Cold Choices

was detail-oriented, but focused on his own job. Hardy didn’t trust anyone’s skills or motivation — and the crew had felt it, both the officers and the enlisted men.

Hardy ruled by fear because that’s what he felt. His fear of someone else’s error ruining his record was transformed by the crew into fear of doing anything without first checking with the captain. It was no way to run any naval vessel, much less a submarine. A fire on board had caused serious damage to Memphis, and the crew’s response showed Hardy that there were better ways to lead men.

He’d just started to trust Jerry when they’d been attacked by Russian forces.

* * *

Mitchell snapped back to the present when Commander Rudel finished his speech with his trademark line: “Now go work your tail off.” Jerry realized he’d used the same phrase when he welcomed Rountree aboard, but he wasn’t worried about copying Rudel’s command style.

Hudson and Rountree headed aft. Jerry noted the smile on Rountree’s face. The skipper had that effect on people. Excusing himself, Jerry headed forward and down one deck to the torpedo room. He had to find Palmer, and check on the UUVs.

Lieutenant (j.g.) Jeff Palmer was a weak link in Seawolf’s chain of command. It wasn’t enough to have intelligence or determination or even a good attitude. Nobody got through the nuclear pipeline and sub school without those abilities, but they weren’t enough to get Jeff Palmer qualified.

Every submariner had to “qualify” aboard his boat. It meant knowing every system aboard in detail, not just the equipment you worked with in your own job. In an emergency, if the boat suffered some sort of accident or was damaged in a fight, everyone aboard had to know what to do. The candidate had to be able to draw the air, hydraulic, electrical, and other vital systems from memory. He had to find valves and damage-control equipment while blindfolded. In a real emergency, with the lights out, or the air filled with thick smoke, conditions could be much worse. In addition, the initial response to any casualty also had to be memorized, and understood. And it didn’t hurt to have the secondary procedures committed to memory as well.

Both officers and enlisted went through the process. When they qualified, the captain awarded them their “dolphins,” an insignia worn on their shirt. Officers had gold dolphins, enlisted men silver. Like an aviator’s wings, they represented a lot of work, and were worn with pride.

Jerry’s first qualification, aboard Memphis, had been an ordeal, for many reasons. Still, he’d done it in record time, in a single patrol. Normally, an officer new to subs would take about a year and a half to qualify. Palmer had been at it now for seventeen months, and had run into trouble from the very start.

Part of the qualification process were “murder boards,” oral quizzes by a group of officers on a particular topic. Palmer could study the manuals and practice the procedures until they were second nature, but he seized up under any sort of pressure. Too many questions in rapid succession caused him to freeze, or give answers that were obviously wrong. Men who couldn’t handle pressure did not belong on a sub.

Palmer was in the torpedo room, along with Torpedoman Chief Johnson, his division chief, and several of the torpedomen. They were loading weapons for the upcoming mission, which on a Seawolf- class sub took quite a while.

The torpedo room on modern U.S. nuclear subs is located aft of the bow, not in it like the old-style WWII boats. The bow on Seawolf was completely taken up by three large sonar arrays, including a monstrously huge sonar “ball,” covered with passive hydrophones. The eight torpedo tubes, four to a side, were mounted in port and starboard nests complete with individual launching system, and angled outward. Modern guided torpedoes were smart enough to turn after they were launched and head for their prey.

Jerry had been torpedo officer on Memphis, and was still impressed by the scale of Seawolf’s torpedo armament. His old boat could carry a warload of twenty-six torpedoes and missiles. Seawolf could load fifty, and the racks for them filled a two-story compartment. Seawolf’s tubes were bigger as well, thirty inches in diameter instead of twenty-one inches. Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy never developed thirty-inch torpedoes, so the tubes were sleeved to accept the standard twenty-one-inch weapons. The space was crowded with weapons and the machinery to move them, but to Jerry it was as large as a cathedral.

Unusually, daylight and sounds from outside filtered into the space. A loading ramp angled from Seawolf’s deck, just aft of the sail, down through two decks into the torpedo room. Because Mark 48 torpedoes are twenty and a half feet long and weigh almost two tons, a special loading tray had been rigged to control their downward journey. Torpedomen handled the massive weapons as if they were made of glass, while Chief Johnson watched their every move. One torpedoman wore a set of sound-powered phones, communicating with the rest of the loading detail above.

Jerry paused in the doorway, taking in the division’s progress and deciding if this was a good time to talk to Palmer. He was reluctant to distract men loading explosives, but the jaygee saw him and walked over.

“What’s up, Nav?” Palmer’s good mood almost gave Jerry another excuse to delay telling him, but it had to be done.

“You’re going to conn the boat out when we leave on the fifteenth,” Jerry said simply.

Palmer acted like he’d been shot. “Oh, no.” If he hadn’t been leaning on a fitting, he might have fallen down. He was obviously remembering his last attempt, which had cost the navy a splintered piling and nearly a crushed sonar dome.

“You need this ticket punched, Jeff.” Jerry’s tone was firm, but positive.

Jeff Palmer was taller than Jerry, though slim. He seemed to shrink as he reluctantly nodded agreement. “You’re right, I have to do this.”

“And you’ll have to answer questions about underway procedures for the XO day after tomorrow. He’ll see you in his stateroom right after lunch.”

A pale redhead, Palmer turned white. “He’ll grind me up like hamburger! I’ll never be able to satisfy him.”

“Do you think the XO’s going to deliberately trip you up?”

“No, but you know what will happen.”

Jerry sighed, but managed to do it on the inside. Palmer had developed a real confidence problem, but Jerry wasn’t going to blow sunshine at him. That wasn’t his job, and it didn’t really help the guy. Still, he needed to be positive.

“Jeff, you know the material, you’ve proven that to me. If you want to stay in subs, you’ve got to show the XO you know it, then use it to get Seawolf under way safely.”

“What if I can’t get past the XO?”

“Then I’ll have Santana take her out,” Jerry answered flatly. Ensign San-tana was the electrical officer, and was also working on his qualification. To himself, Jerry added, “And you’ll be off the boat and out of subs the day we get back from patrol.”

“Who will be the OOD?” asked Palmer hesitantly.

“Mr. Hayes,” Jerry replied, and then with a slight grin, “And yes, he knows what he’s getting into.”

“Thanks, Nav. I’m not too popular with my department head right now. And I don’t think I could be up on the bridge with him again. At least not right away.”

“You’re right, he’s not happy with your progress,” said Jerry frankly. “And yes, he was upset about your earlier attempt, and not just because he was the OOD. It’s his job to push you, Jeff. If Greg Wolfe had given you up as a lost cause, would he have spent all those hours working with you?”

“No, sir,” answered Palmer quietly.

“All right then. Get your act together and show him you are capable of conning a boat on the surface. You know what to do. You just need to muster the intestinal fortitude and do it. Okay?”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

“Correct answer, Mr. Palmer,” remarked Jerry. “Now you’d better get back to supervising the weapons loading evolution.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Palmer replied with a little more confidence. “And Nav. thanks.”

Tuesday afternoon

USS Seawolf, executive officer’s stateroom

When Jeff Palmer knocked on the XO’s door and went inside, Jerry stayed in the passageway. The XO had