Let’s turn up the temperature a little. Just a little.

Time for tea? Yup, maybe so. Music? Definitely.

Couldn’t think of anything more relevant than the Moodies, but I had in mind In Search of the Lost Chord. No need of a link for this one, I reckon; just load her up and hit play. If you ain’t in the mood by the time you get through Departure and Ride My See-Saw…well…go check your pulse because something’s wrong. And oh yeah, before I forget, Timothy Leary’s still on the outside, looking in.

So, ready or not, here she comes.

5.5

Callahan felt the connection break, but not before he saw what MacKenzie had seen. What he had reacted to – before he’d passed out.

The Tall White, the same one he’d met in the desert years ago. But…Roosevelt? Nimitz and Ray Spruance? He knew those faces from history books, from their role in crafting the strategy that had defeated Japan in the Second World War – but that only made their appearance here, and now, that much more confusing…

He fell away from the little Yamaha and turned to the stunned faces reeling around the room. Turner had never been briefed-in on this stuff, obviously, and now the grizzled veteran was quaking on the floor in a mass of convulsive drool, completely blown away by what he’d seen. Richardson appeared dazed, but his sidekick, the old cop from LA, simply appeared thoughtful. Shook up, but thoughtful.

“Well,” Sumner Bacon sighed, “I will be dipped in shit…”

Richardson snapped out of it and looked around MacKenzie’s cabin, then at Callahan. “That was Chester Nimitz, right?” he asked.

“Yup,” Harry said.

“Who was the other one? The other admiral?”

“Ray Spruance,” Bacon replied.

“I know the name,” Richardson sighed, “but why do you think he was there with Roosevelt?”

Bacon crossed his arms pedantically and shook his head. “He was in overall command at Midway, Ralph. He was the architect of that victory, and several more.”

Richardson nodded. “Okay? So, we have the three principal architects of the victory in the Pacific? Is that what I’m hearing, or what else am I missing?”

Bacon nodded, still confused. Callahan just grinned – like the mad cat when Alice appeared.

“Well then,” Richardson added, “the real question is why? Why them?”

Callahan nodded. “Yup. I guess that is the question,” still grinning like the Cheshire cat.

And Richardson turned to Callahan and stared at him for the longest while. “So why do I get the impression you already know the answer to that one, Harry? What’s your game, anyway?”

“No game, Ralph, but I guess I always thought you were smarter than this, but hell, I’ve been wrong before.”

Bacon huffed up protectively and turned to stare down Callahan, but Harry just laughed at this bit of theatrics before he turned to Chief Turner. “You doing okay down there, Jim?” he asked.

“Yeah…yeah…think so. Mr Callahan? Do you really know what’s going on?”

“Me? Oh, sure. Don’t I look like I know everything?”

“No more riddles, Callahan,” Richardson growled. “What’s going on? Do you, or don’t you know?”

Harry still smiled, but he abruptly turned fractionally more serious for a moment before he spoke: “One of the things you figure out in a hurry, when you start tripping like this, is to keep what you learn to yourself. Every one of you knows what a timeline is, so I don’t have to tell you that I’m not going to be the one to mess with it. Right?”

Richardson glowered, then turned to Sumner. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”

Eve and Sara had remained silent through all of this, and they’d had no need for Callahan and his piano to go where he had taken the others, but now they rushed to help get Richardson back to his stateroom on the main deck. That left Callahan and Turner to straighten up the admiral’s cabin, and after they finished-up they walked up to the bridge to relieve Valdez.

“Chief,” she said to Turner as he stepped up to her side, “what was going on back there?”

Turner, his face still as white as a percale sheet, simply shrugged. “I got no clue, Jenn.”

So she turned to the old cop, her eyes pleading now. “Mr Callahan? Do you know what’s happening?”

And Callahan nodded, his eyes now full of manifest purpose. “Yup. There’s a war coming. A real big one, too.”

And then Turner wheeled around and faced Callahan. “But you just said…” but he stopped when he saw the old cop hold up a hand.

“Look, Chief, I don’t trust Richardson, and I’m not even sure I trust that henchman of his. The less they know the better, at least as far as I’m concerned…”

“What? Why?”

“Questionable motives, Chief. Money and greed, for one, but they’re pawns on this board so I’d steer clear of them if I was in your position.”

Turner understood straight talk, and now he understood that this Callahan character was a straight shooter, someone he could relate to and talk with. “Okay, got it. Now, what kind of war?”

Callahan smiled again. “Oh, you know, just the usual cast of bad dudes. Fascists and their industrial enablers, for the most part.”

“What? You mean like Hitler type fascists?”

“Yeah, Chief,” Callahan sighed, “just like Hitler, only worse.”

+++++

Several hours later and the weather had turned snotty as Amaranth approached, and then skirted around the cabbage patch off Cape May, New Jersey, with near gale force winds now coming out of the east; Turner had enough sea miles under his keel to know that a late-season depression was working its way up the coast – well before he dialed up the weather charting function on the plotter. The lumbering Nordhavn took a 15 foot wave over the bow as she turned northeast for New York City, and a moment later an even bigger set of waves approached so he turned into them. A few minutes later he heard someone below on the main deck blowing beets in the galley sink and he grinned like a madman. Sailors love the misery of others – when that misery isn’t coming from one of their own, anyway.

With all three radars running, and AIS still active, he was glad to see that they were the only ship out here – but just then another P-8 Poseidon out of NAS Jax came gliding by a few hundred feet over the waves, the pilot rocking the wings to let him know they were on station again, now that Amaranth was back out in the Atlantic. 

“They back already?” Valdez said as she came up from her cabin, pointing at the Boeing as it disappeared in the low scudding clouds.

“Looks that way, don’t it?” Turner snarled. “You get some shut-eye?”

“Not really.”

Turner nodded. “Some heavy shit last night.”

“Man…” she sighed, “…that Callahan dude is one strange mo-fo.”

Turner shrugged. “He’s been there, done that. Flew Hueys in ‘Nam, so cut him some slack, okay?”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Someone toss their cookies down there?”

“Yeah. Richardson’s daughter. Green as a head of lettuce, too,” Valdez said, grinning.

“She’s been keeping to herself a lot, hasn’t she?”

“First time I’ve seen her out of her cabin.”

“Know her name?”

“Nope,” she said, “and she didn’t look too much like she wanted to talk, if you know what I mean.”

“Make a mess?”

“No. Anyway, that Sara thing cleaned it up.”

Turner shook his head. “She’s not a thing, Valdez – any more than you are. We clear on that?”

“As day, Chief. Want me to take it for a while?”

“Sure.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

Turner pulled up the chart on the main display. “McCrie Shoal Buoy?” he said, pointing at the chart then off to their port forward quarter. “The red one, there? That’s 2MS; keep that well to port, steer 0-7-0 for ten miles, then 0-2-5 for the ship channel into New Jack City. It’s plotted and the AP is on, so just keep an eye on the engine temps and fuel flows while we’re in this stinky weather.”

“Did Callahan say anything about the admiral?”

“Nope.”

The radio hissed and came alive: “Vine, this is Kestrel.”

Turner picked up the mic and made sure the handshake for the encryption sequence was active. “Kestrel, Vine, go ahead.”

“Dropping on a submerged contact 2-5 miles ahead. Recommend you stay close to the beach.”

“Roger, advise when you know more. Vine, out.”

“Well, well,” Callahan said as he came up the steps and onto the bridge. 

“Know who that is, Mr Callahan?”

“It’s Harry, Chief, and yeah, I know.”

“Alright, Harry. Anything I need to know about?”

“They’re not going to bother us, Chief.”

“Is it another one of those blue things,” Valdez said – as a shiver ran up her spine.

Callahan shrugged. “Maybe. It’s either that, or one of Weyland’s boats.”

That bit of information seemed to catch Turner off-guard. “This Weyland? You sayin’ he has a submarine?”

“Submarines. And yes, his group certainly does. Argentine build, diesel electric.”

Turner picked up the mic again. “Kestrel, this is Vine.”

“Kestrel, go.”

“You’re probably going to find an Argentine boat, diesel electric. You got tapes for that?”

“Affirmative, Vine. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Vine out.” Turner looked at Callahan again, nodding. “Anything else we need to know?”

“Just leave ‘em alone, Chief. I reckon they’ll follow us to New York, whoever it is. How close to the beach can this thing get?”

“Close,” Turner said. “Depth drops off real quick to 30, 40 feet, but this storm will kick up a bunch of stuff near the beach, and I’m not sure I want to suck that muck into the cooling system.”

“How deep is it offshore, like 25 miles out…?”

Turner zoomed the chart out and looked at the shaded bottom contours. “Not real deep, Harry. Ninety feet, maybe a hundred plus. Kind of skinny for a sub, and if he gets much closer to territorial limits he’ll be in deep shit with the airdales. That P-8 might have to get authorization, but they’ll drop on any unidentified submerged contact getting that close to CONUS.”

“It’d be better if they didn’t,” Harry sighed. “Drop, I mean.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I’d rather they know where we are right now, and that everything appears to be copacetic. If it happens to be one of Weyland’s boats, well then, we can still assume they have no idea that anything weird is going on with MacKenzie. Now, I don’t about you, but I’d like to keep it that way – for as long as we can.”

Turner nodded.

“What does copacetic mean?” Valdez asked sheepishly.

Callahan grumbled and shook his head, then took off down the stairs to his cabin on the lower deck.

+++++

Lieutenant Commander Cole Knight had one eye on the P-8s radar altitude and the other on the far horizon, the Boeing’s windshield wipers beating a steady cadence, then he checked the countdown timer again. “Okay, start your turn in 15 seconds.”

“15 seconds, aye,” Lieutenant junior grade Judy Abramson, the freshly minted aviator in the left seat replied.

Knight was the commanding officer of Fleet Replacement Squadron 30, or VP-30, and his squadron was the Navy’s principal east coast training squadron for the P-8. He typically only flew right seat when a rookie was nearing graduation – or about to flunk out of the class. That would not, however, be the case with Abramson, and while they’d only been airborne for three hours he was already impressed with her abilities, if not her innate skill as an aviator. He’d asked her why she hadn’t gone to fighters or attack aircraft, and her reply said it all. Her dad had been a P-3 driver, and it had been her dream to follow in his footsteps – ever since he’d taught her how to fly.

“WEPS,” Abramson said over the intercom, “you still got the contact.”

“Yessir, we got him pinned. Too shallow to do anything but sit on the bottom and hope we go away.”

“Got it.” She came out of her standard rate turn and trimmed for level flight as another heavy gust shook the aircraft, and this one caught her off guard.

“You got it?” Knight asked.

“Yessir.”

The radio hissed to life. “Kestrel One, Dover.”

“Kestrel, go,” Knight replied to the tower at Dover air force base.

“Kestrel, Dover, we’re tracking a stationary target your vicinity, altitude angels 1-2-0-0. EastROCC advises you’re close and NORAD wants you to investigate.”

“Dover, confirm angels 1-2-0-0.”

“That’s affirmative, Kestrel. One hundred and twenty thousand feet, and now descending slowly. Looks like a, well, we have a very large return here, and no ECM.”

“Sounds like a balloon,” Abramson said, looking over at Knight.

He nodded. “Okay, gimme a heading of 0-9-0 and set us up for a 3500 vertical rate to fifteen thousand. We ought to be out of these clouds by ten, but let’s take it slow. I doubt we can sneak up on ‘em, but we might as well try.”

“Uh, sir, you know something I don’t?”

He replied with a dead ahead, stony-eyed stare, though reports about that first blue sphere had come straight to his desk and then right to the CNO and SecDef. The information had been compartmentalized as ‘Eyes Only, Ultra’ after that, and that was, as they say, that. 

“Got it,” Abramson sighed, unconvinced. “3500 vertical to angels 1-5.”

“Kestrel, Dover. Object now at 9-0 thousand and descending rapidly. Phased array showing a rough diameter of 4-0-0 feet.”

Knight nodded. “Kestrel, got it. Any word on support from Tyndall?”

“Kestrel, Dover. Two ANG 16s on ready alert responding out of Westover, ETA 2-0 minutes.” 

“Fuck,” Knight sighed.

“Sir?” Abramson said, now more than a little nervous.

Knight leaned over and looked up, saw the overcast was thinning from gray to white – and then the Boeing popped out of the clouds for a moment, then as quickly went into another wall of dark, heavy cloud – and he looked at the main altitude readout in the horizontal display. ‘Ninety-five hundred…ninety-six…’

“Alright Lieutenant,” Knight said, “my aircraft.”

Abramson immediately relinquished the controls. “Instructor’s A/C,” she answered, as per protocol.

As the jet popped out of the heavy overcast this time Knight reefed the aircraft into a steep right turn, giving Abramson a commanding view of the sky overhead…

“Oh-Jesus-fuck!” she screamed.

“Where is it?” Knight said, struggling to remain calm despite the panic-filled screech in his headset.

“Right on fucking top of us,” she screamed once again, only this time a little louder.

“Call it in. Now,” he said as he leaned over the throttle quadrant, trying to see what it was she was seeing, but the only thing out there was a shimmering wall of electric blue – and whatever the hell it was, the damn thing was full of stars… 

Abramson’s thumb reached for the transmit button on the yoke, and then her world winked out and was as suddenly gone.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites. com | this is fiction, plain and simple.

I hate to resort to another musical cliché, so I won’t. I have been listening Kurt Weill all week, and man, does this stuff take me back. Here’s the link for the album on YouTube.