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  If he squinted his eyes, Zack could just make-believe he was looking at a great field of Greeley County wheat in the gray half-light of a rainy summer evening. He’d hardly ever been in hilly country in all of his life. His landscapes were strictly flat, the High Plains and the High Seas. He thought about his dad, old Jethro Carson, still going strong at eighty years of age, ten years widowed now, but still the master of those hundreds and hundreds of acres. And Zack resolved to take the entire family out to visit in the fall, when the warm, sweeping grasslands of his youth were, to him, so unbearably beautiful.

  “You don’t think there really is anything out there snooping on us, do ya, Jack?”

  “No, Admiral, I really don’t. But when you get a contact, you gotta run the checks. It’s not my job to take anything at all for granted. Especially with those sneaky pricks. But I do believe if some goddamned foreigner was sniffing around our zone, we’da got him by now.”

  “I guess so, Jack. But those Russian diesels were just about silent under five knots.”

  “Yeah, but they weren’t that good. And even in this weather we’d be sure to hear them snorkeling.”

  081800JUL02. 20N, 64E.

  Course 155. Speed 3.

  “She’s out there, Georgy, off our port bow, coming back from the northeast.”

  “I guess three to four hours. You sure about this, Ben?”

  “I am sure, my nation is sure, and my God is sure. I expect your bank manager would also be sure.”

  “I want distance five thousand meters—not closer. This thing very stupid, very big. Work on time only. Run four minutes. We might get a more accurate distance visually. But we might not.”

  “Check all systems, Georgy. For the last time. We’ve come a long way for this. I just wish we could have done it four days ago. More poetic somehow.”

  082103JUL02.

  On board the nine-thousand-ton Ticonderoga Class guided-missile cruiserPort Royal , operating close in to the carrier, Chief Petty Officer Sam Howlett decided to take a breather. As he stepped out onto the portside deck the murky sky suddenly lit up. A deafening blast followed seconds later. As Howlett instinctively grabbed for the rails, a thunderous rush of air took him by surprise, flinging him sideways and downward, his skull fracturing as he hit the deck. Before losing consciousness, Howlett looked up to see the towering SQ28 Combat Data Systems mast rip clean out of its moorings and crash onto the deck. The great warship heeled to starboard and the giant mast rolled with it, crushing a young officer on the upper deck outside the bridge.

  Astern, on the flight deck, the blast flung the LAMPS helicopter off its moorings onto the missile deck, killing two flight deck crew. Its ruptured rotor, spinning in the rush of air, snapped in two, decapitating a twenty-three-year-old aircraft mechanic. Two other men were blasted one hundred yards out into the sea.

  Below, the force of the smaller for’ard radar mast slamming into the port edge of the deck split it in two. As it caved in, the deck crashed into a fire main, rupturing it. The split fire main crashed down into a companionway, trapping two sailors while it pumped out hundreds of gallons of compressed seawater, drowning them both. A twenty-year veteran Petty Officer, with blood streaming down his face and three broken ribs, wept with rage and frustration as he tried unsuccessfully to free them.

  Up on the bridge there was carnage. The top of the main mast had broken off completely, and it plummeted down, smashing through the roof of the bridge and killing the Executive Officer, Commander Ted Farrer. Every portside window shattered in the blast, one of them practically severing the right arm of the young navigator, Lieutenant Rich Pitman. The face of the Watch Officer was a mask of blood. Young Ensign Ray Cooper, just married, lay dead in the corner. The cries and whispers of the terribly wounded sailors would haunt Captain John Schmeikel for the rest of his life.

  The suddenness of the disaster from nowhere temporarily paralyzed thePort Royal . No one knew whether they were under attack or not. Captain Schmeikel ordered the ship to battle stations. All working guns and missile operators sought vainly for the unseen enemy, a task rendered impossible with no radar, no communications, no contact with any other surface ship in the Battle Group.

  082103JUL02.

  On board the eight-thousand-ton Spruance Class destroyerO’Bannon , also working close in to the carrier, no one had time to move. The blast of air roared through the ship, heeling her over almost to the point of broaching, hurling sailors into the bulkheads. But it was the following near-tidal wave which did the damage. The ship had not quite righted herself when the mountain of water hit theO’Bannon amidships. This time she almost capsized, and down in the galley, where cooking oil was now streaming across the floor, a terrible fire swept from end to end. Two oil drums exploded, and all three of the duty cooks were shockingly burned in the ceiling-high flames—twenty-four-year-old Alan Brennan would later die from his injuries, and his assistant, nineteen-year-old Brad Kershaw, lost the sight of both eyes.

  Eight men were catapulted overboard when the wave struck. Three of them were hammered into the bulkhead and were unconscious when they hit the water. These men would never regain consciousness, despite swift and heroic rescue attempts by the crew.

  The engine room was a catastrophe. Chief Petty Officer Jed Mangone suffered terrible facial burns in a flash from an electrical breaker, and two young engineers were crushed by a huge generator they had been repairing. Neither of them would ever walk again. Up on the bridge the scene was almost identical to that on thePort Royal . Flying glass from the blown windows had reduced the area to a war zone, a grotesque scarlet and crystal nightmare, in which no one had escaped injury.

  Captain Bill Simmonds, who would later need sixty-three stitches in his face, took over the blood-soaked helm himself, ordered his ship to battle stations, cursed the communications failure, and roared at the top of his lungs for someone to access the Flag.

  082103JUL02. 20N, 64E.

  Course 230. Speed 25.

  Twenty-four miles northeast of the carrier, the USSArkansas was changing course, closing to her former position in the inner zone, as decreed by the admiral’s policy of frequently altering the disposition of his group to hide the carrier on any foreign radar screens.

  “Captain…Conn. Just saw aweird flash in the murk to the south. Coulda been lightning, but it don’t seem right somehow.”

  “Captain, aye. Coming to the bridge.”

  “Conn…CIC. Sonar reports massive underwater explosion. Bearing two-four-five…”

  “Captain, sir, sonar reported massive underwater explosion…two-four-five…I’m turning toward.”

  “Got that. What’s going on?” But even as he spoke, a thunderous explosion split the night, and a blast wave of solid air crashed through the bridge windows.

  The rest was lost in the roar of the wind and the unexpected chaos on the bridge, as the Watch Officer tried to restore order in the dangerous shambles of broken glass and wounded sailors.

  And now behind the first blast, another wind was rising, a grotesque unnatural wind, warm and vicious, like the height of a typhoon, sweeping across the ocean, blasting now across the upper works and radar installations of the big Aegis missile cruiser, slowing the eleven-thousand-ton bulk of the warship in her tracks.

  “Jesus!What’s going on out here? Is this an earthquake?”

  “Captain, sir. That was one hell of a blast—Jeez! You feel the ship stagger? And why has the wind backed a whole twenty degrees? Even the sea feels strange, rolling in from the wrong angle.”

  “Beats the hell out of me…but it has to be one hell of a disturbance. I think we will…wait a minute…” To himself, “Take no chances, Art.” Then “Okay…Go to General Quarters, Officer of the Deck.”

  The captain stayed on the bridge, but down in the sonar room they were replaying their record of the apparent subsurface eruption which had occurred several miles away just moments before. At least they did not hear the dreaded noise of tinkling glass that always ec
hoes and echoes, back through the underwater, and then through the mind, when a big ship goes down. Instead there was just a strange continued rumbling, slowly dying away to eerie silence. No one had any answers. None whatsoever.

  Whatever had caused the violently freakish conditions had also caused a certain amount of chaos in the operations center of the USSArkansas . Communications were down everywhere. The big round radar screen that showed the surface picture of the Battle Group was out altogether, and the Air Warfare Officer was trying to coax it into life. It seemed darker than usual because so many screens were blank.

  Captain Barry headed for his high chair and hit the UHF radio phone on the inter-ship network, direct to the carrier’s Combat Information Center. The line was a dead end. No one in the command ship replied. But he heard an erratic transmission voice from one of the outlying frigates, almost seventy miles away to the south, apparently calling the carrier. “Jefferson…this isKauffman …Radio check…Over.” But farawayKauffman was getting no answer either. Art Barry tried the encrypted line to the admiral’s ops room. No reply.

  Then he tried the direct line to his baseball pal, Jack Baldridge. There was total silence on his phone too. Captain Barry asked Comms for a satellite link to the carrier…“Sir, we’re having a real problem with satcom…aerial stabilization, intermittent malfunction. Been trying for several minutes…achieved occasional access to the satellite, but there’s no contact fromJefferson . As far as I can tell all normal comms with the Flag have died on us.”

  “Someone try to raise the CIC in theO’Kane . She’s operating close in today, a couple of miles off the carrier’s port bow. They’ll know more than we do….”

  “No communication there either, sir, we were just trying.”

  “Okay, tryHayler , she was about twenty miles out when we lost the surface picture. Get their captain…yes, regular UHF.”

  “They’re on, sir!Commander Freeburg, encrypted.”

  “Hey, Chuck…Art Barry. Can you tell me what the hell’s going on around here…we can’t raise the carrier, most of my comms are down, and we couldn’t raiseO’Kane either…neither could you…? Jesus…! Who?…You got one of the SSN’s in comms? It was a big bang all right…God knows…! You’re heading in to meet the carrier? No…don’t do that. Hold station on formation course and speed. I am approachingJefferson ’s last known to investigate…Meantime, I’ve gone to GQ and I’m gonna turn on my radiation monitors…you better do the same. There’s something weird goin’ on here…I will keep you informed.”

  “Captain, sir, look out. The biggest wave I’ve ever seen is coming…!”

  As the Watch Officer shouted, almost in slow motion, a sixty-foot-high wall of ocean seemed to rise up from nowhere. It hit theArkansas head-on, breaking right across the fo’c’sle, and up over the superstructure—thousands of tons of green water crashing across the guns and missile launchers, submerging the entire ship it seemed, and roaring through the broken bridge windows.

  But like all modern warships, she righted herself swiftly, seeming to shake the ocean from her decks, and shouldered her way forward with seawater still cascading down the hull. The Officer of the Watch could see the colossal wave rolling on, like that strange wind, toward the northwest and the shores of Arabia.

  The next wave was not quite so big, but it swamped the ship again, and the one after that did the same. Slowly the waves diminished, and as the seas returned to the normal swell, the Officer of the Watch set about checking that no one had been swept or blown overboard.

  Twenty-six minutes had now passed since the weird flash in the southern sky had barely been sufficient for the Officer of the Deck to bother his captain. But now only four of the possible ten other Battle Group surface warships were coming up in comms withArkansas . Art Barry found himself apparently in charge of the group until the carrier came back on line. He established that both guided missile frigates, the four-thousand-tonnersIngraham andKauffman , appeared intact, as did the four-thousand-ton Spruance Class DDGFife . The other Spruance,Hayler , appeared in similar shape to theArkansas , wind-and sea-swept, but almost back to full working order.

  Both SSN’s,Batfish andL. Mendel Rivers , reported themselves unharmed at periscope depth. Both submarine captains gave their intentions, to remain on original station fifty miles out from the carrier, west and east respectively, on formation course and speed, maintaining constant comms. “Outfield beautiful,” muttered Barry. “Where the fuck’s the pitcher?”

  Everyone in comms was now reporting the same violent underwater upheaval.Ingraham andKauffman were first hit by a smaller forty-foot wave. Both of them were fifty miles out from ZULU ZULU (the Group Center) at the time.Hayler andFife , however, had been about twenty-five miles out, and likeArkansas , had taken a sixty-foot wave. UnlikeArkansas, Ingraham had taken it right on the beam and very nearly capsized.

  Of the missing six ships, not yet in comms, there appeared to be only five surface radar contacts close to ZULU ZULU. These were all stationary, or nearly so. By 2145Arkansas ’s surface picture was back in business, which partly clarified the situation for Captain Barry.

  He could now see twelve other contacts from his ink picture, including himself. There were two SSN’s and five surface warships in good to reasonable shape, five others were floating, but unidentified, and still making way to the southwest, but out of comms.

  One was missing.

  At 2150, the ship’s broadcast of theArkansas blared: “Radiation alarm! Radiation alarm! Clear the upper deck. Assume condition 1A. Activate pre-wetting. Decontamination parties close-up.” This official imperative ended with the traditional U.S. Navy roar of no-questions-asked, do-it-now urgency…“No shit!”

  Within seconds all ventilation fans were crash-stopped. It took ten more minutes to get the ship properly isolated from the outside air, from the radioactive particles, which had set off the monitors. She was now like a huge, sealed cookie tin.

  Every hatch, every flap, every external bulkhead door, every opening to the outside air was clipped hard home. Only then was it safe to bring in the gas-tight “citadel” ventilation to provide fresh air via special filters which would sift out all the radioactive particles. The system raised the pressure inside the citadel to slightly above atmospheric, and thus prevented any inward leakage of the lethal radioactive outside air. All drafts were headed OUT.

  Radar picture from theThomas Jefferson showing its position within the Carrier Battle Group, July 8, 2002

  As the ship swung away across the monsoon wind, and cleared the radioactive plume to the north, the upper-deck working parties began to power hose the decks with saltwater and bleach, standard procedure for clearing radioactive particles from every area in the path of a nuclear explosion. Monitoring parties accompanied the hose crews, checking every corner.

  By 2155, Captain Barry was ready to take a break. He needed thinking space to assess what had happened. There had plainly been a nuclear detonation, and he desperately needed to find out which ship was missing. Six would not, or could not, answer, and only five were on his radar.

  For a couple of minutes he stared at the screen,willing it to produce the sixth contact at the center of the group. But his space-age electronics were unable to tell him what he needed to know: who was missing?

  He knew he would have to go back to basics, to what sailors call the “Mark I Eyeball.” He ordered a course change: “Conn…Captain…come left, two-three-five…flank speed…I am closing to make visual contact on the most northeast contact of the group ahead…that is track 6031…he may have no lights burning…check visual signaling lamps.”

  By 2309, Captain Barry had seen what he needed to see with his own eyes, searching the dim, shadowy seas, probing the darkness to come alongside each of the four ships that showed up on his radar.

  He was able to identify the huge 49,000-ton full-load fleet oilerArctic , minor casualties only, radar and comms out, but 70 percent operational. He found the formidable 9,000-ton Ticonderoga Class
guided-missile cruiserPort Royal , with ten dead, twenty injured, severe aerial damage, major structural damage in the stern area, including her harpoon battery and one helo, severe flooding in the hangar area.

  He also found her sister ship, USSVicksburg , which had taken the big wave fine on her starboard bow, no serious casualties, severe aerial damage, no significant structural damage. TheO’Kane , as she lay stopped and listing in the water, was a floating wreck, in desperate need of aid. And he found the Spruance Class DD, sister ship toHayler , theO’Bannon , many casualties, number not yet known, ship nearly capsized in the tidal wave, able to make way through the water but little else, severe damage topside and internal.

  Captain Barry stared at his screen again, in shock, at the space where the carrier must have been. The radar made its familiar, emotionless, circular sweep. And still there was nothing where once the mighty warship had been. No one could see her. No one could speak to her. And no one could hear her. TheThomas Jefferson was gone.

  As the senior officer in charge of the second most important warship in the Group, Captain Barry now ordered his communications office to access the satellite’s direct line to the U.S. Navy headquarters in Pearl Harbor, to Admiral Gene Sadowski, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC).

  The two men spoke for less than three minutes. The sentences were terse, two lifelong Naval officers communicating in the economical language of their trade. Within moments Admiral Sadowski had opened his private line to the Pentagon. It was 1318 local in Washington, D.C., as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore, picked up his telephone.

  “I regret to inform you, sir,” said Admiral Sadowski, “that the carrierThomas Jefferson has been lost in what looks like a nuclear accident. All six thousand men on board appear to have perished.”