Master Chief O'Day stepped into the sonar shack. "How ya doin', Cassie?" the older man asked. Caswell jumped, startled. "Shit, COB!"
"Sorry, kid."
" 'S'okay. Jesus. Give a guy some warning next time." The Chief of the Boat grinned. "I just wanted to know how you were getting on."
Caswell nodded. "Okay, I guess. Work helps, y'know?"
"Yeah. Y'know, my wife left me after twenty-one years. I came home one day, and found she'd cleaned out her stuff and left. Took the joint account, too. It still hurts."
"How long ago was that, COB?" Dobbs asked. "About six years."
"Jeeze, doesn't it ever stop hurting?" Caswell asked.
O'Day shrugged. "I dunno. Haven't gotten that far yet. Point is, you get through it. Kind of like kicking the bottle. One day at a time."
Caswell nodded. "I guess that's what I'm learning. I… I was kind of close there, for a while…. "
"Close to what?"
"I don't know. Doing something stupid."
"Killing yourself?"
Caswell hesitated, then nodded.
"Yeah. I kind of figured."
"You did?"
"Like I say, I been there." O'Day rubbed his jaw. "You in the mood for some advice?"
"I guess so."
"Don't. If you think you're in a world of shit now, just try killing yourself."
"What do you mean? The idea is to make it stop hurting." The words started coming faster. "I mean… it just keeps going on and on and on! I try to forget her, but I can't. I try to sleep, and I can't. I try to pay attention to my work… and she keeps getting in the way. I don't want to screw everything up for everybody."
"Of course you don't. That's why you're not going to kill yourself."
"Huh?"
"Look, on board a submarine, there are only so many ways to off yourself. The doc has all the dangerous drugs locked up. No place to hang yourself. No privacy. No, you'd have to get a weapon out of the arms locker and try to blow your brains out.
"And let's say you're able to do that, see? There'd be an inquiry. Jesus, kid, do you hate the skipper that much that you'd put him through that kind of hell? That's assuming he survived, 'cause if you fired off a weapon down here, the Iranians would hear it, and they'd be all over us. You want to take your shipmates with you?"
"N-No, COB."
"But the real pain would be if you fucked it up. There was this guy on a sub I was stationed on about fifteen years ago… nice kid. Twenty, maybe twenty-one. His brand new wife dumped him, and he went off the bulkhead. Trying for a Section Eight. We had ourselves a nice little stand-off in the torpedo room, him stark naked and raving about Jesus Christ and holding a pistol to his head, while me and the boat's doc tried to talk him down."
"What happened?"
"Damnedest thing I ever saw. The boat's skipper came down, held out his hand like this, and said, 'Give me that weapon, mister. I'm Jesus Christ on this boat, and that's a fucking order!' This kid damned near fainted, but he lowered the gun and handed it over.
Pure force of will, I guess. We had him in handcuffs and sedated before he knew what hit him. Inside of twenty-four hours he was on his way stateside."
"Did he get court-martialed?" Dobbs asked.
"Nah. The skipper recommended a medical discharge. He got it, eventually, but he was in the hospital for quite a while. So, Caswell… how bad do you want out of the Navy?"
Caswell shook his head. "Not that bad."
"Good. Because, like the skipper said, we need you. We need your ears. Right?"
"Right, COB."
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
"I said, 'Right, COB.' "
"That's better. Now listen up. I've been where you are right now, okay? And let me tell you something. It never, ever gets so bad you can't wait one more day. Can you do that? Wait one more day?"
"Y-Yeah. I guess so."
"Know so. I'm not going to make pacts with you, or any of that shit. All I want is that if you get to where you want to kill yourself, you just make a pact with yourself… to wait one more day. I think you'll find that you're glad you didn't do it. You hear me?"
"Yes, COB."
"Good. You've got some good people looking out for you. Your department head. The exec. Doc Kettering. Me. We're all watching you to make sure you don't do something stupid… but we're also here to help you if we can. You can always—"
Caswell held up his hand, a sharp, urgent movement. The pitch of one set of sonar pings had just changed and was growing stronger. He hit the intercom switch. "Control Room, Sonar. An enemy vessel has just changed course and is heading straight toward us. Heavy pinging."
"Acknowledged, Sonar. What can you tell me?"
Caswell closed his eyes, as if to better merge himself with the sound. He could hear the steady throb of the other vessel's screws behind the chirp-ping of its sonar.
"Control Room… target is a surface vessel. Twin screws. Type 174 hull, sonar bearing two-eight-five. Speed twenty knots. Estimated range… two thousand yards." He listened a moment longer. "Captain, I don't think he has a lock. He's moving too fast."
"Acknowledged, Sonar. Keep on him."
The pinging was audible now to unaided ears throughout the Ohio. The chirps and their echoes grew louder… more insistent…
… and then they were receding as the pounding of the ASW warship's screws passed overhead.
O'Day let out a long, pent-up breath. "Good call, kid."
"I think the bastard is trying to drive us," Dobbs said. "At twenty knots, though, he's not going to hear very much."
"He's changing course again," Caswell said. "He's turning south, out into the middle of the straits. Still banging away like mad."
"Probably hopes to spook us," O'Day observed. "Maybe get us to pop a fish at him."
"There's something else," Caswell said. Damn! This one was close! "Control Room! Sonar! I have an air contact, directly overhead! Sounds like a helicopter, hovering low over the water."
"Acknowledged."
For a long, achingly tense moment, Caswell listened to the faint sound of a helicopter's rotors, a muffled whop-whop-whop transmitted down through the water. He was listening now for the telltale splash of something dropping into the water — sonobuoy, torpedo, depth charge….
And then the sound of the helicopter began fading.
"Control Room, Sonar. Helicopter contact is moving off toward the south."
"Very well."
O'Day sagged, leaning against the sonar room entranceway. "Jesus, kid. Good ears."
"Just doing my job, COB."
"Well… keep on doing it. Well done." The Chief of the Boat turned and left the compartment. Just doing my job.
Caswell was startled to realize just how important that was right now. How very much he didn't want to let down his shipmates.
And even how much he wanted to please the skipper.
A long time later, he was startled again when he realized he hadn't thought about Nina once during that whole encounter.
17
Delta One had reached their objective.
With the ASDS remaining submerged a mile offshore, eight of the sixteen SEALs had egressed through the upper hatch, inflated a pair of rubber ducks — slang for their CRRCs — with silenced electric motors, and slipped ashore within the dune-choked estuary east of the town. Leaving the CRRCs buried on the beach, the site marked by handheld GPS units, Delta One had made the long passage up the nameless river, slipping silently and unseen past the drowsing fishing village of Bandar-e Charak. For the first mile the stream had been deep and clear; they'd followed it easily, swimming along through the shallows, and at times wading. After that, however, the river branched rapidly, fed by three streams that in turn drained a large and marshy area extending in a broad fan shape another three or four miles inland. For another two miles, the SEALs waded through brackish, knee-deep water, and at times were forced to crawl through the noisome muck of salt marsh and swamp, dragging their satchels of equipment behind them.