Chapter 5 - The Wreck
The USS Anzio was a Spruance-class destroyer.
She had been commissioned in 1980 at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She had been 563 feet long and 55 feet wide and had displaced 9,200 tons fully loaded. She had been designed to hunt submarines in the North Atlantic. She had carried two 5-inch guns, a NATO Sea Sparrow missile launcher, an ASROC launcher, six torpedo tubes, and two SH-60 helicopters. She had been one of thirty-one Spruance-class destroyers built for the United States Navy. She had been a good ship. She had served her country for seventeen years.
She had been decommissioned in 1997.
The Naval Vessel Register said so. The disposal record said so. The bill of sale said so. The scrap company in Brownsville said so. The Navy's historical and heritage command said so. The public record said so.
The public record was wrong.
The truth was this.
The USS Anzio had been decommissioned in 1997. She had been sold for scrap to a company in Brownsville, Texas, for one dollar. She had been towed toward Brownsville by a commercial tug. She had arrived at the entrance to the Brownsville shipping channel.
And then, according to a document that Special Agent Reyes obtained from a source she would not name, the ship had been diverted.
The tow had been redirected by the United States Navy. The ship had been towed back into the Gulf of Mexico. She had been towed to a classified facility in the Gulf. She had been reconfigured. She had been given a new hull number. She had been repainted. She had been re-registered under a false name. She had been sent to San Diego. She had been assigned to a program whose name was classified.
The program was called "PELAGIC."
Special Agent Reyes did not know what PELAGIC was. She had looked. She had asked. She had received, from the appropriate office, a single-sentence response: "You do not have the clearance to inquire about the PELAGIC program. Do not attempt to inquire again."
Reyes had inquired again.
She had been told, the second time, by a different office, that if she continued to inquire about PELAGIC, she would be removed from her position at NCIS and would be subject to an investigation under the Espionage Act.
Reyes had stopped asking.
She had not stopped investigating.
Because the USS Anzio — the ship that PELAGIC had taken back from the scrap dealer and repainted and re-registered under a false name and sent to San Diego — had been a ship with a crew. The crew had been Navy. The crew had been sworn to secrecy. The crew had been told that they were serving on a classified platform conducting classified missions in the Pacific. The crew had been told that they could not speak to their families about their service. The crew had been told that their service would be erased from the record when they were discharged.
Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas Hale had been one of that crew.
He had been aboard the USS Anzio from 1996 to 2003. He had known the ship. He had served aboard her before PELAGIC. When PELAGIC had reactivated her in 1998, he had been recalled. He had been assigned to her crew. He had been told that he was needed. He had been told that his country needed him. He had been told that his service would be honored, one day, when the program was declassified.
He had been aboard her on the night of October 14, 2003.
The night of October 14, 2003, had been a Tuesday. The ship had been conducting a classified mission in the Pacific. The mission had gone wrong. A senior officer aboard the ship — a captain whose name had been redacted from every document Reyes had seen — had ordered the ship to a position that was outside the authorized operating area. The ship had been detected by a foreign vessel. There had been a confrontation. There had been gunfire. The ship had been struck by a torpedo. The ship had begun to sink.
The captain had ordered the crew to abandon ship. Most of the crew had been recovered by a U.S. submarine that had been operating in the area. Six sailors had not. Five of those sailors had been rescued. The sixth had been Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas Hale.
He had been the last man out of the berthing compartment.
He had gone back into the compartment to pull a nineteen-year-old seaman out of his rack. He had handed the seaman up the ladder to another sailor. He had gone back down the ladder to look for a second sailor — a second seaman, eighteen years old, who had been in the head and had been trapped.
He had not come back up the ladder.
The ship had rolled. The compartment had flooded. The ladder had come loose. The seaman Morgan had pulled out of the water in her dive bag — no, the seaman the crew had pulled out of the water on the night of October 14, 2003 — had been the nineteen-year-old. He had survived. He was alive. He lived in Norfolk. He was fifty-two years old. He had a wife and two daughters and a garden.
He had told NCIS investigators — when they had found him, when they had shown him the nameplate, when they had told him what had happened — that he had been alive at that moment because a chief boatswain's mate had gone back into a flooding compartment to save him.
The second seaman — the eighteen-year-old — had been recovered by the submarine. He was alive. He lived in Jacksonville. He was forty-nine years old. He had a wife and a son and a construction company. He had told NCIS investigators that he had been alive at that moment because a chief boatswain's mate had gone back down a ladder to save him.
The chief boatswain's mate had not come back up the ladder.
He had gone down the ladder twice.
The first time, he had saved a nineteen-year-old.
The second time, he had saved an eighteen-year-old.
He had not come up the second time.
The ship had sunk beneath him.
The Navy had recovered five of the six sailors.
The Navy had not recovered the chief boatswain's mate.
The Navy had declared him dead.
The Navy had told his family that he had drowned in a storm.
The Navy had lied.
Special Agent Reyes read the file.
She read the file twice. She read the file three times. She read the file four times. She read it in her office. She read it in her car. She read it in her apartment. She read it on the morning of the investigation. She read it on the morning of the court-martial. She read it on the night before she testified.
She read the file one more time on the morning of her testimony.
Then she closed the file.
She picked up the nameplate.
She walked into the courtroom.
She set the nameplate on the table.
She looked at the jury.
She said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a small brass nameplate. It is corroded green with salt and time. It has two initials on it — T.H. — and a number — 04. Those initials belong to Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas Hale. That number is the number of the berthing compartment in which he lived aboard the USS Anzio. That nameplate was recovered from the wreck of the USS Anzio in April of this year by a Navy diver named Chief Petty Officer Morgan Hale, who is the daughter of Chief Boatswain's Mate Hale. Chief Petty Officer Hale did not know, when she recovered the plate, that the wreck she was diving on was the USS Anzio. She thought she was diving on a fishing trawler. She had been told by her command that the wreck was a fishing trawler. She had been told by her commander — the defendant, Commander Peter Vale — that the wreck was a fishing trawler. And she had believed him. Until she found her father's nameplate in a berthing compartment that no fishing trawler has ever had."
She looked at the defendant.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "the defendant — Commander Peter Vale — knew. He knew that the wreck was the USS Anzio. He knew it because he was aboard her on the night she sank. He knew it because he was the officer of the deck on the night she sank. He knew it because he signed the deck log. He knew it because he had been ordered, by a senior officer, to erase the deck log and to write a new one. He knew it because he had been ordered to lie. And he had been lying — to the United States Navy, to the United States government, to the American people, and to the families of the men who died aboard the USS Anzio — for sixteen years. The nameplate proves it. The wreck proves it. The lab report proves it. The defendant proves it, by his own conduct, because on the morning of the sixteenth of April, when Chief Petty Officer Hale brought him a small brass nameplate that had been recovered from a wreck that was not a fishing trawler, the first thing he did was arrest her."
She paused.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "Chief Petty Officer Hale is sitting in the third row. She is the daughter of Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas Hale. She has been trying for sixteen years to find out what happened to her father. Today — thanks to her, and thanks to her father's nameplate, and thanks to the truth — she is going to find out."
She turned to the jury.
May you like
"Let me tell you what happened to her father," she said.
And she did.
