A Final Broadside Read online

  A FINAL BROADSIDE

  BUDDY WORRELL

  Copyright © 2017 Buddy Worrell.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Abbott Press

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  Bloomington, IN 47403

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  Phone: 1 (866) 697-5310

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4582-2097-4 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4582-2096-7 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4582-2095-0 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905463

  Abbott Press rev. date: 04/11/2017

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  PART I: THE PARANORMAL LINKAGE BEGINS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART II: ANATHEMA

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  PART III: BB-55, “THE SHOWBOAT” A BRIEF HISTORY 1937–1962

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  PART IV: A FINAL BROADSIDE BB-55

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge the author Elsa Bonstein for her guidance, direction, and advice in the writing of this novel. I would also like to thank my wife of forty-six years, Donna, for being my harshest critic and most ardent supporter. Last, I would like to thank my long-term colleague Becky Weaver for guiding me through the perils of word processing software.

  To Donna, Kathy, Sara, and the officers and men who served aboard the battleships Arizona and North Carolina

  PART ONE

  The Paranormal Linkage Begins

  CHAPTER 1

  Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, 5:45 a.m.

  He was sleeping soundly in that snoreless, dreamless, floating void of total relaxation when he felt the first, tentative punch on his arm. Lieutenant JG Ken Hagar pulled in a deep breath and attempted to ignore the assault on his slumber. The next punch was firmer and delivered with a “Don’t you dare ignore me” implication and a whisper: “Ken, it’s time!”

  This time his eyes flew open and quickly turned toward his very pregnant wife, Sara. She was already moving, and as she got up from the bed, the tropical moonlight illuminated her body. Ken responded the same way he always had since she started showing five months ago: “Betty Grable has nothing on you, babe!”

  Sara feigned anger and said that she felt like an old cow and it was his fault.

  He responded with one word. “Guilty.”

  Ken had met Sara McGregor while they were both attending college at Chapel Hill. He was originally from Southport, North Carolina, and had grown up with a love and respect for the ocean and all things having anything to do with the ocean. He had been a lifeguard down at Myrtle Beach during his high school summers and had worked the slow-moving shrimpers out of Calabash, North Carolina, when he was off from college in the summer. Back then, Ken’s goal had been to have his own charter fishing fleet and ply the warm waters of the Gulf Stream for deepwater game fish. The monthly stipend from the Naval ROTC helped with the tuition, and the experience he would gain with the navy after graduation would be invaluable. Besides, Sara always thought he looked dashing and ruggedly handsome in his uniform.

  Sara was born and raised in Boone, North Carolina, and was a hopeless landlubber. She much preferred the rugged peaks of Grandfather Mountain and the pastoral beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway to the ocean. When she met Ken five years earlier at Chapel Hill, he was majoring in mechanical engineering, and she in psychology. The two met at a fraternity mixer and were soon inseparable. They married right after graduation. Ken was soon commissioned as an ensign in the US Navy. His first assignment at the New York Naval Shipyards was as an aide to the naval liaison, on the completion and launch of the USS North Carolina, the first new battleship to be commissioned in twenty years. Sara loved it when Ken came home from the shipyard and told her of this fantastic new ship—how fast it was and how it bristled with guns, including the battery of nine sixteen-inch forty-five-caliber Mark 6 guns. He had hoped to be posted on the North Carolina when the ship was finally commissioned but instead got orders to report to the commander of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Sara was happy with the new orders but did ask whether the navy had a base closer to Boone.

  In the present, in a few moments both Ken and Sara were dressed and moving toward the bus stop and the twenty-four-hour shuttle from the married officers’ quarters to the base. Sara was preregistered at the base hospital, and within fifteen minutes, she was in a wheelchair and headed to Labor and Delivery. As the nurses were busily preparing her, Ken said that he was off to his ship to make sure his watch was covered and that he would be back in no more than thirty minutes. Sara waved him on and laughed that she hoped the baby would try to wait for him to return; a slight chill rippled up her spine, but she quickly dismissed it. Ken blew her a kiss, told her he loved her, and ran to the bus stop that would take him to the USS Arizona. It was 7:20 a.m.

  Ken reached the docking berth of the USS Arizona at 7:41 a.m. and quickly boarded, looking for the officer of the day to report the happy news of Sara and the incoming bundle. The officer of the day was another JG—a lieut
enant junior grade—and a friend since Ken’s arrival at Pearl. Nathaniel Hawthorne Starbuck, or Nate to his friends, saw Ken board and sent a call for Ken to join him on the bridge of the big ship. Ken loved the view from the bridge of the Arizona—two turrets of fourteen-inch guns surrounded by multiple five-inch gun turrets and dozens of antiaircraft batteries pointing skyward. The Arizona and ships like her were the pointed edge of US foreign policy. The joke was that you pulled one of these behemoths into a hostile foreign port, and the locals would start asking, “Where do I sign up to be a Christian, boss?”

  Arriving at the bridge, Ken greeted Nate with a big smile and a breathless exclamation. “Nate … Sara … baby!”

  Nate grinned widely, grabbed Ken’s hand, and started pumping it furiously.

  The moment was broken by the crackle of the ship’s intercom. “Officer of the deck, forward lookout.”

  Nate dropped Ken’s hand, picked up the mic, and answered the call. “Forward lookout, officer of the deck.”

  “Sir, I have several dozen aircraft approaching from the west, three thousand meters altitude at two hundred knots.”

  Nate called out nervously, “Can you identify?”

  Ken picked up a pair of binoculars and quickly located the formation. “Jesus Christ, Nate, they’re Japanese bombers and torpedo planes!”

  The intercom crackled again. “Confirmed ID, sir—Japanese bombers and torpedo planes with fighter support!”

  Nate flipped the intercom switch to “All Ship” and screamed into the mic, “Captain to the bridge, captain to the bridge! General quarters! General quarters! Battle stations, battle stations! This is not a drill!”

  Nate dropped the mic and pushed the klaxon, sounding the alarm. It was 8:00 a.m. The two friends looked quickly at each other, and then Ken broke into a run toward his battle station in turret 2. He would not use the big guns now, but he would command the nest of antiaircraft batteries surrounding the turret. Men were scrambling across the deck, preparing to defend their ship, when the first bombs fell, followed by strafing runs by the Zero fighter planes. The bombers scored three hits out of four on their first run, but the damage was minimal. Ken’s antiaircraft crew numbered only five sailors because of the Sunday duty schedule, but they had already opened up on the strafing Zeros, damaging one with a vicious stream of shells from the Arizona’s three-inch guns. The lightly armored Zero started smoking and limped out of range.

  As the antiaircraft crew broke into a cheer, Ken heard the sickening whine of an incoming 1,700-pound armor-piercing shell bearing down on them. The shell hit close to Ken’s turret, penetrating the deck, where it exploded in the forward magazine. In a matter of seconds, the forward magazine ignited with a force that lifted the 38,000-ton ship eight feet out of the water. In the cataclysm that followed, the forward turrets and conning tower collapsed, most of the ship’s interior was destroyed, and the great ship sank in place, taking 1,177 men to a watery grave. At the exact moment that Lieutenant JG Ken Hager took his last breath, his newborn son took his first. It was 8:06 a.m.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sara gave a final push, and Ken Hager Jr. was delivered into the waiting hands of the navy ob-gyn on call that morning.

  Captain Russell Christenbury had delivered hundreds of babies in his twenty-six-year career in the navy—most in hospitals, some in tents on South Sea islands, and even one in the backseat of a taxi in the Philippines. But he had never plied his craft under a full aerial bombardment. Base hospital staff had rushed outside at the first sound of distant explosions. Just before 8:00 a.m., the wail of warning sirens had ripped through the air, and the base intercom had squawked, “General quarters, general quarters, battle stations, battle stations. This is not a drill!”

  People had begun a well-practiced drill of moving patients into underground bomb shelters, turning off gas and electric supplies, and rolling necessary equipment into so-called safe zones.

  The base hospital had a large red cross painted on its roof with the hope that it would be spared an attack, and at first, the sounds of explosions had been centered on the harbor. Captain Christenbury and his duty nurse had not budged from their battle station in the delivery room, the table currently occupied by a soon-to-be mother and the head and shoulders of a very impatient infant who was ready to greet the world, bombardment or not! One more push, and the baby had come out howling.

  Christenbury glanced up at the wall clock and muttered to the duty nurse, “Oh eight oh six.” Christenbury quickly tied off the umbilical cord and passed the infant to the duty nurse to clean up and weigh. The infant was eight pounds three ounces and had a full head of red curly hair and the lungs of an Irish tenor. “The boy is gonna be an admiral,” Christenbury opined.

  Sara sighed. “A boy!”

  “That it is, young lady. Now let’s get the hell out of this delivery room and down to the bomb shelters. Where is your husband’s duty station? I will try to get word to him.”

  “He is on the Arizona, Doctor.”

  As the doctor, nurse, new mother, and infant moved down a long corridor, a bank of windows opened a view toward the harbor. The group turned to look out toward the harbor and saw the massive fire and rising black smoke coming from what minutes before had been the US Pacific Fleet. The duty nurse gasped.

  “Son of a bitch!” the doctor cursed loudly.

  Sara broke into tears and the baby howled again.

  Only after several days could the damage caused by the Japanese attack be assessed. The stricken Arizona burned for two days. Of the 2,403 killed during the attack, 1,177 were from the crew of the Arizona. All eight battleships moored at Pearl had been damaged, sunk, or purposely run aground to keep the harbor channel open. Multiple cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft had been destroyed. Of the damaged or sunken battleships, only the Arizona was damaged beyond salvage, and many were repaired to rejoin the fleet.

  The Arizona would stay in its berth with its crew of 1,177 now silenced officers and men. It would be decades later before it was discovered that the first major paranormal link had clicked into place.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was June 1942 when Sara finally cleared all of Ken’s affairs, got the military insurance payment, and secured passage back to the States. She had sold or given away most of their furniture, keeping only clothing and some personal possessions for the trip home.

  Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there had been a distinct fear of an incoming invasion, and martial law had been enacted all over the islands. Japanese mini-submarines had participated in the attack and were feared to still be lurking in the crystal-blue waters surrounding Pearl. Most air and sea traffic was incoming to Pearl Harbor, with military supplies, naval salvage units, fighter aircraft, and personnel landing daily.

  The officer in charge of base housing had urged Sara to stay as long as she needed, but ultimately, the navy would need their house since thousands of new personnel would be flooding onto the island in the coming months. Both Sara’s parents in Boone and Ken’s parents in Wilmington offered to have Sara and young Ken stay with them until she was able to find a home and job. Sara loved the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and the beach, but she longed to return to her Appalachian Mountains. “She came from strong Scottish stock,” her father used to say in his best Scottish burr. She loved the clean smell of balsam trees in the air and the yearly displays of flame azalea and flowering rhododendrons in the spring, which contrasted with the fiery fall colors as the oak, hickory, and maple trees prepared for winter.

  Now Sara, a twenty-four-year-old widow carrying an infant and two duffels of clothes, boarded a military transport back to the States. She and Ken Jr. arrived in San Francisco and boarded a navy bus to Alameda Naval Air Station to secure a flight back to the East Coast. She could not get a flight out for three days, so the housing officer, Ensign Kemp Plemmons, found her accommodations in a hotel on base. He also asked a nurse fr
om the base hospital to stop by to check on Ken Jr., to make sure he had suffered no ill effects from the trip. Young Ken had actually done fine, sleeping most of the time and awakening only to be fed or changed.

  The nurse knocked on the hotel room door and, upon entering, introduced herself as Agnes. Agnes was fiftyish, with graying hair pulled back into a severe bun and tucked into her nurse’s cap. She bathed young Ken in the bathroom sink, fed him, and laid him in a baby bed supplied by the hotel. Ken responded by burping loudly and nodding off instantly. Sara, meanwhile, was near exhaustion. The nurse said she would come back in a few hours to check on them, and as the door closed, Sara collapsed on the bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Sara awoke with a start and quickly looked at the clock on her nightstand. She rubbed her eyes furiously to clear them so she could see the time. Eight hours had passed since the nurse left them. Sara stifled a scream as she dashed toward the baby bed and found that young Ken was not there. She gulped a large breath, which separated her from full hysterics, when she saw the handwritten note pinned to the baby pillow.

  Dear Mrs. Hager,

  When I came by to check on you and the baby, you were sound asleep and the baby needed feeding. I hope you don’t mind, but I am taking the baby back with me to the infant and children’s ward at the hospital. He will be cared for by twelve new navy nurses, all cooing and holding him. I am sure he will be quite rotten when you come to get him. Call me at the base hospital and ask the operator to page me.

  Sincerely,

  Agnes Plemmons, RN

  Lt. Commander, United States Navy

  Sara took in two more deep breaths, holding them and then exhaling slowly as she let the anxiety, bordering on terror, leave her body.

  Sara straightened her clothes, brushed her hair, and quickly made her way to the base hospital. She was struggling with opposing feelings of gratitude toward Commander Plemmons and serious alarm at having her baby snatched off to somewhere she had never seen by someone she had just met. Sara moved briskly through the hospital’s brass revolving doors and directly to a reception desk, where she demanded in no uncertain terms to see Commander Plemmons. The receptionist quickly paged the commander to the lobby, and in a few seconds, Sara saw Agnes approaching, holding baby Ken and trailed by six young women in nursing uniforms.