In return, a gesture to the pilot and a signal to the cat operator, the deck officer leaned forward, his legs far apart, until he crouched forward, while taking his orange wand and swinging it through a giant overhead arc as if throwing a tomahawk in slow motion. His wand came all the way down to the deck, then came back up pointing forward, the gesture graceful and exhilarating, a combination statement of “good luck up there, sir,” and “hit the catapult, cat operator.” The catapult kicked in, the highpressure steam driving a trolley that pulled on Galvin’s nose-wheel. Galvin was thrown far back in his seat from the acceleration, the world around him dissolving into a blurred tunnel of gray and blue. In an instant the jet was shot like a bullet off the deck, the catapult trolley disconnecting, the acceleration gone, the jet hanging in space trying to fly but almost hesitating as if confused, the jets still shrieking on full afterburners, the ocean waiting below to swallow him up, but finally the aircraft won and the ocean lost, the jet accelerating again, Galvin swinging the wings to a port roll as he turned out of the carrier’s path. Beneath him the USS Reagan sailed on, majestically plowing through the sea, her stern kicking up a wake that trailed her for five miles. Galvin climbed to 8000 feet in slow spirals, catching up with his flight of F14s, then falling into formation as the flight leader, taking the jets to the northwest, diving down low as they approached the Japanese coastline. The mission profile called for them to fly in the grass, taking the shortcut over the island itself to get to the Sea of Japan on the other side. Galvin wondered if they would be met by Firestar fighters. The land came closer, the F-14s now at MacH 1.8, the wings swept back, altitude eighty feet, the supersonic jets kicking up a huge rooster tail wake. The Japanese were about to see the US Navy in action, Galvin thought. Soon they were feet-dry over Japanese soil, the ridges and valleys flying at him as they sailed in at treetop level, the occasional rice paddy and collection of houses flashing by, their inhabitants standing outside, children pointing up at them. Now the coastline approached, the west coast of Honshu Island, and again they were feet-wet over the Sea of Japan. Another twenty minutes of flying low over the sea and the ship, the target, was in sight. The supertanker was huge, as long as the Reagan, so full of oil that its waterline was almost all the way up to the gunwales, its bow wave plying back far into the twilight. There was just enough light to make out the name on the bow — the block letters spelling petersburg. For the first time during the mission Galvin broke radio silence and spoke into the microphone, his radio selected to the bridge-to-bridge VHF frequency.

“VLCC Petersburg, this is the flight leader of the US Navy aircraft formation circling your bridge. I say again, this is the flight leader of the US Navy aircraft formation circling your bridge. Do you read me, over?”

SEA OF JAPAN

USS CHEYENNE

Comdr. Gregory Keebes wore a blue poopysuit that was faded and old, the pants legs too high over his black socks and faded canvas loafers. He had a crewcut and sported horn-rimmed black glasses. He stood now leaning on the railing of the periscope stand and replaced the phone in its cradle. The radio chief had just told him the orders that had come in.

“Officer of the Deck,” Keebes called, “man battlestations.”

“Man battlestations, aye, sir.” The O.O.D was Lt.

Frank Becker, former right tackle for Navy’s varsity squad, a hulking youth with a good head, though in Keebes’s opinion something of a whiner. “Chief of the Watch, man battlestations.”

“Man battlestations, aye, sir.” The COW, a young slick-haired, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing youth in a blue poopysuit, reached for a coiled microphone and clicked it on. His voice poured from the circuit-one speakers throughout the ship. “man battlestations.”

He unclicked the mike and partially stood to get to the general alarm, a small lever in a panel in the overhead, found it and rotated it clockwise. The blaring BONG BONG BONG of the alarm rang throughout the ship.

He clicked the circuit-one microphone one more time.

“MAN … BATTLESTATIONS.”

Keebes clicked a stopwatch on his neck and waited for the crowd to arrive in the control room. He leaned over the chart table and saw the flashing dot where they were presently located, the ship channel pulsing in yellow, the position of the target, a VLCC supertanker called the Petersburg, there in the shipping channel some twenty miles to the northwest, approaching the boundary of the exclusion zone, the edge of the Japan Oparea.

“Off’sa’deck, take her deep and flank it at heading three one zero. Once you’re down lay out a course to the target.”

“Aye, sir. Dive,” Becker called to the diving officer! “make your depth five three zero feet. Helm, all ahead standard.”

“Five three zero feet, aye, sir.”