White Night

  WHITE NIGHT

  William H. Lovejoy

  © William H. Lovejoy 1994

  William H. Lovejoy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1994 by Zebra Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corporation.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  27 NOVEMBER1640 HOURS LOCAL

  GYPSY MOTH ONE

  Shark Cady scanned the cockpit instruments automatically, paying particular attention to the status of the Reaction Control System (RCS). The system would be crucial in the next few minutes.

  Upon reflection, he thought, perhaps it would be crucial.

  Provided he found a need for it.

  At the moment, his priority was less anticipating the landing and more attempting to stay aloft.

  The familiar instrumentation of the cockpit was more comforting than the view outside the canopy. The blue-gray scuz that swirled past the windscreen was his close-up view of what the meteorologists at Howard Air Base in Panama had called ‘low overcast.’ It was low, all right. His radar altimeter read 212 feet above sea level, and he hadn't broken out of it yet. In fact, he had been encased in it for the last quarter-hour and for the last 11,000 feet of his descent.

  It wasn't a common, every day, lazy overcast, either. This one was hyperactive, alive with a gusting wind that was undecided about the direction it wanted to take. Cady estimated that the gusts, primarily out of the northwest, might be hitting sixty knots. He fought to maintain his heading with the stick and rudder pedals, and he had tried trimming in a little rudder and aileron to counter the main drift, but every time he thought he had it set, the crosswind shifted direction by a few points.

  Since he was trying to maintain a heading of 255 degrees, the wind was interfering with his flight, slowing his ground speed, though he was showing 430 knots on the True Air Speed (TAS) indicator.

  The headwinds affected all aspects of his flight, including the other item that was about to start bothering him: the readout for his fuel state.

  Twenty minutes left.

  The GR.Mk 5 Harrier II could easily ferry itself 1400 miles, flying clean and with the auxiliary fuel tanks slung on the wing pylons, if the pilot babied the throttle. The Rolls Royce Pegasus Mk 105 vectored-thrust turbofan produced 21,750 pounds of thrust, but if a cautious pilot didn't use all of it, all of the time, a journey such as this should have been a cakewalk.

  Cady had been conservative with his fuel consumption, even resisting the urge to go supersonic for the long stretch out of Panama, but his weatherman had been more optimistic than realistic, and an hour out of Panama City, he had encountered the strong headwinds.

  Like the weatherman, though, James "Shark" Cady was also an optimistic man, and he assumed that once he broke out of the overcast, he would find something more than a few million acres of barren Pacific Ocean.

  With his left hand, he found the big ball of the throttle handle and retarded it some more, lost speed to 400 knots, and reduced his altitude to 150 feet above the sea.

  The buffeting didn't seem to abate, but his visibility may have increased by about ten feet, which wasn't a great deal of help.

  His primary UHF radio was already dialled into 290.10 megahertz, with the scrambler cut into the circuit and he pressed the transmit stud on the stick with his thumb.

  "Beehive, Gypsy Moth One."

  The air controller, an Italian by the name of Giovanni Este, came right back to him, his voice tinged with a metallic echo as a result of the encryption equipment.

  "I have you, Gypsy One. Go ahead."

  "Beehive, do you have any idea where you are?"

  "Of course, One."

  "Well, then, do you know where I am?"

  "I have a fair idea," the controller said. "I would be more positive if you would squawk me with the appropriate modes and codes."

  Cady switched his Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) transponder to active, setting the modes to transmit his position and altitude. He skipped mode one, which would provide a unit designation for friendly forces, and mode four, which told the world he was military. Este already knew that. The transponder identified his blip on the air controller's radar screen.

  "It is as I thought, Gypsy One. I show you at one hundred and fifty feet, bearing one-six-one, forty-five miles. You are flying awfully low, Shark."

  "I'm looking for the sea."

  "You will find it, but not before you leave the fog."

  "Wonderful. What are your conditions, Beehive?"

  "Winds from the northwest, gusting to forty-five knots, barometric pressure two-nine-point-six-five and falling, visibility a quarter-mile."

  Cady reset his barometric altimeter.

  "How about your heading?"

  "The ship is making sixteen knots on a heading of two-six-one. Come left two points, Gypsy One."

  "Left two." Cady made the adjustment, but the crosswind wanted to push him off the numbers.

  "Your conditions are not ideal," Cady told Beehive.

  "In other circumstances, I would divert you. Save your fuel."

  There wasn't a diversion air field within a thousand miles.

  "I’ve got all of sixteen minutes," Cady told him.

  "Well, we will hope for the best, then."

  Cady appreciated such strongly-worded support.

  Losing more altitude, to a hundred feet above the sea, and reducing his air speed to two hundred and fifty knots, Cady finally saw the ocean surface. It wasn't serene. He estimated that the seas were running twelve-foot swells, and the wind was whipping the tops off the waves, creating a moving kaleidoscopic pattern of white and gray that constantly shifted to the southeast.

  The tunnel of his visibility had extended. Este was more-or-less correct, he thought. At times, he could see almost a thousand feet in most directions. Little caverns of fog-free clearing zipped by, nearly doubling that distance, but then rapidly disappearing..

  Eight minutes later, he located the ship. Because of the visibility limitations and his altitude above the sea's surface, he didn't have an early warning. It appeared abruptly, emerging from the haze like a phantom vessel.

  Most aviators in his fuel and weather situation would have been dismayed at the sight. She wasn't a massive aircraft carrier. She was a massive crude oil tanker, classified as an Ultra Large Crude Carrier, or ULCC. One of the giants of the sea, she was 1,350 feet long, and in comparison, she was 250 feet longer than the U.S. Navy's Enterprise class of aircraft carrier. With a beam of 170 feet, she was 82 feet narrower than the flight deck of an Enterprise or Long Beach, though her hull was actually forty feet wider than the hulls of the carriers. The draft was thirty-six feet, and her registry with Lloyd's of London stated that she was capable of on-loading 750,000 tons of crude oil.

  The hull was black as night, with blunt bows that savagely levelled the seas ahead of her. The stern was squared-off, and a white superstructure aligned with the stern rose seven decks above the main deck. With visibility restricted as it was today, those on the bridge deck--the sixth level--could not see the bows.

  When he found her ploughing through the angry seas, her wake a widening vee of churned water, Cady bled off more power, and came up on her stern. He couldn't see the bow, and he couldn't yet read the six-foot-high gold letters spaced across the stern, but knew they spelled out Cornucopia, and below them, smaller letters suggested her home port was Marseille.

  She had turned into the wind, which was no mean feat. Turning or stopping the beast required miles of ocean, time, and pre-planning.

  “Gypsy Moth One, Beehive.”

  “Go, Beehive.”

  “You are cleared for approach and landing. G
ive us a little more room than usual, please.”

  “Wilco, Beehive. Gypsy Moth One on approach.”

  “Go to two-eight-six-point-five, Gypsy One.”

  “Gone.” Cady punched the keypad for his secondary channel, calling up the frequency he had pre-set.

  “Gypsy Moth One. I’m with you, Shaker.”

  “Got you, Shark. There’s some buffeting. Be cool.”

  “Wilco.”

  With an aircraft carrier, Cady would have had a landing approach system to help him get on the deck--flying the “ball”, to guide his descent. Because of the mountainous superstructure spread across the stern of the Cornucopia, he lined up parallel to, and a hundred feet off of, the starboard side of the vessel.

  He came in slow, at 150 knots, deployed his flaps for increased lift and as the stern letters of the ship became legible, he punched the landing gear button. He felt the bicycle gear – nose and main wheels both located in the fuselage ­­­­­­– thud into the down-and-locked position, but checked for green lights, anyway. A quick glance out either side of the canopy reaffirmed that the outrigger gear –the small stabilizing wheels on long oleo struts –had deployed successfully from the high-mounted wings.

  As he lost more speed, he added power, then grabbed the nozzle lever, which was located inboard of the throttle, and began to ease it backward. The GR.Mk 5, like other late models of the Harrier, had been outfitted with a computerized stability system which removed some of the dangerous aspects of the transition from flight to hover, and vice-versa. Still, the act of abandoning reliable wing-lift for the posture of standing on one’s own engine exhaust increased the adrenaline flow.

  Drawing back on the nozzle lever turned the four side-mounted exhaust nozzles downward and even slightly forward if he wanted reverse thrust. The aircraft slowed dramatically as he passed to the right of the superstructure, noting the pale blobs of faces through the bronzed bridge windows turned toward him. The engine RPM climbed as the power of the turbofan was vectored downward. Within seconds, Cady was moving at a walking speed, slowly advancing ahead of the superstructure and still alongside of the ship. As requested, he gave her more clearance than normal. When something went wrong, the wind pitched him over into the sea, the captain preferred that he not take the ship with him.

  Once he cleared the superstructure, he had an unobstructed view of the centered catwalk that extended the length of the deck several feet above the maze of piping and tank hatches that covered that open deck. He couldn’t see the far, bow end of it, though. It disappeared into a shadowy, shifting fog. The catwalk was thirty-five feet wide, conveniently wider than the thirty-foot wingspan of the Harrier II, as well as the twenty feet spread between its outrigger wheels.

  He also had a fair view of the landing officer, dressed in a fluorescent yellow vest and helmet, standing midway down the deck on a small, railed platform to one side of the catwalk. A large trampoline-like netting was suspended next to the LO’s platform. It was a place of refuge into which he could jump if something unexpected happened on the catwalk. The yellow vest whipped wickedly in the wind. The LO held two red-lensed flashlights for signaling and his communications headset kept him in touch with Cady.

  Delwin “Shaker” Adams was their best landing officer, and Cady had automatically assumed Adams would be in control of a landing in these weather conditions.

  Ocean spray was rocketing upward, splattering droplets against the canopy. The latest Harrier design had revamped the wings to counter crosswinds which wanted to flip a wing up, but Cady had to continually balance the attitude of the aircraft against the ebb and flow of the wind turbulence. Because he was no longer on wing-lift flight, his controls had switched to the Reaction Control System, small thrusters on the wingtips and tail which managed pitch, yaw, and roll. He dipped the right wing lower as much from habits learned in F-4s and F-14s as from the need to fight the crosswind.

  “Easy now, Shark,” Shaker Adams said. “Match speed.”

  Cady glanced to his left and saw the yellow cross laid out on the catwalk. He vectored the nozzles forward slowly until his forward movement coincided with the cross.

  “Good, man, good. Now, let’s come to your left.”

  A stream of denser fog shot over the bows, shredding into patches and striding its way down the deck. The yellow cross blurred. Cady eased in some left rudder, the RCS eased the tail around, and he advanced the nozzles momentarily. The Harrier moved in toward the ship, passed over the starboard gunwale, and approached the catwalk. He kept his eyes on Adams and the flashlights.

  “All right, Shark, couple more feet. Bring the nose around.”

  He added some right rudder, and the nose swung into alignment with the catwalk.

  “Right on! Almost. I need a couple more feet left... there you go! Set her down.”

  Cady eased back the throttle, reducing the nozzle velocity, and the Harrier began to settle.

  A blast of wind raised the nose.

  He corrected quickly with the RCS.

  The Harrier settled lower, lower, and then the landing gear banged as he chopped the throttle.

  Five crewmen in yellow vests scrambled onto the catwalk, surrounding him, hooking lines into the tiedowns. Shaker Adams came trotting down the catwalk, coming out of the vaporous fog like an errant specter, propelled by the wind at his back.

  Cady shut down the engine, then his electronics. He unclipped the oxygen and communications umbilicals, then the G-suit hose. After releasing the harness for the Martin-Baker ejection seat, he found the snap-pin on its short chain and safed the seat. He unclipped his oxygen mask and cranked open the canopy. It slid backward on its rails, and he stood up in his seat.

  The air was damp and salty, but it tasted sweet after his hours of stale oxygen. The mass of the ULCC took away most of the ocean’s movement, and Cady felt as if his airplane was resting on solid ground. By the time he removed his helmet, Adams was standing next to the cockpit, below the high wing of the airplane.

  “Welcome back to the Cornucopia, Shark.”

  “It’s good to be back, Shaker,” Cady said and grinned.

  He knew it wasn’t really the Cornucopia.

  *

  8 NOVEMBER UNS U THANT

  0745 HOURS LOCAL

  If Captain Samuel Harrison Monmouth, United States Navy, were ever to be immortalized, which he didn’t expect, a large, square block of marble would be required. Dressed in his tailored uniforms, he appeared to be one vertical mass from spit-polished shoes to shoulders. Latched to his shoulders by a thick and short neck, his head was squarish, with a lantern jaw and grim mouth. Lively blue eyes tempered the harshness of his mouth and flaring nose. He was fifty-four years old and though some accused him of dyed vanity, his hair had actually retained the same black tint that had appeared at age one.

  Monmouth was a superb listener. Even people he didn’t really have an interest in spilled their life stories and their tribulations to him. He listened and he filed the information away for future reference in a mind that categorized easily and retrieved readily. His ability to remember people and names and facts and to cull vast amounts of data rapidly and analytically, made him a popular and effective decision-maker.

  From the time he graduated from the United States Naval Academy, Monmouth – a native of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean – had had one goal in mind. He would one day command a battleship.

  He was afraid now that the battleships would all be retired again before he had the chance.

  He was also amazed that he had been selected by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) himself to command an oil tanker.

  Not that she wasn’t a unique tanker; the image just did not quite conform to the one he had envisioned for himself thirty years before. At that time, too, he had thought that he would always belong to the United States Navy. His father had been a Navy man in World War II. His grandfather had been a Navy man with action in the Great War and though he wasn’t certain about his great-grandfather, it seemed
prudent in family gatherings to suppose that he had also been a Navy man.

  Now though, Captain Monmouth, still an active commission in the U.S. Navy, belonged to the world. It was sometimes difficult to suppress the nationalistic fervor with which he had been imbued and take on the universal morality and ethics with which he had been charged. It was a responsibility in which he could take pride, but frequently, it was also a balancing act.

  As commander of the United Nations Ship U Thant, Monmouth found himself in command of diverse and shifting philosophies, cultures and personalities. Bringing them together and herding them in approximately the same direction could be considered a world-class magic act. And in the other direction, he reported to a command structure composed of similar divergent cultures and personalities. He often pictured himself as a traffic director at the center of an hour glass, attempting to capture a thousand grains of truth and channel them into one path even though once they passed through his hands, they would immediately follow their own courses once again.

  Monmouth often awakened with that picture hanging in front of him, and it took a few moments to shake it.

  He had almost completed the breakfast that had been delivered to his quarters when he heard the rap on his door.

  “Come in.”

  The door swung inward, and Colonel James Cady and Major Archibald Baker stepped inside and came to attention.

  “As you were, gentlemen. Pour yourself some coffee and sit down while I finish my muffin. Blueberry, if you want one.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Cady said, “But I’ve already eaten.”

  The two men filled mugs from the plastic pot on the serving cart and took seats on the couch against the bulkhead. One of the more agreeable aspects of commanding a ULCC could be found in the living accommodations. The U Thant had been designed by a Japanese ship builder and it had been eighty per cent complete when it was purchased by the United Nations Security Council and immediately retrofitted. The Spartan quarters, with exposed conduits and drab paint, that Monmouth had become accustomed to in three decades of sea-faring would not be found on his current ship. Though the crew quarters, which had had to be revamped from the original plan, were somewhat cramped, they were still airy-feeling and cheerful. The interior paint schemes for residential and recreation spaces ran from white to yellow to pale blue. The officers’ staterooms and they were staterooms, on D and E decks generally housed two persons each, but each room was spacious and had a bath shared with the next stateroom. Spaced throughout the superstructure and below decks were wardrooms, lounges and recreation rooms. The ship was designed to keep her crew happy at sea or in exotic ports where they weren’t allowed liberty for fear of disclosing the total number of men and women aboard. In the nine weeks since the ship had been commissioned, his enlisted personnel still had not conquered all of the electronic games to be found in the recreation areas.