The sound of hydraulics clunked as the snorkel mast came up. The forward part of control was hectic for a few moments as the ship control team lined up the system to suck air into the ship from the surface above so that the emergency diesel generator could sustain the ship’s survival electrical loads while the nuclear reactor was down.
“Commence snorkeling,” Tarkowski ordered.
“COMMENCE … SNORKELING!” rang out over the ship wide PA. circuit, just prior to an earsplitting roar from the decks below as the massive emergency diesel engine came up to full revolutions.
“Let me look,” Murphy said to Tarkowski, who was still doing slow circles on the number-two periscope.
Murphy took the periscope, putting his right eye on the rubber eyepiece, the sharp blue of the Pacific coming into sharp focus, the gentle waves coming toward the cross haired view, the sky and clouds above a beautiful seascape. Murphy smiled, wondering what could be better than command at sea, command of one of the most remarkable nuclear submarines ever built.
CHAPTER 2
The Cabinet room was frigid in spite of the broiling May afternoon sun streaming in through the tall windows facing south to the White House lawn. Admiral Richard Donchez suppressed a shiver as he crossed his arms over his ribbon-covered chest. Donchez was in his mid-fifties, young to hold the rank of full admiral.
He was slim as a midshipman but completely bald, his head shining in the bright lights of the room’s chandeliers. As if to compensate for his lack of hair, his eyebrows had grown bushy with age, gray mingling with black. His dark eyes were set between rows of smile-wrinkles from years of squinting out a periscope.
Donchez’s submariner’s dolphins sparkled above his ribbons — solid gold, a present from a family friend when he had received his fourth star.
Donchez was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Forces, CINCPAC, and as such had three main subordinates — the commanders of the Pacific Fleet’s surface, air and submarine forces. Vice Admiral Martin Steuber, the man on Donchez’s right, was Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet, COMSUBPAC. In Donchez’s opinion Steuber was under qualified for the job; he could name a dozen men more suited to commanding the Pacific Fleet’s submarines, but at that level the Navy, Congress and the Department of Defense had more say in promotions than the Navy’s officers. Politics. The way things were.
Steuber was thin and balding, with large brown rimmed glasses perpetually perched on the tip of his nose. In Donchez’s memory Steuber had never worn any expression except a tight-lipped frown. Donchez was tired of the man. When they had flown together from Pearl Harbor the night before, Steuber had tried to chat the whole damn flight, repeating his theories about the Chinese Civil War and how the Communists were going to win the struggle against the insurgent White Army. He didn’t say why and Donchez didn’t ask. He realized, though, that the Chinese crisis undoubtedly was the reason President Dawson had called them to Washington.
As Donchez waited for the President to arrive, he stared out over the lawn at the row of helicopters parked on the grass. Finally the room’s north door opened and Dawson and the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State entered. Newly elected, President Bill Dawson was a big man with a distinct paunch.
Known for his casual style, Dawson wore no jacket and his tie was drawn to half mast below an open shirt collar. His sleeves were rolled up and slight traces of sweat began to show under his arms in spite of the cool of the refrigerated room. He plopped down now into a seat in the middle of the table on the side facing the windows, smiled and opened a briefing file.
On Dawson’s right was Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson, an ex-Navy aviator admiral who had been a POW in Vietnam. Fergy, as he had been called during his days as a pilot, was arguably the best Secretary of Defense in the last half-century, Donchez thought, well known for his devotion to the troops, the grunts who did the military’s real work.
On Dawson’s left was a unique hybrid — Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, the most powerful of the three female members of the Cabinet. The Secretary was in her late forties, attractive and model-thin, with a striking high-cheekboned face. The wife of a former House of Representatives Majority Leader, Eve Trachea had begun her rise to Cabinet level only two years earlier during the campaign, when her effort had been viewed as the reason for winning states assumed to be opposition strongholds.
President Dawson had given her the job at State partly out of political obligation, but also out of respect for her organizational abilities, and after a few months at State, named her to the position of National Security Advisor.
For Donchez, Eve Trachea was a worrisome pacifist who seemed to pride herself on the conviction that war was, finally, obsolete and that all of mankind’s conflicts could be solved by diplomacy. Well, Donchez thought, the China crisis might give her reason to rethink that notion. Trachea seemed to have Dawson’s ear in a way Napoleon Ferguson did not and her abilities made her pacifist views especially dangerous.
Across from President Dawson sat Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Kent. Kent, fifty-three years old, was short and wrinkled beyond his years, his neck too thin to touch his shirt collar, his voice tremulous and high-pitched. But in spite of his small physical presence, he cast a long shadow. He was so highly regarded in the intelligence community that he was held over from the previous administration. Kent was rare for Washington, a highly placed official who cared nothing of partisan politics. In all the Kent briefings Donchez had ever attended the analyses had never contained any political spin. Kent was known for insisting that the President and policy makers see both sides of any issue. He never gave his personal opinion unless asked for it — he usually was asked - and his opinion was usually dead on. Kent and Dawson exchanged pleasantries for a few moments. Then Kent got up and the dozen men in the room turned their attention to the end of the room near the fireplace where Kent stood. Kent worked keys on the podium, shutting the room’s heavy curtains, dimming the lights and drawing the curtains on a screen behind him. He clicked on a slide, a map of China flashing up on the screen. He opened a file on the podium, checked his notes.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President, gentlemen,” he started, then added, “Ms. Trachea. This brief concerns the situation in China, at least what we know if it.”
He turned to look at the projected image of the Asian continent, dominated by the area of China. The map was multicolored. Much of the southwest and east coast of China was colored white, with the Beijing area and northeast provinces colored red. Donchez glanced at President Dawson, whose smile was gone, replaced by a frown now that the room was shrouded in darkness.
“As you can see by our extrapolation here,” Kent went on, “the Nationalist White Army of the New Kuomintang, the NKMT, now seems to be closing in on Communist Beijing. Unfortunately, this evaluation is little more than a guess, since intelligence out of China has slowed to a trickle ever since the White Army broke out of Xi’an. Ever since the early days of the Civil War journalists have been expelled by both Communist and rebel forces. The Communists have their normal allergy to open reporting. The NKMT is probably worried that news reports would give Beijing free intelligence. Most of you have heard this, but this morning Maria DeLavelle of the “Good Morning USA’ show was executed by the Red Guards outside of Beijing. She was charged with violating the Western Media Expulsion Order.”