The Chesapeake was waiting, and as there was no accommodation inside the yard they went straight on board for a long sleep. The next morning they began two days of intensive familiarization.
The senior officer, the new captain, was a Navy commander, and his first officer one rank down. There were two lieutenants and the other eight ran from chief petty officer down to rating. Each specialist concentrated on his individual kingdom: bridge, engine room, galley, radio shack, deck and hatch covers.
It was when they penetrated the five huge grain holds that they stopped in amazement. There was a complete Special Forces barracks down there, all without portholes or natural daylight and therefore all invisible from the outside. At sea, they were told, they would have no call to come forward from their own quarters. The SEALs would fix their own chow and generally look after themselves.
The crew would confine themselves to the ship's normal crew quarters, which were more spacious and more comfortable than they would have had, for example, on a destroyer.
There was a double-bunked guest cabin, purpose unknown. If the SEAL officers wished to confer with the bridge, they would walk belowdecks through four watertight doors connecting the holds and then upward into the daylight.
They were not told, because they did not need to know, or not yet, why the hold nearest the bow was a sort of jail to take prisoners. But they were definitely shown how to remove the hatch covers over two of the five holds to bring their contents up into action. This exercise they would practice repeatedly on their long cruise; partly to while away the hours, partly until they could do it in double time and in their sleep.
On the third day, the parchment-skinned McGregor saw them off to sea. He stood on the end of the seamost groyne, as the Chesapeake came under way and slid past him, and raised an amber glass. He was prepared to live in conditions of heat, malaria, sweat and stench, but never to be without a bottle or two of the distillation of his native islands, the Hebrides.
The shorter route to her destination would have been across the Arabian Sea and through the Suez Canal. Because of the long shot of Somali pirates proving troublesome off the Horn of Africa, and because she had the time, it had been decided she would turn southwest for the Cape of Good Hope, then northwest to her sea rendezvous off Puerto Rico.
Three days later, the British arrived to pick up the MV Balmoral. There were fourteen, all Royal Navy, and under the guidance of McGregor they, too, went through a two-day familiarization process. Because the U.S. Navy is "dry" in alcohol terms, the Americans had brought no duty-free spirits from the airport. The inheritors of Nelson's navy have no such rigors to endure, and they made their mark with Mr. McGregor by bringing several bottles of single malt brew from Islay, his favorite distillery.
When she was ready, the Balmoral also put to sea. Her sea rendezvous was closer; around the Cape of Good Hope and northwest to Ascension Island, where she would meet, out of sight and land, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary carrying her complement of Special Boat Service Marines and the equipment they, too, would need.
When the Balmoral was over the horizon, McGregor packed up what was left. The converter crews and internal outfitters were long gone and their motor homes taken back by the hire company. The old Scot was living in the last of them on his diet of whisky and quinine. The brothers Kapoor had been paid off from bank accounts no one would ever trace and lost all interest in two grain ships they had converted to dive centers. The yard went back to its habitual regime of dismembering ships full of toxic chemicals and asbestos. COLLEEN KECK crouched on the wing of the Buccaneer and puckered her face against the wind. The exposed flat plains of Lincolnshire are not balmy ever in June. She had come to say good-bye to the Brazilian of whom she had become fond.
Beside her, in the forward cockpit of the fighter bomber, sat Major Joao Mendoza, making last and final checks. In the rear cockpit, where she had sat to train him, the seat was gone. Instead was yet another extra fuel tank, and a radio set that fed straight into the flier's headphones. Behind them both, the two Spey engines rumbled at the idling pitch.
When there was no point in waiting anymore, she leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek.
"Safe journey, Joao," she shouted. He saw her lips move and realized what she had said. He smiled back and raised his right hand, thumb erect. With the arctic wind, the jets behind him and the voice from the tower in his ears, he could not hear her.
Cdr. Keck slid off the wing and jumped to the ground. The Perspex canopy rolled forward and closed, locking the pilot into his own world; a world of control column, throttles, instruments, gunsight, fuel gauges and tactical air navigator, the TACAN.
He asked for and got final clearance, turned onto the runway, paused again, checked brakes, released and rolled. Seconds later, the ground crew in the van by the tarmac, who had come to see him off, watched as 22,000 pounds of thrust from twin Speys powered the Buccaneer into the skies and saw it bank toward the south.
Because of the changes made, it had been decided Major Mendoza would fly back to the mid-Atlantic by a different route. In the Portuguese islands of the Azores is the U.S. Air Force base of Lajes, home of the 64th Wing, and the Pentagon, operating to unseen strings, had agreed to refuel the "museum piece" ostensibly heading back to South Africa. At 1,395 nautical miles, it was no problem.
Nevertheless, he overnighted in the officers' club at Lajes in order to leave at dawn for Fogo. He had no wish to make his first landing at his new home in the dark. He took off at dawn for the second leg, 1,439 miles to Fogo, well under his 2,200-mile limit.
The skies over the Cape Verde Islands were clear. As he dropped down from his cruise altitude of 35,000 feet, he could see them all with total clarity. At 10,000 feet, the wakes of a few speedboats out at sea were like little white feathers against the blue water. At the south end of the group, west of Santiago, he could make out the jutting caldera of Fogo's extinct volcano and, tucked into the southwestern flank of the rock, the sliver of airport runway.
He dropped farther in a long, curving sweep over the Atlantic, keeping the volcano just off port wing. He knew that he had a designated call sign and frequency, and that the language would not be Portuguese but English. He would be "Pilgrim," and Fogo Central was "Progress." He pressed the Transmit button and called.
"Pilgrim, Pilgrim… Progress Tower, do you read me?"
The voice that came back he recognized. One of the six from Scampton who would be his technical and support team. An English voice, North Country accent. His friend was sitting in the Fogo Airport control tower beside the Verdean traffic controller of commercial flights.
"Read you fine, Pilgrim."
The Scampton enthusiast, another retiree recruited by Cal Dexter with Cobra money, stared out of the plate-glass window of the stumpy little control box and could clearly see the Bucc curving over the sea. He delivered landing instructions: direction of runway, wind strength and direction.
At 1,000 feet, Joao Mendoza lowered undercarriage and flaps to landing setting, watched the airspeed and altitude drop. In such brilliant visibility, there was not much need for technology; this was flying as it used to be. Two miles out, he lined up. The froth of foaming surf swept under him, the wheels thumped the tarmac at the very threshold marker, and he was braking gently down a runway half the length of the Scampton strip. He was fuel light and un-weaponed. It was not a problem.
As he came to a halt with two hundred yards to spare, a small pickup swerved in front, and a figure in the back beckoned him to follow. He taxied away from the terminal to the flight-school complex and finally shut down.
The five who had preceded him from Scampton surrounded him. There were cheery greetings as he climbed down. The sixth was approaching from the tower on his rented scooter. All six had arrived by a British C-130 Hercules two days earlier. With them came rockets for RATO departures, every tool needed to maintain the Bucc in her new role and the all-important Aden cannon ammunition. Among the six, all now assured of much more comfortable pensions than they had faced six months earlier, were rigger, fitter, armorer (the "plumber"), avionics expert, air comms (radio) technician and the air traffic controller who had just talked him down.