‘Hold on!’ Kelly snapped as the front-sight assembly came off.
‘It’s too noisy, sir. You are going in alone, right?’
‘Yes, I am.’
The machinist didn’t even look up. ‘You want me to quiet this baby down or do you like to advertise?’
‘Yon can’t do that with a rifle.’
‘Says who? How far you figure you have to shoot?’
‘Not more than a hundred yards, probably not that much. Hell, I don’t even want to have to use it -‘
”Cuz it’s noisy, right?’ The chief smiled. ‘You want to watch me, sir? You’re gonna learn something.’
The chief walked the barrel over to a drill press. The proper bit was already in place, and under the watchful eyes of Kelly and two petty officers he drilled a series of holes in the forward six inches of the hollow steel rod.
‘Now, you can’t silence a supersonic bullet all the way, but what you can do is trap all the gas, and that’ll surely help.’
‘Even for a high-power cartridge?’
‘Gonzo, you all set up?’
‘Yeah, Chief,’ a second-class named Gonzales replied. The rifle barrel went onto a lathe, which cut a shallow but lengthy series of threads.
‘I already got this made up.’ The chief held up a can-type suppressor, fully three inches in diameter and fourteen inches long. It screwed nicely onto the end of the barrel. A gap in the can allowed reattachment of the front sights, which also locked the suppressor fully in place.
‘How long did you work on this?’
‘Three days, sir. When I looked over the arms we embarked, it wasn’t hard to figure what you might need, and I had the spare time. So I played around some.’
‘But how the hell did you know I was going -‘
‘We’re exchanging signals with a sub. How hard is all that to figure out?’
‘How did you know that?’ Kelly demanded, knowing the answer even so.
‘Ever know a ship that had secrets? Captain’s got a yeoman. Yeomen talk,’ the machinist explained, completing the reassembly process. ‘It makes the weapon about six inches longer, I hope you don’t mind.’
Kelly shouldered the carbine. The balance was actually improved somewhat. He preferred a muzzle-heavy weapon since it made for better control.
‘Very nice.’ He had to try it out, of course. Kelly and the chief headed aft. Along the way the machinist got a discarded wooden box. On the fantail, Kelly slapped a full magazine into the carbine. The chief tossed the wood into the water and stepped back. Kelly shouldered the weapon and squeezed off his first round.
Pop. A moment later came the sound of the bullet hitting the wood, actually somewhat louder than the report of the cartridge. He’d also distinctly heard the working of the bolt mechanism. This chief machinist’s mate had done for a high-powered rifle what Kelly himself had done for a .22 pistol. The master craftsman smiled benignly.
‘The only hard part’s making sure there’s enough gas to work the bolt. Try it full auto, sir.’
Kelly did that, rippling off six rounds. It still sounded like gunfire, but the actual noise generated was reduced by at least ninety-five percent, and that meant that no one could hear it beyond a couple hundred yards – as opposed to over a thousand for a normal rifle.
‘Good job, Chief.’
‘Whatever you’re up to, sir, you be careful, hear?’ the chief suggested, walking off without another word.
‘You bet,’ Kelly told the water. He hefted the weapon a little more, and emptied the magazine at the wood before it grew too far off. The bullets converted the wooden box into splinters to the accompaniment of small white fountains of seawater.
You’re ready, John.
So was the weather, he learned a few minutes later. Perhaps the world’s most sophisticated weather prediction service operated to support air operations over Vietnam – not that the pilots really appreciated or acknowledged it. The senior meteorologist had come across from Constellation with the admirals. He moved his hands across a chart of isobars and the latest satellite photo.
‘The showers start tomorrow, and we can expect rain on and off for the next four days. Some heavy stuff. It’ll go on until this slow-moving low-pressure area slides up north into China,’ the chief petty officer told them.
All of the officers were there. The four flight crews assigned to the mission evaluated this news soberly. Flying a helicopter in heavy weather wasn’t exactly fun, and no aviator liked the idea of reduced visibility. But falling rain would also muffle the noise of the aircraft, and reduced visibility worked both ways. The main hazard that concerned them was light antiaircraft guns. Those were optically aimed, and anything that hindered the ability of the crews to hear and see their aircraft made for safety.
‘Max winds?’ a Cobra pilot asked.
‘At worst, gusts to thirty-five or forty knots. It will be a little bumpy aloft, sir.’
‘Our main search radar is pretty good for weather surveillance. We can steer you around the worst of it,’ Captain Franks offered. The pilots nodded.
‘Mr Clark?’ Admiral Greer asked.
‘Rain sounds good to me. The only way they can spot me on the inbound leg is the bubbles I leave on the surface of the river. Rain’ll break that up. It means I can move in daylight if I have to.’ Kelly paused, knowing that to go on would merely make the final commitment. ‘Skate ready for me?’
‘Whenever we say so,’ Maxwell answered.
‘Then it’s “go-mission” on my end, sir.’ Kelly could feel his skin go cold. It seemed to contract around his entire body, making him seem smaller somehow. But he’d said it anyway.
Eyes turned to Captain Albie, USMC. A vice admiral, two rear admirals, and an up-and-coming CIA field officer now depended on this young Marine to make the final decision. He would take the main force in. His was the ultimate operational responsibility. It seemed very strange indeed to the young captain that seven stars needed him to say ‘go’ but twenty-five Marines and perhaps twenty others had their lives riding on his judgment. It was his mission to lead, and it had to be exactly right the first time. He looked over at Kelly and smiled.
‘Mr Clark, sir, you be real careful. I think it’s time for your swim. This mission is “go.”‘
There was no exultation. In fact, every man around the chart table looked down at the maps, trying to convert the two-dimensional ink on paper into three-dimensional reality. Then the eyes came up, almost simultaneously, and each pair read all the others. Maxwell spoke first to one of the helicopter crews.
‘I guess you’d better get your helo warmed up.’ Maxwell turned. ‘Captain Franks, would you signal Skate?’ Two crisp aye aye, sirs answered him, and the men stood erect, stepping back from the chart and their decision.
It was a little late for the sober pause, Kelly told himself. He put his fear aside as best he could and started focusing his mind on twenty men. It seemed so strange to risk his life for people he hadn’t met, but then, risk of life wasn’t supposed to be rational. His father had spent a lifetime doing it, and had lost his life in the successful rescue of two children. If I can take pride in my dad, he told himself, then I can honor him best in this way.
You can do it, man. You know how. He could feel the determination begin to take over. All the decisions were made. He was committed to action now. Kelly’s face took a hard set. Dangers were no longer things to be feared, but to be dealt with. To be overcome.
Maxwell saw it. He’d seen the same thing in ready rooms on carriers, fellow pilots going through the mental preparations necessary before you tossed the dice, and the Admiral remembered how it had been for him, the way the muscles tense, how your eyesight suddenly becomes very sharp. First in, last out, just as his mission had often been, flying his F6F Hellcat to eliminate fighters and then cover the attack aircraft all the way home. My second son, was what Dutch suddenly told himself, as brave as Sonny and just as smart. But he’d never sent Sonny into danger personally, and Dutch was far older than he’d been at Okinawa. Somehow danger assigned to others was larger and more horrid than that which you assumed for yourself. But it had to be this way, and Maxwell knew that Kelly trusted him, as he in his time had trusted Pete Mitscher. That burden was a heavy one, all the more because he had to see the face he was sending into enemy territory, alone. Kelly caught the look from Maxwell, and his face changed into a knowing grin.
‘Don’t sweat it, sir.’ He walked out of the compartment to pack up his gear.