The Search For Home by C A Bird

Author:C A Bird [Bird, C A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781500736040
Published: 2014-08-03T05:00:00+00:00

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Phillip Canfield tapped a pencil against the desk chair’s arm, keeping a beat to the music. He had appropriated a couple of AA batteries from stores and powered up the handheld, digital, music player. He had over a thousand songs recorded in the device. Leaning way back in his chair, he propped his feet on the desk, a cord running from the recorder up his chest to the ear bud in his right ear. Needing a haircut, his brown, wavy hair hung over the bud. He kept his voice low as he sang along with Adele, “Rolling in the Deep,” his head bobbing, and a big grin on his face.

Since relieving Mason, Phil had been in the tower at Hickam Air Force Base for over an hour, and had closed the blinds over the western and southern windows to keep the intense sunlight from spoiling the mood generated by music he hadn’t heard in years. The song ended and he pulled his feet off the desk, allowing the chair to fall to the floor. Jerking on the cord, the ear bud popped out and he flung it onto the desk as he rose to saunter over to the window. He pulled the cord to raise the blinds and squinted southwest toward the open ocean, as the late afternoon sunlight temporarily blinded him.

As his pupils shrunk and he could once again see out the window, his jaw dropped.

“Oh shit!” He ran over to the desk and grabbed his binoculars, returning to the window and raising them to his eyes. In the magnified field of view he saw dozens of ships - all types, shapes and sizes. There were obvious military vessels, fishing boats and a half a dozen enormous cruise ships. He wasn’t real familiar with Chinese craft but he recognized a Type 071 Amphibious Warfare ship and a couple Type 052C Luyang II Class destroyers.

Taking into consideration the height of the tower, the horizon was approximately forty miles away. To his shock, the fleet had already closed to half that distance as he had shirked his duty, rocking out to the tunes. The military vessels had anti-ship missiles that could blow the Louisiana out of the water and as soon as she began to move, they would pick her up on their sonar, if they hadn’t already.

Hoping he hadn’t destroyed their chance to escape, Phil snatched the two-way radio off the desk, shoved his music player into his pocket and flew down the tower steps. He bounded out onto the road and sprinted toward the sub docks a few miles away. The captain had specifically chosen the tower at Hickam to give them the farthest line of sight to the horizon… and he had blown it.

Ignoring all radio protocol, he screamed breathlessly into the radio, “Louisiana, this is Canfield! There’s a huge fleet of ships, dozens of ‘em, approaching the islands from the southwest. I repeat, they’re coming right now. Approximate distance is twenty nautical miles.” He crossed runways, passed base housing and cut through yards to shorten the distance to the sub.

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