“You’d much rather have him around than me, wouldn’t you?”
The dog rose to its feet and came over to nuzzle her hand.
“But you’ll take any affection you can get,” she said, scratching behind his ears.
Once the fingers slowed down, the animal plunked itself on the floor and scratched. Myra moved across the room to the sofa and sat down, running a finger across the surface of the coffee table. No dust. Then she remembered that she’d run a cloth across everything just that morning. Jack Tar noticed she was seated and trotted over to rest his head in her lap, liquid brown eyes looking up at her, his ears forward to indicate pleasure.
“Any port in a storm,” she murmured, smoothing the fur on top of his head, then scratching his ears with both hands. “Do you miss him?”
The dog continued to look up, ears cocked. Each time she spoke to Jack Tar, he acted as if he understood every word, He was a friend, those deep brown eyes always sympathetic to this understanding voice.
Was it unhappiness at times like this, or was it just insecurity, that forced Myra to dwell on past situations? Her thoughts, as always when she was alone, returned to the last time Wayne was with them. It was becoming an obsession, and she was intelligent enough to be irritated by this control over her mind. Damn. She was growing less enchanted with this game, this habitual process, wishing something else — anything, anything at all — would occupy her mind. But her life was too often divided into two distinct worlds, the lonely one when he was at sea and the tense one when he was home.
Pasadena had been alongside the tender for an extended availability the last time, so it had been a longer stay. The first three weeks hadn’t really been so bad. Wayne had been fairly easy to get along with. He was still as tense, of course, still bringing the boat’s problems home with him each day. But he’d appeared as relaxed as he’d ever been. Charlie probably had more of his time because they could throw a football together, and twice Wayne took him fishing.
His daughter, as always, wasn’t as lucky, Kathy had the misfortune to be a female child growing up. She was also becoming quite attractive. At the age of fourteen she had naturally wavy hair, a clear complexion, and her figure was blossoming. Wayne Newell was more conscious each day of her rapid maturing. As much as he loved her, as much as he tried to accept this natural process, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Each time Pasadena returned to port, Kathy was a different girl, a little more the independent teenager, hair a little longer, perhaps another touch of makeup — no longer his little girl.
While Charlie could go just about anywhere on his own, Kathy had to account for every minute outside the house. When a date came to their door to pick her up, Wayne treated the boy like one of his sailors, quizzing the youngster about every moment of their evening until Kathy left in tears one night.
The second three weeks at home, Wayne’s conversations with Kathy grew more limited. When he spoke to her, it was to complain or correct — her manners, her grades, her attitude, her clothes, her lipstick, her boyfriends. It became a litany that gnawed at the household itself, until all of them were on edge.
When Myra confronted him with the damage he was causing, it was the first time he’d ever lashed out at her so vehemently. He shouted and cursed and gave every indication that he might actually strike her, though it never happened. He apologized sincerely the next morning, ashamed enough of himself to ask her forgiveness.
It was one of many personality quirks she observed that year. None of them were new, none of them even enough to drag out in the open. Each by itself was minor, but taken together they troubled her greatly. She loved Wayne Newell, but she saw his work — though she later determined that perhaps it was more him than the Navy — changing him into another individual.
It was all so subtle at first that she was sure it had to be his work — the rigors of Navy life — that was gradually taking him away from them. It couldn’t be another woman. He had no time to cultivate another relationship. But others had seen it, too.
Dick Makin mentioned it casually at a party one night. It was an XO’s responsibility to understand everything about his captain, and he was doing what he had to do, asking if his captain’s wife had also noticed the man wholly responsible for a nuclear submarine was changing. She said little, answering only that she thought Wayne seemed to be working too hard. But she knew Dick saw the answer in her eyes, and she understood when he hugged her that night at the door and said—”I’ll take care of him out there for you.”
Myra could feel the tears coming to her eyes, and she struggled to hold them back, ashamed to admit that she could actually think herself into such an emotional state. She had to be stronger than this if she was to hold their marriage together. Dick Makin couldn’t do that for her. And with that thought, she lost her composure completely.
No communications with SUBPAC!
The word — any word … whatever word might be hot at the time — was sure to spread through a Navy ship like wildfire. In a submarine, where men were more confined and quickly learned to depend on each other, the word moved even faster. The fact that Wally Snyder had reported to the captain that communications with the outside world had ceased, that there were no messages, nothing, when they last rose to periscope depth, troubled each man in a different way. They had no idea that their communications with the outside world had been totally under the control of SSV-516. When the link connecting her with the satellite was destroyed, Pasadena was completely cut off because the other circuits were being jammed. Moscow had failed to consider such an accident. They also had never considered how it would affect submariners who thought the world above them was at war.
How many days had they been under this stress? When did the conflict actually start? And where? They were unaware of any actual declaration of war. Was the Soviet Union the only enemy? Did it all begin in Europe, as the experts had anticipated? Did the Warsaw Pact nations pour hundreds of thousands of troops through the Fulda Gap to deluge the NATO countries? Or had it come down to threats between the two superpowers which eventually escalated to a missile exchange?
They knew only what they had been told. The captain of a submarine not only holds each man’s life in his hands, he also controls the minds of his crew. Their information comes at his sole discretion. Wayne Newell was both their leader and Pasadena’s propaganda minister. Whatever he chose to tell them had to be accepted, of necessity, as gospel.
He had told them that America was in danger. He had told them that Pasadena had been selected for a vital mission that just might save their country and their loved ones. One hundred thirty of them had functioned as one for him, sinking two Soviet boomers — even though they gave every indication of being American — because he had released classified information to them about a horrifying masking device the Russians had invented to confuse them. And he had accepted the lonely responsibilities that came with his position when challenged by members of the crew — Newell placed those who questioned his absolute authority as captain under ship’s arrest and confined them before they could contaminate the rest of the crew with their mutinous ideas.
With each fearsome dollop of knowledge that came to them, they continued to hold together as one, accepting the fact that “they must face a lonely challenge with bravery, as so many of their seagoing forebears had done through the centuries.” Those words had been a bit much for some of them, especially the older ones, but they were willing to be led. Their captain had successfully inspired his crew with that tradition, and they were proud of themselves in facing such adversity. Their minds were controlled by one man, and they had to place their trust in him. They had no other choices, no options.