He cursed himself for his lameness, and felt the pressure of his deadline, the even greater pressure to write something worthy of historic preservation. He was no writer, he knew that. But wasn’t true love supposed to inspire him, like it had her grandfather? It had to. And he had to get it done before they departed in two days. They would keep him hopping in the galley in the meantime. He vowed to think about the letter as he went about the mindless work of scrubbing pots and chopping vegetables, composing something completely great in his mind so when he got the chance he could just dash it off, get the letter in the mail bag, and fulfill his promise to her. Maybe he could do it at night, they’d still have to let him sleep no matter what kind of trouble he was in. He’d write the letter then, in the rack with the curtain drawn. He looked at his painted fingernail, another crazy thing love had made him do, and felt it sting a little where the nail had cracked.
Fuck, he missed her.
Twenty-four hours later, Dunham pulled a large tray of lasagna out of the galley stove. He walked two steps, coughed, and collapsed.
Captain Jefferies was in the wardroom, reviewing charts with the XO and the navigator, when he heard the news. He sighed and looked up at Lieutenant Dwyer, the Duty Officer.
“Get two men to take him to Tripler,” he said. “Take the van.”
“Aye, aye sir,”
“Drama just seems to follow some men around,” said the navigator as Dwyer left.
The captain frowned at him, even though a version of that thought had passed through his mind as well. “Let’s just hope he’s okay.”
Jefferies was that kind of captain, one who took his role as a guardian of all the men in his command seriously. He was a small, scholarly looking officer who acted with deliberation and a religious devotion to procedure. And he was smart: years before, on his first shore tour at the Pentagon, he’d won a military-wide chess tournament sponsored by Lockheed, defeating a Marine Corps General with a mustache like Stalin in the final match. An article and picture about the match from the Navy Times proudly hung on his stateroom wall. He ran his ship, and his career, the same way he played: deliberately, trying to see several moves ahead, and relying heavily on the movements and doctrine of those who had gone before. It was the time-honored strategy of the peace-time naval officer, to advance by avoiding mistakes rather than boldly jumping into the fray, and it had served him well.
Not all men believed in that philosophy, of course. Following procedure took discipline, and at times, restraint. Not everyone wanted to believe that the procedures had been vetted and proven over years. The old timers especially fought him: men like the XO. Those men believed in intuition and gut instinct. It was his mission, in large part, to break them of that. To make them give themselves over to the volumes and volumes of documents that could save their lives in any situation. With the younger men it was easier: they didn’t have bad habits to break. Young men like Lieutenant Dwyer, his duty officer and protégé, had absorbed his message of slavish devotion to The Word of doctrine, regulations, and standing orders. Dwyer was going to make a fine officer, and while the captain would retire soon, creating officers like Dwyer would be his legacy.
Chief Zimmerman knocked on the door. “Enter?”
“Enter,” said the captain.
“Sir, I’ve got a young man who’s going to be painting all night tonight, so we can get done before we pull out. Then he’s going right to the scullery tomorrow before lunch. I was wondering if we might let him sleep two hours during the maneuvering watch — it will be the only chance he gets.”
“Who is it?”
“Seaman Winn.”
“Which one is he?”
“Brand new kid, right out of boot camp. Freckles. Looks like he’s fifteen.”
“Sure,” said the captain. “Let the XO know I said it was okay.”
“Aye sir,” said the chief. “Thank you.”
The captain went back to reviewing the chart.
The Captain was on the bridge with Lieutenant McCutcheon, the Officer of the Deck, as they cast off all lines and sounded a prolonged blast from their horn, signaling to all that they were a ship underway. He always felt a visceral sense of relief at that point in any patrol, the moment when they separated from the pier and all the seductive hazards of land. An even deeper sense of calm would come over him when they submerged, as underwater was where the ship and crew were designed to operate the most efficiently.
The Boise was commissioned in 1992, six years after the Louisville, making her part of the “improved” group of 688 class submarines. The most visible difference was the removal of the fairwater planes on the sail, the tower that jutted up from the deck of the Boise: it was at the top of this tower, exposed to the gorgeous Hawaiian sky, that the captain and McCutcheon stood watch. Those control surfaces had been moved to the bow of the submarine, underwater and invisible. Clearing the sail of those planes allowed the ship to operate underneath the arctic ice, since it could surface and punch through with its unadorned sail. It had been a crucial Cold War capability since the Arctic Sea was the shortest path between the Godless Soviets and North America. A generation of American submarines went to sea with war fighting publications on not only how to identify ice patches thin enough to punch through, but how to deal with polar bears and rabid Arctic foxes. But since she was commissioned in 1992, the Boise not only missed the Cold War, she also missed the first Gulf War, when Louisville had made history launching cruise missiles. Like her commanding officer, the Boise had had a solid and successful, if unremarkable, career.
Soon, the Boise cruised out of Pearl Harbor, and the ocean floor fell away drastically beneath them. The quartermaster took a sounding and confirmed that they had ample room to submerge.
“Ready?” said the captain to McCutcheon. “Shift the watch.”
“Shift the watch, aye sir.”
McCutcheon formally exchanged information with Lieutenant Dwyer, his counterpart in the control room: the ship’s course, speed, and readiness for diving. With that, Dwyer took the watch below, and McCutcheon finished preparing the bridge for submerging. As a final step, he began happily pounding away on everything in sight with a rubber mallet, ensuring that everything was tight, and that there would be no rattles or sound shorts in the sail that would give them away. Even among their peers, the Boise was known as a very quiet ship, in large part because of the discipline of the crew.
“We’re almost there,” said the captain.
“Twenty minutes to the dive point,” said McCutcheon, pausing from his hammering, a little breathless.
“How beautiful is that?” said the captain. “An hour from casting off lines until the dive point. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to come back.”
“Not like that in Bangor, sir?”
“Takes almost a day to get through Puget Sound,” he said. “In rough weather, usually, dodging Washington State Ferries and salmon fisherman the whole way.”
“Captain, I believe we’re ready to go below now. The bridge is rigged for dive.”
“You sure? You look like you’re having fun with that mallet.”
McCutcheon smiled. “It’s one of the few times they let an officer get his hands on a tool.”
“Let’s go then,” said the captain. He turned to climb down the ladder. Behind them, he caught a glimpse of Tripler on the hill. He hoped Dunham was doing alright.
When McCutcheon climbed into control, he announced, “last man down from the bridge.” He closed the watertight hatch behind him and sealed it tight. A light illuminated on the Chief of the Watch’s panel, and He announced it.