Cradle. Part 2

Nick walked back to the folding chair and the television. He took another drink from his beer and did not turn around to look at Carol and Troy. "All right," he said, somewhat reluctantly. "Get started. But if we're not ready to sail by one o'clock it's no deal." The basketball players swam in front of his eyes. Harvard had tied the game again. But this time he wasn't watching. He was thinking about Carol's outburst. I wonder if she's right. I wonder if I do think that women are inferior. Or worse.

5.

COMMANDER Vernon Winters was trembling when he hung up the phone. He felt as if he had just seen a ghost. He threw his apple core in the wastebasket and reached in his pocket for one of his Pall Malls. Without thinking, he stood up and walked across the room to the large bay window that opened onto the gra.s.sy courtyard of the main administration building. Lunch hour had just finished at the U.S. Naval Air Station. The crowds of young men and women heading either toward or away from the cafeteria had died out. A solitary young ensign was sitting on the gra.s.s reading a book, his back against a large tree.

Commander Winters lit his nonfilter cigarette and inhaled deeply. He expelled the smoke with a rush and quickly took another breath. "Hey, Indiana," the voice had said two minutes before, "this is Randy. Remember me?" As if he could ever forget that nasal baritone. And then, without waiting for an answer, the voice had materialized into an earnest face on the video monitor. Admiral Randolph Hilliard was sitting behind his desk in a large Pentagon office. "Good," he continued, "now we can see each other."

Hilliard had paused for a moment and then leaned forward toward the camera. "I was glad to hear that Duckett put you in charge of this Panther business. It could be nasty. We must find out what happened, quickly and with no publicity. Both the secretary and I are counting on you."

What had he said in response to the admiral? Commander Winters couldn't remember, but he a.s.sumed that it must have been all right. And he did remember the last few words, when Admiral Hilliard had said that he would call back for an update after the meeting on Friday afternoon. Winters had not heard that voice for almost eight years but the recognition was instantaneous. And the memories that flooded forth were just a few milliseconds behind.

The commander took another drag from his cigarette and turned away from the window. He walked slowly across the room. His eyes slid across but did not see the lovely, soft print of the Renoir painting, "Deux Jeunes Filles au Piano," that was the most prominent object on his office wall. It was his favorite painting. His wife and son had given him the special large reproduction for his fortieth birthday; usually several times a week he would stand in front of it and admire the beautiful composition. But two graceful young girls working on their afternoon piano lessons were not the order for the day.

Vernon Winters sat back down at his desk and buried his face in his hands. Here if comes again, he thought, I can't hold it back now, not after seeing Randy and hearing that voice. He looked around and then stubbed out the cigarette in the large ashtray on his desk. For a few moments he played aimlessly with the two small framed photographs on his desk (one was a portrait of a pale twelve-year-old boy together with a plain woman in her early forties; the other was a cast photo from the Key West Players production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, dated March 1993, in which Winters was dressed in a summer business suit). At length the commander put the photographs aside, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and succ.u.mbed to the powerful pull of his memory. A curtain in his mind parted and he was transported to a clear, warm night almost eight years before, in early April of 1986. The first sound that he heard was the excited nasal voice of Lieutenant Randolph Hilliard.

"Psst, Indiana, wake up. How can you be asleep? It's Randy. We've got to talk. I'm so excited I could s.h.i.t." Vernon Winters had only fallen asleep himself about an hour before. He unconsciously looked at his watch. Almost two o'clock. His friend stood next to his bunk, grinning from ear to ear. "Only three more hours and we attack. Finally we're going to blast that A-rab lunatic and terrorist supporter to heaven with Allah. s.h.i.t, big buddy, this is our moment. This is what we worked our whole life for."

Winters shook his head and began to come out of a deep sleep. It took him a moment to remember that he was...o...b..ard the USS Nimitz off the coast of Libya. The first action of his military career was about to occur. "Look, Randy," Winters had said eventually (on that night almost eight years ago) "shouldn't we be sleeping? What if the Libyans attack us tomorrow? We'll have to be alert."

"s.h.i.t no," said his friend and fellow officer, helping him to sit up and handing him a cigarette, "those geeks will never attack someone who can fight. They're terrorists. They only know how to fight unarmed people. The only one of them that has any guts is that Colonel Gaddafi and he's nutty as a fruitcake. After we blow him to kingdom come, the battle will be over. Besides, I have enough adrenaline flowing that I could stay awake for thirty-six hours with no sweat."

Winters felt the nicotine coursing through his body. It reawakened the eager antic.i.p.ation that he had finally conquered when he had fallen asleep an hour earlier. Randy was talking a blue streak. "I can't believe how G.o.dd.a.m.n lucky we are. For six years I have been wondering how an officer can stand out, distinguish himself, you know, in peacetime. Now here we are. Some loonie plants a bomb in a club in Berlin and we just happen to be on duty in the Med. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. s.h.i.t. Think how many other midshipmen from our cla.s.s would give their right nut to be here instead of us. Tomorrow we kill that crazy man and we're on our way to captain, maybe even admiral, in five to eight years."

Winters reacted negatively to his friend's suggestion that one of the benefits of the strike against Gaddafi would be an acceleration in their personal advancement. But he said nothing. He was already deep in his own private thoughts. He too was excited and he didn't fully understand why. The excitement was similar to the way he had felt before the state quarterfinals in basketball in high school. But Lieutenant Winters couldn't help wondering how much the excitement would be leavened by fear if they were preparing to engage in a real battle.

For almost a week they had been getting ready for the strike. It was normal Navy business to go through the preparations for combat and then have them called off, usually about a day ahead of the planned encounter. But this time it had been different from the beginning. Hilliard and Winters had quickly recognized that there was a seriousness in the senior officers that had never been there before. None of the usual horsing around and nonsense had been tolerated in the tedious and boring checks of the planes, the missiles, and the guns. The Nimitz was preparing for war. And then yesterday, the normal time for such a drill to be called off, the captain had gathered all the officers together and told them that he had received the order to attack at dawn. Winters' heart had skipped a beat as the commanding officer had briefed them on the full scope of the American action against Libya Winters' last a.s.signment, just after evening mess, had been to go over the bombing targets with the pilots one more time. Two separate planes were being sent to bomb the residence where Gaddafi was supposedly sleeping. One of the two chosen pilots was outwardly ecstatic; he realized that he had been given the prime target of the raid. The other pilot, Lieutenant Gibson from Oregon, was quiet but thorough in his preparations. He kept looking at the map with Winters and going over the Libyan gun emplacements. Gibson also complained that his mouth was dry and drank several gla.s.ses of water.

"s.h.i.t, Indiana, you know what's bothering me? Those flyboys will be in the battle and we'll be stuck here with no role unless the crazy A-rabs decide to attack. How can we get into the fight? Wait. I just had a thought." Lieutenant Hilliard was still talking nonstop. It was after three o'clock and they had already gone over everything a.s.sociated with the attack at least twice. Winters was feeling lifeless and enervated from lack of sleep but the astonishing Hilliard continued to exude exuberance.

"What a great idea," Randy continued. talking to himself. "But we can do it. You briefed the pilots tonight, didn't you, so you know who's going after what targets?" Vernon nodded his head. "Then that's it. We'll tape a personal 'screw you' to the side of the missile that's going to get Gaddafi. That way part of us will go into battle."

Vernon did not have the energy to dissuade Randy from his crazy plan. As the time for the attack drew closer, Lieutenants Winters and Hilliard went into the hangar on the Nimitz and found the airplane a.s.signed to Lieutenant Gibson (Winters never knew why, but he immediately a.s.sumed it would be Gibson who would score a missile on the Gaddafi enclave). Laughingly, Randy explained to the fresh ensign on watch what he and Vernon were going to try to do. It took them almost half an hour to locate the right plane and then identify the missile that would be the first to be launched against the Gaddafi household.

The two lieutenants argued for almost ten minutes about the message they were going to write on the paper that would be taped on the missile. Winters wanted something deep, almost philosophical, like "Such is the just end to the tyranny of terrorism. "Hilliard argued persuasively that Winters' concept was too obscure. At length a tired Lieutenant Winters a.s.sented to the visceral communication written by his friend. "DIE, MOTHERf.u.c.kER," was the message the two lieutenants inscribed on the side of the missile.

Winters returned to his bunk exhausted. Tired and still a little unsettled by the magnitude of the coming day's events, he pulled out his personal Bible to read a few verses. There was no comfort in the good book for the Presbyterian from Indiana. He tried praying, generic prayers at first and then more specific, as had been his custom during critical moments in his life. He asked for the Lord to guard his wife and son and to be with him in this moment of travail. And then, quickly and without thinking, Lieutenant Vernon Winters asked G.o.d to rain down terror in the form of the missile with the taped message on Colonel Gaddafi and all his family.

Eight years later, sitting in his office at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Key West, Commander Winters would remember that prayer and cringe inside. Even then, in 1986, just after he finished the prayer, he had felt weird and disoriented, almost as if he had somehow committed a blasphemy and displeased the Lord. A brief hour of sleep that followed was torturous, full of dreams of hideous gargoyles and vampires. He watched the planes leave the carrier the next morning at dawn in a dreamlike trance. His mouth had a bitter metal taste when he mechanically shook Gibson's hand and wished him luck.

For all those years Winters had wished that he could have rescinded that prayer. He was convinced that G.o.d had permitted that particular missile carried by Gibson to take the life of Gaddafi's infant daughter just to teach Winters a personal lesson. On that day, he thought as he sat in his office on a Thursday in March 1994, I committed sacrilege and violated Your trust. I overstepped my bound and lost my privileged position in Your sanctuary. I have asked for forgiveness many times since then but it has not been forthcoming. How much longer must I wait?

6.

VERNON Allen Winters was born on June 25, 1950, the day that the North Koreans invaded South Korea. He was reminded of the significance of his birthdate throughout his life by his father, Martin Winters, a man who was a hardworking, deeply religious corn farmer in Indiana at the time Vernon was born. When Vernon was three years old and his sister Linda was six, the family moved off the farm and into the town of Columbus, a white, middle-cla.s.s town of thirty thousand or so in south central Indiana. Vernon's mother had felt isolated out on the farm. particularly during the winter, and wanted more company. The Winters' farm provided a nice cash profit. Mr. Winters, by now almost forty, put most of the nest egg aside as security for a rainy day and became a banker.

Martin Winters was proud to be an American. Whenever Mr. Winters would tell Vernon about the day of his birth, the story would inevitably center around the news of the start of the Korean War and how it was explained to the nation by President Harry Truman. "I thought that day," Mr. Winters would say, "that it was surely no coincidence. The good Lord brought you to us that special day because of his purpose for you. And I bet he meant for you to be a protector of this wonderful country we have created . . ." Later banker Winters would always see to it that the Army-Navy football game was one of the key events of the year and he would tell his friends, particularly when it became obvious that young Vernon was a good student, that "the boy is still trying to choose which of the academies to attend." Vernon was never asked.

The Winters family lived a simple Midwestern life. Mr. Winters was moderately successful, eventually becoming the senior vice-president of the largest bank in Columbus. The family's chief social activity was church. They were Presbyterians and spent almost all day Sunday at the church. Mrs. Winters ran the Sunday school. Mr. Winters was a deacon and voluntarily managed the church finances. Vernon and Linda helped supervise the smaller children at Sunday school and were responsible for the special Bible displays on the bulletin boards in the kindergarten and primary school rooms.

During the week Mrs. Winters sewed and watched soap operas and sometimes played bridge with friends. She never worked outside the home. Her husband and her children were her job. She was an attentive, patient parent who deeply cared for her children and tirelessly chauffeured them to their many activities throughout their years of adolescence.

Vernon played all sports in high school, football and basketball because it was expected of him, baseball because he loved it. He was above average at all sports, not outstanding at anything. "Activities are important, particularly sports," banker Winters often told him approvingly. "The academies look at much more than your grades " The only significant decision that Vernon had to make in the first eighteen years of his life was which of the service academies he preferred. (Mr. Winters, being cautious, was prepared politically to secure a nomination for Vernon to any of the academies. He strongly urged Vernon to think about applying to all three just in case.) In his junior year at Columbus High School, Vernon took the Scholastic Apt.i.tude Test (SAT) and made such a high score that it was obvious he would be able to pick his own favorite. He chose Annapolis and was not questioned about the reasons. If he had been, he would have answered that he just liked the idea of himself in a Navy uniform.

Vernon's teenage years were remarkably linear, particularly considering that they occurred at a time of great social turmoil in the United States. The Winters family prayed together for hours after the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, worried about local boys in the Vietnam War, remarked with concern when three prominent high school seniors refused to cut their hair and were expelled from school, and attended a couple of church-sponsored meetings on the evils of marijuana. But all these anxieties were outside the daily harmony of the Winters family. Music by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did penetrate the controlled Winters culture, of course, and even some of the protest songs sung by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were played on Vernon's stereo. But neither Vernon nor his sister Linda paid much serious attention to the lyrics.

It was an easy existence. Vernon's closest friends were all from families like his. Mothers did not work, fathers were bankers or lawyers or businessmen, almost all were Republicans (but a patriotic Democrat was accepted) and believed fervently in G.o.d, country, and the entire litany that ends in apple pie. Vernon was a "good kid," even an "exceptional kid," who first drew attention to himself by his performances in the annual church pageants at Christmas and Easter. The pastor of their church was a great believer that reenactment of the birth and crucifixion of Christ, performed by the children of the town, was a powerful way to reconfirm the faith of the local citizenry. And Reverend Pendleton was correct. The Columbus Presbyterian Church pageants were one of the highlights of the local year. When the church congregation and their friends saw their own children acting in the roles of Joseph, Mary, and even Christ, they became involved in the depicted events at an emotional level that was virtually impossible to achieve in any other way.

Reverend Pendleton had two casts for each pageant, so that more children could partic.i.p.ate, but Vernon was always the star. When he was eleven years old Vernon first portrayed Christ in the Easter pageant and it was mentioned in the religious column of the Columbus newspaper that his tortured dragging of the cross had "captured all of man's suffering." He was Joseph at Christmas and Jesus at Easter for four years running, before he became too old and therefore no longer eligible for the pageants. The last two years, when Vernon was thirteen and fourteen, the role of the Virgin Mary in the "A" cast was played by the pastor's daughter, Betty Vernon and Betty were together quite often while rehearsing and both families were delighted. All four parents made no secret of the fact that they would generously approve if, "a.s.suming G.o.d wills it," the Vernon-Betty friendship would eventually mature into something more permanent.

Vernon loved the attention he received from the pageants. Although Betty was touched deeply by the religious aspects of their performances (she remained truly devoted to G.o.d, without wavering, through everything in her life), Vernon's joy was standing by his proud parents after each performance and soaking up the praise. In high school he gravitated naturally toward the small drama activity and was the lead in the school play every year. His mother supported this over his father's mild objections ("After all, dear," she would say, "I don't think anyone is really going to think Vernon's a sissy when he's playing three sports.") and because she also vicariously enjoyed the applause.

During the summer of 1968, just before he entered Annapolis, Vernon worked in his uncle's cornfields. Only a little more than a hundred miles away there were riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, but in Columbus Vernon spent his summer evenings with Betty, talking with chums and drinking root beer at the A & W Drive-in. Mr. and Mrs. Winters played miniature golf or canasta with Vernon and Betty from time to time. They were delighted and proud to have "good clean kids" who were not hippies or drug victims. All in all, Vernon's last summer in Indiana was ordered, constrained, and very pleasant.

As expected, he was a model student at Annapolis. He studied hard, obeyed all the rules, learned what his professors taught him, and dreamed of being the commander of an aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine. He was not outgoing for the big-city boys seemed way too sophisticated for him and he did not always feel comfortable when they talked about s.e.x so casually. He was a virgin and he was not ashamed of it. He just didn't feel the need to broadcast it around the U.S. Naval Academy. He had a couple of dates a month, nothing special, just when the occasion called for it. After a blind date early his junior year with Joanna Carr, a cheerleader at the University of Maryland, he took her out several more times. She was vivacious, lovely, fun, and modem. She drew out the best in Vernon, made him laugh and even relax. She was his date for the weekend of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

(During his entire time at the Academy, Vernon went home every summer and every Christmas to Indiana. He always saw Betty Pendleton when he was home. Betty graduated from high school and entered a nearby state college to study education. Once or twice a year, on special occasions such as the anniversary of their first kiss or New Year's Eve, Betty and he would celebrate, in a sense, by doing a little something intimate. Like controlled petting [outside only] or kissing lying down. Neither of them ever suggested any variation in this well-established routine.) Vernon and Joanna were joined for the weekend by another midshipman, the closest acquaintance that Vernon had at Navy who was still not quite what one would call a friend, Duane Eller, and his date from Columbia, an extremely loud and pushy girl named Edith. Vernon had never spent much time around a New York City girl and he found Edith absolutely obnoxious. Edith was violently anti-Nixon and anti-Vietnam and seemed, despite the fact that her date for the weekend was going to be a military officer, anti-military as well. The original plan for the weekend had been decidedly proper, even backward given that it was 1970 and casual intercourse was not unusual on college campuses. Vernon and Duane were to share one motel room and the two girls were to share another. Over a pizza dinner the night before the game, Edith frequently insulted Joanna and Vernon both ("Miss Betty Crocker-Go-Team-Go" and "Onward Christian Soldiers, G.o.d's on Our Side") and Duane did nothing to intercede. Seeing that Edith was annoying Joanna, Vernon suggested to Joanna that it might be easier if the two of them shared a room instead of following the original game plan. She readily agreed.

Vernon had made no s.e.xual moves on Joanna on the four or five dates that they had had together. He had been attentive, had kissed her good night a couple of times, and had held her hand most of the evening on their last date. Everything had always been extremely proper, but there had never actually been any opportunity for intimacy. So Joanna really didn't know what to expect. She liked this handsome Hoosier midshipman and had thought, a couple of times, about the possibility of the involvement developing into something serious. But Vernon was not yet anyone "super special" for her.

Just after they made the room change (which a drunken Edith made more difficult by embarra.s.sing them and herself with lewd comments), Vernon very carefully apologized to Joanna and told her that he would sleep in the car if she were offended. The room was a typical Holiday Inn room with two double beds. Joanna laughed. "I know you didn't plan this," she said. "If I need protection, I can order you to your bed." The first night they enjoyed watching television and drinking more beer in the room. They both felt a little awkward. At bedtime they shared a couple of almost pa.s.sionate kisses, laughed together, and then went to separate beds.

The next evening, after the postgame dance sponsored by the Naval Academy at a downtown Philadelphia hotel, Joanna and Vernon returned to their room at the Holiday Inn just before midnight. They had already changed into their jeans and Vernon was brushing his teeth when there was a knock on their door. Joanna opened the door and Duane Eller was standing there, a gigantic s.h.i.t-eating grin on his face and his hand clenched around some small object. "This stuff is f.u.c.kin' fantastic," he said, thrusting a joint into Joanna's hand. "You've just got to try it." Duane withdrew quickly with a wild smile.

Joanna was a bright young woman. But it did not occur to her that her date had never even seen a joint, much less smoked one. She herself had smoked marijuana maybe a dozen times over a four-year period, beginning in her junior year in high school. She liked it, if the situation and the company were right; she avoided it when she couldn't have control of her environment. But she had enjoyed the weekend with Vernon and she thought this might be a perfect way to loosen him up a little.

Under almost any circ.u.mstances Vernon would have said no to any offer of marijuana, not just because he was against all drugs, but also because he would have been terrified that somehow he would be discovered and eventually thrown out of Annapolis. But here was his lovely date, a mainstream American cheerleader from Maryland, and she had just lit a joint and offered it to him. Joanna quickly saw that he was a gra.s.s neophyte. She showed him how to inhale and hold in the smoke, how not to bogart the joint, and eventually how to use a roach clip (one of her hairpins) to finish it off. Vernon had expected to feel as if he were drunk. He was astonished to find that he felt more alert. Much to his own surprise, he began reciting e.e. c.u.mmings poems he had been studying in Lit. And then he and Joanna began to laugh. They laughed at everything. At Edith, football, the Naval Academy, their parents, even Vietnam. They laughed until they were almost crying.

An overpowering hunger attacked Vernon and Joanna. They put on their jackets and walked out into the cold December air to find something to eat. Arm in arm they paraded down the suburban parkway, finding a convenience store that was still open about a half mile from their motel. They bought c.o.kes and potato chips and Fritos and, much to Vernon's astonishment, a package of Ding Dongs. Joanna opened the potato chips while they were still in the store. She put one in Vernon's mouth and they "Mmmed" while the checkout clerk laughed with them.

Vernon could not believe the taste of the chips. He ate the entire bag while they were walking back to their room. When he was finished, Vernon burst spontaneously into song, singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" by the Beatles. Joanna joined in vigorously on the "Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon his head . . ." She reached up with the side of her fist and playfully banged on the top of his head. Vernon felt jaunty, liberated, as if he had known Joanna forever. He put his arm around her and kissed her ostentatiously as they turned into the driveway leading to their motel.

They sat on the floor with all their munchies spread out in front of them. Vernon turned on the radio. It was tuned to a cla.s.sical station in the middle of a symphony. Vernon was mesmerized by the sound. For the first time in his life, Vernon could actually hear the individual instruments of the orchestra in his head. He visualized a stage and saw the musicians pulling their bows across the violins. He was fascinated and excited. Vernon told Joanna that all his senses were alive.

To Joanna Carr, it seemed that Vernon was finally opening up. When he leaned over to kiss her, she was more than willing. They kissed sweetly but deeply several times while the symphony was playing. During a momentary break for some more munchies, Joanna tuned the radio to a rock and roll station. The music changed the pace in their necking. Driving, jangling sounds increased the tempo and their kisses became more pa.s.sionate. In his ardor Vernon pushed Joanna down on the floor and they kissed over and over again as they lay side by side, still fully clothed. They became enthralled by the strength of their arousal.

The radio now started playing "Light My Fire" by the Doors. And Vernon Allen Winters of Columbus, Indiana, third-year midshipman at the U S. Naval Academy, was no longer a virgin by the time the long song was over. "The time to hesitate is through, no time to wallow in the mire, try now you can only lose, and our love become a funeral pyre . . . Come on baby, light my fire . . . Come on baby, light my fire." Vernon had never lost control of himself before in his entire life. But when Joanna stroked the outline of his swollen p.e.n.i.s underneath his jeans, it was as if a giant wall of steel and concrete suddenly gave way. Years later, Vernon would still marvel at the raw pa.s.sion he showed for two, maybe three minutes. The combination of Joanna's insistent kisses, the gra.s.s, and the driving rhythms of the music pushed him over the edge. He was an animal. Still on the floor of the motel room, he pulled vigorously on Joanna's slacks several times, nearly tearing them as he managed to free them from her hips. Her underpants half followed the slacks. Vernon grabbed them roughly and pulled them down the rest of the way while he was squirming out of his own jeans.

Joanna tried in a quiet voice to slow Vernon down, to suggest that maybe the bed would be better. Or at least it would be more pleasant if they actually took off their shoes and socks and didn't make love with their pants around their ankles restricting their movement. But Vernon was gone. Years of restraint left him no ability to deal with his own surging desire. He was possessed. He crawled on top of Joanna, a look of frightening seriousness on his face. For the first time she was scared and her sudden fear heightened her s.e.xual excitement. Vernon struggled for a few seconds (the music was now in the frenzied instrumental part of "Light My Fire") to find the right spot and then entered her abruptly and forcefully. Joanna felt him drive once, twice, and then shudder all over. He was done in maybe ten seconds. She intuitively knew that it had been his first time and the pleasure of that knowledge outweighed her bruised feelings about his lack of finesse and gentleness.

Vernon said nothing and quickly fell asleep on the floor next to Joanna. She gamely went to the bed, pulled the bed-spread off, cuddled into Vernon's arms on the floor, and wrapped the spread around them. She smiled to herself and drifted off to sleep, still a little puzzled by this Hoosier lying next to her. But she knew that they were now special to each other.

How special Joanna would never really know. When Vernon woke up in the middle of the night, he felt an over-powering sense of guilt. He could not believe that he had smoked dope and then virtually raped a girl he hardly knew. He had lost control. He had been unable to stop what he was doing and had clearly crossed the bounds of propriety. He winced when he thought about what his parents (or worse, Betty and Reverend Pendleton) would think about him if they could have seen what he had done. Then the guilt gave way to fear. Vernon imagined that Joanna was pregnant, that he had to leave Annapolis and marry her (What would he do? What kind of job would he have if he were not a naval officer?), that he had to explain all this to his parents and to the Pendletons. Worse still, he next imagined that at any minute the motel would be raided and the police would find the b.u.t.t of the joint in the roach clip. He would first be kicked out of the Academy for drug abuse, then find out that he had made a girl pregnant.

Vernon Winters was now really scared. Lying on the floor of a motel room on the outskirts of Philadelphia at three o'clock on a Sunday morning, he began to pray in earnest. "Dear G.o.d," Vernon Winters prayed, asking for something specific for himself for the first time since he asked G.o.d to help him on the day that he took the SATs, "let me get out of this without harm and I will become the most perfectly disciplined naval officer that You have ever seen. I will dedicate my life to defending this country that honors You. Just please help me."

Eventually Vernon managed to fall asleep again. But his sleep was fitful and disturbed by vivid dreams. In one dream Vernon was dressed in his midshipman's uniform but was on stage back at the Columbus Presbyterian Church. It was the Easter pageant and he was again Christ, dragging the cross to Calvary. The sharp edge of the cross on his shoulder was cutting through his uniform shirt and Vernon was aware of anxiety that he might not pa.s.s inspection. He stumbled and fell, the cross cut deeper through the uniform as he had feared and he could see some blood running down his arm. "Crucify him," Vernon heard someone shout in the dream. "Crucify him," a group of people in the audience shouted together as Vernon tried vainly to see through the klieg lights. He woke up sweating. For a couple of moments he was disoriented. Then again his emotions went the cycle from disgust to depression to fear as he played through the events of the night before.

Joanna was tender and affectionate after she woke up but Vernon was very distant. He explained his att.i.tude by saying he was worried about his coming exams. A couple of times Joanna started to talk about what had happened the night before, but each time he rapidly changed the subject. Vernon suffered through brunch and the drive back to College Park to Joanna's sorority house. Joanna tried to kiss him meaningfully when they parted but Vernon did not reciprocate. He was in a hurry to forget the entire weekend. Back in the privacy of his own room in Annapolis, he contritely bargained again with G.o.d to let him escape unscathed.

Midshipman Vernon Winters was true to his word. He not only never talked to Joanna Carr again (she called and failed to reach him a couple of times, sent two letters that were unanswered, and then gave up), he also gave up dating altogether during his final eighteen months at Annapolis. He worked very hard on his studies and attended chapel, as he had promised G.o.d, twice each week.

He graduated with honors and did his initial tour of duty on a large aircraft carrier. Two years later, in June of 1974, after Betty Pendleton had completed college and obtained her teacher's certificate, Vernon married her in the Columbus Presbyterian Church where they had played Joseph and Mary a dozen years earlier. They moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and Vernon believed that the pattern of his life was set. His life would be going out to sea for long stretches and then coming home for short stays with Betty and any children they might have.

Vernon regularly thanked G.o.d for keeping up His part of the bargain and he dedicated himself to being the finest officer in the U.S. Navy. All of his fitness reports praised his dependability and thoroughness. His commanding officers openly told him that he was admiral material. Until Libya. Or more specifically, until he returned home after the Libyan action. For the entire world changed for Vernon Allen Winters during the few weeks after the American attack against Gaddafi.

7.

CAROL and Troy were sitting in deck chairs at the front of the Florida Queen. They were facing forward in the boat, toward the ocean and the warm afternoon sun. Carol had removed her purple blouse to reveal the top of a one-piece blue bathing suit, but she was still wearing her white cotton slacks. Troy was shirtless in a white surfing outfit that came quite a way down his beautiful black legs. His body was lean and sinewy, clearly fit but not overly muscled. They were talking casually and animatedly, laughing often in an easy way. Behind them underneath the canopy, Nick Williams was reading A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley. Every now and then he would look up at the other two for a few moments and then return to his book.

"So why didn't you ever go to college?" Carol was asking Troy. "You clearly had the ability. You would have made a fantastic engineer."

Troy stood up, took off his sungla.s.ses, and walked to the railing. "My brother, Jamie, said the same thing," he said slowly, staring out at the quiet ocean. "But I was just too wild. When I finally did graduate from high school, I was hungry to know what the world was like. So I took off. I wandered all over the U.S. and Canada for a couple of years."

"Was that when you learned about electronics?" Carol asked. She checked her watch to see what time it was.

"That was later, much later," said Troy, remembering. "Those two years of wandering I didn't learn anything except how to survive on my wits. Plus what it was like to be a black boy in a white man's world." He looked at Carol. There was no noticeable reaction.

"I must have had a hundred different jobs," he continued, looking back at the ocean, "I was a cook, a copyboy, a bartender, a construction worker. I even taught swimming lessons in a private club. I was a bellman in a resort hotel, a greenskeeper for a country club . . ." Troy laughed and turned again to see if Carol was paying attention. "But I guess you're not interested in all this . . ."

"Sure I am," Carol said, "it's fascinating to me. I'm trying to imagine what you looked like in a hotel uniform. And if Chief Nick is right, we still have another ten minutes to pa.s.s until we reach where we're going." She dropped her voice. "At least you talk. The professor is not exactly social."

"Being a black bellhop at a southern Mississippi resort hotel was an amazing learning experience," Troy began, a smile spreading across his face. Troy loved to tell stories about his life. It always placed him center stage. "Imagine, angel, I'm eighteen years old and I luck into a job at the grand old Gulfport Inn, right on the beach. Room and board plus tips. I'm on top of the world. At least until the chief bellman, an impossible little man named Fish, takes me out to the barracks where all the bellhops and kitchen staff live and introduces me to everybody as the 'new n.i.g.g.e.r bellhop.' From bits of discussion I can tell that the hotel is in some kind of trouble because of possible racial discrimination and hiring me is part of their response.

"My room in the barracks was right behind the twelfth green on the golf course. A small bunk bed, a dresser built into the wall, a desk or table with a portable lamp, a sink to brush my teeth and wash my face - that's where I lived for six weeks. Down at the other end of the building was the great community bathroom that everyone left whenever I showed up.

"In my high school in Miami virtually the entire student body was Cuban or black or both. So I knew almost nothing about white people. From books and television I had this fantasy image of whites as handsome, competent, educated, and rich. Ha. My fantasy quickly vanished. You would not have believed the crew that worked in that hotel. The head bellman Fish smoked dope every night with his sixteen-year-old son Danny and dreamed of the day he would find a million dollars left in somebody's room. His only other goal in life was to continue s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the chef's wife, Marie, in the supply closet every morning until he died.

"One of the other bellmen was a poor, lonely soul whose real name was Saint John because his brilliant parents thought that 'Saint' was a given name. He had only six teeth, wore thick gla.s.ses, and had a giant tumor underneath his left eye. Saint John knew that he was ugly and he worried all the time about losing his job because of his personal appearance. So Fish exploited him unmercifully by giving him all the s.h.i.ttiest a.s.signments and forcing him to pay kickbacks with a portion of his tips. The other bellmen also ridiculed Saint John at every opportunity and made him the b.u.t.t of their practical jokes.

"One night I was sitting quietly in my room reading a book when there was a soft knock on the door. When I answered it, Saint John was standing there. He looked confused and distracted. He was holding a small game box in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. I waited a few moments and then asked him what he wanted. He looked nervously in both directions and then asked me if I knew how to play chess. When I told him yes and added that I would enjoy a game, Saint John grinned from ear to ear and mumbled something about being glad that he had taken a chance. I invited him in and we played and talked and drank beer for almost two hours. He was one of nine children from a poor, rural Mississippi family. While we were playing, Saint John casually let slip that he had been a little reluctant to ask me to play because Fish and Miller had told him that n.i.g.g.e.rs were too dumb to play chess.

Saint John and I became friends, at least sort of, for the few more weeks that I stayed there. We were united by the deepest of bonds, we were both outsiders in that strange social structure created by the employees of the Gulfport Inn. It was from Saint John that I learned about the many misconceptions that Southern whites have about blacks." Troy laughed. "You know, one night Saint John actually followed me to the bath-room to verify with his own eyes that I was not significantly larger than he was."

Troy returned to his deck chair and looked at Carol. She was smiling. It was hard not to enjoy Troy's stories. He told them with such enthusiasm and self-involved charm. Under the canopy Nick also had put his book aside and was listening to the conversation.

"Then there was this giant Farrell, early twenties, who looked like Elvis Presley. He supplied liquor to the guests at cut rates, operated an escort service on call, and took excess hotel goods to sell at his sister's market. He rented part of my room to store some of the liquor. What a character. After big convention breakfasts Farrell would pour the leftover orange juice in the pitchers into bottles and keep it for resale. One morning the hotel manager found a case of the juice temporarily sitting in a room off the lobby and demanded to know what was going on. Farrell grabbed me and took me out front. He told me that he wanted to make a deal. If I would acknowledge that I had taken the juice, Farrell would pay me twenty dollars. He explained that if I confessed, nothing would happen to me, because n.i.g.g.e.rs were expected to steal. But if he Farrell were caught, he would lose his job . . ."

Nick came out from under the canopy. "I hate to break this up," he said, a little sarcastic edge in his voice, "but according to our computer navigator, we are now at the south edge of the region on the map." He handed the map back to Carol.

"Thanks, Professor," Troy laughed, "I believe you saved Carol from being talked to death." He walked over to where all the monitoring equipment had been set up on the footlocker next to the canopy. He turned on the power supply. "Hey, angel, you want to tell me now how this all works?"

Dale Michaels' ocean telescope was programmed to take three virtually simultaneous pictures at each fixed setting. The first of the pictures was a normal visible image, the second was the same field of view photographed at infrared wavelengths, and the third was a composite sonar image of the same frame. The sonar subsystem did not produce crisp pictures, only outlines of objects. However, it probed to greater depths than either the visible or infrared elements of the telescope and could be used even when the water underneath the boat was murky.

Affixed to the bottom of almost any boat, the compact telescope could be driven thirty degrees back and forth about the vertical by a small internal motor. The observation schedule for the telescope was usually defined by a preprogrammed protocol. The details of this sequence as well as the critical optical parameters for the telescope were all stored in the system microprocessor; however, everything in the software could be changed in realtime by manual input if the operator desired.

Data from the telescope was carried to the rest of the electronic equipment on the boat by means of very thin fiber optics. These cables were bracketed along the edge of the boat. About ten percent of the pictures reconstructed from this data were then displayed (after some very crude enhancements) on the boat's monitor in realtime. But all the data taken by the telescope was automatically recorded in the one hundred gigabit memory unit that adjoined the monitor. Another set of fiber optics connected the same memory unit with the boat's central navigation system and the servomotor actuators controlling the telescopes. These circuits were pulsed every ten milliseconds so that the orientation of the telescope and the boat's location at the time of each telescope image could be stored together in the permanent file.

Next to the monitor on top of the footlocker, but on the other side from the memory unit, was the system control panel. Dr. Dale Michaels and MOI were famous throughout the world for the cleverness of their inventions; however, these ingenious creations were not so easy to operate. Dale had tried to give Carol a crash course on the workings of the system the night before she had driven down to Key West from Miami. It had been almost useless. Eventually frustrated, Dale had simply programmed into the microprocessor an easy sequence that mosaicked the area under the boat in regular patterns. He then set the optical gains at normal default values, and instructed Carol not to change anything. "All you have to do," Dr. Michaels had said as he had carefully loaded the system control panel into the station wagon, "is push this GO b.u.t.ton. Then cover the panel to make certain that n.o.body inadvertently hits the wrong command."

So Carol certainly could not explain to Troy how anything worked. She walked over beside him on the boat, put her arm on his shoulder, and grinned sheepishly. "I hate to disappoint you, my inquisitive friend, but I don't know any more about how this thing works than I told you when we were setting up all the equipment. To operate it, all we have to do is turn on the power supply, which you have already done, and then push this b.u.t.ton." She pushed the GO b.u.t.ton on the panel. A picture of the clear ocean about fifty feet underneath the boat appeared immediately on the color monitor. The picture was amazingly sharp. The threesome watched in wonder as a hammerhead shark swam through a school of small gray fish, swallowing hundreds of them in his awesome rush.

"As I understand it," Carol continued as both men stayed glued in fascination to the monitor, "the telescope system then does the rest, following a planned set of observations stored in its software. Obviously we see what it sees here on this monitor. At least we see the visual image. The simultaneous infrared and sonar pictures are stored on the recorder. My friend at MOI (she didn't want to alert them even more by using Dale's name) tried to explain how I could change between the visual and infrared and sonar images, but it wasn't simple. You'd think it would be as easy as pushing an "I" for infrared or an "S" for sonar. Nope. You have to input as many as a dozen commands just to change which output signal is fed into the monitor."

Troy was impressed. Not just by the ocean telescope system, but also by the way Carol, a woman admittedly not educated in engineering or electronics, had clearly grasped the essentials of it. "The infrared part of the telescope must measure thermal radiation," he said slowly, "if I remember my high school physics correctly. But how would underwater thermal variations tell you anything about whales?"

At this point Nick Williams shook his head and turned away from the screen. He recognized that he was hopelessly out of his intellectual element with all these engineering terms and he was more than a little embarra.s.sed to admit his total ignorance in front of Carol and Troy. Nick also didn't believe for an instant that Carol had brought all this electronic wizardry on board to find whales that had strayed from their migration route. He walked over to the small refrigerator and pulled out another beer. "And what we're going to do for the next two hours, if I understand it correctly, is ride around in the boat while you look for whales on that screen?"

Nick's derisive comment carried with it an unmistakable challenge. It intruded upon the warm and friendly rapport that had been created between Carol and Troy. She allowed herself to become irritated again by Nick's att.i.tude and fired back her own verbal fusillade. "That was the plan, Mister Williams, as I told you when we left Key West. But Troy tells me that you're something of a treasure hunter. Or at least were some years ago. And since you seem to have convinced yourself that treasure is really what I'm after, perhaps you'd like to sit here next to me and look at the same pictures to make sure I don't miss any whales. Or treasure, as the case may be."

Nick and Carol glared at each other for a few moments. Then Troy stepped between them. "Look, Professor . . . and you too, angel . . . I don't pretend to understand why you two insist on p.i.s.sing each other off. But it's a pain in the a.s.s for me. Can't you just cool it for a while? After all," Troy added, looking first at Nick and then at Carol, "if you two go for a dive, you're partners. Your lives may depend on one another. So knock it off."

Carol shrugged her shoulders and nodded. "Okay by me," she said. But seeing no immediate response from Nick, she couldn't resist another shot. "Provided that Mr. Williams recognizes his responsibility as a PADI member and stays sober enough to dive."

Nick's eyes flashed angrily. Then he walked over to the deck railing and dramatically poured his new beer into the ocean. "Don't worry about me, sweetheart," he said, forcing a smile, "I can take care of myself. You just worry about what you do."

The ocean telescope microprocessor contained a special alarm subroutine that sounded a noise like a telephone ring whenever the programmed alarm conditions were triggered. At Carol's request, Dale Michaels had personally adapted the normal alarming algorithm just before she left for Key West so that it would react to either a large creature moving across the field of view or a stationary "unknown" object of significant size. After he had finished the logic design for the small change and sent it to his software department for top priority coding and testing, Dale had smiled to himself. He was amused by his complicity with Carol. This piece of technological subterfuge would certainly convince Carol's companions, whoever they might be, that she was earnest in her search for whales. At the same time, the alarm would also sound if what Carol was really seeking, supposedly an errant (and secret) Navy missile currently under development, appeared on the ocean floor underneath the boat.

The basic structure for both alarm algorithms was easy to understand. To identify a moving animal, it was sufficient to overlay two or three images taken less than a second apart (at any wavelength, although there was greater accuracy in the process with the sharper visual images), and then compare the data using the knowledge that most of the scene should be unchanged. Significant miscompares (connected areas in the overlay that differed from image to image) would suggest the presence of a large moving creature.

To identify foreign objects in the field of view, the alarm algorithm took advantage of the tremendous storage capacity of the memory unit in the telescope data processing system. The near simultaneous infrared and visual images were fed into the memory unit and then crudely a.n.a.lyzed against a data set that contained chains of pattern recognition parameters over both wavelength regions. These pattern parameters had been developed through years of careful research and had been recently expanded by MOI to include virtually everything normal (plants, animals, reef structures, etc.) that might be seen on the ocean floor around the Florida Keys. Any large object that didn't correlate in realtime with this existing data base would be flagged and the alarm would sound.

The alarms made it unnecessary to sit patiently in front of the screen and study the thousands of frames of data as they were received on the boat. Even Troy, a confessed "knowledge junkie" whose interest in everything was almost insatiable, grew tired of staring at the monitor after about ten minutes, particularly when the boat entered into deeper water and very little could be seen in the visual images.

A couple of solitary sharks triggered alarms and created momentary excitement about twenty minutes after the telescope was activated, but a long period void of any discoveries followed. As the afternoon waned Nick became more and more impatient. "I don't know why I allowed myself to be talked into this wild goose chase," he grumbled to n.o.body in particular. "We could have been preparing the boat for the weekend charter."

Carol ignored Nick's comment and studied the map one more time. They had traversed from south to north the region she and Dale had defined and were now moving slowly east along the northern periphery. Dale had constructed the search area based upon his own inferences from the questions asked him by the Navy. He probably could have pinned down the area of interest with greater certainty with a few more questions of his own, but he hadn't wanted to arouse any suspicions.

Carol knew that the search was a little like finding a needle in a haystack, but she had thought it would he worthwhile because of the potential payoff. If she could somehow find and photograph a secret Navy missile that had crashed near a populated area . . . What a scoop that would be! But now she too was growing a little impatient and it was hard for her to revive her earlier excitement after the long afternoon in the sun. They would have to head back to Key West soon to ensure arrival by nightfall. Oh well, she thought to herself with resignation, at least I gave it a shot. And as my father used to say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She was standing all the way at the prow of the boat when suddenly alarms started coming from the memory unit next to the monitor. One ring, then two, followed by a brief silence. A third ring then sounded and was rapidly joined by a fourth. Carol rushed excitedly toward the monitor. "Stop the boat," she shouted imperiously at Nick. But she was too late. By the time she reached the monitor, the alarms had stopped and she could not see anything on the screen "Turn around, turn around," a frustrated Carol hollered immediately, not noticing that Nick was again glaring at her.

"Aye, aye, Cap-i-tan," Nick said, jerking on the wheel with such force that Carol lost her balance. The monitor and other electronic equipment started to slide off their flimsy mountings on the top of the footlocker; they were rescued at the last minute by Troy. The Florida Queen veered sharply in the water. Despite the quietness of the ocean, a small wave came over the railing on the low side of the deck, catching Carol from the knees down. The bottom of her cotton slacks were left clinging to her calves. Her white tennis shoes and socks were drenched. Nick made no effort to hide his amus.e.m.e.nt.

Carol was about to joust with him again when the renewed ringing of the alarms diverted her attention. Regaining her squishy footing as the boat leveled off, she saw in the monitor that they were above a coral reef. And deep beneath the boat, barely discernible on the screen, were three whales of the same kind that she had seen on the beach that morning at Deer Key. They were swimming together in what appeared to be an aimless pattern. But there was more. The special alarm message code indicated that there was also a foreign object in or near to the same field of view as the desultory whales. Carol could not contain her excitement. She clapped her hands. "Anchor, please," she shouted, and then she laughed. She saw that Troy had already thrown the anchor overboard.

A few minutes later Carol was hurriedly putting on her buoyancy vest in the aft portion of the boat behind the canopy. Her mask and her flippers had already been adjusted and were beside her on the deck. Troy was helping her by holding up the air bottle that was built into the back of the bulky vest. "Don't worry about Nick," Troy said. "He may be grumpy today for some reason, maybe because Harvard lost the basketball game, but he's a fabulous diver. And he has the reputation of being the best dive teacher in the Keys." He grinned. "After all, he taught me a couple of months ago and we're not even supposed to be able to swim."

Carol smiled and shook her head at Troy. "Don't you ever stop joking?" she said. She slid her free arm through the second opening and the vest fell into place. "By the way," she continued softly, "for an expert diver your friend certainly uses antiquated equipment." At this moment she regretted her decision to leave her customized diving vest in the station wagon. She always used it when she dove with Dale and it had all the latest advances, such as ABC (Automatic Buoyancy Compensation) and a perfect pocket for her underwater camera. But after all the brouhaha when she came through the marina headquarters with her footlocker of electronic equipment, Carol had decided not to attract further attention by bringing in a state-of-the-art diving vest.

"Nick thinks the new vests make it too easy for the diver. He wants them to have to adjust their buoyancy manually - so that they are more conscious of how far down they are." Troy looked Carol over. "You're pretty light. This belt may be enough by itself. Do you normally use any weights?"

Carol shook her head and pulled the belt around her waist. Nick came around the canopy carrying his mask and flippers. He had already put on his diving vest with air bottle and his weighted belt. "Those whales of yours are still in the same spot down there," he said. "I've never seen whales hang around like that. "He handed her a piece of chewing tobacco. She rubbed the tobacco on the inside of her mask (to prevent fogging) while Nick walked around behind her. He looked at her air gauge and checked both her regulator and the secondary mouthpiece that he might have to use to share her air in the event of an emergency.

Nick talked to Carol while he was making her final equipment checks. "This is your charter," he began in what sounded like a friendly tone, "so we can go almost anywhere you want while we are down there. The dive will not be too difficult, since it's only forty-five feet or so to the floor. However," Nick moved around in front of Carol and looked directly in her eyes, "I want one thing thoroughly understood. This is my boat and I am responsible for the safety of the people on it. Including you, whether you like it or not. Before we dive, I want to make certain that you will follow my lead under the water."

Carol recognized that Nick was trying to be diplomatic. It even flashed through her mind that he looked sort of cute standing there in front of her in his diving gear. She decided to be gracious. "Agreed," she said. "But one thing before we descend. Remember that I'm a reporter. I will have a camera with me and may want you to move from time to time. So don't get angry if I motion you out of the way."

Nick smiled. "Okay," he said, "I'll try to remember."