At Beale Air Force Base three teams moved in and positioned themselves well before they were due to go into action. At various other military installations where the enemy was present and had any combat capability, other personnel already on the job were backed up and reenforced. All of this was made easier because the enemy was still relatively new in the area, not yet deployed in any major strength, and convinced that the fervent desire of the United States for peace at any cost was adequate insurance against any uprisings.
At Hamilton Air Force Base three enemy fighter pilots who had been assigned to put on a show of force should that ever become necessary regularly dined at the only local facility where their patronage appeared to be welcome. They liked American food and the good liquor that could be had to go along with it. The only thing missing was suitable female company, but that had proved to be very hard to come by in the United States under the circumstances.
On the evening before S day they ate as usual, but the occasion was marked by the fact that three American girls were seated unescorted not too far away. After some discussion the pilots tried an approach. It was not successful, but on the other hand it did not appear to be a flat rejection. After a little more talk, they decided to try again. This time they had better luck.
All that was being done was known in general terms to the captain of the Magsaysay; each place where something might go wrong was known to him also, and he was at least forewarned. The most critical area was the possibility of air attack; surprise would help a great deal in forestalling any effective land-based action against the submarine, but even traveling at flank speed she would lie exposed for over an hour on the surface, and in that time an air attack against her could be mounted and carried out.
Against such an action she would be helpless; the water she would be in would not allow her to maneuver and she carried no antiaircraft defense whatever. The Bay area was surrounded by military installations where the enemy was in possession. Almost from the moment that she had slipped her moorings the thought of air attack had been foremost in the captain’s mind; once Blossom Rock had been cleared and the Golden Gate lay ahead, he knew that the time of greatest peril was at hand.
In his Washington headquarters Colonel Rostovitch had been informed within minutes of his own emergency phone call that in some totally unexplained manner the Magsaysay had been seized and was attempting to put out to sea. With furious energy he began to mount a counterattack. He was not too familiar with the geography of the Bay region, but he knew in general terms that the fugitive submarine would have to negotiate some inland waters before she would be able to reach the Pacific, and that was where she would have to be caught.
He summoned subordinates, who came with all haste and the knowledge that something drastic had occurred. Rostovitch whipped them into action with a few words, then he stormed into his communications room so that not a moment would be lost in finding out what was going on. As the reports began to come in, minor disasters seemed to accumulate. In San Francisco three seized U.S. Army tanks were being kept more or less on the alert to deal with any possible mob uprisings, but only one of them was able to respond to the call to action; the crews of the other two could not be readily located in the predawn on the West Coast. When the one available tank had started out, it had encountered unexpected road construction which had forced a maddening delay.
At Hamilton Air Force Base all three of the posted fighter pilots were discovered to have been out on an extended party with some girls they had met the night before. They seemed unable to rouse themselves and reportedly acted like men who were in a trance. At McClellan the single fighter plane available and armed was discovered to have nearly empty tanks. When an effort was made to refuel it, the main gas tank cap stuck and, when force was applied, it broke loose from its fitting. It was a very minor thing, but the plane could not get off the ground.
At Beale, of the two available interceptors, one had a damaged wingtip as the result of a careless truck driver’s backing into it the day before; the other had a routine flat tire. The supply depot was secured, so a tire had to be removed from the damaged aircraft and switched with the flat. Two airplanes had to be jacked up to accomplish the change, and only one set of the proper-sized jacks could be located on short notice.
At Mather Air Force Base no suitable aircraft of any kind were available. At Travis, the great transpacific terminal of the Military Airlift Command, a plumbing rupture had allowed several hundred gallons of injection water to get into the main fuel lines. Before this was discovered several aircraft had been loaded with the contaminated mixture; they could not be flown until their tanks had been completely drained and the fuel systems cleaned out.
Alameda Naval Air Station had a few transports on the field, but not a single combat aircraft capable of an attack.
And so it went: Moffett, Castle, and all of the other air facilities within a realistic range reported trouble of one kind or another. Before the third such report had been received, Rostovitch knew that a thorough campaign had been staged without his being forewarned. His fury raged to the point where he seemed on the verge of apoplexy, but he could do nothing. He did not know how long it would take the submarine to reach a safe haven in the Pacific, but he sensed without being told that he would not be able to muster anything from anywhere in time. He seized a phone once more and ordered a maximum, unceasing effort to find and capture the saboteurs. He ordered the American commander of the Hunters Point Shipyard seized and held in maximum security for his personal interrogation. The man who had been assigned to guard and watch over him was to be treated likewise. All of the American agents, when captured, were to be executed publicly at once.
Then he thought hard. There had to be some way to locate and destroy the Magsaysay while she was still close in, some system of detection that would reveal her position. Offhand he did not know of any, but that was not in his field. Information was what he needed; once more he jerked up a telephone and hurled an order into the mouthpiece.
The OD on the bridge looked straight up at the mighty structure of the Golden Gate Bridge. “They might take some potshots at us from up there, sir,” he said.
“Pretty difficult,” the captain answered. “If anything does start, you and the talker get below on the double.”
“With your permission, sir, negative.”
“That goes for me, too, sir,” the talker said.
The captain raised his binoculars toward the bridge, then once more searched the sky. He was acutely aware of a low fogbank that lay not too far ahead; that was one prayer answered, although any enemy fighters that managed to get airborne might be equipped with sophisticated modern radars. Mercifully, traffic was not proving to be a problem; since the United States had fallen, waterborne commerce to and from her shores had dropped off to a considerable degree. The radar reports from below indicated that the ship channel was, as of then, free and clear.
Six minutes later the first of the fog began to dilute the stark brightness of the sky. The Magsaysay continued on at flank speed, racing now for the deep water where she could find sanctuary. The first real motion of the Pacific caused the submarine to begin to roll, but the knowledge of what that signified negated any sense of discomfort. A thin allover haze surrounded her as she continued southwestward toward the ship channel. Then, visibly, it became more dense and the sky was erased in a dull whiteness. The ship was alone now, just as though she were on some voyage in space, plowing ahead at her best surface speed, dipping and rolling under the force of the moving water, making steady progress past the shoals that lay astride the harbor entrance.