Chapter 175

I was up early 0400; I just couldn’t sleep. The cook fixed me pancakes, eggs over easy and two sausage patties. A couple of agents joined me drinking coffee.

On my desk was the box back from the FBI. Inside the box was a letter and papers with signatures - lots of signatures.

‘‘To the honorable President Jones.’’

‘‘I know you are very busy so I will try to keep this as short as possible. My name is Chief Petty Officer Stanley Hastings. I serve on the USS Fordson. I know you have been highly distressed at all the problems getting my ship into service, as we all have been.’’

‘‘At the last sea trial the engineers and technicians found the solutions to most of the problems and they have been repaired. We are waiting for new sea trials to confirm the repairs.’’

‘‘The reason for the letter is our brothers on the Hammann have been attacked. Being former military I’m sure you know an attack against one of us is an attack against all of us.’’

‘‘Other ships at the Navy docks have received orders to go to sea immediately to avenge the attack on our brothers in arms, many are leaving in the morning fully armed - eager to carry the fight to the enemy.’’

‘‘We can launch planes and recover them, our pilots are the best, they can deliver weapons on the target. Please, please allow us to join the fight to avenge the attack on the Hammann. No ship can call itself a warship while tied to the dock when it is needed at sea.’’

It was signed by Stanley Hastings and four thousand six hundred of his shipmates, including Rear Admiral Bramble, Captain Horn and one hundred and twenty pilots.

I would take no action until I talked with the Chief of Naval Operations and the secretary of the Navy. They were coming in early every morning now.

Frank dropped off the latest satellite pictures. We went over them one at a time. The analyst had circled several items of things that had changed since yesterday. From all appearances they were hardening several missile sites where they did testing. More Chinese antiaircraft radars and anti aircraft batteries were brought in. Plenty of cruise missiles would take care of them.

China was their go to supplier now that Russia was out of the picture. It was a match made in heaven. Iran was selling them oil at a discounted price - pennies on the Rial - for what the market value was in exchange for weapons made with slave labor.

It was almost a joke, what neither Iran nor the Chinese knew was that Russia turned over to the CIA the manuals on the latest Chinese missile systems, including the coding systems for the controls.

Before all the turmoil between Russia and China they had worked together on the anti-missile systems China had sold to the Iranians. The engineers had exchanged detailed design plans.

Experts were pouring over the data and had already found and were working on exploiting its weaknesses, sending the data to the Air Force and the Navy.

My early visitors were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Ingram and Chief of Naval Operations Miles Browning lll who was the naval component of the joint chiefs and Admiral John Paterson, the liaison between Newport News Ship Building and the Navy.

The Chief of Naval Operations gave me an update on the departures of Navy ships from the East Coast and West Coast ports and ships at foreign Navy bases. We needed to leave some ships at scattered bases in case there were issues that the Navy had to handle. Those ships would be frigates and other ships.

I asked about the Fordson and the repairs and modifications since the sea trials. Admiral Paterson went down the list of items that were faulty from the first sea trials and the list of those that were repaired.

Then he went down the list on the last sea trial and all the ones that had been fixed. The numbers were considerably better. He highlighted that there were no longer any critical items that had not been repaired. The shipyard was confident that those systems would pass at the next sea trial.

Critical systems are those that create an unsafe or hazardous situation that could jeopardize the ship in combat or its ability to deliver weapons to the target. Radar was just one example, propulsion was another.

For any fighting ship that included the ability to move weapons from the magazines to the guns or planes that were to deliver them. Or in the case of a carrier - launch and recovery systems and the elevators to move aircraft from the hangar deck to the flight deck. All of those systems had failed multiple times in the sea trails of the Fordson.

‘‘Newport News Shipbuilding is fully confident they have fixed all the major problems,’’ Admiral Paterson said for the second time.

‘‘Can the remaining items be repaired at sea if the repair teams are on board?’’ I asked.

I slid the box with the letter on top of the sheets of signatures to General Ingram. It only took a minute for him to read it and look at the stack of signatures. He slid it over to Admiral Browning.