Choke Point

that’d be the end of us.”

Alicia knew he was right. She had felt the gut-tightening “human factor” when the ADCAP had been fired. Seeing how it was done on the sub rather than watching a launch in the lab tank ashore could help enormously in the design, in upgrading the Mark 50. A minute change could buy you that vital nanosecond. “I agree,” she told him. “That’s why I came along.”

Rorke realized then why she was tops in her field. It wasn’t just because of her mastery of physics and ocean dynamics. She was quick to concede a point if she thought you were right, not pigheaded like some of her male colleagues. Though obviously proud to have been the first child of a “blue-collar family,” as the Navy Times had put it, to work her way through college — the “icing on the cake,” as her father said, a Ph.D. from MIT — it was clear that, unlike other aspiring postdoctoral students, she wouldn’t allow her pride to stand in the way of admitting to a better idea from colleagues. It was one of the reasons, Rorke concluded, that she had been appointed senior scientist in charge of upgrading the Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes and the Mark 50, the revolutionary ship and air-launchable nine-foot-four-inch-long by 12.75-inch-diameter torpedo, which was half the size of the ADCAP and less than a quarter its weight.

“Well, Captain,” she told Rorke, “when you start using the 50B, you can forget all about the problems of wire guidance. It’ll be strictly ’shoot and scoot.’ No hanging about.”

“Great, but don’t we already have that with the present Mark 50?”

“Yes, but the 50B’ll give you fifteen more knots.”

Which meant it would have twice the speed of the ADCAP.

He was obviously impressed, and ushered her into the wardroom, where a sonar operator had taken in the reams of the two fired torpedoes’ telemetry printout for her perusal.

“Like a coffee, Doctor?” Rorke asked. “Hot chocolate?”

Alicia declined. The excitement and anxiety of the launch was all the stimulus she needed to stay awake. “May I ask,” she ventured coyly, “where we are?” Before he could answer either way, she added, “I’m guessing on the Nanoose range?” She was referring to the testing range east of Vancouver Island loaned to the U.S. Navy by Canada for firing and retrieval of dummy warhead torpedoes.

“Nope!” he said good-naturedly. “The Nanoose range is so full of sh — er, crap, miles of used wire and other Navy debris. Bangor had to hire Oregon Oceanics to clean it up. We’re nowhere near it. We’re west of Cape Flattery.”

“That’s off Washington State, right?”

“Right.”

“Most northwesterly point of the continental U.S.”

He raised his coffee mug in salute. “Were you on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ”

“Oh no,” she laughed. “No — I couldn’t stand the strain.”

“Ah, too bad.” He smiled. “I could have been your lifeline.” He said it jocularly but pointedly, sipping his coffee. Their eyes met. He saw her blush like a schoolgirl.

“Ah,” she stammered, “how long will it take to clean up Goose — I mean Nanoose — Island?”

He laughed; an open, breezy laugh. “Nanoose Bay.”

“What — oh yes, of course. Bay.”

Rorke shrugged. “Month or two. Hall, the guy who runs Oregon Oceanics, works pretty fast. Unlike most government contractors, he doesn’t soak the taxpayer. Ex-SEAL and SALERT. One of Freeman’s boys.”

Rorke could see Alicia hadn’t heard of either Freeman, the retired general, or Frank Hall, oceanographer extraordinaire. Or was she still trying to find her feet after his subtle but unmistakable pass?

“Freeman’s a tough old buzzard,” explained Rorke. “Ex-SpecFor warrior. Very unpopular in Washington, D.C. Has a nasty name for bureaucrats.”

“Oh?” Then, to show him she was no neophyte, blushing notwithstanding, she asked, “Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”

“No, ma’am. It’s not for the likes of you.”

“You mean I’m a goody-two-shoes.”

He paused, putting down the coffee mug. “Yes, ma’am, you are. You’re a lady.”

She was shocked. On a sub, she’d expected to be treated as an equal by the officers — she had a Ph.D. to make the point. But a lady. For a man who captained the most technologically advanced “weapons platform”—that is, “killing ship”—in the world, “lady” struck Alicia as delightfully old-fashioned. “Thank you, kind sir.”

He nodded appreciatively. “I’ll leave you to your work.” He glanced at his watch, as if in sudden need of an excuse to go. “We’ll be heading through the Juan de Fuca Strait soon, back to base.”

“Fine.” She hesitated, then followed him briskly down the corridor. “Thank you for letting me use your stateroom. I’d expected to have to—” She was flustered again. “Actually, I don’t know what I expected.”

“Doss down with the crew? Now that would’ve taken the edge off them.”

With that, he was gone, leaving her in the wardroom, staring at the seemingly endless printout of telemetry. She made a mental note that when she got back to the lab ashore, she needed to do another security check on all her lab personnel — a mandatory requirement for all department heads, ever since Hansen of the FBI had avoided such regular checkups to become the most infamous Russian spy in America’s history. And it would be a good excuse to check Captain Rorke’s file. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But was he engaged? Estranged? It wasn’t the sort of question you could ask the crew.

Though it had been a short exercise patrol, Alicia, toiling back in the wardroom with her telemetric data, had become attuned to the slight variation of sound in the sub that indicated a change in speed. Now it felt as if the Utah was barely moving. “Are we stopping?” she asked a steward who was cleaning up the wardroom.

“No, ma’am. We’re still underway, but we’re entering Juan de Fuca Strait. It’s always busy, but especially now that it’s fall.”

“How’s that?”

“There’s a lot of shipping,” he answered.

“There’s always a lot of shipping,” Alicia said, nonplussed, as she put down her marker pen to take a break from the rows of oceanographic data. “It’s one of the busiest waterways in the world.”

“Well, you know, it’s snakehead time. Asian smugglers bringing illegals across into Canada and the U.S. They try their luck starting springtime. Too cold in the winter. They’d freeze to death in those containers. It’s bad enough for ’em being locked in there for three weeks, with other containers stacked on top of them and all around them.” The steward picked up empty mugs and swiped the wardroom table with a chamois. “Some don’t come in container ships — try to sneak in on some rust bucket during the night with no navigation lights, no lights period. Figure that once they’re through the strait and get to where it widens into the funnel of Puget Sound, they’re home and away, get lost amid the myriad islands.”

Amid the myriad islands. Alicia was taken more by the steward’s vocabulary than by what he was telling her. She knew about the ongoing problem of illegals trying to slip into North America, with Canada being particularly known as the softest touch in the world for immigrants. It had harbored everyone from genuine refugees to Nazi war criminals and terrorists, but a steward who used a phrase such as “amid the myriad islands” was intriguing.

“Forgive me if I’m prying,” she said, “but have you always been in the Navy?”

“Yes, ma’am. From high school on.” He could see where she was headed — he’d been asked the same kind of question before. “I like what I do,” he explained. “I’m not really a people person. In this job I know exactly what I have to do. At the end of my watch, that’s it. Gives me lots of time to read. That’s what I like doing best.”

“Aha!” she said, smiling, folding her arms and sitting up straight-backed against the bulkhead in a mildly triumphant mood. It was a moment of exuberant empathy. “You’re one of us.”

“I’m no scientist, ma’am.” But Alicia knew he knew what she meant, and she knew she was flirting. She was surprised at herself, even mildly disapproving, but she was enjoying it. She didn’t lack confidence in her job, but she was essentially a shy person, her white lab coat ashore evoking a more impersonal, reserved impression — that of the cool, objective scientist who, if not devoid of emotions, kept them under tight rein. That is, until Rorke had showed up and—