Either way she had to be moving north, and Castillo thought she’d be going slow and quiet.
He would find her.
But until then he was going to get some sleep. The hunt for Kirishima had been grueling; Castillo had gotten only four hours of sleep in the last thirty. He had left orders with the OOD to wake him immediately if Sonar detected the Typhoon but otherwise he was going to grab a couple hours of much needed rest.
Someone rapped on his stateroom door.
Castillo looked daggers at the gray hatch and then he sighed. “Come.”
Senior Chief Ezekiel Washington poked his head in. “Sorry to bother you, Captain, but I was wondering if I could have a few minutes?”
“Of course.” Castillo gestured at one of the two straight-backed steel chairs that graced his stateroom. The cob closed the hatch behind him, and sat down. Castillo settled into the other chair.
Pasadena had three lay readers, a Catholic, a Mormon, and a Southern Baptist, but the chief of the boat was as close as the submarine came to having a priest. The cob’s job was to look out for the welfare of the crew, to use his experience to smooth over the kind of conflicts that inevitably arose when men were tired, under pressure, and living on top of each other. A good cob was worth his weight in gold. This was Castillo’s first deployment on Pasadena, but near as he could tell after two months, Ezekiel Washington was one of the best.
If the chief of the boat needed to talk to him, he would make time to listen.
“What can I do for you, Senior Chief?”
The cob dragged his hand across the smooth, chocolate skin of his skull. “Captain, I have an¼observation. I was wondering if I could talk to you about it, man to man?”
Castillo nodded. “Of course. Some kind of problem with the crew?”
Washington tilted his head to one side and fixed Castillo with his wise, brown eyes. “More a problem with the submarine.”
Castillo frowned, but said nothing.
Washington spread his hands out. “When Rickover fathered the nuclear navy he had to be worried about accidents, nuclear accidents. So he created the most rigorous training program in the navy. He wrote the book on nuclear reactors and he made every officer memorize that book, down to the punctuation. He had to do it that way, because the consequences of a nuclear accident, even one, would be disastrous.”
“That sounds like philosophy to me,” said Castillo smiling. “I thought you wanted to talk to me man to man.”
The cob broke into a big smile, a flash of bright white against his dark skin. “You got me, sir. Sorry, I know you need to get some rest.”
“Speak plain,” said Castillo. “I’ll listen.”
“All right,” said Washington. “You ever fail at anything, sir? Ever flat-out fall on your face? Ever blow something that really mattered to you?”
Castillo stared at the chief of the boat for a long, cold moment. “No,” he finally said.
Washington nodded, like that was the answer he had been expecting.
Castillo didn’t like this. He’d expected the cob to have some concern about the function of the submarine.
Not her captain.
“I’m not sure I am following you, Senior Chief.” Castillo’s voice was tight.
“Accidents happen, Captain,” Washington said softly. “Failures. Disasters, even.”
“And you think I don’t know that,” said Castillo and his voice was soft.
“I think you know it, sir. But I think you know it in your head. Until you’ve royally, uh, screwed something up, you don’t really know it in your gut. You can’t.”
The rules of discipline on a submarine were more lax than those on a surface ship, they had to be. Submarine crews were small and the men lived in close contact. And enlisted submariners were the brightest sailors in the navy, smart enough to govern themselves. But there were still lines.
And the chief of the boat had just stepped over one of them.
“I will not have anyone question my fitness to command this boat,” said Castillo coldly.
Washington pushed away Castillo’s words with a raised hand. “I did not do that, Captain,” said the senior chief and there was a warning in the tone of his voice. “And I would not do that. I was just offering you an observation.”
For a moment the two men stared at each other. Washington was a formidable man, Castillo could see that. “Then what exactly were you doing, Senior Chief?”
“Skipper, you’re new to Pasadena and you don’t know me too well. So let me tell you a little story. Most people, they look at my skin tone and hear the Georgia twang in my voice and they assume I come from a poor family. Or maybe I joined the navy because some judge offered me a choice between the military — or jail.”
“But that’s not true.”
Washington smiled broadly. “No, sir. My father is a partner in the third largest corporate law firm in Atlanta. My two older brothers are lawyers, too. One of them, Samuel, is a state senator.”
Castillo leaned back in his chair. “Is this where you tell me you’re a sea lawyer.”
Washington chuckled. “No, sir. Anyway, not really sure why I decided to join the navy. Maybe because it was as far away as I could get from the law. If NASA had been hiring, I’d probably be an astronaut now.”
“All right,” said Castillo. “So you enlisted. What’s the punch line.”
“The punch line is that I didn’t enlist. My pop was a big wheel, remember? He got me an appointment to the Naval Academy.”
“No,” said Castillo. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”
Washington raised his right hand. “Honest to God.”
“What happened?”
“Threw me out my sophomore year. For drinking and cavorting with women of low moral character.”
“Cavorting?”
The cob arched an eyebrow. “There’s something to be said for a woman of low moral character.” He raised his hands. “Now, Captain, I know you’re having some fun at my expense and that’s just fine, but I got a serious point. I ended up an enlisted man on a ship, chipping paint. Nineteen years old and I was already a failure.”
“At nineteen,” said Castillo.
“Well, my father always did insist I was precocious. It takes most men three, four decades before they fail as impressively as I did at nineteen.”
Suddenly Castillo was laughing and Washington was laughing with him. For a moment, Castillo felt warm and happy and a little bit loopy.
“All right, Cob. That was good enough that I’m almost willing to forgive you for cutting into my rack time. Is that point you promised somewhere in my future?”
Washington grew serious. “Here’s my point, Skipper. Failure happens. All the planning in the world won’t prevent it. The real measure of a man is not that he never fails. The real measure of a man is what he does with himself after he fails.”
Castillo suddenly felt cold, ice cold.
“All right, Cob, you told me a story. Let me pay you back.”
Washington nodded, but said nothing.
“I did grow up poor. I’m from East Colfax in Denver. He paused for a long moment thinking back. “Growing up, my best friend in the world was a kid named George Fuentes. George was a dopey looking kid. He had ears out to here.” Castillo stuck his hands on the side of his head, palms out. “It didn’t matter though, because George had a mouth on him.