Close Up the Sky Read online

  Close Up the Sky

  By James L. Ferrell

  Copyright © 2012 James L. Ferrell

  All Rights Reserved

  To Patricia, who always believed, gave patient support, and stayed confident through daylight and darkness.

  Chapter 1

  The U.S. Navy heavy transport Sidney James fought her way through a howling Pacific storm. From her bridge, Captain William Rudley gazed across her forward decks at whitecaps running over twenty feet high. Each time the big freighter slammed into a wave her bow would plunge into the churning surface, then rise again to send tons of frothy water back into the sea. Rudley looked at the bridge chronograph for the tenth time in the last hour. It was 0900 and he had not slept since that time yesterday.

  He checked the engine room telegraph and noted the speed he had ordered at dawn: three quarters power. They were making twenty knots, an unsafe speed at best; but even at that they were barely staying on schedule. Rudley was well aware of the dangers of running too fast in rough seas. One mistake in steering, one wave too massive, and as the bow plunged beneath the water the screws would simply propel the ship downward until she went completely under. He did not like it, but it was a risk he was compelled to take.

  The Sydney James split another wave and the impact rumbled through her steel skeleton. Out the corner of his eye Rudley saw the helmsman cast a nervous glance in his direction, but he pretended not to notice the mighty groaning of his ship. Calmly, he raised the binoculars hanging from his neck and made a 180-degree sweep of the horizon. Seeing nothing but open sea, he walked over to the bulkhead barometer and tapped it. The pressure was rising, indicating an end to the storm that had plagued them for the last fourteen hours. He tapped the glass again and noted that the needle remained steady. He turned back to his vigil of the sea just as First Officer Paul Driese opened the starboard hatch and stepped onto the bridge. A gust of damp wind swept in with him. He wore a yellow slicker with the hood pulled over his head. He flipped the hood back and slung his arms a couple of times to shake off the salt spray. Driese was a small man, barely five-seven with a slender build, but his forty-three year old body was in excellent condition. He was well muscled, and no gray laced his reddish-brown hair.

  "Looks like it's lightening up out there," he said to Rudley.

  "Yeah, the barometer's rising. How about the hatches? All secure?"

  "Everything's tight, Captain," he answered as he pulled off the slicker and hung it on a row of hooks near the entry hatch. The ship crashed into another big one and rolled a few degrees to port. The men staggered and braced themselves against the bulkheads.

  "Damn it, Holloway!” Rudley roared at the helmsman. “Keep her at forty-five degrees to the sea!" The sailor made no reply, but his grip on the chrome wheel tightened until his knuckles turned white.

  Rudley turned back to Driese. "You been below in the last hour?"

  "Checked the forward cargo hold about 0630. Lieutenant Burns is handling the stern. He's been dividing his time between there and the engine room most of the morning. How's our running time, sir?"

  "We're doing well just to stay on schedule,” Rudley complained. He jerked a telephone handset off the bulkhead, put it to his ear, and pressed a button on the phone's dial pad. Within a few seconds the ship's plotting room answered.

  "Willis here," a voice said.

  "What's her range now, Willis?"

  "Twenty-eight miles and closing, sir."

  "Estimated time to visual?" Rudley asked.

  "At our current speed we should have visual by 0950.”

  "Good. Keep me posted if there are any changes." He put the phone back on the hook and glanced at Driese. "We should have her in about forty-five minutes." He scanned the sea again with his binoculars. The constant checking of the sea was a habit left over from his years as executive officer of a cruiser during the Iraq War. Rudley knew that the Sidney James’s sophisticated radar could detect anything of significance long before his naked eye could see it, but using the binoculars made him feel more in direct command of his ship; especially during the kind of weather they were currently experiencing.

  He had just celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and had been an officer in the United States Navy for thirty-five years. Like most sailors who had spent their lives at sea, he could sense the life forces running through his ship just as another man who had been married to the same woman a long time could sense changes in her moods and needs. He knew the Sidney James was straining under the burden of her heavy cargo, and was perilously close to the edge of her capabilities. Under ordinary circumstances he would have reduced speed and turned the ship away from the wind until the big seas subsided. However, these were far from ordinary circumstances, and the storm itself was an essential element to the success of their mission. The ship and her crew would have to endure the cruel conditions for at least another forty-five minutes. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through thinning brown hair. He stared out across the forward hatches for a few seconds, put the hat back on, and turned to Driese.

  “I’m going below for a few minutes,” he said. “Call me if anything changes.”

  "Aye, sir," Driese responded.

  Rudley put on a slicker and stepped through the hatchway into the howling wind. After he had gone Holloway turned to Driese and said, "What's the matter with the Captain, sir? He seems a little jumpy or somethin'."

  "He's got a lot on his mind," Driese responded in a clipped tone. "Keep your eyes on the sea and make damn sure we don't get off course."

  "Aye sir. Dead on 057 degrees." He tightened his grip on the wheel.

  Driese, a fifteen-year veteran, shared Rudley's anxiety. He had weathered many storms, and was ordinarily unaffected by them except in extreme circumstances. He knew the capabilities of Sidney James's officers and crew, and felt comfortable with their performance. Most of them had served together for several years, and their combined experience was more than a match for any tropical storm. On this occasion, however, it would not be just a matter of heavy weather seamanship. This time they would have to perform a precision maneuver in conjunction with another ship under the worst possible conditions. One mistake by the helmsman and they would wind up at the bottom of the sea. The thought made Driese wince. In his mind's eye he saw the other ship's bow rip through the Sidney James's port quarter, leaving a monstrous hole in her side. Within seconds water would fill her forward cargo hold and her bow would sink beneath the waves. As the downward angle increased, her stern would rise, water would fill the rest of the forward compartments, and she would plunge to the bottom like a freight elevator. In a matter of minutes there would be nothing to mark her passing but swirling sea and wind. No lifeboats would be launched, and no debris or bodies would float to the surface. He shook off the image, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  Below decks in the main hold, Rudley stared at the mass of equipment packed into his ship. Bulldozers, trucks, drums of gasoline, huge pipes, pumps, and steel superstructures of myriad sizes and shapes filled the hold from bulkhead to bulkhead. He moved randomly among the pieces of equipment, pulling on tie-downs and shoving against crates to test the tightness of the chains. His crew was as efficient as ever; he could find nothing about which to complain.

  For a long moment he stood still and listened to the voice of his ship. She spoke to him with the moaning of thousands of tons of bulkheads, steel plates and rivets, all straining against the relentless assault of the sea. He felt the beating of her heart through the soles of his shoes as her powerful engines labored to overcome the titanic force of the storm. She was a good ship, strong and sure, and she had served him well for the six years he had been her captain.

  He glanced at his watch and saw that time had slip
ped away. Only a few minutes remained before the rendezvous with his escort. He hurried to the hold's ladder and scurried up the rungs two at a time.

  Eighteen miles to the northeast, the guided missile destroyer USS Talon steamed at full speed on an intercept course with the Sidney James. Like the freighter, the stormy weather kept the Talon’s decks awash as she beat through the waves. Though she was smaller, her knife-edge bow cut the sea with far greater efficiency than the comparatively blunt bow of the Sidney James. She was the latest in her class and had been specially modified throughout to handle the task that awaited her. In addition to her compliment of cruise missiles, her forward deck had been fitted with a turret equipped with twin five-inch guns having a range of over twenty miles. The usual compliment of smaller guns bristled along both flanks. Astern, tied down on their landing pads, two helicopter gunships rested beneath their canvas covers. Though other ships were larger and more heavily armed, in a very short time the Talon would become the most powerful force on earth.

  Captain Clifford Lloyd was in the combat information center, from where he watched the distance between the Talon and Sidney James slowly diminish on the ship's radar screen. Instruments of every kind lined the bulkheads, their green, red, and orange LED’s flashing. The Talon was equipped with the most advanced level of American technology available, making her a true twenty-first century ship. Lloyd glanced at the large transparent plotting screen in the center of the room where a seaman using a dry erase marker updated the positions of the Talon and Sidney James.

  "Eight miles, sir," a petty officer announced from his seat at the radar station.

  "Eight miles it is, Tarnowski," Lloyd answered. "We should have visual any minute now."

  "Aye sir, providing the foul weather doesn't keep her shrouded." He sounded doubtful.

  Lloyd moved up behind him and slapped him on the shoulder. "You worry too much, Tarnowski. I've seen harder rain than this at baseball games. This isn't even enough to make the hotdogs soggy."

  Tarnowski shook his head. "Hope you're right, Captain. These close meetings always make me a little nervous, especially having to do it in foul weather."

  Lloyd turned toward the hatch. "I'm going to the bridge," he said over his shoulder. "Let me know if you pick up any unusual activity from the Russians."

  "Aye, sir," Tarnowski responded.

  As soon as Lloyd reached the bridge he scanned the horizon with his binoculars.

  "She's just off the starboard bow, skipper," reported Lieutenant Jimmy Hicks, Talon's executive officer. "She's already signaling."

  Lloyd turned in the direction indicated. "I see her. Sound general quarters," he ordered. "Close all watertight doors and black out all portholes!"

  Hicks picked up a telephone handset and set Lloyd's order into motion. Talon's crew rushed to their stations as claxons and speakers blared the GQ command throughout the length of the ship. Ports and hatches slammed shut in a crescendo of activity as the crew scrambled to seal off the ship from the outside world.

  "Jimmy, use the light and signal Sidney James to stay exactly on her present course," Lloyd instructed. "We'll make our approach from her port side."

  Hicks stepped out onto the bridge wing and flashed the signal by Morse code to the other ship. Standing procedure prohibited the use of radio by either ship during this operation. He watched the return flashes through his binoculars as the freighter acknowledged the instruction: ROGER HOLDING 057.

  "Keep her dead on course, helm," Lloyd ordered.

  "Aye sir. Holding collision course," the sailor responded in a nervous voice.

  "Keep her steady, son," Lloyd said quietly. He fixed his cool blue eyes on the young helmsman. "And don't worry. It's a piece of cake. Remember, we've done this before. Just be ready when I give the order."

  "I'll be ready, sir," he answered. This time he sounded more confident.

  Lloyd was forty-one years old with premature gray hair, but was blessed with an unlined boyish face. His self-assured bearing coupled with an amiable demeanor had always given his subordinates confidence in his command ability. Many of his fellow officers paid him the supreme compliment of trying to imitate him, but none could match his natural aptitude for leadership. Though he felt the helmsman's apprehension, he did not show it. The timing in what they were about to do was critical, and he could not afford mistakes.

  He lifted one of the wall phones and spoke into it. “CIC, give me a countdown over the bridge speaker."

  “Aye, Captain, counting on my mark…….C minus 60, 59, 58…” Tarnowski’s voice came over the speaker.

  Ahead, the Sidney James continued on her course, seemingly oblivious to her impending collision with the destroyer.

  "28, 27, 26…."

  “Standby, Jimmy,” Lloyd said to Hicks.

  Hicks moved to the center of the bridge where he inserted a key into a waist-high pedestal with a half-dozen toggle switches on top. The action caused LED’s beneath the toggles to light up. He flipped up a red plastic cover over one of the switches and placed his finger on it.

  "10, 9, 8…"

  The Sidney James loomed dead ahead of them, a wall of gray steel towering over the smaller ship.

  "Now!" Lloyd commanded.

  Hicks flipped the switch just as Lloyd shouted to the helmsman, "Hard left rudder!"

  An instantaneous blaze of green radiance lit up the Talon's bridge, the Sidney James, and the sea around them. Three seconds later the light was gone and both ships had vanished, leaving only the churning sea.

  Eighty miles to the east, a Russian surveillance aircraft whose job was to track the activities of certain elements of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, made a sharp turn to the southwest. Its crew had been monitoring the Talon's course ever since she had detached herself from the main fleet some nine hours before. At one of her tracking consoles, a Russian officer gazed intently at the radar scope from which the Talon and another unidentified ship had just disappeared. He had watched the two blips draw closer and closer until they merged, then blinked out. The aircraft was now proceeding to the location of their last known position. The officer made some adjustments to his equipment, but was unable to reacquire the image.

  "What do you think happened, sir?" a technician sitting at an adjacent console asked.

  "It appears they collided," the officer answered. "At the speed of the destroyer it would have been a devastating impact. Both vessels probably sank immediately." He tried a few more adjustments, but found nothing. "Too bad," he mused. "That is the second collision the Americans have suffered this year." He gazed at the blank screen for a long moment then said, "I will notify our naval forces in the area to proceed to the location and see if there are any survivors."

  The technician nodded, and quietly resumed his duties.

  After he had made notification of the incident to the proper authorities, the officer leaned back in his chair and stared at the blank radar screen. It was improbable that such an accident could occur between the only two ships in a two hundred mile radius, but if his instruments were to be believed, it had happened. Less than six months ago he had been tracking two British ships in the same area when a similar incident had occurred. A tropical storm had been in full blow at that time, too. He knew the vessels that were proceeding to the location of the American collision would find nothing, just as they had found no trace of the British ships. He picked up a pen and began tapping absently on the console table. Yes, it was damned strange. After a long moment he dismissed the incident and returned to his routine duties.

  Chapter 2

  An irritating buzz drilled its way into the subconscious mind of Detective Lieutenant Matt Leahy. The dark mist surrounding his brain cleared as he awoke. After a few seconds he opened his eyes and focused on the white stucco pattern of the ceiling. He reached over and punched off the alarm clock on the night table. It read 7:00 AM. He swung his legs off the bed, walked to the bathroom and switched on the light. The image that stared back at him with a blank expr
ession from the sink mirror wore a two-day stubble of beard. Although he had just celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday, the unlined face belied his age. The eyes were clear blue, and sandy brown hair topped his head. A faint cleft chin and lips perpetually turned up at the corners contributed to a charming, swashbuckling appearance. Though he had never considered himself particularly handsome, most women would argue in his favor. He gave the reflection a dour look, bent over the sink, splashed cold water into his face, and brushed back his hair with wet fingers.

  Two days before, he had been in Nashville working with FBI agents and local detectives to bring one of the most publicized cases on record with the Atlanta police department to a successful conclusion. The Atlanta mayor's seven-year-old daughter, Lisa, had vanished from the playground of her exclusive private school. Though his expertise was in homicide cases, Leahy had been chosen to head the investigation. He knew this was primarily because of his reputation for perseverance and attention to detail, but he had felt uneasy handling a case of such magnitude.

  He and his team of four detectives had spent countless hours reviewing case files and interviewing known pedophiles and sex offenders. Prison records were checked and rechecked for information concerning the recent release of kidnappers or child molesters. Some had returned to prison and some were dead; others were cleared by the time and circumstances surrounding the child's disappearance. For various reasons, each man had eventually been eliminated as a suspect.

  Circulars with the girl's photograph and details of the crime had been forwarded to police departments and newspapers nationwide asking for information and assistance. The mayor and his wife were given television airtime where they made a desperate plea for their daughter’s safe return. Friends and wealthy supporters established a hundred thousand dollar reward for information leading to Lisa’s whereabouts and the arrest of the person responsible for her abduction. Their only lead was the testimony of her six-year-old playmate, Brian Greer, who had witnessed the kidnapping. Brian had seen her talking to a man in a red car. He had not seen Lisa get into the car but remembered the man’s ‘shiny eyes.’ Leahy had been unable to get any better description of the suspect, and remained nonplussed at the child's reference to the shiny eyes.