Tidal Rip

undersea warriors, so to the rest of the naval community — and to the outside world at large — both types of men must seem mad. Beyond that, the chiefs avoided shoptalk, as was the custom at meals. They mostly spoke of their families: how their kids were doing in school, wives and cars and pets and housing and overdue bills and such. By long-practiced tacit agreement, they left their worries unvoiced — of death, or escalation, or a spouse who might ask to divorce.

As Felix finished his breakfast, a messenger came and asked him to report to the Special Warfare command and planning center. Felix gulped the last of his coffee, bussed his dirty dishes, and headed aft.

He took a steep steel ladder down one level. The Special Warfare command center was a compartment that once held electronics needed to fix the Ohio’s exact position and then coordinate launching her two dozen Armageddon rockets. The very thought gave Felix the creeps. With all that equipment removed, the SEALs now had different consoles and workstations to support the various missions U.S. Navy frogmen trained for. Many of the consoles in the blue-lighted compartment were manned. Message traffic was monitored through Ohio’s low-observable floating-wire antenna. Upcoming SEAL sorties from the sub were mapped out and then rehearsed, using simulators and planning software. Felix made a point not to look, in order to maintain mission security.

Running into the master chief of the ten-man SEAL command and communications staff, he was told, “Commander McCollough wants to see you.” The chief pointed to a small meeting room. The door was closed.

Felix knocked and entered. McCollough sat at a worktable, going over status reports and briefing documents; the commander wore neatly starched and precisely creased khakis, with his rank insignia on the collar tabs. When he saw Felix, he stood. As a chief, Felix also wore khakis — the main difference was the anchor on each collar tab, instead of bars or oak leaves.

“Morning, Master Chief,” McCollough said.

“Morning, sir.” In the SEALs, relations between officers and enlisted men were informal — the navy didn’t salute indoors anyway. The room they were in was drab, linoleum floor tiles and painted metal bulkheads — a study in gray on gray.

McCollough shook Felix’s hand. This was the first sign Felix got that they’d have a serious discussion.

“Sit. Please.” The commander pointed to a chair beside his own. The two men were about the same age, but McCollough was a good foot taller. McCollough spoke with a heavy Boston Irish accent that Felix liked. He also enjoyed the commander’s lively sense of humor and his tolerance of the practical jokes of which most SEALs were so fond. As was the way in the SEAL teams, McCollough — as a commissioned officer — had spent much less time on field operations than Felix. The fact was, the SEALs worked their chiefs quite hard, but moved their officers up and away from the day-to-day grit rather quickly.

“Feeling rested?” McCollough asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a month on leave.” Felix meant it, but he smiled. His smile was short-lived. He knew at once McCollough’s question wasn’t small talk. Right now the commander was stone-faced, even dour.

“I need someone to lead another team, on a different sort of op.”

Felix thought fast. “You want my advice on picking the best lieutenant still fit for duty, sir? What sort of op?” The Ohio had seven separate eight-man teams under McCollough’s command. The team that had deployed from Ohio to the Brazilian coast — the one Felix and his men heard fighting off an ambush the night before they themselves were hit — had come back with several wounded, including their LT and their chief. With the death of the lieutenant of Felix’s team, there remained five lieutenants or lieutenants junior grade to choose from.

“What sort of op?” McCollough repeated Felix’s question. “The sort of op I want you to lead.”

“Sir?”

“You did a real good job back there. I need somebody mature and hard, not another kid with daydreams of glory, with his head stuffed full of all the generalist nonsense naval officers are supposed to know to enhance their ‘upward mobility.’”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going, sir.”

McCollough suddenly smiled, a disarmingly puckish grin. Felix knew that look. The commander used it to win people over to something he knew they wouldn’t welcome — something procedural, bureaucratic, dealing with navy regulations and hierarchy.

“Master Chief, I put you in a few weeks ago for what I prefer to view as a well-deserved battlefield promotion. I can think of no better time than now to inform you that the Senate’s rubber stamp came through. You’ve been formally approved as a limited duty officer with the rank of full lieutenant.”

“Thanks but no thanks, Skipper,” Felix said immediately. A limited duty officer was a chief or other enlisted person who’d won a commission through merit. The limited meant that, lacking the generalized training McCollough just mentioned, the officer’s future assignments would be confined to their existing specialty — in this case, SEAL operations.

McCollough sighed. “Look, do me a favor and take it for now. Once we’re through with this deployment, if you haven’t changed your mind…”

Felix shook his head vehemently. “Master chief is what I am, and what I want to be till I retire. It’s the best social club in the world. None of this officer politics crap, none of these jump-through-hoops promotion selection boards and mumbo-jumbo fitness reports. Let me just do what I love to do.”

“You see, my man Felix, that last part is exactly the idea. This next op, I need someone who can command. You’ll be off on your own with a team, exposed, beyond any means of support, and you may go head-to-head with kampfschwimmer in a knock-down-drag-out with no retreating allowed this time.”

Felix thought for a minute. “Sir, does this have something to do with repercussions from my team’s last action? The hard proof of Axis involvement in northern Brazil?”

“The answer is yes, and no, and I don’t know. We sent your report up the ladder, with my full and unconditional endorsement. But questions like yours, the answers don’t filter back down.”

“I understand.”

McCollough cleared his throat pointedly. “So quit evading the issue. To command, by navy regs and age-old custom, you have to be a commissioned officer…. You do geta raise, you know.”

“Effective immediately?” Felix’s wife and kids could always use the extra money.

McCollough nodded.

“But what about your exec?” McCollough’s deputy was a lieutenant commander, seasoned and mature himself.

“One, he doesn’t have the language skills. Two, I need him here. We have too much to do, getting ready for other near-term ops. And three, he just isn’t as good in the field as you are. I don’t think anyone in my complement is as good in the field as you.”

“First you bribe. Now you’re trying to flatter me, sir.”

McCollough smacked the table. His face turned red. “I never flatter anybody and you know it! Take the promotion! I don’t have all day to waste coddling you. And you don’t have any time to waste getting ready for this assignment.”

“Uh, okay, Commander. Okay. But it still stands, if I don’t like it, later, you send in the forms and I go back to master chief forever?”

“If you and I are still alive in a month, that’s a promise. Meantime, get ready to leave the ship. You’re taking men from my third platoon and transferring to Challenger once we rendezvous.”

“Jeffrey Fuller’s boat?”

“That ought to make up somewhat for your inconvenient change in rank.”

“Yeah, if I don’t mind being squashed to the size of a peanut, down at fifteen thousand feet.”

“Challenger’s crush depth is classified. Keep your educated guesses to yourself. You should know better.”

Felix was taken aback. “Sir, what’s really the matter?”

McCollough sighed, and rubbed his bloodshot, overworked eyes. “After we drop you off, we’re heading across the Atlantic. My men are tasked for antimine warfare and sabotage around the extreme north flank of the pocket to help prepare waterspace access for the convoy landings. Plus joint suppression of enemy air defenses in coastal Saharan Africa.” JSEAD. “Clandestine intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting for