Charles Taylor - Boomer

Wayne Newell had seen the girl before. She was cute, and she was one of the only females who bothered to watch his company drill, at least without carrying a sign demanding that the military get off campus. The maneuvers he ordered were simple — the company marched to the left, to the right, to the rear — and before she was quite aware of how it had happened, he had brought them to a halt and he was standing beside her.

“How would you like to be the color girl at our ball?” He gave orders for right face, at ease, and called out to his company, “How about it? Does she fit the description?”

They cheered.

She turned a deep shade of red.

“Then it’s settled. You’ve been honored. What do you say?”

She looked up at him for the first time. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

But she went to the ball — and fell in love with Wayne Newell.

It was the kind of story that Connie Steel loved. It was out of the storybooks, a true romance, and so different from the others that followed a predictable path either after graduation or shortly after the intense concentration on winning the submariners’ dolphins.

Ben Steel had met Connie the night the officers from his first boat were celebrating his new dolphins at the officers’ club. She was with a shore-based officer who’d become hopelessly drunk, and she was calling a taxi when Ben overheard her on the phone. “Please.” His hand covered the mouthpiece. “Cancel it. If I don’t have a date to take home, there’s no way I can leave this party early, and my friends are going to get me very drunk.”

“What’s the party for, Lieutenant?” She held the phone tightly, suspicious, lonely, and unsure of her answer.

“New dolphins … special honor, special party.”

“Who’s won the dolphins?” For some reason which she later realized was absolutely irrational, she trusted the submariners much more than the men ashore. Somehow they gave the impression of being a lot more serious. She later learned that ended with working hours.

Steel brightened. “Me.” He pointed to the shiny gold dolphins on his chest. “And it would really mean everything to me if you accepted, I hate hangovers … and I really would like to meet you. Honestly, my intentions are honorable … at least they are now.” He grinned, taking his hand off the mouthpiece.

“Cancel the taxi,” she murmured into the phone. “All right,” she said, placing it back on the hook and nodding in the direction of the private room where the party was going on, “but I insist on a formal introduction before I go into that madhouse with you.” She held out her hand. “I’m Connie.”

It wasn’t quite as romantic as the Newells’ introduction — maybe the movies had overdone that approach — but it was different. The two women became fast friends as soon as Stonewall Jackson left on the next patrol. Two months at sea was an eternity for a wife on shore.

The Newells and the Steels remained friends for their entire tour, the men more so because they worked together and it was convenient, the women because they too often shared a unique loneliness. It was a relationship that was pleasant while they were all together, but there was nothing to bind it permanently when they left for new commands. Connie wrote to Myra often that first year, and was disappointed when the responses grew more rare, until Ben assured her that it was more likely Wayne Newell’s attitude. Both men instinctively understood that Newell had little interest in maintaining relationships. He was friendly enough, respected others for their capabilities, and returned favors, but his job was his life. He preferred to maintain a polite distance. Eventually Connie understood, just as she gradually accepted other oddities concerning the Navy and its people.

Over the years, the two women remained casual friends-by-mail, until their husbands ended up commanding attack submarines homeported at Pearl Harbor. They found the ten years hadn’t hurt the enjoyment they found in each other’s company when Manchester and Pasadena were at sea.

The relationship that was to last from the days on Stonewall Jackson was between Ben Steel and his commanding officer, Mark Bennett. It was nurtured by the women because their husbands’ respect for each other sustained itself through the years. It grew until the younger man commanded Manchester and was chosen by his mentor, who had become the most senior submariner in the Navy, to battle an unknown enemy.

The sonar chief announced another distant contact. Steel squeezed his eyes tight and strained for that mostly inaudible sound. It was next to impossible to continue his musings about the old Stonewall days at the same time. The mental images of Connie and the girls faded rapidly, and he said a silent little prayer for their safety as Manchester plunged ahead through the black Pacific waters.

Was the Kremlin conference room excessively hot, or was it just his imagination? The General Secretary dabbed at the perspiration on his upper lip, then ran the handkerchief over his bald head. The cloth came away damp. Damn! He should have known better than to drink that much vodka earlier in the evening. Wasn’t it all just a simple matter of age? He couldn’t handle it like he used to, and sooner or later he was going to have to admit it. But at times like this….

“… and our intelligence operatives in Honolulu,” the KGB head continued, “still haven’t located the American admirals. However, there has been an increase in message traffic between Washington and Pearl Harbor, peaking at approximately twenty-seven percent over the past twelve hours. Also, their Trident base in the state of Washington was included almost fifty percent more as an information addressee than in the preceding six months. The codes being used are unusual for even highly classified operational traffic, and we have reason to assume that one-time codes are being employed.”

“Stop!” The General Secretary’s voice cracked like a shot through the Kremlin room. “I have no interest in that garbage. Answers, all I want is answers. Keep the details to yourself.” A mild headache had commenced earlier behind his eyes and was now pulsating toward the back of his skull. KGB percentages had a great deal to do with magnifying what should have been bothersome, like too much vodka, but it shouldn’t have been so irritating. There was no need to snap like that. Vodka hadn’t contributed to discomfort of this nature in the past, at least not to this extent. “My only interest is the content of those messages. There are others to worry about the extent of message traffic and explain its meaning. We all know why this is happening, so tell us what will result.” The anger in his voice was controlled but still evident.

“As I explained, their coding has created some problems and—”

“I came here at your request,” the General Secretary interrupted. “I left the comfort of my home after spending a long day here because there was a grave emergency, as far as I could gather from your phone call. That home was very comfortable. I’m no less tired than I was then.” The look in the General Secretary’s eyes was an unusual combination of impatience and outright displeasure. “A plan designed by men who no longer appear at this table has finally been activated. Those originators are either dead or sitting in front of a fire with a blanket over their withered knees, waiting to die. So please don’t tell me about percentages. Just tell me exactly what the Americans are doing now.”

It was the question they’d all anticipated, and each man at that table appeared momentarily lost in his own thoughts as the KGB head stared wordlessly back at his senior. Their reaction was automatic. To head the KGB no longer meant automatic invincibility. They were remembering the words the General Secretary had uttered earlier that day, no more than an expansion of what he had been saying for the past couple of weeks — they were a government so steeped in the past that they could only complete that which had been designed by an earlier generation of bureaucrats. And to compound that, their own decisions were doomed to be carried out by a succeeding generation, unless the system was radically altered.