The 165-foot cutter was a ship that responded quickly. He heard the chug-chug of the engines almost immediately and then felt the familiar surge of the ship as she moved forward against the single spring line holding her to the dock. “Port engine back one-third,” he said immediately.
“Port engine back one-third, sir. Engine room answers port engine back one-third, sir.”
“Check two,” Cates said.
“Check two,” the talker said into his mouthpiece. “Forecastle checking two, sir.”
“Rudder amidships. Starboard engine stop. Take in number two. Shift colors.”
Behind Cates the quartermaster of the watch blew a mouth whistle, signaling a shift of the ensign to the after stick. The cutter began backing out of the dock. “Sound three short blasts,” Cates said. He heard them sounding behind him. “All engines stop.”
“All engines stop, sir. Engine room answers all engines stop, sir.”
“Right full rudder. Port engine ahead one-third.”
“Right full rudder, sir. Rudder is right full, sir.”
They were moving out and away from the dock now, past the Naval Station light, the buoys dead ahead marking the Key West main ship channel.
“Rudder amidships,” Cates said to the helmsman. “Steady on course two-zero-four. All engines ahead one-third.”
“Coming to two-zero-four, sir. All engines ahead one-third, sir.”
“Steady as you go.”
“Small boat bearing three-five-zero, range five thousand,” the lookout called down.
“Very well,” Cates answered. “Come right to two-zero-nine.”
“Right to two-zero-nine, sir.”
Cates turned to Michael Pierce, the full lieutenant who was his evecutive officer, and who was standing just a few feet to his left, staring through the wheelhouse windshield at the three-inch 50-caliber cannon on the bow, and past that to the channel beyond. “Someday we’ll cut one of those damn boats right in half,” Cates said, and then turned his head over his shoulder and said to the quartermaster, “Sound one blast.” The whistle sounded in warning, high and sharp and strident on the clear Key West air, telling the small boat that the cutter was coming right. The boat went past on the cutter’s port bow, and the pilot waved up at the bridge. Cates did not return the wave.
“Left to one-eight-three,” he said.
“Left to one-eight-three, sir.”
As the ship began its swing, Cates said, “Move those men off the forecastle and onto the lee side,” and then to Pierce, “No sense getting them soaked out there, Mike.”
The cutter moved slowly down the main channel, changing course and speed as she went, the helmsman watching his compass, Cates peering ahead through the windshield, Pierce silent at his side, the other men in the wheelhouse waiting for sight of the sea buoy. At the buoy Cates said, “Come left to zero-eight-five.”
“Coming left to zero-eight-five, sir.”
“Meet her.”
“Steering zero-eight-five, sir.”
“Steady as you go.”
“Steady as you go, sir. Course zero-eight-five.”
“Secure the special sea detail,” Cates said. “Set the sea watch.”
Into the p.a. system the quartermaster said, “Secure the special sea detail. Set the sea watch.” He turned to Cates. “That’s watch section three, sir.”
“Very well. All engines ahead two-thirds,” Cates said.
“All engines ahead two-thirds, sir. Engine room answers all engines ahead two-thirds, sir.”
“Very well. As soon as we’re relieved up here, Mike, let’s go down to the wardroom for some coffee.”
“I can use some, sir,” Pierce said. “This weather gets in your bones.”
“Quartermaster, ask the engine room when they’ll be able to give us standard speed,” Cates said.
Sitting in the pilot’s seat on the port side of the Grumman Albatross, Frank Randazzo looked off to starboard past his copilot, Murray Diel, and down to where the Keys were clearly visible. He had checked the weather map and the weather reports at the Miami Air Station before takeoff, and so he was not surprised by the visibility here, and yet there always seemed to be something mysterious and magical about the way weather could change in the space of a few miles. He pressed the ICS button under his left thumb on the yoke. He was wearing soft earphones with a boom mike an inch from his lips. Through the static coming from the HF and VHF circuits he said, “We’d better check in with Bluerock, before he calls us.”
“Right,” Diel said.
“Bluerock, this is Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two,” Randazzo said into his mouthpiece.
There was a pause and then the radar station answered, “Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two, Bluerock. Go ahead with your position.”
“Bluerock, seven-two,” Randazzo said. “Long Key at three-seven, one thousand feet. Heading, two-two-six. Speed, one-fifty. Estimating ADIZ at five-seven in position twenty-four forty-five north, eight-oh-four-oh west. Over.”
“Bluerock, roger.”
Randazzo pressed the ICS button and said to Diel, “That ought to hold them for a while.”
“Fuel transfer’s coming off about now, Frank,” Diel said. “We’re reading seventeen fifty in each.”
“Right,” Randazzo said, and watched his gauges as the gasoline was automatically transferred from the 300-gallon drop tanks into the mains. Penner, one of the two mechanics, came into the cockpit with two paper cartons of coffee, handing one to Randazzo and the other to Diel.
“I take three sugars,” Diel said, tasting it. “You always forget.”
“ ’Cause I can’t understand how anybody can drink it so sweet, sir,” Penner said, and went aft again with the carton of coffee. Like every other man aboard the plane, he was wearing a flight suit over his work uniform, and a life vest over that. The flight suit was orange, and the life vest was a bright yellow; the colors were supposed to enable searchers to spot the crew more easily in the water if ever they had to ditch. In addition, and also in the interests of survival, the life vest was equipped with a battery-operated light that could be switched on at night, a shark repellent, a survival knife, a dye marker to spread on the water, and a day and night signal marker. Murray Diel, who had a reputation for thin-bloodedness in a warm climate, was wearing a nonregulation, blue poplin flight jacket over his orange flight suit and under his yellow life vest, and therefore was the most colorful man aboard. The jacket was adorned with two patches. He had brought one of them with him from Floyd Bennett Field where he had been stationed before his transfer to Dinner Key. The Brooklyn Air patch showed a red, white and blue American shield against which soared a brown eagle clutching a yellow rubber life raft in its claws. The Miami Air patch, which Diel wore on the opposite side of his jacket front, showed the Florida coastline in the background in green and, against that, the yellow numeral 7 with an ever-watchful eye painted up near its top, Miami being in the Seventh Coast Guard District, and Miami Air calling itself “The Eyes of the Seventh.”
“Coffee, sir,” Penner said. “Three sugars, sir,” and he grimaced.
The soft rubber earphones against Randazzo’s head erupted with sound.
“Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two, this is Miami Air, over.”
“Miami Air, seven-two, seven-two.”
“You see anything of that cruiser out of Bimini?”
“Nothing yet,” Randazzo said.
“She’s a fifty-footer, twin Cadillacs, overdue three days.”
“Got that before I took off,” Randazzo said drily.
“Thought you might have spotted her. I’m reading you kind of scratchy. Want to give me a short count?”
“Short count,” Knowles, the radioman, answered. “One, two, three, four, five.”