The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [315]
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Okay, thanks. Owe you one," Cathy said on her way through the door.
The Carmen Vita pulled into Hampton Roads barely an hour late. She turned to port and proceeded south past the Navy piers. The captain and pilot rode the port-side bridge wing, noting the carrier that was even now departing from the pier with a few hundred wives and children waving goodbye to USS Theodore Roosevelt. Two cruisers, two destroyers, and a frigate were already moving. They, the pilot explained, were the screening ships for The Stick," as TR was called by her crew. The Indian-born captain grunted and returned to business. Half an hour later, the container ship approached her pier at the end of Terminal Boulevard. Three tugs took their position and eased the Carmen Vita alongside. The ship had barely been tied up when the gantry cranes started moving cargo.
"Roggen, Colorado?" the trucker asked. He flipped open his large book map and looked on I-76 for the right place. "Okay, I see it."
"How fast?" Russell asked.
"From the time I leave here? Eighteen hundred miles. Oh, two days, maybe forty hours if I'm lucky. Gonna cost you."
"How much?" Russell asked. The trucker told him. "Cash all right?"
"Cash is fine. I knock ten percent off for that," the trucker said. The IRS never found out about cash transactions.
"Half in advance." Russell peeled off the bills. "Half on delivery, a grand bonus if you break forty hours."
"Sounds good to me. What about the box?"
"You bring that right back here. We'll be getting more stuff in a month," Russell lied. "We can make this a sort of regular run for you."
"Sounds good to me."
Russell returned to his friends, and together they watched the unloading process from the comfort of a block building with a large coffee urn.
Teddy Roosevelt cleared the harbor in record time, bending on twenty knots before they reached the sea buoy. Already, the aircraft were orbiting overhead, first among them the F-14 Tomcat fighters that had lifted off from Oceana Naval Air Station. As soon as there was sea room, the carrier came into the northerly wind to commence flight operations. The first plane down had the Double-Zero number of the CAG, Captain Robby Jackson. His Tomcat caught a gust over the fantail, and as a result caught the number-two wire when it landed -'trapped' - somewhat to Jackson's annoyance. The next aircraft, flown by Commander Rafael Sanchez, made a perfect trap on the number-three arrester wire. Both aircraft taxied out of harm's way. Jackson left the fighter and immediately sprinted to his place on Vulture's Row, high up on the carrier's island structure, so that he could observe the arrival of the rest of his aircraft. This was how a deployment started, with the CAG and squadron commanders watching their troops land. Each trap would be recorded on videotape for critiques. The cruise had not gotten off to a very good start, Jackson noted as he sipped his first mug of shipboard coffee. He'd missed his customary 'OK' grade, as the Air Boss had informed him with a twinkling eye.
"Hey, Skipper, how my kids doing?" Sanchez asked, taking his seat behind Robby.
"Not bad, I see you kept your record going, Bud."
"It's not hard, Captain. You just keep an eye on the wind as you turn in. I saw that gust you took. Guess I should have warned you."
"Pride goeth before the fall, Commander," Robby observed. Sanchez had seventeen consecutive OKs. Maybe he could see the wind, Jackson thought. Seventy uneventful minutes later, TR turned back east, taking the great-circle route for the Straits of Gibraltar.
The trucker made sure the container box was firmly secured to the bed of his truck, then climbed into the cab of his Kenworth diesel tractor. He started his engine and waved to Russell,