The final countdown, p.5
The Final Countdown, page 5
Black Cloud’s eyes went wide. “The wind’s gone around the compass twice in the last hour.”
Lasky nodded. “Captain Yelland, even the Skylab astronauts couldn’t figure out this effect. The real-time photos they were taking would show interference like this, well, this smudge, but when they looked down they couldn’t see anything unusual in the visual band. Yet there was localized, intense storm activity. Later, the pictures they were taking at this time showed no details—only this same smudge. Even the cosmonauts aboard their Salyuts had the problem.”
Dick Owens took one comer of the printout. “Warren, was there any particular geographical area where this was picked up?”
“Ninety percent of all such activity was in the Atlantic, well off the Florida coast.”
Silence followed that remark. “Jesus, not that Devil’s Triangle crap. Ghosts and goblins. They looked at Commander Dan Thurman; his face confirmed his disgust at even considering anything unusual to do with the area known as the Devil’s Triangle or the Bermuda Triangle, as it was also known.
Kaufman motioned for attention. “Commander, we’re in the Pacific, not off Florida.”
“Stop it,” Yelland ordered. “Where we are doesn’t matter. What is happening is everything. Mr. Lasky, can you add anything else?”
Lasky shrugged. “The computers will not function because of an overwhelming magnetic field that, for want of a better description, continually short-circuits their magnetic flow. I have never encountered this situation before and I cannot explain it.”
Yelland nodded to his met officer. Black Cloud looked as dark as his name. “Sir, whatever is happening is impossible. And I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it’s over.”
“Good point. Mr. Kaufman, is there any contact with or monitoring of those Russian trawlers?”
“No, sir. Not on our wavelengths or theirs. May I add, sir, we have no contact with anyone or anything, anywhere, including our own support vessels. .AH satellite contact is, well, squeezed out is the best term I have for it”
Dick Owens glanced at Yelland. “Sir, is there a chance this entire effect—the electromagnetic effect, I mean—could be generated by the Russians?”
“I don’t know. Anybody have anything to offer?” “Impossible,” Lasky said immediately. “The only way to blank out electromagnetic signals is through the detonation of high-yield nuclear or thermonuclear devices at high altitude. You would then get a total sponging effect in the communications band, right on up through UHF, microwave, the works. But the effect would be totally electrical and electromagnetic. It could not possibly produce a physical storm effect like this.”
Yelland picked up a red phone by his chair. The simple act of lifting that one particular telephone activated every priority command channel on Nimitz. The buzzing and crackling from the phone could be heard by the entire group surrounding the captain.
“It’s dead,” Yelland said. “Use direct line communications from this point on.”
Communications hash stalked the carrier. The last semblance of contact with the outside world came from wide-eyed pilots still in the air trying to reach the safety of Nimitz. In carrier air traffic control (CATSEE) men cursed their gear and worked frantically to overcome goblins of static and wavering sounds of their highly advanced equipment In the electromagnetic sense their world had gone crazy. These were the specialists who handled all traffic to and from Nimitz and, electronically, they were being robbed of their senses.
A radio operator kept a microphone close to his lips, talking urgently. “Lightfoot Eighteen, Lightfoot Eighteen, this is Strawboss. Repeat, this is Strawboss. Come in, come in. Over.”
A voice crackled weakly in his headphones and from the bulkhead speakers, a great blurring of words and static, “—is Lightfoot—can’t—over—”
“Say again, Lightfoot! We’re reading you! Repeat your last call! Over!”
Again the distorted voice gabbled at them. “— problems—radio gear—something—vertigo—” Sudden, crashing static. “Fading—over—”
The operator tried valiantly. “Lightfoot Eighteen, this is Strawboss, keep transmitting, keep transmitting so we can get a fix on you. Repeat your last call, repeat your last call, you’re garbled. Keep transmitting. Over.”
Static hissed at them. Another crewman standing by snatched at a phone.
Lt. Commander Walt Kaufman had left the bridge for the observation complex high above the flight deck, where he would take over as air boss. He surveyed the mad world of the rising storm. Around Kaufman were three walls of unbreakable armored glass and he could see the entire length of the flight deck. Kaufman brought his phone to his ear. “Kaufman here. How goes it in comm?”
“Sir, intermittent, badly broken, mostly hash. Light-foot Eighteen is trying to get in. He’s reported radio problems and he said something about vertigo.” “Jesus,” Kaufman swore. “We can’t bring him in if we can’t talk to him. You getting anything on the transponders? What? You’re not painting them? Go to the highest frequencies we’ve got. Try anything. Yeah, well, hang in there. How’d you like to be the man out there?”
Kaufman was deep in thought for several moments. He had some new pilots out there. If they could hold their headings by using their directional gyros, that didn’t depend upon electrical flow; because every fighter had a backup vacuum system, they could get to the carrier in the next few minutes. Kaufman called Dick Owens. CAG’ would have to make the decision. “Dick? Kaufman here. Look, we’ve got every light on this barge turned on. Why don’t we fire flares every fifteen seconds? The biggest damned things we’ve got. We can get some good altitude with them and they can be seen almost through a brick wall.”
Owens snatched at the slim hope. “Good move, Walt. Okay. Let them go every fifteen seconds and keep them going. And if you do get any clear contact, well, the way things are going, trying to bring them in here could be the worst thing of alL If you read anyone, bingo them.”
“You know what you’re saying?”
Owens’ voice was harsh. “I sure as hell do, mister. Bingo them. That’s an order. Tell them to head for Pearl. That’s in the clear as far as we know, and we’ve got another carrier between us and the islands. They can transmit mayday on their transponders and they’ll have a chance with Halsey taking them aboard.”
6
Dick Owens went directly to Matt Yelland. “Captain, they went to the highest power for transmission we could muster. Six planes out there and five of them acknowledged. They ve gone for max altitude on their bingo orders. They’ll try to make Halsey or go back to Pearl.”
Yelland’s eyes narrowed. “What about number six? Who and what is he?”
“Bob Stanton. New pilot He’s in an A-7.”
“How far out?”
“Sir, we don’t know. Encoding altimeter, transponder; none of it reads worth a damn. We’ve got intermittent voice contact We’re trying to get him down. He’s got some kind of problem. Fuel from the sound of it and he’s got to come in.”
“Take personal charge of the operation,” Yelland ordered.
“Yes, sir.” As Owens took off, Yelland stared with growing dismay at the bizarre electrical effects of the storm. In all his years in the navy he had never seen a ceaseless barrage of lightning that was the only illumination down what appeared to be an enormous tunnel of utter blackness.
Dick Owens’s voice crashed between decks and on the flight deck of the carrier. “This is air boss. All hands, let’s get with it. I want a ready deck immediately. Emergency conditions, all hands. Man your huffers and check your wires. Move it, move it Let’s get it together. We’ve got a Corsair out there trying to get in. Go, go.”
Flight deck crews were in frenzied but well-disciplined action. Men in different-colored jackets and helmets moved about purposefully. All crash equipment was at the ready. Dick Owens and the men with him stared gloomily at the violent horizon. Owens couldn’t believe that goddamned sky. It was turning from black to a dismal green, seeming to glow from within itself, and turning sallow every face about him.
A seaman tugged at Owens’s sleeve. “Excuse me, sir. Would you look at the PPI radarscope? We can’t make any sense out of it.”
Owens hesitated. What the hell; they wouldn’t make an issue out of the PPI unless they had reason enough in the face of all the other crap busting loose about them. Owens moved to the radar seat and peered into the scope presentation. What he saw on the glass was unbelievable. The sweep line pivoted around the face of the scope, showed the normal amount of sea return, picked out the precipitation, indicated the hash of lightning. But within the edge of the storm’s ragged limits there had appeared a wavering brilliant line. Owens lifted his head to study the other men.
“You saw that line also? Anybody know what the hell it is?” No one answered; they shook their heads. Owens cursed to himself. He could fight anything he’d ever encountered in his life. But this was beyond all knowledge and all reason. A seaman brought him coffee and he nodded his thanks. Around him men were taking on a new air of readiness, as if everyone could feel some strange sort of hell about to break loose with the weather. Owens looked out across the pitching flight deck. Every man available was securing for the worst Owens studied the coffee mug in his hand. The mug was vibrating strangely, the coffee almost burbling. Jesus. He glanced up. That green light along the horizon was getting stronger.
A shift-break crew assembled in the mess. CPO Jaime Castillo was worried. Unless everything was completely secured down, the weather could turn his enormous kitchen area into its own land of devil’s broth. But there were men out there who needed food and hot liquids and Castillo rattled off orders to his men. They moved as quickly as the rolling deck would permit. The seated men being served were deep in animated conversation. The atmosphere gripped them all, and the scuttlebutt of freaked-out computers and electronic hash was all over the ship.
Lieutenant John Harris, deck boss for hangar level two, slipped into a seat. He reached for a coffee mug, joining the others in the light-serious conversation about the crazy weather. He never got his coffee; the ship took what felt like an enormous jolt and lurched suddenly. It was like a city heeling over to one side. The only man standing near by was a steward with a full tray that flew from his hands and crashed to the deck with a clatter of metal, breaking glass, and spraying liquids. The steward went down, his hands flailing wildly for balance. No one could move fast enough to help; he screamed as his left arm snapped.
But Harris had no thought for the man. He had an immediate vision of that blow on his hangar deck. “What the hell was that?” he shouted. He jumped to his feet, starting back to the flight deck, when the ship gave another shuddering yaw and that tremendous jolting motion. At the same time the speakers through the carrier clamored with the alarm for Condition Zulu. Full emergency. “Oh, shit,” Harris swore quietly and struggled to leave the mess. Other men streamed behind him to their stations.
The minute Harris checked onto the flight deck his number one hand told him that everything was under control. “They want you on the bridge, pronto, Lieutenant,” he heard. Harris went quickly along a corridor and then turned to a ladder, sprinting upward three steps at a time. He was on the third level, breathing heavily, when the speakers came alive again. My God—they were bringing in a fighter in this weather! Harris ran all the way to the bridge and stopped as if struck a physical blow. For the first time since this weather had hit them he had a true idea of what was happening. He saw the ocean building heavily, and he looked, startled, at the ghastly green glow on the horizon. He heard Owens’s voice.
“We’ve got no choice. We bring him in, no matter what The poor bastard can’t eject into that ocean! His only chance is to land. Yes. Do it, and fast!”
A radar technician grasped Harris’s arm. “We got an A-7 out there. Stanton. We were able to bingo the others back to the Halsey or to Pearl. Stanton has got a bunch of trouble on his hands.”
“Commander Owens!” The voice carried above all other sounds.
“Go!” Owens snapped.
“CATSEE One here, sir. We’ve got a weak skin track. He’s maybe ten miles out. We can’t be sure.” “Stay with him!”
“Yes, sir. We got part of his transmission. He cannot get his arrestor hook down.”
“Jesus,” Owens wore. He hit the comm switch for all channels. Owens’s voice boomed through the entire carrier. “We have a Corsair coming in now, about ten miles out on straight final. He can’t get his arrestor hook down. All hands full alert Deck crew, rig the barricade. Big the barricade. This is no drill. I repeat, this is no drill. Rig the barricade!”
Men moved as swiftly as wing and rolling deck and vicious rain would permit Owens took another call from radar. “Sir, approach control here. We’re still skin-tracking. The pilot … well, sir, he’s just taken what seems to be mutiple lightning strikes.”
Good God. “Is he under control?” Owens snapped.
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Stay with him. Keep talking to him. Tell him the barricade is up. Keep him drilling right in, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Matthew Yelland waited for the right moment. As the deck barricade was being rigged, he knew he had a few precious moments that could be critical for his men. He squeezed his transmit button and his voice carried through Nimitz.
“This is the captain speaking. I want all of you to know that we may be running into something different from anything we’ve ever encountered before. Were in some kind of freak storm, and we’ve picked up what looks like a pretty mean squall line. That’s all the radar can tell us, but whatever it it, it should hit us in the next several minutes. You know this ship can take anything, so every one of you that isn’t on immediate duty right now, secure everything within reach. Batten it all down and hang on.”
Commander Dan Thurman looked at his captain. “Sir, you know what? You were so calm just then that I think you scared the shit out of this whole ship.”
Yelland nodded slowly. “Funny you should say that. Because it’s just how I feel.”
They secured aircraft and trucks and equipment with cables and chains, they locked cabinet doors, they tied equipment down with ropes and they jammed lockers beneath bunks—everything they could see that might move was secured. Those planes still on deck were triple secured with cables and chains. Every deck hook that was available was raised from its flush position so that a small forest of wires and cables ran to the sturdier warbirds. The last helicopters, much more fragile than the slab-winged jets, had been taken below decks by elevator where the ritual of cables and chains was repeated.
On the flight deck, eyes were turned anxiously to the sky, looking aft, where the stem of the great carrier made a mockery of the word horizon. Great swells heaved along the ocean surface, and the deck itself, despite computerized stabilization equipment, was like a flat-backed snake crawling over a sand dune. The landing signal officer stood by at the automatic guidance system for approach, knowing the hell Stanton was going through in that A-7; the LSO was ready in case the automatic system went out. He wore a body harness, strapped in four ways to the deck so he wouldn’t lose his footing, like a stunt man about to do wing-walking atop a plane. If necessary, he would use the old illuminated hand paddles to bring in Stanton. In the meantime, the automatic light system with mirrors was still working.
The deck crew had completed its emergency rigging of the barricade and the deck was devoid of all personnel. That A-7 was little more than a winged •bomb about to impact on an insanely-pitching-rolling deck. A shout went up. “There he isl I can see his lights!”
And they could. The Corsair was still invisible in the blackness but its flashing beacons and strobes and the landing lights were on and unmistakable. In radar approach the operator was jubilant—he could hear Stanton clearly! He began his reply and then his face turned white as Stantons voice went shrill.
“I’ve just lost the lights! The approach lights are out!”
The radar controller snapped out his answer. “Use the LSO! Use the LSO! He’ll bring you in with the paddles! We’re barricaded for you! Just come on in!”
On the deck, six men standing on platforms, braced against the rolling motions, pointed bright battery-powered lights on the landing signal officer* He stood out in brilliant relief.
The LSO’s face was starkly white. Not just from the lights. His lips peeled back in a grimace of pain. All through the carrier other men felt the same high frequency sound that was assailing the huge vessel on deck and through its innards. Men ripped off headsets as feedback screeches stabbed wildly into their ears. Several screamed in pain. Those working to bring in the A-7 gasped for breath, suffering terrible agony as the second rose higher and higher. They could barely see the fighter as it bounced and swayed wildly on what was now only a two-mile final to safety. The sound kept rising. In the computer room a man collapsed, unconscious. Lasky jammed his hands to his ears, opening his mouth, trying to equalize pressure. Captain Yelland’s eyes bulged as though something alive were within his skull, fighting madly to get out
Not only were men affected. The sound was both audible’ and electromagnetic. Electrical equipment sparked and smoked, compasses spun crazily, radar scopes exploded in sprays of fire. Glass shattered everywhere. Vision began to fade, turning white instead of black. Agony raced through the ship, bringing men to their knees or collapsing where they stood. Hundreds of men bled from noses and ears.
