Seas of Crisis

“Nav, when do we pass through five-five north, one-seven-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 complete his final trip without becoming a victim of friendly fire.

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 a small act of defiance against those seniors who’d used him, drained him, and cast him aside when the going got too rough, Jeffrey stood and opened his safe.

He withdrew the bulky envelope. It contained an 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 well, subs could be sunk during 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 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. The envelope opened safely; he emptied it onto 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 rank above commander. The actual rank of captain, not just the courtesy title that every warship’s skipper received. Jeffrey snatched the hard-copy orders and read as fast as he could.

His entire demeanor changed. He realized that his mind had been playing nasty tricks, in the vacuum of feedback from above, running toward doldrums that were probably a symptom of his own lingering reactions to the traumatic events in the Med.

Challenger’s trip to the U.S. East Coast was a cover story. Five mysterious passengers, embarked at Pearl, belonged to a Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team; SERTs were elite shadow warriors from among the Navy’s mobile combat construction battalions. They gathered unusual intel and did mind- boggling tasks at the forward edge of the battle area. Interesting.

Jeffrey was hereby promoted to the rank of Navy captain. He was awarded a second Medal of Honor, 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 the selection boards for rear admiral, Jeffrey reminded himself, would certainly know about it when the time came. Challenger’s whole crew had been awarded another Presidential Unit Citation, although this was also top secret outside the ship. Excellent. Morale will skyrocket.

Once through the Bering Strait, gateway to the Chukchi Sea, he still would turn toward Canada. In the ice- choked, storm-tossed Beaufort Sea, above the Arctic Circle, Challenger would rendezvous with USS Jimmy Carter. Carter was an ultrafast and deep-diving steel-hulled sub of the Seawolf class, uniquely modified with an extra hundred feet of hull length. This gave her room to support large special operations 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 these different roles and ranks, Jeffrey was granted the courtesy title of commodore.

Jeffrey read further into his orders, more slowly now to absorb every detail. Crucial portions of the mission required that two submarines be involved, but there was much more to it than Challenger and Carter together having greater firepower while covering each other’s backs. This piqued Jeffrey’s curiosity; no explanation was given of what it meant. Even more cryptically, Jeffrey was told to brush up on the Russian he’d studied in college, and to practice his poker face. The SERT passengers would help him on both counts, starting right away. His eyebrows rose, involuntarily, as he took this in.

After the rendezvous and a joint briefing to be held aboard Carter, he would lead his two-ship strike group westward, into the East Siberian Sea — Russian home waters. His assignment, the orders warned, was to do something draconian, and utterly Machiavellian, that would decisively force Russia to stop supporting the Axis against America while Moscow outwardly kept claiming legal neutrality. Specifics were inside that inner envelope, to be opened only once the rendezvous was made.

This was exactly the sort of high-stakes mission his command personality needed and craved. Revealing the whole plan in stages, for security, was something he’d gotten used to.

Yet one thing puzzled Jeffrey. For this mission, he came under the control of Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, an Air Force four-star general. In the present wartime military organization, that general oversaw the readiness and possible use of America’s thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs. Challenger carried no H-bombs, and never had. Her nuclear torpedoes bore very low yields, a single kiloton maximum. H-bombs had destructive power a thousand times as large, and their vastly greater radioactive fallout drifted globally.

The Axis, shrewdly, owned no hydrogen bombs and made sure the whole world knew it. This kept America from escalating past tactical atomic fission devices set off only at sea — not that anyone sane in the U.S. would want to further escalate this war.

Jeffrey began to suffer a rising unease. Why am I suddenly reporting to Commander, U.S. Strategic Command?

Chapter 2

Jeffrey stood to move around and stretch, breathing in and out slowly, to relax. There were important things to discuss. He returned to his desk, shoving everything back into the orders envelope but not resealing it. He grabbed his intercom and dialed the control room. He no longer felt so cold. He felt as if his blood burned and every neuron fiber tingled.

“Messenger of the Watch, sir.”

“Get in here, son, soon as you can.”

“Right away, Captain.” Jeffrey could hear him jump to attention at the steel he’d put in his tone this time.

The messenger arrived in seconds. The captain’s stateroom was only a few paces aft of the rear of the control room. Jeffrey told the messenger to come in and shut the door.

“Yes, sir.” The kid wore the blue cotton jumpsuit that was universal garb among enlisted submariners on patrol, and was also popular with most officers. He was typical of many in a fast-attack sub’s crew: eager and honest and open, a devoted team player, with the bearing of a techie since every job on the ship required strong technical skill. This young man had a large Adam’s apple, and wore eyeglasses — as did about a third of Jeffrey’s people — adding to the effect of a likable warrior-nerd. He was apprehensive at first, then quickly picked up on the new electricity radiating from his captain.

“Find the XO and tell him I want to see him in ten minutes. Also the Nav.” Bell, and Sessions.

“XO and Nav in ten minutes, aye, sir.” Messengers were trained to repeat things back, to avoid mistakes.

“Then go find the one of our passengers named…” Jeffrey hesitated. He wasn’t positive how to pronounce it. The five strangers had come down the airlock ladder, after the minisub from Pearl Harbor docked, wearing enlisted dungarees and work shirts, as if they were pierside hands. There were no markings on their sleeves to show their rates — enlisted rank — or their ratings — enlisted specialty — but up close they were clearly too old and hardened to be raw recruits. They hadn’t even brought luggage, except for whatever they fit inside a single canvas tool bag.