Without remorse - Tom Clancy [192]
'So's the hill. It's a wash.'
'Tonight?' Kelly asked. It wasn't hard to catch the meaning of the General's words.
'Think you're up to it?'
'I suppose we need to know that. When's the mission going to go?'
Greer took that one. 'You don't need to know that yet.'
'How much warning will I have?'
The CIA official weighed that one before answering. 'Three days before we move out. We'll be going over mission parameters in a few hours. For now, watch how these men are setting up.' Greer and Young headed off to their car.
'Aye aye,' Kelly replied to their backs. The Marines had coffee going. He got a cup and started blending in with the assault team.
'Not bad,' Irvin said.
'Thanks. I always figured it's one of the most important things you need to know in this business.'
'What's that?' Irvin asked.
'How to run away as far and fast as you can.'
Irvin laughed and then came the first work detail of the day, something that let the men cool down and have a laugh of their own. They started moving the mannequins around. It had become a ritual, which woman went with which kids. They'd discovered that the models could be posed, and the Marines made great fun of that. Two had brought new outfits, both rather skimpy bikinis, which they ostentatiously put on two lounging lady-figures. Kelly watched with incredulous amazement, then realized that the swimsuit models had had their bodies - painted, in the interests of realism, Jesus, he thought, and they say sailors are screwy!
USS Ogden was a new ship, or nearly so, having emerged from the New York Naval Shipyard's building ways in 1964. Rather a strange-looking ship, she was 570 feet long, and her forward half had a fairly normal superstructure and eight guns to annoy attacking aircraft. The odd part was the after half, which was flat on top and hollow underneath. The flat part was good for landing helicopters, and directly under that was a well deck designed to be filled with water from which landing craft could operate. She and her eleven sister ships had been designed to support landing operations, to put Marines on the beach for the amphibious-assault missions that The Corps had invented in the 1920s and perfected in the 1940s. But the Pacific Fleet amphibious ships were without a mission now - the Marines were on the beach, generally brought in by chartered jetliners to conventional airports - and so some of the 'phibs were being outfitted for other missions. As Ogden was.
Cranes were lifting a series of trailer vans onto the flight deck. When secured in place, deck parties erected various radio antennas. Other such objects were being bolted into place on the superstructure. The activity was being done in the open - there is no convenient way of hiding a 17,000-ton warship - and it was clear that Ogden, like two more sister ships, was transforming herself into a platform for the gathering of electronic intelligence - ELINT. She sailed out of the San Diego Naval Base just as the sun began to set, without an escort and without the Marine battalion she was built to carry. Her Navy crew of thirty officers and four hundred ninety enlisted men settled into their routine watch bill, conducting training exercises and generally doing what most had chosen to do by enlisting in the Navy instead of risking a slot in the draft. By sunset she was well under the horizon, and her new mission had been communicated to various interested parties, not all of whom were friendly to the flag which she flew. With all those trailers aboard and a score of antennas looking like a forest of burnt trees to clutter up her flight deck - and no Marines embarked - she wouldn't be doing anyone direct harm. That was obvious to all who had seen her.
Twelve hours later, and two hundred miles at sea, bosun's mates assembled parties from the deck division and told some rather confused young men to unbolt all but one of the trailers - which were empty - and to strike down all of the antennas on the flight deck. Those on the superstructure would remain in place. The antennas