Straits of Power

was different. Jeffrey and Bell’s parting would not be a happy one for Jeffrey, and he knew he’d miss Bell a lot. Their hair’s-breadth survival so many times, the shared exhilaration with each added victory, had brought the two men close.

Jeffrey grimaced to himself. Bell will have a new boss.

Jeffrey understood Bell’s perspective. He needed to attend, first and foremost, to his own future career. Bell had a family to support. If he survived the war and wanted to stay in the Navy, he’d require as much space between himself and Jeffrey’s now-tainted reputation as he could get.

Bell had arrived to give his regular evening 2000—8 p.m. — report as XO to his captain. Bell’s words held no surprises. He wrapped up crisply and left, pulling the door shut behind him. Toward the end of his verbal update on the status of the ship and her machinery and equipment and personnel, Bell avoided making eye contact. It was as if he was embarrassed for Jeffrey, and tried to hide it, but the more he tried to hide it, the more he made things worse.

Two more weeks of this before they got to New London, Jeffrey told himself. He was a lame duck in every sense of the word. He didn’t like the sensation, not one bit.

At least they didn’t relieve me of command right there at Pearl. Probably only because nobody with the right credentials was free.

Jeffrey needed something more than meaningless paperwork to keep busy. He refused to start mental rehearsals for the court martial which might be coming — that was just too defeatist, too morbid. There’d be plenty of time for it later if need be, and as a decorated war hero — a national celebrity— such drastic measures were unlikely. No, exile to semioblivion in some token land activity was a more probable disposition for a commander who’d become an awkward case to those on high, key officials not just at the Pentagon but in the CIA and the State Department too, coming together at the Cabinet level.

Jeffrey realized his thoughts were going in circles.

To stay occupied, however briefly, and hear the sound of another human voice, Jeffrey picked up his intercom handset for the control room. The messenger of the watch answered, one of the youngest and least experienced crewmen, someone who was still working hard to earn his silver dolphins, the coveted badge of a full-fledged enlisted submariner; officers wore gold. Jeffrey wondered if the messenger, like Bell, would survive this horrendous war or not — assuming civilization and humanity survived.

“Give me the Navigator, please,” Jeffrey said, keeping his tone as even as he could.

“Wait one, sir,” the still-boyish voice of the teenage messenger said.

“Navigator here, Captain,” Jeffrey heard in his earpiece. Despite himself, he smiled. Lieutenant Richard Sessions was one of the most unflappable people he’d ever met, inside or outside the military. From a small town in Nebraska, Sessions was the type of guy whose hair and clothes were always a little sloppy, no matter what he did. But his indispensable work as head of the ship’s navigating department — an extremely technical area — was without fail beautifully organized and precise.

“Nav, when do we pass through fifty-five north, onehundred-seventy-five west?” In mid-Bering Sea, on the way up to the strait. It was at that point, and only then, that Jeffrey was to open the sealed orders in his safe, containing the recognition signals and other data he’d need to finish his last trip without becoming a victim of friendly fire.

“Hold please, sir,” Sessions responded, as earnest as ever.

At her present stealthy speed of twenty knots, and heading due north, Challenger would cross one degree of latitude every three hours. Jeffrey had a detailed readout on the computer screen by his desk, so he always knew the ship’s exact position to an error usually measured in tens of feet — depth was displayed to the nearest foot. He could have done the calculation easily in his head. Calling Sessions was make- work, for both of them. And it wasn’t like anyone would know or care if he opened those orders an hour early or late.

But punctuality was valued — and demanded — in the Navy. It had been thoroughly ingrained in Jeffrey from the time, almost twenty years ago, when he’d done college in Navy ROTC at Purdue, an electrical engineering major. Now, in his late thirties, even in the midst of emotional doldrums, the impulse to stick to a printed schedule died hard.

Sessions had the answer for Jeffrey quickly. “At local time zero-three-twenty tomorrow, sir.” The wee hours of the coming morning.

“Okay. Thanks, Nav.” Jeffrey hung up.

Aw, what the heck.

As an act of rebellion against those seniors who’d used him, drained him, and cast him aside when the going got rough, Jeffrey stood and opened his safe.

He withdrew the bulky envelope. It contained a seawaterproof incendiary self-destruct charge, to cremate the classified contents in case of unauthorized tampering. This precaution was normal for submarine captains’ order pouches in this war. As Jeffrey knew painfully well, American subs could be sunk in battle. And just as the U.S. had done more than once to derelict Soviet submarines, Axis salvage divers or robotic probes could rifle through Challenger’s wreckage if something went wrong, compromising crucial codes and revealing priceless secrets.

Jeffrey very carefully entered the combination on the big envelope’s keypad, to disarm the self-destruct. The last thing he wanted was to set it off by accident. Aside from ruining his orders before he could read them, fire on a submerged submarine would be terrible. None was ever considered small until after it was out. When the ship was prevented, because of the need for perpetual stealth, from surfacing or snorkeling to clear the smoke, at best the crew would have to spend long hours in uncomfortable respirator masks, until the air scrubbers removed the toxins and soot. At worst, men would die. No, Jeffrey did not want to further mar this voyage by starting a fire.

The envelope opened safely. Jeffrey emptied its contents on his desk. His heart began to pound.

Among the papers and data disks, and another, inner, sealed envelope, were two metal uniform-collar insignia— silver eagles, which meant the rank of Captain, United States Navy, the next rank above commander. The actual rank of captain, not just the courtesy title that every vessel’s skipper received. Jeffrey snatched up the hard copy orders and read them as fast as he could, almost desperately.

He realized his mind had been playing nasty tricks, in the vacuum of feedback from above, running toward paranoia that was probably a symptom of his own lingering reactions to his drastic decisions and their traumatic effects in the Med.

Challenger had indeed been ordered to mask her presence at Pearl Harbor because of security. The trip to the U.S. East Coast was a cover story. His five mysterious passengers belonged to a Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team; SERTs were elite shadow warriors from among the Navy’s mobile combat construction battalions. They gathered unusual intell and did mind-boggling tasks at the forward edge of the battle area. Interesting.

Jeffrey was hereby promoted to the rank of Navy captain — the rank immediately below rear admiral. He was also awarded a second Medal of Honor for what he’d done in the Med, though this award was classified. There’d be no bright gold star, for the blue ribbon with small white stars already adorning his dressier uniforms, to denote the second Medal. But selection boards for rear admiral, Jeffrey reminded himself, would certainly know about it when the time came. Plus, Challenger’s whole crew had been awarded another Presidential Unit Citation, although this was also top secret outside the ship.

Good. Excellent. Morale will skyrocket.

He skimmed more. Once through the Bering Strait, gateway to the Chukchi Sea, he still would turn toward Canada. Then, in the ice-choked, storm tossed Beaufort Sea, above the Arctic Circle, Challenger would rendezvous with USS Jimmy Carter. Carter was an ultra-fast and deep diving steelhulled sub of the Seawolf class, uniquely modified with an extra hundred feet of hull length — room to support large special operations forces commando raids, plus “garage space” for oversized weapons and off-board probes.

Bell was being promoted to full commander. He’d take over Challenger from Jeffrey, who from now on was commanding officer of an undersea strike group consisting of Challenger and Carter; Bell and Carter’s captain would be his subordinates. To avoid confusion between all these different roles and ranks, Jeffrey was granted the courtesy title of commodore.