Charles Taylor - Boomer

“Tommy, I’d never hear them,” Sanford protested. “I’m sorry I said anything about—”

Lott was on his feet. “Come on. Right now. Let’s go down there. I’ll tell you what to look for. I don’t know how anyone can reproduce sounds like that. You can imitate cavitation. You can imitate the standard sounds any boat makes. But each boat has its own personality.” He leaned forward with his hands on the table and glared down at Sanford.

“Perhaps they’ve recorded our signatures — you know, got it down to a science …” the other began weakly.

“If the Russians can’t quiet their own boats properly, how come they’re suddenly so damn good at designing masking equipment which makes them sound just like our own boats that they can sail away after a friendly bubble or two in the water?” His last sentence seemed to run together in a single phrase. He continued to stare at Sanford, waiting, almost daring him, for a response.

“Now, Tommy, I understand what’s bothering you.” He knew Lott had been chief sonarman aboard Nevada in her first gold crew. As a plank owner, Lott still retained an emotional attachment to her and the men who’d served with him. It was disconcerting to see the father-confessor of the boat on edge like this. “Believe me, I do. But you’ve got to loosen up. We can’t allow the best set of ears in the fleet to have a nervous breakdown.…”

“The best set of ears is still the best set of ears.” Lett looked at the other two men for the first time and saw the same look of concern that Tim Sanford had. His eyes returned to his friend, and he saw that Sanford was patiently waiting for him to say whatever he felt was necessary. There was no tension in Tim’s face, none of the anger that Lott knew was lurking just below his own surface. He sat back down. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to worry about, Tommy….”

“But what would you say if you found out we’d been conned and those were real American boomers we’d sunk? Bud Perini and Charlie Javier were on Alaska. You knew Tony Aldo was still on Nevada. Christ, who else.…” He silently began to tick off other individuals on his fingers who’d been aboard Nevada with him.

“They still are,” Sanford said. “The captain was warned well ahead of time about this new device the Russians are using. Remember, he used the IMC to announce it to the crew before we ever gained contact, so there’d be no surprises.”

One of the other chiefs, a machinist, spoke up for the first time. “You know, Tim, one of my first class said that another sonarman was just as concerned the other day as Tommy. They were talking about it during chow. It really is eerie as hell — this masking device, or whatever the hell it’s called. A lot of troops on the boat are talking about it. Everyone has a buddy aboard one of those boomers. Just imagine—” But he never had a chance to finish.

“Battle stations … all hands man your battle stations.…” The IMC echoed through every space on Pasadena.

It was a false alarm, set off by a sound that had traveled a tremendous distance across Pacific waters through some freak of nature and been picked up with the sensitive ears of Pasadena’ s passive sonar system. It could have been a hundred miles away, or even three hundred. As Pasadena continued toward her next target, the sound faded forever and the crew returned to their work. But it was not the victorious crew that Wayne Newell wished for. It was a curious, introspective crew who worried about the fate of their families in a war they had been told was raging on the surface, and who were equally concerned about their friends sailing aboard American boomers.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics requests the pleasure of your company at the skyburst of America’s initial multiple-reentry vehicle, courtesy of a Trident D-5 missile now less than forty minutes outside of Moscow. Smoked glasses will be issued to protect the eyes of those who might survive… .

The General Secretary snickered silently to himself. The only sound in the room was the voice of the evening newscaster in the background. If anyone had seen his face, there would have been no alteration in his expression as he considered how hilarious that invitation might be to another generation, one not attuned to anticipating a devastating nuclear exchange with the Americans.

He looked over to his wife on the off chance she might have noticed this weird, silent little joke with himself. Married people got like that after a while. They could tell when the other was happy or sad, introspective or carefree, tired, hungry … every sensation a human being might experience. He reflected on their relationship over the years. That was one of the most pleasant aspects of their marriage, seemingly an extrasensory experience — not the ability to read the other’s mind, but a sense of how the other felt. It was a benefit he had not expected, and one that he relished as he grew older.

It was wonderful to have her there, even when she quietly watched the television news and forgot that he was present. There was a feeling of warmth, of security perhaps, which he could not define, but understood without putting it into words. He poured another small glass of vodka from the bottle set in ice. The liquid was thick and reddish-colored and gave off a faint background aroma of the hot peppers that flavored the drink. Pertsovka was his favorite. The aroma, not an especially strong one when the vodka had been in the freezer for so long, tickled his nose.

Each gulp, if he helped himself to some of the smoked fish between drinks, provided a variety of sensory pleasures within a few seconds. First, there was the icy velvet liquid on the tongue — was it the sensation of fire or ice? Which was followed by the first spark of hot pepper on his tongue, then the definite heat on the back of his throat as the vodka warmed on the way down. The arrival in his stomach was the grand finale, like the single, powerful thud on a bass drum as the alcohol and pepper combined for a searing punch that rose back up his throat with hedonistic impact. Whatever man had decided to combine these two stimulants was indeed wise!

The General Secretary had enjoyed more than his normal allocation of pertsovka that evening. Normally wary of alcohol whenever there was tension in the Kremlin, he’d violated his principles that evening. If his dear wife noticed, she said nothing. That was another wonderful part of her makeup — she allowed him the rare privilege of being nothing other than her husband when he returned to their apartment on those rare evenings he could avoid the affairs of state.

When he plunked himself down in his favorite easy chair with that air of exhaustion that came with the job, she always gave him a kiss on the cheek, sometimes a pat on the shoulder, just to remind him that she still loved him. It was simple reinforcement, nothing more, oftentimes providing reassurance to the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Then she would bring out the vodka and fish. It was a warm, wonderful ritual which only the two of them understood. There was no doubt in her mind that he would talk when be was ready to carry on a normal conversation. She could wait. And when he was ready for dinner, on those rare occasions he wasn’t attending a state function, she would prepare something in the tiny kitchen. It would always be simple and easy to do, but it meant much to him. He loved anything that didn’t taste of government chefs.

Although she did note that her husband was drinking more vodka than usual, she said nothing. The news had been full of the recent transgressions of the United States against third-world countries, leading her to assume that’s what had been troubling him. But now there was a segment on the athletes training for the Winter Olympics. She loved anything on ice, the fragile beauty of the figure skaters, the grace of the ice dancers, the power of the speed skaters, the violence of the hockey rink. If her husband felt the need for an extra glass or two, she felt he deserved it. If he had one too many, she even looked forward to his habit of coming up behind her chair, kissing her on the cheek, and slipping one of his rough hands down the front of her dress. Though she counted the days until he would turn his responsibilities over to a younger man, she loved those moments when the man she had always loved escaped for a few moments — even if he sometimes needed a few vodkas to find himself.