The Final Countdown, page 14
Owens gestured to the bandage being applied about Chapman’s head. “You made out lucky, mister. I’m pleased for you.”
Chapman was still trying furiously to sort out this madness about him. “You’re navy?" he asked suddenly. Owens nodded. “Our navy?” Chapman insisted.
Owens showed a thin smile. “If you mean the United States, yes.”
“I mean just that.”
Crusty old bastard, Owens thought. And then he also realized that was the best sign. The man would be all right. The man’s eyes moved back and forth to take in the incredible sights about him. First those wild arrow shapes. Then the Japanese planes, shooting the hell out of them. And now this—huge machines with no wings and a boilermaker’s nightmare of noise, hovering like a blimp in the sky, plucking people from the ocean and now rushing through the air like an airplane. My God, for a while he felt he must be going mad. But all this was real, all too real. Chapman looked up at Owens.
“I know authority. You seem to be the one in charge here. What the hell kind of machine is this thing, anyway?”
“Sikorsky,” Owens said with a half smile.
“What (he hell are you talking about! Sikorsky … they’re in Connecticut. They build flying boats, that sort of stuff. They never built anything like this!” Owens hesitated. ‘It will all be a lot clearer when we’re back aboard ship, sir.”
“Neat sidestepping, mister—?”
“Commander Richard Owens, sir.”
“Commander, huh? And what’s your ship?”
“Aircraft carrier, sir. I’m CAG.”
“What the hell is CAG?”
“Ah, sorry about that. Air wing commander.” Chapman stuck out his hand. “I didn’t mean to be so damned gruff.” He winced as he pulled against the IV needle in his arm. “It’s been a bit wild. I apologize for my bad manners. The name is Sam Chapman.”
His eyes narrowed as there came no response to shake his offered hand. The commander had frozen in place, was staring at him, suddenly white-faced. “Did you say Sam Chapman?”
“Yes, yes. What’s wrong?”
“Senator Sam Chapman?”
Chapman looked at Laurel. "I'll be goddamned! I’m not crazy, after all, not if someone knows who and what I am! Commander, I’m getting more delighted with your presence with every passing moment Shake hands, man!”
They clasped in silence, Chapman beaming, Owens still acting as if he’d been struck a terrible blow.
Jiro Simura wanted no part of rescue. Instinct, and curiosity, had kept him alive until now. The Japanese pilots flew from their carriers with cork-style life preservers wrapped about their bodies. When the spinning fighter cartwheeled into the sea, the remaining wing absorbed most of the blow. Simura was thrown about in the cockpit but aside from a few bruises he emerged relatively unhurt from the slow impact with the water. Without thinking he pulled back his canopy hatch and climbed onto the wing. Moments later the Zero sank beneath the surface, leaving a still stupefied pilot floating in a vast ocean. Simura tried desperately to think clearly. He had failed in his mission, for he and Togawa had left survivors in the water. And then they had been swatted from the skies like helpless flies before those terrible, strange shapes. He knew he should die, because he was still alive with no way to return to his carrier, and the idea of becoming a prisoner—in a war that hadn’t even started!—was beyond his wildest imagination. Yet he could not bring his mind to function properly and—
He turned, paddling furiously, at the strange sounds in the sky rapidly becoming louder. He looked up in astonishment, calling on all his ancestral gods for help, as two hulking shapes without wings and emitting a terrible broken thunder fell toward him. A screaming wind roared across the waters, blowing him about helplessly. One of the machines came to a stop in midair directly above him. It could not be! Then he saw moving bodies, the faces of men, and several of the men leaped from the floating, roaring machine into the sea and swam toward him. Simura tried to swim away but his cumbersome vest impeded his movement. The vest! He must rid himself of it so he could drown his worthless self!
He was still trying when two frogmen reached him. Simura lashed out wildly with his fists, screaming curses in Japanese. One of the strange men grabbed a wrist and pulled. Simura was momentarily helpless as a powerful fist smashed against his jaw, once, twice, and a third time before blackness washed over him. He was still unconscious when the winch operator brought him aboard the helicopter. “Get his gun, and look for any knives. Don’t waste any time. Get that cable over there and tie the son of a bitch hand and foot. I don’t want him able to twitch a finger. And while you’re at it, gag him.”
The sun burned a copper streak across the water as the first helicopter turned into the wind and settled easily to Nimitzs deck. Anchor cables were snapped to the gear and the crew shut down the howling jet engines. Medical teams rushed forward, and moments later Chapman and Laurel were carried on stretchers across the deck and through a wide entryway into the carrier island. Chapman stared, almost hypnotized by the furious activity and the strange shapes about him. “Commander Owens!” he called. “What in the name of God is—”
Owens gripped his arm. “Senator, do me a favor. Let it wait. Please. Just let it wait. We’ll get you to sick bay, and then we’ll let you catch up on what’s happening. I promise we’ll clear away all the questions.”
Chapman studied the officer before him. “All right, Commander. You’ve already saved our lives. I guess I can be patient for a while.”
Owens smiled. “Thank you, Senator.” He stepped aside as the medical team went off on the double to sick bay. Right behind him came another team with Laurel strapped to the stretcher. Her eyes were glassy and she was again close to hysteria. She looked up at him, eyes imploring. “Please! My dog … what will happen with Charlie?”
“Rest easy, miss,” Owens said. He leaned over the stretcher and smiled. “I promise you he’ll be all right. The crew will take care of him.”
A doctor loomed by his side. “Commander, we’ve got to get her to sick bay. If you would?”
Owens stepped aside. “Of course. Sorry, doc.”
Owens turned to watch two helicopters approaching, one carrying the Japanese pilot, the other the heavily armed escort Owens ran to the fist chopper as it was anchored to the deck. “Keep this hatch closed until I tell you otherwise, got it? And let no one aboard!”
They showed their surprise but said only, “Yes, sir.” Owens turned to the marine guard detail. “Clear the deck between here and that hatch over there. I want no one to interfere with us. We’re going to remove someone from that chopper. He’s to speak with no one and he’s not to be spoken to. Keep him under tight security. Take him to the brig. I’ll have a doctor meet you there. And whatever you do, keep him under your surveillance at all times. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Owens returned to the helicopter cabin. A terrified pilot looked at him. “Untie his feet,” Owens directed. “But keep his hands tied behind him until you reach the brig. I want a marine hanging on to each arm, and tightly. Don’t stop. The detail outside will take you down. All right, now, move it.”
They released Simura’s feet. Two husky marines grasped his arms and led him from the helicopter, moving quickly across the deck. They almost stumbled as Simura stopped moving, his head snapping to one side. A Tomcat fighter howled to the deck with its terrifying roar and scream of jet engines, crashed into its arrestor hook, bobbing up and down on the nose gear. Immediately the cables were released and the fighter taxied forward. Another crash of thunder as the second Tomcat slammed with bone-jarring impact to the deck. Simura’s mouth was held open by the gag, but his eyes were bulging as if all that he saw confirmed he was truly mad. Then the marines dragged him forward and he stumbled, trying to match their pace. A moment later he was gone inside the ship.
The world was dark, the ocean a fog of blackness beneath the high cloud deck. In Captain’s Plot several men sat with Matt Yelland, who held a damp photo in his hand. “Lovely thing,” he murmured, and passed the picture of the pretty Japanese girl in a flowered kimono to the others. Personal effects had been laid out carefully on the plotting board. A slim wallet, a crushed cigarette pack, a small penknife. And a leather bound pocket diary. The pages were still damp and in places the ink had run. Japanese characters had been written in painstaking detail on each page. Yelland tapped the diary ana looked at his operations officer. “Commander, I want this translated immediately.”
Dan Thurman took the diary. “Yes, sir. I’ll get Lieutenant Jose Kajima to do it.”
Lasky looked up, surprised. “Jose Kajima? What the hell kind of name is that?”
Thurman grinned. “He’s a Filipino, but his father is Japanese, and he lived in Japan for several years. He’s fluent in the language.”
“How long will it take?” Yelland asked.
“I don’t know, sir. I imagine a while, with all these pages here, and—”
Lasky reached for the diary. “Captain, I can get it done a lot faster.” He saw tne unspoken question in Yelland’s expression. “The computers, Captain. They’ll take a photo impression of each page and we’ll have a complete translation, printed out, in just about fifteen minutes or so. One of the technicians can handle it.”
Yelland nodded. “Very good. Get it going, Warren, and then join me on the bridge.”
They took hot soup and bread on the bridge. Exhaustion dogged their steps but none of them could sleep. Or wanted to. Every moment was unspeakably precious to them. They feared that if they even turned away from every succeeding event, they’d never catch up with what was happening about them. Yelland had his immediate staff surrounding him: Dan Thurman, Dick Owens, Bill Damon, Artemus Perry, and John Arthur—Black Cloud. By now they had all accepted Warren Lasky as a member of their most intimate team. Indeed, slowly but surely they had come to accept that Captain Yelland’s own composure about all that had befallen them had been provided by Lasky s knowledge of mighty forces still beyond their own understanding. They didn’t know if the captain, or Lasky himself, truly understood what had happened to them, had caused this mighty rupture of time, but at least they knew how to handle it, and that was good enough for them.
“Gentlemen,” Yelland said slowly, “I won’t go into all the detailed aspects of what’s happened. The results are enough for this moment. You are all aware of what’s happened to us?”
They nodded or murmured their assent. “In short, somehow, we’ve been thrown by that storm back to December 6, 1941. Tomorrow, by local time, that Japanese fleet we spotted earlier will launch its attack against Pearl Harbor. We know the events, we know the sequences, we know the results. What we don’t know, and I’m sure the question has haunted all of you, is what we do about it.”
Thurman gestured. “Sir, how can there be any question? You said we know the consequences of their attack. We all do! They’ll tear Pearl to pieces and … well, everything else. There’s only one thing to do, sir, and that’s blow that Japanese task force to hell and gone.”
Yelland let the others absorb Thurman’s words. Only then did he speak, carefully, slowly. He didn’t want emotion running out of hand and too many men on this ship were already as taut as bowstrings. “In other words, then,” Yelland spoke, “you are recommending that this ship, U.S.S. Nimitz, launch an all-out assault against the Nagumo force, with the express purpose of destroying that force?”
“Yes, sir, that is exactly what I’m saying,” Thurman said with undisguised heat.
“You are recommending that we open undeclared war against the Japanese Empire?”
Thurman’s jaw dropped. “Undeclared—!” He took a deep breath. “Sir, they bombed the hell out of Pearl!”
Yelland’s face was a stone mask, his eyes unblinking. “No, they haven’t,” he said quietly. “Not yet.”
“But …”
“It hasn’t happened yet. We know from the past that it is supposed to happen, that if history unravels itself along the same paths, it will happen. But it has not happened. This is the sixth and not the seventh of December.”
Thurman looked about him, saw no one else stepping into the breach. “Captain, I’m not trying to play with words, but it’s in the history books, in our records. The Japanese tomorrow morning are going to launch their air strike against Hawaii, and we’ll be at war, and—”
Bill Damon gestured and Yelland nodded. The operations officer turned to Thurman. “We can’t count too much on those books, Dan.”
“And why not!”
“Because we’re here, right now, and there is absolutely no record anywhere of the nuclear-powered U.S.S. Nimitz in these waters on the sixth of December in 1941.”
“You must consider that, Dan,” Yelland said gently. “Then why don’t we consider what happened today?” Thurman demanded. “Those Zero fighters, remember? They attacked an American vessel on the high seas and shot it up and sank it and they killed everyone aboard with the exception of two survivors. Isn’t that an act of war? My God, what more do we need?”
Yelland shook his head. “No, it’s not an act of war. It comes under the heading of isolated incident.”
Lasky moved closer to the others. “It does open up, um, shall we say, amazing possibilities? The awesome firepower of Nimitz back in 1941. Jet fighters, guided missiles, radar … and all those nuclear warheads.” He paused, and the suddenly alarmed Yelland became aware that Lasky was playing a role as devil’s advocate. “Just think,” Lasky went on, “we don’t even need an all-out strike such as you’re calling for, Commander Thurman. Why bother? Just one hydrogen bomb in the water under that Japanese fleet. Just one, and it’s all over. No survivors, no ships, no question that we can accomplish total extinction with just one warhead. And the attack on Pearl Harbor, if indeed it is going to take place tomorrow, will never be.”
“Holy Jesus,” someone murmured.
“Of course,” Lasky went on smoothly, “it has other possibilities. What we might regard as a review of the next forty years of history.”
Dick Owens took a verbal swing at the scientist. “I suspect, Mr. Lasky, that history might just be a touch more difficult to beat than even you imagine.”
Lasky studied the CAG officer. Warning suspicions sounded in his mind. Owens was a brilliant man, but he’d just overplayed his hand. There was something hidden within his last remark, but it would have to be extracted slowly. “Look, were talking about the classic time paradox.” He paused and moved his gaze along the others present. “I don’t want to go into a long song and dance on the subject, because Captain
Yelland and I have already worn ourselves hoarse on this matter.” He paused again to let the news sink in. Captain Yelland had been into a deep discussion of the classic time paradox… . That would affect how every one of them would think and react. The old man is being regarded in a different light. He’s their hero. Now suddenly he’s a deep thinker. Good.
“The gist of it,” Lasky continued, “is where I go back in time and meet my own grandfather before he sires my own parent. I kill him. That means since he doesn’t father children, then on down the line my own parent fails to come into existence. But if I’m never bom, how can I go back in time to meet my own grandfather?”
Owens gestured angrily. “Lasky, I’m not the theorist you are. I don’t know those computers of yours and I haven’t delved into the philosophical aspects of astrophysics or topology or whatever you need to understand what you call warps in space and time. But I have a damned good gut instinct that tells me that things happen only once. Time isn’t a revolving door—”
“Very good,” Lasky murmured, and he meant it.
Owens swept right on. “If something has happened, then there’s nothing we can do to change it. And we shouldn’t even try to change it,” he added with sudden emphasis.
“There are two flaws to that remark,” Lasky said quietly. “Not to try, as an avenue in life, is to accept the doctrine that if God wanted man to fly, he would have created us with wings.” Pause. “The second flaw won’t go away, either. How can we avoid not only what’s happened in the past if we can’t avoid the present? We’re here, Commander. We’re a part of what’s happening right now.”
Dan Thurman’s interruption was an emotional explosion. “For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “What the hell is this! Some half-assed Princeton debating society? We’re in a war situation here! We’ve had a ship shot to pieces. Our own fighters have shot down two planes that carried out a war attack. We know that task force out there intends to bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow morning. And we are a warship of the United States of America. Or at least, we used to be. Or will be … or whatever the hell! Goddamnit, this stuff will drive us all crazy if we don’t hang on to the only reality that counts—ourselves. We’re here, we are, and if that’s not true, then what the hell are we doing affecting things around us by shooting down Japanese planes!”
Yelland coughed quietly to draw their attention. “All right, everybody cool it. As Lasky told you, we’ve been through this rat maze a couple of times. I’m getting tired of this house of mirrors where you see reflections of yourself from every comer. We don’t need theory as much as we need a good grip on ourselves. Everybody got that signal loud and clear? Good. Now, we do it one step at a time. And if we don’t know what’s coming down on us, gentlemen, then we look to see if the book is real. I assure you it is. The good old book of regulations and rules. We go by the book. We function as what we are in the best way we know how and to the devil with the theoretical implications. To put it bluntly, gentlemen, we simply grasp Old Father Time by the short hairs and I guarantee you he’ll come right along in the same direction we’re traveling. If, no matter what else is going on, tomorrow morning the United States comes under military attack, then our job is to defend her—whether it’s in the past, right now, or in the future.”
