George had no problem recruiting Pappy.
Chapter 16
Three months later, after successfully completing Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) training, George Adams reported to the Commander Submarine Squadron 16 at the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia, to take command of the nuclear fleet ballistic missile submarine, USS Louisiana SSBN 743, Gold Crew. The Gold Crew immediately began preparations and training for the submarine’s next patrol under Captain Adams’s careful guidance. George was surprised how quickly and easily he became used to being called captain. After working to achieve it for over seventeen years, it just seemed natural.
As part of the preparations for deployment, each member of the crew had to undergo a strict security review — part of the Navy’s Personnel Reliability Program, otherwise known as PRP. The PRP review provided an excellent opportunity for Captain Adams and the XO to screen members of the crew and identify potential candidates to participate in the plan.
The XO sat in the captain’s cabin in a visitor’s chair next to the captain’s desk. He was bent over a large spiral binder, studying the detailed instructions for the PRP review. “As I understand it, Captain, the CO or XO must personally review the background report and interview each member of the crew prior to deployment.”
“That’s the way I read it, too. That should be perfect for identifying potential team members. Of course, we’ll have to follow up with informal interviews throughout the deployment.”
“I guess anytime we talk to a crew member, we should be sizing them up to see if they fit the bill. We basically have to whittle down the crew to about one-third of the normal ship’s complement.”
“That’s exactly right. But instead of thinking about who we can eliminate from consideration, let’s work it from the other side. We need to identify and recruit the best fifty crew members on this boat. But it’s more complicated than merely selecting fifty crew members with the right attitude. They also have to have the right skill set to be able to safely operate the boat for several weeks. That means we need to spread our recruiting efforts through all the departments and all specialties. I’ve given a lot of thought to the composition of the ideal team, and we need to strive to pull together a team as close as possible to the ideal team.”
George pulled a binder out of his desk and handed it to Pappy. “You’re my right-hand man, XO. Here’s a binder I’ve put together over the last few months with job descriptions of the ideal team. It will be our recruiting bible so make sure you have it memorized.”
“You’ve done a lot of work, Captain, so I guess it’s high time I earned my keep as well!” Pappy flipped through the pages skimming the job descriptions, then thoughtfully asked, “I can see how in certain departments, we might have situations where the most skilled crewmember is not necessarily the best fit in terms of attitude and reliability. What then?”
“Attitude and reliability come first. Make notes of every discussion that would impact our decision to disclose the plan to them. We have to be absolutely sure, before we tell anyone about the plan, that he or she will be favorably disposed to joining us. We can’t afford to have a whistleblower!”
“No, sir. You’re absolutely right. A whistleblower would ruin the entire plan and probably result in you and me going to prison for the rest of our lives.”
“That’s a certainty, XO. If they don’t shoot us.”
“They’d probably shoot us and send us to prison!” the XO joked. Both men laughed nervously.
“Okay,” the captain continued. “It’s time to get serious — real serious!”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“So other than having the right skills, being single, and having no encumbering family ties, what are we looking for in these team members?” asked the XO.
“Patriots first of all. And people who clearly understand the system is broken, and somebody needs to fix it. People of action who will accept that responsibility, rather than pushing it off on someone else.”
“All right. But I think we have a lot of people like that on the Louisiana. How do we narrow them down?”
“Well, we can certainly eliminate Muslims,” said the captain. “They’re too unpredictable. Muslims can’t even agree among themselves what their religion says about spreading Islam by the sword. As a result, you never know. Every Muslim is a potential radical.”
“I don’t know anything about that, but I agree Muslims are too unpredictable for this mission, given the world situation today. So who else?”
“New Age types.”
“New Agers? Why them? They wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“That’s just it. The New Agers are all peace and love, so it’s questionable whether they would have the conviction to push the button, if the time comes. What we need are members of a good old fear-based religion like Islam, but ones who are more predictable and reliable.”
“So who would that be?” asked the XO.
“Christians.”
“Christians? But Christianity is a religion of love, not fear. How do you get that?”
“I’ll explain it later. For right now, let’s just say Christians fit the bill.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how this is going to work. Religion is a sort of taboo subject. We can’t just go around talking to crewmembers about their religious beliefs.”
“That’s why I recruited the chaplain.”
“You’ve already recruited Lieutenant Lewis?” the XO asked incredulously.
“Yes. I reviewed Chaplain Lewis’s background and had the opportunity to feel him out on a number of subjects. I asked him a few ‘what if’ questions, and he jumped at the opportunity. He’ll be one of our most valuable members. He’s the only one who can legitimately go around and talk to people about their religious beliefs.”
“Wow! So we already have our third member!”
“Our fourth, actually. Petty Officer Leona Harris is also in, but she’ll be joining us later.”
“Petty Officer Harris? Who’s that? She’s not a member of the crew.”
“She was my yeoman on the SUBLANT staff. She has an incredible photographic memory for ship dispositions and numbers. She’ll be our eyes and ears on the inside while we’re on the run, and then she’ll join us later.”
“You mean a spy?”
“She’ll attend all the admiral’s briefings, and she won’t even have to write anything down — so there won’t be any evidence that she’s spying. She’ll remember every detail until she gets home. Then she’ll write it out and fax it to my cousin, Dwight, at his private fax at GenCon Construction Company.”
“Dwight?”
“Yeah, Dwight Belevieu — a good ol’ South Louisiana Cajun oilman.”
“Sounds interesting. So we have a fifth member! But how would we get the information from him?”
“The old-fashioned way. Dwight has an HF transmitter — like an old ham radio operator. He’ll encrypt it and transmit it to us every evening. At HF frequencies, the radio waves bounce off the charged layer of the ionosphere and come back down to the ground at distances up to two thousand miles away. You can control the length of the hop by varying the frequency.”
“Wow! So I guess we’ll be taking an HF radio along…”
“You got it. And the beauty of it is that the navy doesn’t monitor HF transmissions these days because it’s old technology.”
“It seems pretty sophisticated. Why doesn’t the navy use it?”
“Because it’s not very reliable. The ionosphere is real dynamic — it varies hour by hour. When it’s really charged up, you get a good bounce and the signal comes in real clear on the other end. But when it’s weak, you may not get any bounce at all.”