Falling Star (3 page)

McHugh had completed a tour in the South China Sea just prior to being assigned to the Special Projects Office.  While there, he had received a bronze star for a particularly difficult extraction under enemy fire.  The mission had been to run a river boat up the Mekong River and pickup a provincial official who had served the American forces well, but had come under the suspicion of local Communist cadres.

As McHugh's crew finished boarding the official and his family, Viet Cong opened fire from the dense brush along the shore.  Two Navy corps men were still in the water.  McHugh grabbed an M-1 carbine and returned fire from the stern of the vessel; drawing the enemy's attention to himself.  His actions permitted the two corps men to jump aboard and the River Boat to escape, thereby allowing the safe return of all.  In his usual self effacing manner, McHugh wondered aloud what an ocean research scientist was doing in a situation like that.  His heroics under fire gave McHugh standing in NAVFAC, where many officers had never seen combat.

"So, do you know anything about this new guy?" asked McHugh.

"Just that he is an NROTC graduate from the University of Virginia and is completing his Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford.  I think his name is Liu; Chinese I believe."

That was an interesting remark, since oriental officers were still a rarity in the Navy, thought McHugh.  He took the manila folder from Captain Mitchum and went back to his office.

0805 Hours: Monday, August 15, 1967: Port Hueneme, California

"Sir, Ensign Aloysius Liu reporting for duty, as ordered."

The newly-minted Ensign was dressed in Service Dress Khaki despite the oppressive heat of southern California on an August day.  His brown face had turned that much darker from the sun; his thick black hair had been freshly cut in a crew cut.  Liu stood rigidly at attention, his right hand in a salute, as he reported to his commanding officer.

"Weren't you supposed to report five minutes ago?" growled McHugh, returning the hand salute.

"Sorry Sir."

"Don’t let that happen again," scowled McHugh.

"Yes Sir," answered a nervous Ensign, straightening himself into an even stiffer stance, thinking that his nascent naval career was coming to a crashing end.

Bob McHugh was dressed in long wilted service khakis with short sleeves; the only indications of his rank were gold oak leaves resting on the open lapels of his shirt.  McHugh closed his report on subsurface thermal inversions and looked up at the lanky Chinese youth standing stiffly at attention in front of his desk. 

McHugh's prematurely gray hair was cut in a "flat top."  On his wrist was a Rolex "Oyster" with a stainless steel bezel for noting dive time.  Taking his ever-present cigar from its resting place in the corner of his mouth, McHugh studied the starched, ramrod-stiff Ensign that had been sent to be his assistant.  Sizing up the new Ensign before him, McHugh thought to himself that they sure are making them younger every year.

As the young Naval officer would soon find out, the ever present cigar would always look as if it had just gone out.  No one could recall ever having seen it lit.  There was, however, a persistent memory of stale cigar smoke in McHugh's office.

McHugh's office was pretty much what one would find in the Navy, no matter where you were in the world.  The gray steel desk and the green leather, gray steel chairs were standard issue.  An American flag stood in the corner of the room, behind McHugh's desk.  On the gray steel bookcases that served as his credenza were mementoes of McHugh's Naval service:  brightly colored crests on walnut shields bearing the names of the various Navy vessels on which McHugh had served, one silver crest from his Annapolis days, a small brass anchor, and assorted pens and pencils.

The books in his bookcase bore diverse titles such as Celestial Navigation, Nautical Engineering, Marine Engine Repair, the Zen of Volkswagen Repair, Johnston's Handbook on Ocean Engineering, and Royce's Sailing Handbook.  In addition, many official-looking black vinyl notebooks were crammed into every nook and cranny of his small office.  The only jarring note was what seemed to be a fully loaded M-1 Carbine magazine, sitting on McHugh's desk, on top of a pile of paper.

The Ensign cast a furtive glance at the M-1 clip.

A photograph mounted in a sterling silver frame showed a very attractive brunette woman with two smiling tow-headed boys who couldn't have been older than four.  Over the credenza hung an inexpensive print of the HMS Beagle - Charles Darwin's sailing ship.

On another wall, hung a color photograph of a much younger Robert McHugh in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves standing in front of an ocean going tug.  The nameplate on the tug said, R/V
Wayward Wind
.  The young McHugh was smiling.  The office was brightly lit and had a view of the busy docks at the Naval Station in Port Hueneme, California.

"I hear tell you have some training in side scan sonar."

"Yes, Sir.  Sir, my master's research at Stanford was on the effect that thermal inversions have on surface towed arrays.  As part of my research, I experimented with narrow beam side scan sonar, Sir."

"First off, Mr. Liu, stand at ease, you are making me nervous.  Second, if you are going to be my assistant, my name is Bob, not Commander McHugh or Sir."

"Yes Sir."

"What do they call you - not Aloysius; I hope."

"Most of my friends call me Mike."

"O.K., Mike it is.  Why don't you pull up that chair," said McHugh as he motioned to one of the steel gray metal chairs with green leather seats.

"Mike, about four months ago one of our oceanographic survey flights taking fairly standard background magnetometer readings over the Hatteras Abyssal Plain in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Bermuda came up with a marked magnetic anomaly.  Nothing like we've ever seen before."

"Maybe it is a large iron ore deposit like they have in the Northeastern part of Minnesota.  They have been known to cause magnetometers to go crazy."

"Nope, we've thought about that and this one is different.  The magnetometer spiked; nothing natural could have caused that.  We thought about sending in
Alvin
, but the depth is too deep for anything but the Trieste; we think the source of the anomaly is over 3000 fathoms."

"Is the Trieste available?"

The Trieste, a bathysphere, was the deepest diving vessel, manned or unmanned, in the Navy's inventory.  Although the Trieste had plumbed the deepest depths of the ocean in the Marianas Trench, it suffered from one very big problem.  It had no propulsion system, whatsoever.

"No." responded McHugh.

"NAVFAC doesn't want to commit the Trieste unless we can pinpoint the exact location.  The Trieste, after all is little more than an elevator - incapable of any lateral movement.  NAVFAC thinks there may be another system that might work better."

McHugh continued, "I understand that Western Light's ocean research laboratory in Annapolis has a towed platform with cameras, lights and side scan sonar.  NAVFAC thinks that side scan sonar might be able to assist in finding the anomaly." 

"I'm familiar with that system," said Mike.  "Western Light nicknamed it, 'Nematode,' after some microscopic marine parasite because the package is so small and has to be towed.  Didn't the Navy use something like the Nematode to find those H-Bombs off of Palmores, Spain?"

"Yes, but not as sophisticated or proved to the depths that we need to go," responded McHugh.  "An old friend of mine, Ted Sevson, is the project manager.  I'll give him a call and tell him to expect you.  I'd like you to coordinate the use of the Western Light system.  Have you ever been to Annapolis?

"A couple of times," responded Mike shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

McHugh took notice.  His look prompted Mike to continue.

"Annapolis was my girlfriend's home and I visited there several times while I was at the University of Virginia.  Her father was in the Coast Guard."

"Good, maybe you can drop in to see her."

"Can't sir, we are having some problems right now."

"Oh," answered McHugh.  "Well, you got to keep those problems contained, son."

"Yes, Sir," replied Mike as he noticeably flushed.  "You won't have to worry about that."

"O.K. familiarize yourself with the Orion report, get a billet at the BOQ and let's talk tomorrow.  Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, Sir."

1967: Mike

0930 Hours: Wednesday, August 24, 1967: Annapolis, Maryland

"I fall to p-ieces -- Each time I see you ah-gain...." sang Patsy Cline on the car radio. 

Tuned to the only country western station that came in clearly, Mike hummed along, reminiscing about his college days in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he drove along Route 50 to keep his appointment with Tom Sevson at the Western Light facility in Annapolis, Maryland.

Born in China and brought up in urban Washington, D.C., one would not have thought that Mike would be hooked on country and western music.  However, his college years were spent in the piedmont of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Albemarle County, Virginia.

Mike had grown up in Washington during the fifties when the capital was a steamy intersection of international sophistication and deep Southern prejudice.  It had been with great trepidation that Mike enrolled in that bastion of southern schools, the University of Virginia, on a NROTC scholarship, but he was destined for a big surprise.

Mike found the University to be a far different place from the dirty, throbbing neighborhoods of non-diplomatic Washington in which he had grown up.  Growing up in Washington, D.C. had been painful.  Some of the slights had been obvious, like the rednecks that would not let Mike's family onto Calvert Beach, Maryland, during the Fifties.  The confusion of growing up in a white person's world had left an impression on the young Mike Liu.

It wasn't right that someone could tell you that you could use this fountain or that, changing their decisions not so much from person to person but from time to time depending on how they felt.  Sometimes, the rednecks would say Chinese could use white facilities, other times they could not.  In some perverse way, the uncertainty was worse than the clear barriers that blacks had to endure in the same places.  Prejudices were delivered personally to Chinese, not impersonally through placards.  Racism was arbitrary with Orientals depending on the mood of the next redneck you met.

It pained Mike to remember the sadness in his parents' eyes when they urged their children to not think about going to the bathroom until they got to the safety of their own house; just to avoid the uncertainty and impulsiveness of white shop owners.  Growing up Asian in the fifties and sixties in the United States meant you weren't included, not by the whites nor the blacks.

But this changed dramatically for Mike from his first days at the University; Mike had been immersed in a culture that his ancestors in China would have never understood.  The Grounds of the University of Virginia, as the faculty and students referred to the campus, were perhaps the most beautiful thing that Mike had ever seen when he arrived at the school in the fall of 1962.

A favorite memory of his last days on the Grounds was the signing off of radio stations in the early morning hours - alone in his room on the Lawn, the original student quarters designed by Mr. Jefferson in the early eighteen hundreds and continuously used by students ever since.  Mike treasured the memory of the orange glow from the dying embers in his fireplace casting flickering shadows on his walls as he labored under the benevolent dictatorship of Professor Fred Morris, his teacher and friend.  The memory was embedded in his mind as was the slow haunting refrain of "Dixie" floating over the air as the radio stations signed off, the drowsy ethereal nature of that tune played as it was meant to be played; not the jangling strident march that had been adopted by the Confederacy during the Civil War and segregationists thereafter.  He could never understand how that sweet song could have been turned into such a vehicle of hate.

What Mike treasured most about Charlottesville was a sense of finally belonging.  This sense of belonging was important to Mike particularly given the isolation he felt while growing up in segregated Washington, D.C.  Mike was fighting his own subconscious war against a society that seemed to give aid and comfort to obnoxious racists, who would use whatever skills they had to put others "in their place."  Here he could be himself, and not the stereotyped Chinese, meant to be placed in a corner and ignored as his father and other Chinese had been before him.

It was an auspicious moment when he was commissioned an Ensign in the United States Navy following graduation in 1966; a sense of finally arriving.  After graduate school, Mike was assigned to the Special Projects Office at the Naval Construction Battalion Center.  He considered himself to be downright lucky to have been further assigned to work with Bob McHugh on such an interesting engineering problem.  He had heard about Bob McHugh and looked forward to learning a lot about oceanography from this warrior-scientist.

The only hesitation Mike felt as he drove to Annapolis was the nagging questions.  What would he do if he accidently saw Corrine?

1967: Found

0800 Hours: Tuesday, October 4, 1967: Aboard the USS Marysville Somewhere Over the Hatteras Abyssal Plain, West of Bermuda

Captain George Vander, U.S.N., put his binoculars down and turned to what seemed to be his thousandth cup of hot black, acrid coffee.  The latest link in his chain smoking habit hung from his lips and the bluish smoke lazily reached toward the overhead of the bridge. 

"Mister Evans," Vander called without looking back.  Immediately, a thin, bespectacled Lieutenant appeared from the shadows on the bridge of the USS
Marysville
and joined the Captain.

Frederick Evans, a Ph.D. from Caltech, had already established a reputation for geosciences measurement including his duty on the fateful March 20, 1967, flight of the P-3B Orion.  Evans had been seconded to the
Marysville
especially for this mission to search for and locate the mysterious object.