The Captains (45 page)

He stepped to the controls, jerked the lever which cut out the mufflers, and with the other hand shoved the throttles forward. The diesels roared.

“Get those fucking sails down!” MacMillan shouted.

The sails would slow the junk down, acting as air brakes, rather than the opposite, when he got the junk up to speed.

If he ran into a sandbank, he thought, that would be all that anybody would write. But it never entered his mind not to try to get Felter and the Korean Marine off the beach.

A second and third mortar round landed. The first landed in the spot where the junk had been thirty seconds before. The second landed in his wake, now a double cocks's tail of water churned up by the powerful diesels.

He spun the wheel to the left, and then to the right, and then straightened the junk up.

The Koreans were having trouble with the rigging.

“Cut the goddamned ropes!” MacMillan shouted, at the moment the forward sail fluttered down the mast. The second followed a moment later.

Now, he thought, he could get some goddamned speed.

“I take? I take?” the Korean Marine who was nominally the junk's skipper asked.

“Yeah,” MacMillan said. “We pick up. You understand?”

The Korean looked at him out of his dark, expressionless eyes. He nodded his head.

MacMillan stepped away from the wheel and the throttles. He went to a .50 caliber machine-gun ammo box, to which a hasp for a padlock had been welded. He unlocked the padlock with a key hanging from his dog chain, opened the ammo box, and took from it a manila envelope. He tore it open. Inside was a cover sheet stamped
TOP SECRET
. Below that, the Signal Operating Instructions in case of emergency. This was clearly an emergency.

He found what he was looking for. He went to the radio, switched in the channel assigned, and picked up the microphone.

“Mulberry, Mulberry,” he called. “This is Balaclava, Balaclava.”

He was surprised when Mulberry came right back.

“This is Mulberry, go ahead.”

“Condition Yellow,” MacMillan said. “Condition Yellow.”

The pitch of the diesels stopped. They slowed to idle. What the fuck was going on?

And then their pitch increased again, and he felt the junk slow. The Korean Marine had slowed the engine to shift into reverse, and was now racing them to stop the junk in the water. They were obviously about to try to pull Felter and the Korean Marine out of the water.

But even over the roar of the diesels, he could hear the incoming mortars. He ducked involuntarily as he heard the whistle of one that he knew was going to be close.

It landed on the port side. If that's where the rubber boat was, that was the end of them.

Two other mortar rounds landed in the water. MacMillan heard the whistle of their shrapnel overhead.

What the fuck was taking them so long to get Felter and the Marine back aboard?

He saw the body basket he had scrounged from the navy being lowered over the side. One of them,
at least
one of them, had been hit.

There came the whistle of mortars again.

The first two missed. The third landed on the high forward deck and blew away the .50 caliber mount and the Korean Marines who had been manning it.

“Balaclava, Mulberry,” the radio said. They had apparently gotten the message, “Condition Yellow,” which meant the mission had been detected. “Do you require assistance, over?”

Shit, what a dumb fucking question.

“Mulberry, Mulberry. This is Balaclava,” MacMillan said to the radio. “Condition Orange. I say again, Condition Orange.” “Condition Orange” meant “Under attack, require assistance.”

The navy body basket came over the side. MacMillan ran to see who it was. Three more mortar rounds came in, landing where they had been. The North Korean on the mortars simply had never seen a junk that could move like this one. Otherwise they would have been blown out of the water long before this.

The body basket held Felter, who was unconscious and bleeding badly from a wound in his knee. He'd thrown up and pissed and shit his pants, and he stank; and he almost made MacMillan sick to his stomach.

They were headed out to sea now, the diesels roaring, the junk crashing into the waves. In a little while, they would be safe from the mortars. But that didn't mean safe. The North Koreans would probably come after them with patrol boats, or planes, and they would shell them when they were within range of shore batteries.

MacMillan put a tourniquet on Felter's leg, put a Korean Marine beside him to hold it, and ran back to the controls.

“Right out to goddamned sea!” he ordered, gesturing toward the open sea.

The Korean skipper didn't like that. He would have preferred to run along the coast, away from the North Korean patrol boats. But he did as he was told, and he didn't have much time to consider whether Major MacMillan was wrong.

Another three mortar rounds bracketed the fleeing junk. One of them landed amidships, and a piece of shrapnel struck the skipper in the stomach and passed out his back, severing his spinal column. He flopped around on the deck for fifteen seconds before he lay still.

MacMillan caught pieces of the same round. One sliced a chunk out of his left thigh, and the other opened a neat gash in his forehead. He had to wipe the blood out of his eyes to find the microphone.

“Mulberry, Mulberry,” he said to the microphone. “This is Balaclava, Balaclava. Condition Red. I say again, Condition Red.”

Condition Red was the code phrase for “Vessel damaged, in immediate danger of sinking.”

Then MacMillan hobbled over to the controls. Slapping a compress on the hole in his thigh, he steered the junk straight out into the Sea of Japan.

(Three)
USS Charles Dewey, DD404
Latitude 41 Degrees 17 Minutes
Longitude 129 Degrees 21 Minutes
0235 Hours
16 November 1951

“Ambrose,” the radio said. “This is Hammerhead.”

Ambrose was today's radio call sign for the USS
Charles Dewey
, DD404, a destroyer attached to Destroyer Squadron K-06, radio code Hammerhead.

“Go ahead, Hammerhead,” the radio operator reported.

“Ambrose, stand by to copy Operational Immediate.”

“Hammerhead, Ambrose ready to copy Operational Immediate.” The radio operator got half out of his swivel chair and pushed a switch. “Skipper…” he began, and then the radio spoke again. The operator put his fingers on the typewriter keys.

“Ambrose, Operational Immediate follows: Execute Balaclava. End message. Acknowledge.”

“Ambrose copies Operational Immediate, Execute Balaclava.”

“Roger, Ambrose. Hammerhead, clear.”

“Ambrose, clear.”

“You get that, Skipper?” the radio operator asked.

“I got it,” the skipper's voice came over the intercom. “Stand by.”

It was half past two in the morning. The skipper was dressed in his skivvies, and had been asleep. He went to his bulkhead safe, and worked the combination. It took him three tries. He took out a vinyl zippered pouch, not unlike a bank deposit pouch. There were a half dozen sealed envelopes in it. He went through them until he came on one marked
BALACLAVA
. He tore it open. There was a cover sheet, a dashed red line surrounding the edge of the sheet reading
TOP SECRET
. He lifted the cover sheet. He stepped to the intercom.

“Sparks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get on 225.35 megacycles. Identify yourself as Florence Nightingale. Establish contact with United Parcel. Get their position.”

“Two twenty-five, thirty-five, got it, Skipper,” the radio operator said. He spoke to the microphone: “United Parcel, United Parcel, this is Florence Nightingale.”

There was no response, so he made the call again. This time there was a reply.

“Florence Nightingale, this is United Parcel. Go ahead,” MacMillan said.

“United Parcel, Florence Nightingale,” the radio operator said. “What is your position? I say again, what is your position?”

“Florence Nightingale, Fox Item Item George Fox Able. I say again. Fox Item Item George Fox Able.”

“Understand Fox Item Item George Fox Able,” the radio operator said. “Stand by.”

The skipper, still in his skivvies, rushed from his cabin to the bridge. He jammed the heel of his hand against a palmsized brass knob by the passageway door. A bell immediately began to clang.

The speaker, who had been leaning against the starboard compass, stood erect and pressed his microphone switch.

“General Quarters, General Quarters,” he said. “This is no drill. This is no drill.”

The skipper looked at his chart table. The officer of the watch indicated their position with the points of his dividers.

“Steer one three zero,” the skipper ordered.

“One three zero it is, sir,” the helmsman replied, spinning the wheel to port.

“Have the engineer give us emergency military power,” the skipper said. The engine room telegraph clanged, and the officer of the deck picked up the telephone to the engine room. “Emergency military power,” he said.

The destroyer heeled sharply. The skipper almost lost his balance. He regained it and went to the intercom.

“Sparks, advise United Parcel Florence Nightingale is en route at flank speed. Estimate one hour and five minutes.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Skipper, they advise they are on fire and about to lose power.”

“OK, Sparks, thank you,” the skipper said.

“Somebody in trouble, Skipper?” the officer on the deck asked.

“You heard it,” the skipper said. “I'm going to get my pants on.”

“Seas are smooth, Skipper,” the officer of the deck said. “They can take to the boats.”

“I don't think ‘a wooden sailing vessel bearing the appearance of a junk' is able to have any small boats,” the skipper said. “I hope they can all swim.”

(Four)
Kwandae-Ri, North Korea
0240 Hours
16 November 1951

One of the sixteen radio teletype machines in the XIX Corps (Group) Communications Center rang a bell and immediately began to type out a gibberish series of five character words both on the roll of yellow teletype machine paper and on a strip of perforated tape which spilled out the side of the machine. One of the operators on duty waited until there was about two feet of perforated tape dangling from the machine.

Then he carefully ripped it off and walked across the room to another machine. He inserted the tape in a hole, pushed a switch, and watched as the machine began to swallow the tape. A moment later, the keys of the machine clattered into life.

 

OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

TOP SECRET MULBERRY

FOR JADE SIX PERSONAL

BALACLAVA REPORTS CONDITION ORANGE. PREPARE TO RENDER

ASSISTANCE WHEN REQUESTED
.

“Captain,” the operator said. The communication officer on duty, who had been reading the
Stars and Stripes
at his desk, laid it down and walked to the cryptographic machine. The operator went to the clattering radio teletype machine and ripped off another length of perforated tape and inserted it in the cryptographic machine. It began to clatter again.

OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

MULBERRY BUSH NUMBER 2

BALACLAVA REPORTS CONDITION ORANGE
.

The communications officer picked up a telephone and dialed a number.

“Black,” a voice answered on the second ring. Jesus, the Old Man himself. The communications officer wondered if he had dialed the wrong number.

“General, I was trying to get Colonel Newburgh,” he said. “This is the comm center, Captain Tailler.”

“What is it, Captain?”

“I've got a Mulberry Operational Immediate coming in, sir. Colonel Newburgh requested that he be informed whenever that happens.”

“OK, Captain,” Lt. General E. Z. Black said. “Thank you very much. I'll be right down. Try the G-3 Operations Room for Colonel Newburgh.”

 

General Black entered the comm center. A moment later, Colonel Newburgh—who, the troops said, because of his silver brush mustache and curly hair, looked like a model in a booze ad in
Esquire
—walked in. The commo officer handed the two Operational Immediates to General Black, who read them and handed them to Colonel Newburgh.

The machine began to clatter again. In foot-long lengths, the operator tore the perforated tape from the teletype machine and fed it to the crypotgraphic machine.