It was 1700 hours, and they were right on time. Mack’s onward flight, another Aries, was waiting, engines running, as if a slightly embarrassed navy did not wish to spend one extra second saying good-bye to Mackenzie Bedford.
Mack grabbed his bag and walked down one set of aircraft steps and straight to another 50 yards away. No one met him, no one spoke to him, no one made contact. The second flight was empty save for the flight crew, and they took off immediately on this 650-mile journey to America’s most northeastern state.
It took almost two hours, and by the time the aircraft arrived it was dark, around 2100, long after the last coastal bus from Brunswick had left for the picturesque ride down Route 127 to Georgetown and Bay Point. Mack was given an officer’s room in which to spend the night, and the following morning, shortly after 0700, he walked out of the base and down to the bus stop.
The summer morning was already warm, and there were seagulls overhead wheeling above the bays, swooping down toward the mighty Kennebec River, the longest in Maine, and the great waterway that for four centuries has floated Maine-built ships of all types down to the sea on its high, rough tides.
Mack’s bus was on time. It was an elderly single-deck wagon that would take him down a little-used route to his home on the outskirts of the little town of Dartford on the east bank of the river. Dartford lies 10 miles downstream from the great shipbuilding town of Bath, home of the century-old Bath Iron Works (BIW), whose motto is “Ahead of schedule and under budget.”
Here great yachts, cruisers, and warships have rolled out of the workshops and down the ways to the Gulf of Maine in an unstoppable convoy of excellence. J. P. Morgan’s gigantic black-and-gold yacht
Corsair,
all 343 feet of her, was built at BIW. As was Mike Vanderbilt’s sensational America’s Cup J-Boat,
Ranger,
winner in 1937, and never beaten in any race she ever entered.
In World War II there were more destroyers built at BIW than were constructed in the entire empire of Japan—eighty-two of them. Today, BIW still concentrates on guided-missile destroyers, frigates, and cruisers, principally for the U.S. Navy.
Bath stands on a fabulous deepwater harbor with a mean range of tide of 6.5 feet. All the facilities at BIW are on the west bank of the Kennebec, and above it all, like a spare part from Jurassic Park, looms the tallest lifting crane in the Western world—old Number Eleven, which can hoist a 220-ton modular ship’s part straight off the jetty and into place on the hull, accurate to about a billionth of an inch, depending on who’s driving.
The Kennebec River itself is 150 miles long, rising way north out of Moosehead Lake, which stretches for more than 30 miles among the high peaks of the Longfellow Mountains. The upper reaches are scarcely navigable until the hard-flowing stream out of the mountains reaches Maine’s capital city of Augusta, 45 miles from the ocean.
At this point the Kennebec widens, and by the time it reaches Bath it becomes saltwater and tidal, so powerful are the ebb and flow from the gulf. The lower reaches are truly majestic, as the great river surges by wooded islands and jutting promontories, coves, back channels, and marshes.
Dartford itself lies on the north bank of a deepwater bay that cuts northwest out of the main stream. It started off as a boatyard at the beginning of the nineteenth century but slowly grew into a major shipyard surrounded by a small town almost entirely dependent on the shipbuilding industry for its existence.
In the boom years, when Bath Iron Works was swamped with work, the yard at Dartford was used as a runoff to construct warships. As the years passed, many a skilled shipwright, engineer, or welder made the southern journey from the ironworks to set up home in the picturesque seaward community of Dartford. Though dominated, like Bath, by the industry, this was a more bucolic spot, with a small fishing fleet and a way of life that was more relaxed. At least it was as relaxed as may be expected on the spectacular, but often viciously cold, wind-swept coast of Maine, where the summers are short, the snows long, and the seas powerful.
Mack Bedford’s family members were true Down-Easters. His forefathers hewed granite and sent massive tree logs down the Kennebec River to help build some of America’s greatest cities. His great-grandfather built yachts at BIW, but his grandfather came to live in Dartford around the same time old Sam Remson took over the shipyard and started to build warships.
The Bedfords had been a fixture at both Remsons and Dartford for almost a century, ships’ engineers, and in the case of Mack’s father, a guided-missile specialist, one of Harry Remson’s most valuable men. Mack himself was the first male member of his family for six generations to seek a life beyond the rugged coastlines, rough waters, and awesome beauty of the Pine Tree State.
Remsons had built frigates for the U.S. Navy, and the yard had provided many specialist parts not only for Bath Iron Works but also for the huge naval shipyards at Newport News, Virginia, Todd’s in Seattle, and General Dynamic’s Electric Boat Division in Connecticut.
But the complex patterns of modern warfare had caused an undeniable shrinkage in the numbers of ships being ordered by the U.S. Navy, principally because no one dares to sink them—at least not very often, save for the occasional bunch of turbaned maniacs happy to detonate and destroy themselves and the warship together. Strike rate since 9/11: zero.
Remsons’ survival now depended not on the U.S. government handing them a $500 million frigate contract every three years. It depended on Marine Nationale, the French Navy, and its regular order for Remsons to build them a guided-missile frigate. It came every three years, the only orders placed by Marine Nationale outside of France since the 1980s.
The French have, by any standards, a powerful navy, larger than Great Britain’s, with a twelve-strong submarine fleet, fifteen guided-missile destroyers, twenty frigates, a forty-thousand-ton
Charles de Gaulle
aircraft carrier, and more than forty-five thousand personnel with sixty-five hundred active reservists.
The old tradition of purchasing one frigate from Remsons every thirty-six months was continued partly out of loyalty to a shipyard where the craftsmanship was legendary. And partly because the French Navy enjoyed owning state-of-the-art U.S. technology. However, almost every other warship in the French fleet was built at the naval yards in either Brest, Brittany, the main Atlantic base of Marine Nationale; Cherbourg on the English Channel; Saint-Nazaire on the Loire estuary; or Lorient on the north coast of the Bay of Biscay.
Remsons was unique in the French military’s pantheon of operations. As the years passed, and every order for U.S. frigates and destroyers seemed to go automatically to Bath Iron Works, the position of France in the lives of Dartford’s citizens grew in importance. The fact was, without the Marine Nationale, Dartford would almost certainly perish.
And there were rumors, always rumors. But during the past six months, with the French elections looming, there were worse rumors than usual: that a new Gaullist potential president was on the rise and had made it clear that there would be
no foreign orders
for the French military. None, that is.
Rien.
That included guns, missiles, tanks, aircraft, and ships. In the future, everything would be made in France. France for the French
. Viva la France!
And the proud little shipyard on the coast of Maine was facing the Valley of Death. More than 87 percent of Dartford residents owed their living to Remsons.
It was to this rather gloomy prospect that Mack Bedford was now headed. Because of the overriding problem of Tommy’s illness, Anne had spared her husband from the worst of the rumors. He now sat quietly on the bus as it rolled down Route 127, all along the east bank of the Kennebec River, upon which an unusual gusting summer squall was blowing off the gulf, against the ebb and causing a very rough surface.
He still felt a sense of unreality, as if his cell phone would somehow ring any moment now, and a voice would snap, “Lieutenant Commander Bedford? That’s it, sir, we’re going. Prepare platoons for pack-down. Depart 0500 hours Thursday. Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Classified rules apply as from now.”
Even the thought of his old life brought an ineffable sense of utter sadness upon him. He stared through the bus window at the typical Maine waterfront view, with dense dark-green pine woods growing so close to the ocean they would feel the lash of the spray. The granite ledges that stretched far out into the coastal waters formed a minefield for all but the most careful and skillful of mariners.
The bus drew to a halt at the head of a long, straight road that led down to the wide estuary of the Kennebec. The doors opened, and he stepped down carrying just his leather bag. There was no one at the bus stop and no one walking along the long, narrow road home.
Mack and Anne owned a classic white clapboard Maine farmhouse with a barn and a view across marshland to the water. The shipyard was located way behind the backyard, more than a half mile away, but it was omnipotent, a backdrop to the little town, with rising cranes, tall, but not as tall as old Number Eleven up the road at Bath.
From the bus stop it was a one-thousand-yard walk, and Mack set off, marching down the middle of the road, staring at the waterfront beyond the house, longing to see Anne, longing to see Tommy, but dreading the latest news from the doctors.
No traffic passed him, and the wind dropped, giving way to a warm morning in what ought to be paradise, but on this day was not even close. Fifty yards from the front gate Mack saw someone come hurtling out of the front door and across the driveway to the road. For a split second he held Anne’s gaze, and then she ran toward him, and hurled herself into his arms, saying over and over, “Thank God, my darling, thank God you’re here—I saw you from the upstairs window.”
For almost a full minute he held his powerful arms around her, saying nothing, marveling as always at the beauty of her body and the dark luster of her hair, which cascaded over her shoulders and his eyes. Finally, he released her and stared into her deep blue eyes, and said softly, “As homecomings go, this one’s sure got a lot of promise.”
Anne laughed at him. She always laughed at him. In fact, it was his gift of real humor, coupled with a vibrant physical presence, that had first attracted her. She once told him it was like being married to a cross between Johnny Carson and Rocky Marciano.
“You don’t even remember Rocky Marciano,” he’d chuckled. “He died about twenty years before you were born.”
“Yes, but my grandpa knew him—he was a police chief in Brockton, Massachusetts, where Rocky lived. I’ve seen pictures.”
“Well, he was nothing like me. He was a fighter. I don’t know how to fight. I only know how to kill.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” she said. “At last I’m safe.”
They walked slowly up to the house, and just before they opened the front door, Mack stopped and said, “Annie, how is he?”
“Not good. Just starting to show all the early signs of the disease.”
“What are they?” asked Mack, frowning.
“Oh, signs of aggression, unreasonable, and of course the memory loss. Long-term, that is. He can remember anything for about five minutes. But the next day he can’t seem to grasp that he ever learned it. The school’s really worried about him.”
“Jesus,” replied Mack. “Where is he? Poor little guy.”
“He’s still in bed right now,” she said. “This is another sign—unusual tiredness. And the doctors say it will get worse and worse.”
“Is it leukemia, like they first thought?”
“Not really. It’s similar, but it involves a complete breakdown of the nervous system. And he needs a complete bone marrow transplant to give him any chance of long-term recovery. The hospital says he’s just too young for them to attempt it. Trouble is, if we wait, it may be too late.”
“And no one knows how the hell he caught it?”
“Not really.”
“Christ!” said Mack. “It’s not as if he’s from weak bloodlines, right? He’s from generations of stonecutters, lumberjacks, shipwrights, Navy SEALs, and goddamned police chiefs. He ought to be as strong as a fighting bull!”
“Guess it doesn’t work like that,” said Anne. “I just find it all so sad.”
Mack closed the door and put down his bag. Once more he took his very beautiful wife in his arms, and kissed her longingly. Then he told her, “We’ll get him fixed up. Somehow, by Christ, we’ll come up with something.”
“Look, he may come down any moment now. Is there anything you’d like to do beyond the obvious? Let me fix you some breakfast?”