Charles Taylor: Boomer

“Like the movies, Captain.” The quartermaster who was leaning over the chart balancing on his elbows looked up over his half glasses. “If this was a good story, we’d know why we were going and what the enemy had done, and we’d be real mad at him.” His eyes went back to the chart.

“I see,” Newell grinned. “We lack drama.”

Makin shook his head. “More than that, Captain. No one knows why, or what’s happened so far. We’ve got no idea if our families are even alive. We’ve been sent off on two missions and we succeeded in sinking two enemy boomers. That’s great.” He rubbed his bald head as he searched for the words. “But we don’t have any idea if we’re helping to win the war … or if we’re just getting even….” His voice dropped off for a moment before he jabbed a finger at a point on the chart. “Right there, sir. That’s where they want us. Only about forty-eight hours away this time at max speed.”

“Fine. Give the OOD a course,” Newell said. “And then why don’t you come to my cabin. Maybe we can figure out a way to put everyone’s mind at ease.” He clapped Makin on the shoulder. “Then you need to get yourself a good sleep. I’m no good without an XO to make me that way.”

That was exactly the way Newell saw Dick Makin, as a perfect executive officer. If there were distant, faceless people who had created a perfect Wayne Newell, he had created a perfect XO. There was a photo of a wife and children that Makin kept, but Newell couldn’t remember how many youngsters there were. He’d met the family once, perfunctorily out of naval courtesy, after Dick reported aboard. And that was that. From then on he’d concentrated on turning the man into a perfect, faceless XO — so that the crew’s loyalty would be wholly directed toward Wayne Newell.

These visual displays! Giant ones, and so damn clear. Mark Bennett never ceased to be amazed by these electronic wonders. It all used to be done by hand, by men writing backward behind huge status boards. Now computers made it all so much easier. The entire Pacific basin covered much of one wall in the darkened room of SUBPAC operations. The flag lieutenant had done a fine job on short notice. While the room was always manned for emergencies, the only time it would ever be activated to this extent was that fateful moment when war began — and he sincerely hoped that someday this room would be part of a past marked by generations of peace, a museum piece remembering those tenuous, dangerous years of the past — like Churchill’s subterranean command post in London.

The locations of U.S. ballistic-missile submarines were marked by blue boxes indicating their sector assignments. Two of them were in high-speed transit from Bangor, Washington, to replace Alaska and Nevada. No one had ever imagined that such a gap could be opened in America’s strategic defenses! There were a lot more SSBN’s in the Atlantic because there were so many more Soviet targets close to Europe.

Attack submarines were blue X’s, as opposed to the red X’s for the projected tracks of their Soviet counterparts. The latter could be tracked for a while after they got under way, but it became impossible to stay on all of them forever if they didn’t want to be followed. Sometimes they seemed to wave a red flag — follow me — when they needed to draw the Americans away from something else. Bennett accepted those posits with a grain of salt.

There were symbols for various types of vessels, surface warships of other nations, merchant shipping, and a special flashing red one for the Soviet intelligence collectors. The Russians always had a few trailing the aircraft carriers, others checking progress of fleet exercises, and certain ones whose mission was impossible to ascertain. At this very moment there were numerous intelligence ships in various sections of the Pacific, ranging from tiny trawlers to the imposing SSV-516. American intelligence always knew where that one was. Mark Bennett also knew they didn’t have the vaguest idea about its mission at any given time.

The operating sectors for Alaska and Nevada jumped out at him in blue slashes, one north and slightly east of the other. Bennett rose from his chair and sauntered over to the display until he stood directly under the last known positions of the two boomers. When he stared up, his eyes riveted on those slashes, he had hoped for some wonderful insight to suddenly overwhelm him. But nothing happened. There was no mystical prescience he could tap, nothing that would bring their fate to him in a burst of clarity. No Soviet boat’s track gave even a hint of malice.

The intelligence collectors all seemed to be off on their own special missions, their tracks like that of a rabbit in the snow. Nothing solid there — except for that SSV-516.

She was that big one — the one the spooks were so excited about. They didn’t know what she could do, but they were excited by what they thought she might have aboard. Black boxes! That was another method of explaining away intelligence weaknesses. Heady stuff. Cloak and dagger. And all of it bouncing around the ocean….

Mark Bennett’s angular face, deep voice, and unruly hair were almost Lincolnesque. He was tall for a submariner, which was compounded when he bent slightly for doorways. On a submarine he seemed perpetually stooped, but the jokes about his size faded with the early talent he displayed.

Well, why not? Bennett decided. “Neil, I’m going to send some of our intelligence aircraft out to play with that Russian spook ship. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but maybe something will happen. It’s a start, at least.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any correlation,” Neil Arrow mused. “I thought about it and decided it was too far away from those sectors.”

Admiral Larsen listened to their conversation with interest but remained silent. He enjoyed watching others circle a problem. Even if his approach was unconventional, they sometimes provided him with the seeds for an idea.

“Black boxes, my friend. When you can’t figure out what they’re doing, you play craps.” Bennett looked at Neil Arrow and then over at Ray Larsen. “It’s a start. One thing we don’t want to do is let the Russians know we’re on to anything yet. If they’re sinking our boomers, you can be damn sure they’ll react if they think we’re the least bit on to them.”

That last comment struck a sensitive spot in Ray Larsen. The Chief of Naval Operations dictated Navy policy, but there were those rare times when it was also dictated to him. “I discussed that with the President not so many hours ago,” he remarked sourly. “There’s so goddamn many ifs involved here — if Alaska and Nevada are indeed gone for good, which is exactly what he said — if they were sunk by the Russians — if the Russians intend to take out more of our boomers, maybe here, maybe in the Atlantic, too — if their purpose is to unbalance our triad — if they intend to start shooting, or if they just plan to lay everything on the table and ask us to grab our ankles.”

There was no absolute proof yet to lay at the President’s feet. They knew, rather than sensed, that the two boomers were gone. But the man in the White House needed more than their inherent understanding of the situation before he used his tremendous power to threaten someone. He needed proof. All that the four admirals in all their wisdom could tell him was that the Russians seemed the only ones who could have accomplished what appeared to be an impossible feat.

Too often when the redheaded, crew-cut CNO spoke he had a disconcerting habit of pointing at his listeners with a large freckled hand. His index finger moved from one man to the next before falling back on Mark Bennett. “You can fly around that intelligence ship of theirs all you want, because we’re always sticking our nose around it anyway. But you can’t allow any overt moves that would make them think anything’s out of the ordinary. The boys at the White House are jabbing their boss in the ribs every time he tries to think by himself. Don’t do anything they can intercept electronically. Don’t try to search the areas visually. Don’t intimidate any Soviet units.” Larsen’s finger bobbed up and down as if he were scolding a child, and his blue eyes seemed to flash a warning, Ray Larsen had no idea he looked more menacing than his reputation, even among his peers, “Just don’t try … just use your head,” he concluded after realizing his old friend was already aware of everything he was saying.