“No. I’ll handle him.”
Newell glanced over at the photo. He’d already forgotten what Dick’s wife looked like. She was an attractive woman, and he couldn’t imagine why he’d forgotten that. Two kids, too. A boy and a girl. Perfect. Just like the Newells, except for….
“Fine,” Newell said. “Now, what I really wanted to talk about was the tension problem. We talked about it a few hours back and decided we’d chew on it first and come up with a team approach. And that’s what we need, Dick, a team approach, a united front to ease that tension.” He leaned forward enthusiastically, balancing the chair on two legs. “If we don’t go after it right now, Dick, there could be problems later. I don’t want to be counseling crewmen at the same time we’re coming up with a firing solution to take out a Russian boomer.” He shook his head defiantly and the chair banged down on all four legs. “That’s the way to get yourself sunk.”
Makin rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. Wayne Newell’s attitude was contagious. “I really have thought about it a lot, Captain, and there only seems to be one answer. I guess we’ve got to take the old-boy approach, sit down in each compartment and lay it all out again. Hell, we both have families. There’s no better way than to tell them how we feel about our own — explain that we’re all in the same fix.…”
“You’re right, you know, Dick. You always seem to have the right answer.” Newell nodded sagely. “Just like politicians, we’ll take our case to the people.” His blue eyes brightened. “There’s plenty of time, more than thirty hours, I’d say. What we need to do is get them mad, get them keyed up to get revenge for what’s happening on the surface.”
“They’re tired, too, Captain.”
“Understood. Work out a revised watch schedule for the next twenty-four hours so that everyone has a chance to rest. Better yet, have the chiefs take care of their own men and report back to you.”
“That’s the other thing I was going to talk with you about, Captain.” The executive officer rubbed his hands together again until he eventually lowered his chin to rest on his thumbs. “I thought you might be resting when I stuck my head in a while back, and I didn’t want to upset you then.” He pursed his lips and chewed on his lower lip again before he looked up. “Tommy Lott … he really seems to be near the edge. Chief Sanford came to me about it. It seems our chief of the boat is very upset … trying to get other people to listen to the tapes of that last Soviet boomer we sunk … says you can’t imitate a boat’s personality and he knew Nevada’s signature like he knew his own heartbeat. He served aboard her before he came to us, you know. He’s convinced we — somebody — made a mistake.”
“Well … that’s ridiculous!” Newell’s enthusiasm vanished as rapidly as it had appeared. His tone turned suddenly ugly. “You know that as well as I do.”
“I’m just passing it on for what it’s worth, Captain. Next to you, Tommy Lott is the one the troops listen to the most. His shit doesn’t stink, as far as they’re concerned. They respect whatever he says, and he’s right at the edge….”
“Then I’ll take the goddamn tape!” Newell snapped.
“Say again, Captain.” Makin’s hands were no longer occupied with themselves. The sonar tapes were a permanent part of the ship’s record — like the log — and they were turned over to COMSUBPAC for analysis when a sub returned to port.
“That tape, or tapes, of whatever the hell Lott’s yammering about — I want it.” He recognized the surprise in his XO’s eyes and tempered his next words. “I’ll listen to it with him, but we’re not going to do that with everyone hanging around us. He can point out whatever he wants directly to me, but I’ll have none of his upsetting the rest of the crew — not at a time like this.” Newell saw there was no change in Makin’s expression. “If he can convince me, we’ll break off this mission and attempt to establish communications of some sort with Pearl. But you see, Dick” — he was balancing the chair on two legs again, and leaning toward the other man—”we can’t afford any morale problems like that … not when our mission means” — his eyes widening—”everything.”
“I haven’t talked with him yet. I felt this had to be your decision, Captain.”
Newell wagged an index finger in Makin’s direction. “I won’t accept insubordination, Dick, not at a time like this. We may just have a new chief of the boat if Lott doesn’t see things my way.”
Dick Makin said nothing. His loyalty remained intact. But this was the first time he had experienced a twinge of concern about his captain.
Chapter Six
Ray Larsen’s fingers drummed, as before, on the worn tabletop. It was as if none of them had gone their separate ways after their last meeting. His piercing blue eyes skipped across each face before settling back on the fingers of his own large hand. They appeared capable of maintaining that steady beat without his cooperation. “I haven’t talked with many others — mostly C.O.’s and one or two staff types who know how to keep quiet — but they all looked at me like I had four eyes.” The free hand passed over his crew-cut red hair a few times. “The consensus was — impossible. No one could conceive of either equipment casualties or sabotage, not with more than a hundred men aboard.” The eyes once again circled the table until they settled on Mark Bennett. “Well?”
Bennett pursed his lips before he spoke, carefully choosing his words as he passed the question on. “Any new ideas from staring at that display of yours?” he asked Arrow.
The Pacific submarine commander shook his head. “Nothing yet. Something could come up any moment, I suppose — a new sound from a seafloor hydrophone, or maybe SURTASS might pick up something … who knows? My intelligence officer has a whole crew combing through every message from every station in the Pacific — ours and theirs, by the way — sniffing for something we might have overlooked. If he comes up with anything, we’ll be the first to know, but he doesn’t have the vaguest idea of what he’s looking for … or why.” He stared at the CNO’s fingers drumming on the table. The habit was an irritating one, and he toyed with the idea of saying so. On the other hand, he knew Ray Larsen kept a mental scorecard titled: Lack of Patience.
Robbie Newman had nothing to say. He was shaking his head slowly before the other three looked in his direction.
“But they’re goners,” Larsen concluded softly, nodding in private agreement with his own foregone conclusion, knowing none of the others would respond. “And we haven’t got the vaguest idea where or when or how. With all man’s knowledge at our fingertips, we overlooked something that we can’t understand.” His final words came in a whisper, and not one of the men at the table had ever heard the Chief of Naval Operations speak in that manner.
It was all part of an endless litany, an effort to expunge the tragedy from their hearts so that their minds could pursue each angle unemotionally. It was also a way of saying — let’s get on with it, tears won’t bring them back.
Bennett responded just as softly. “Two boomers would never go down at the same time due to an accident or malfunction … not like this. There’s no statistician alive who could find those odds no matter how long he banged away at a computer.” His voice rose. “One … yes. Two … no. They were attacked and sunk. It’s as simple as that. And there’s only one nation that would even attempt something like that.…”
“The first thing the President will say is — ’prove it.’” Newman was matter-of-fact in his conclusion. “And we can’t. How do you go about telling someone to stop sinking your submarines, better yet threatening them, if you don’t have a leg to stand on? No, Mark, we have to come up with something better than a simple conclusion. That’s too easy. Tell me how they sunk those boomers and I’ll break down the door to that Oval Office to tell the man about it.”