Straits of Power

dock, a structure was being built from two-by-fours and thicker beams, and big sheets of a stiff but lightweight material, not plywood but something synthetic. Men and women in combat fatigues were climbing all over this structure, strengthening the framing of raw lumber, fastening the sheets to the frame. The thing was almost as long as Challenger, and some of Jeffrey’s crew kept glancing at it skeptically.

Jeffrey spotted his chief of the boat, whom everyone called COB. COB was a salty bulldog of Latino ancestry, from Jersey City. He was a master chief, the most senior enlisted person in Jeffrey’s crew, responsible for many aspects of keeping Challenger and her people in fighting form. Now COB was keeping a seasoned eye on loading, as weapons went through one hatch from a special crane, food went across from a truck to the ship on a conveyor belt next to another hatch, and spare parts went down a third hatch into the engineering compartment farthest aft. Crewmen stood on the pier, on the hull, and moved up and down the ladders inside the hatches, passing things and scurrying like ants.

“Hello, Skipper,” COB said. “Wel—”

COB was cut off by another power saw, whose screeching echoed inside the dry-dock hangar after it stopped.

“Welcome aboard, sir!” COB had to raise his voice above the hammering that didn’t stop.

“Who are those people?” Jeffrey pointed across the dock to the opposite pier, some eighty feet away.

“Seabees, they said.”

“What in tarnation is that monstrosity supposed to be?”

COB shrugged. “Looks like a cockamamie barn or something, sir. They wouldn’t tell me, so I let them alone.” COB had a sly sense of humor — in his early forties, he was the oldest man on Challenger. By age and title he held special privileges, and had repeatedly proven himself under fire in Jeffrey’s control room. COB was a plank owner too; he’d been involved in Challenger while she was still under construction. This implicitly gave him even higher status. “If it’s a barn, Captain, maybe it’s for target practice. Get it?”

Jeffrey groaned at COB’s awful pun.

COB joined Jeffrey in staring at the structure the Seabees were building. Enough of the near side was done that Jeffrey could see that those large, rectangular sheets came prepainted in different colors, mostly red or blue or green.

Jeffrey walked along the brow onto his ship, stood forward of the sail, and grabbed a bullhorn from one of his junior officers. The young man had been supervising the shutting of the vertical launch-system hatches, now that the dozen Tomahawks were stowed.

Jeffrey saw a master chief among the Seabees, talking to some of the workers.

“What is that?” Jeffrey projected his voice with the bullhorn.

No one across the dock reacted.

Jeffrey cursed under his breath.

“Master Chief! This is Captain Fuller of USS Challenger! What are you doing?”

The master chief turned and aimed a bullhorn at Jeffrey.

“Camouflage, Captain.”

“Camouflage for what?”

“For you, sir.”

Jeffrey went below and sat at the little fold-down desk in his stateroom. He read the portion of his orders he was supposed to know before getting under way. Further instructions, to be opened only later and in two stages, were contained in an inner, sealed pouch warning that its contents included incendiary self-destruct antitamper devices. Jeffrey was to now memorize the authorization codes he’d need to disarm these devices, then swallow the edible paper on which the codes were typed. One code was labeled for use as soon as convenient after submerging. A second was intended for after “Peapod occurred” or Jeffrey knew “Peapod would never occur.” Cagey wording, presumably the postextraction egress plan out of the Med. He duly memorized and swallowed, alarmed that small firebombs would be in his safe.

The immediate-action items were his required time of departure, 2200—ten P.M. — and the point for joining Ohio underwater. The rendezvous was southwest of Virginia Beach, down the coast and well out to sea. But the specified place was on the shallow continental shelf, which extended much farther out before dropping off suddenly to thousands of feet. Challenger would have to dive in water less deep than her length — which was 360 feet from bow dome to pump-jet cowling. This was usually forbidden during peacetime. It gave scant room for the slightest error: The ship might crunch into the seafloor, or be rammed by a deep-draft merchant ship. Both were nightmarish outcomes, but now, submerging early was a necessity. Caution had to be traded for strategic and tactical stealth. The sooner Challenger dived, the safer, in the larger sense, she’d be.

And the calmer the surface, the shallower the place where I can first dare diving at all, and the less we’ll be slowed getting there by having to fight the swells of a storm-tossed sea. Good reasons to leave in front of the bad weather.

Jeffrey grabbed his phone and called the control room.

“Control,” responded the lieutenant (j.g.) who was the in-port duty officer.

“Control, Captain. Find the XO and have him report to my stateroom.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The lieutenant (j.g.) hung up. Jeffrey locked his orders in his safe. A moment later, the 1MC, the ship-wide public-address system, blared, “XO, please report to captain’s stateroom.” Jeffrey shook his head in disapproval.

Bell arrived in a minute, very concerned.

“What’s the matter, Captain?”

“Nothing in that sense, XO. Get that kid’s head straightened out, will you? We have messengers for finding people. The 1MC is not a paging system.”

“Yes, sir,” Bell said sheepishly. He took full responsibility for the violation of standard procedure. “We’ve gotten a little sloppy, sir, spending so long in port.”

“Have the crew lose the sloppiness, smartly.” The XO was responsible for crew training and discipline.

“Yes, sir.” Bell was contrite.

“Lock the door.” Jeffrey asked Bell for a general status report. The reactor was critical in the power range and carrying ship’s loads, as ordered earlier.

“Excellent work, XO. Outstanding job. Give Willey and his department my compliments too. You might see him before me.” Lieutenant Willey was the ship’s engineer, a lanky and straight-talking man; Jeffrey had been an engineer himself, on his own department-head tour. He liked Willey and understood his perpetual air of intensity and his all-important fine attention to detail.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Parker and the SEALs all squared away?”

Bell explained the arrangements. Since he’d been sharing his XO stateroom, which had a fold-down VIP guest rack, with the ship’s sonar officer — Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom, on exchange from the Royal Navy — complicated sleep schedules were needed to accommodate another rider and an eight-man SEAL team. Some junior officers, like the most junior enlisted men, had to hot rack — share bunks — which was rather unpopular, but Challenger had done this before. There was no room for people to sleep in the torpedo room; the huge compartment was crammed to the gills with weapons.

Next, Bell overviewed with Jeffrey the ship’s other major systems and inventories, using Jeffrey’s laptop hooked up to the onboard fiber-optic local-area network.

“Good. Now, be careful how you act. I’m sure the enlisted people and junior officers got the feeling that something is up. I don’t want imaginations running wild, or a morale crash either. It’s bad enough they can’t know where we’re going till we get there.”

“Where are we going, sir?”

“After we submerge. We get under way at 2200. Pretend that’s when our nonexistent dignitary from Washington is due for his alleged inspection. Get done whatever needs getting done before then. Secure shore power and other shore connections now, except the telephone. A readiness drill, remember, and absolute radio silence…. Don’t let me keep you further. Thanks.”