“The whole goddamn ship feels alive!” Hunter told Emma that morning.
But the real celebration came about mid-afternoon. This was when Yaz’s men had boiled up enough steam using the reactor to open the valve which led to the Saratoga’s powerful propulsion turbines. Those aboard felt a sudden, almost violent jolt. Then all were aware of a very strange sensation. They were moving. Evenly. Smoothly. No more push. No more pull.
A spontaneous cheer went up all over the ship. Crewmen on the ships nearby, all unaccustomed to seeing the Saratoga move under its own power, joined in with applause. Hunter happened to be on the bridge at the time and watched in awe as all the multi-colored lights on all the control panels blinked on. Heath and O’Brien were also there to witness the display.
“Good God,” Heath yelled. “They’ve actually done it!”
“I never thought I’d see the day … ” O’Brien said, speechless for probably the first time in his life.
“We couldn’t have gotten this far without you,” Hunter told the Irishman.
“Hear, hear!” Heath echoed, shaking hands with the tugboat skipper. “In fact, on special orders from Sir Neil, I am now naming you the commander of the Saratoga.”
As those sailors present on the bridge gave him a round of applause, O’Brien pointed to himself, genuinely surprised, and asked, “Me? Why me?”
“It’s just logical,” Heath told him. “Of us all, only Olson, the Commodore, and yourself are real sea captains. I’m sure you’ll agree they’ve got their hands full right now. Yaz’s job has now increased tenfold since he’s got the ship running. So, Captain O’Brien, that leaves you in command.”
The BBC crew was on hand, of course, to record the historic moment. As the leader of the video crew came forward, microphone in hand, to interview O’Brien, the old tug man looked at Hunter. But the pilot only smiled and said, “It’s all yours, Skip … ”
That night, as the Saratoga was approaching the Canal at a speed of fifteen knots, two frigates pulled out ahead of the flotilla and steered due south. On board was the Commodore, the UDT team, and a squad of Spanish Rocketeers. One of the frigates carried a Harrier, just in case the pair of ships was spotted from the air.
The other frigate was running on a skeleton crew. All of its armament had been stripped off, as had anything of value not bolted down. In the frigate’s cargo hold were the 100 Soviet mines.
The two ships plowed silently through the night waters traveling the sixty-five miles to a point just a mile off the entrance to Alexandria, Egypt. It was two in the morning when they arrived. Quickly, quietly, the UDT frogmen slipped into the calm seas and went about the task of planting the Soviet mines in strategic, predetermined places.
Later on they would report that, while the mine-laying operation was going on, they had observed the holographic face of Lucifer projected off in the distant eastern sky.
Hunter spent most of the night in the CIC, sitting with Heath, a Moroccan translator, and Giuseppe, the head of the Italian communications group, listening to the multitude of radio broadcasts coming from Lucifer’s fleet.
The carrier flotilla had lost time crossing the Med. The battles, the storm, the loss of the tugboats, and other distractions had put them days behind Sir Neil’s original schedule. For Hunter, it was a miracle they had made it at all, but the delay had presented some problems.
Originally Sir Neil had intended to sail the carrier through the Canal and plant it — and the soldiers sailing with it — at the northern entrance, thus denying the entire gateway to the Med to Lucifer’s ships. But, as the intercepted communications indicated, the first elements of Lucifer’s fleet had already entered the Canal. And, in fact, gunboats allied with the madman had been patrolling the Canal for days.
Now it looked as if a mid-Canal confrontation were imminent.
“It’s going to be tight,” Hunter told Giuseppe and Heath as they moved markers around the ship’s plotting map. “The Canal is only about three hundred feet across. That’s wide enough to accommodate two major ships going in opposite directions and that’s about it.”
“We are lucky that the Egyptian Navy dredged the blasted thing before the Big War,” Heath said. “Otherwise, we might have scrapped the bottom.”
“We still won’t have much room to maneuver, if any,” Hunter said.
“Well, I imagine if we were still using the bloody tugs!” Heath said. “I guess our best bet is to crank it out, get to a good position in the middle of the Canal, disperse the troops, and launch an air strike immediately.”
“I agree,” Hunter said, studying the map. “We can tie up a lot of his ships if we just sink a few early, thereby sealing off the Canal midway, at least temporarily. I’m sure his Soviet mine-laying group is equipped with a UDT. They can clear one sunken ship in about six hours. But if we ice six or seven ships, those guys are going to get real tired real quick.”
“Look here on the map,” Heath said, directing a pointer to an area about halfway down the Canal’s 100-mile length. “Here’s the only place where the Moroccans would have some kind of cover to meet Lucifer’s troops — granting that, if we sink his ships, he’s going to throw his foot soldiers off the transports and make them walk.”
The group was silent for a time, until Heath spoke up again.
“The question is,” he said, “can we get to that point before Lucifer does?”
Hunter finally retired about three in the morning. Tomorrow would be a busy day, he knew, and even three hours’ sleep would help.
He found Emma as he always did: curled up naked on his bunk as a candle flickered away on the bed table. He took off his boots, zipped down his flight suit, and crawled in next to her. She immediately drew herself up close to him, one of her small delicate breasts falling right into his hand. He squeezed it softly. Then he looked at her sweet face. She’s so much like a young Dominique, he thought.
Right away his thoughts flashed over the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, and back to America. Dominique. He yearned for her as much as he yearned for his country. Although he knew he was changing his mind almost every other day, right now he had somewhat settled whether his being here, on this “crusade,” was really the most productive thing to do. In the long run, he felt the answer was yes. Whether Lucifer was in the picture or not, his Legion would keep moving if they weren’t checked in some way. It sounded old hat, but there was a good possibility that, if the madman’s army was not stopped here, in the eastern Med, the day would come when they’d be landing on the shores of America. And the democratic forces in America might not have their shit together enough to mount a decent defense. It was a question of where and when to battle the enemy.
For Hunter, the place was here and the time was now.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the American flag, and felt its threads with his fingers. He always gained some power from the act. Someday, he said. Someday the flag will fly again. Mean something to millions again. It was his life and he knew it and he accepted it. “America,” he whispered to himself. “I am an American … ”