Charles Taylor - Boomer

“Captain,” the young officer interrupted, “I really do need to talk to you.” His voice remained calm and unexpressive, in direct opposition to the harried expression on his face.

“Wally,” Newell responded irritably, glancing quickly in his direction for the first time, “perhaps you don’t understand. Let me try this in English,” he explained acidly. “We have a mission. There is a Soviet boomer to port that needs to be sunk, and she may have a watch dog guarding her.”

“Should I explain my problem right here?” They were standing alongside the periscope. Wally’s voice was a monotone. “It concerns us all anyway.” He wasn’t about to be put off.

Newell, one ear cocked, took a few steps in the opposite direction, trying to hear Steve Thompson’s voice from sonar. He couldn’t quite make out what was going on in there, but it was something new and he was curious. Snyder was only serving as an irritant. “Yeah, go ahead,” was the eventual response.

“We have no satellite communications, Captain.” He waited for a response before continuing. “We raised the antenna about forty-five minutes ago during our regular comm period and there was nothing … absolutely nothing.”

He had gained Wayne Newell’s attention. The captain’s eyes were riveted on his own.

“That’s right, sir. Zip … zero … squat….” His voice remained totally devoid of expression. Only his eyes now revealed the stricken look of a man who has known absolute fear. He had just imagined the world totally devastated, barren, devoid of….

“And you raised at the right time?” It had never occurred to Newell that the concept of war he’d worked so hard to establish would actually convey a picture of Armageddon to someone like Wally.

Snyder paid no attention to the question. “Our gear seemed to be working just fine. I don’t think it’s that at all. Maybe there’s no point in trying to blow anyone else out of the water, Captain. If there’s nothing left out there … no one to communicate with … then there’s no reason.…” His gaze settled on the deck as his voice faded.

The control room was absolutely silent. The normal soft chatter that was a part of a functioning watch had ceased altogether. Each man easily understood, in his own way, what Wally Snyder had concluded — the possibility that the war had expanded to the point where there was no longer any contact with SUBPAC could mean that their families were.…

“Mr. Snyder, that is absolute drivel.” Newell’s voice crackled with anger. “This is another one of your” — he glanced at the OOD and then around the control room. Every eye was fixed on the two of them—”tricks designed to create problems to disrupt our mission.” Everyone knew that the captain felt Snyder was creating as many problems for him as Chief Lott. And they’d seen what happened to Lott.

“I played around with some other frequencies, but they all sounded like they were being jammed. So, I asked the electronics technicians to dismantle the gear,” Snyder continued softly. “I thought there was something wrong before. You remember you wouldn’t believe me when I said so. And now we’re going to see. Otherwise … there’s nothing out there. No one. So there’d be no reason to continue.…”

Newell pivoted on his toes to face the comm officer. His arms hung loosely at his sides, his hands knotted tightly into fists. “You can’t secure that gear without my permission,” he shouted. His fists rapped against his thighs in an effort to maintain control. “You tell those technicians to get that gear back on the line immediately. Do you understand me?”

Snyder’s eyes remained on the same spot on the deck. “I got to find out about that radio. I think.…”

Silence, as deafening as it was inaudible, pervaded the control room. Not a soul was looking toward the two men, but they were the center of each man’s world at that moment.

“Mr. Makin, please escort Mr. Snyder to his quarters.” Newell’s voice was as calm now as it had just been on the edge of losing control moments before. “I want it placed in the log now that Mr. Snyder has been relieved of his duties for cause and confined to quarters until Pasadena reaches port or until I review his case. I will instruct the ETs to place the equipment back on line in the most efficient way possible. Do I make myself—”

“Captain!” Steve Thompson’s voice calling from the entrance to sonar overrode Newell’s angry reaction. Even Wally Snyder turned in his direction. “Target motion on the port contact is northwest about eight to ten knots. The other may be doing approximately the same—”

“Is that a boomer we have to port?” A smile of satisfaction overspread Newell’s face. His attitude had reversed itself completely. Even before he received the response, he was calling over his shoulder to the OOD, “Come left to an intercept course and increase your speed two knots to close him.” Then he was looking back at the sonar officer, who was staring at him uncertainly.

“Yes, Captain, most likely a boomer.…” Steve Thompson responded disconsolately. “Apparently employing a masking device — just like you said it would.” He glanced at Wally Snyder contritely for a moment before his eyes fell to the deck.

Newell’s eyes darted from Thompson to Snyder and back to the sonar officer again. Then he looked around the control room. Every eye was on him, waiting, wondering what his response would be. He could sense the sudden increase of stress, almost a latent hostility, as if the chief engineer had just reported a valve opened to the ocean.

The diving officer’s high-pitched voice broke the silence, “Watch your bubble,” he snapped to the bow planesman.

“XO,” Newell growled. He indicated Snyder with a slight nod of his head and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get his ass out of here. We’re going to make history.”

“Yes, Captain.” The executive officer placed a tentative hand on Wally Snyder’s elbow, but he found himself unable to look at the man he was about to remove from control.

The communications officer gently lifted Makin’s hand and let it drop. His eyes never left the gray deck as he shuffled out of the control room in front of Dick Makin.

The battle-stations team — his first team — had appeared after a short break without being noticed. Newell nodded in satisfaction to himself. With Snyder gone, the pressure appeared to drop in control. Each man seemed to have returned to his job, the confrontation with the comm officer forgotten. It was a comfortable feeling. Don’t allow a bad apple to spoil the whole basket! he muttered silently to himself. “Course to intercept?”

“Actually, just about due north, Captain,” the OOD responded.

“Very well, I’ll be in sonar with Steve for the time being.” He took one step toward the little compartment just forward of the fire-control consoles, then stopped. Newell folded his arms across his chest and fell deep in thought, clenching his lower lip between his teeth. When he spoke, it seemed to be to himself, yet it was also for everyone to hear. “We’re not fooling them this time, not a chance. Before, we were waiting quiet like a goddamn lion in a tree. Now we’re chasing ‘em down. And they’ll have their towed array streamed aft. It’ll pick us up eventually. Not a chance in the world to sneak up on them. We gotta be ready … decoys … the works. A dogfight, a real dogfight. Okay?” he ended in a loud voice. It sounded like a question.

There was an embarrassing silence before one of the planesmen responded without enthusiasm, “We’ll be ready. Captain.”

“Good … good,” Newell murmured. Amazing how you could turn things around with a few well-chosen words. Then, “Damn, I forgot those ET’s in radio … messing with that gear.” He pointed at the OOD. “You get them to put everything back together right now, hear? We’ll worry about communications after we paint one more Russian boomer on our sail. Stop ‘em right now, okay?”