“Many submarine captains in the past who relied solely on themselves are resting comfortably on the bottom. But there’s a number of us still alive and healthy who rely on what we know about the other guy.”
There was a touch in Snow’s voice that she remembered from that morning. It wasn’t anything that bothered her specifically. It was more an undercurrent, a tonal quality that seemed to insinuate more than he was saying. He’d never shaken the belief that submarines were no place for women. Yet he was commanding one that carried a woman in a critical role. Snow had told the members of the consortium he saw no problem with a woman on a civilian ship during his initial interview with them. It was only after he’d signed the contract that he realized this bore no relation to a civilian operation. He was gradually coming to the understanding (though he tried to force it back in the recesses of his mind) that he was probably more affected by Carol Petersen than any of the other men aboard. It was disconcerting, and it was a situation he had to come to grips with before he could have Imperator fully under his command.
“Want me to key in the submarines in our vicinity?” she asked.
“First, let’s get the big screen on a scale that covers the Aleutians. I want to include Olympia and that Russian heading in her direction. He directly affects the one heading for us.”
“It’s coming up now,” she replied, looking over her shoulder at the screen. “Tell me if the scale’s right.” Snow never ceased to be amazed by Imperator’s technology — so far beyond the submarines he understood. The huge screen, which almost completely covered the adjacent wall, took on a gray-green hue. There was no sound, nothing to indicate that anything had been energized. The screen changed color gradually and symbols for the various submarines were accurately defined in their relative locations. The Aleutian Islands hung in a half moon across the top of the screen.
“Put in their latest course and speed.”
“Already there,” she answered. “I just borrowed whatever’s already in the memory. As long as we’re tracking them, the computer updates all data every half minute.” Her brows knit as she glanced over at him. “You really don’t know a hell of a lot about Caesar, do you?”
“I don’t need to if you’re here.” There was that subtle undertone again. Snow immediately regretted it as soon as he’d spoken. It seemed no different than a remark he might have made to his navigator while glancing at the chart. Yet there had been something implied that bothered Snow, more as Imperator’s commanding officer than anything else.
The exercise evolved much as he had anticipated. The deep-diving Russian attempted to position itself to force Imperator into evasive or protective maneuvers that would provide valuable data to the Russians. Anything they could relay by satellite to Danilov would be to their advantage.
Andy Reed’s orders were to keep Houston ahead of Imperator, with Helena assigned to maneuver with the Soviet boat, moving into a blocking position, if necessary. The most dangerous possibility would be for the Russian to attempt a position underneath Imperator, between her and Helena, and realizing that, Hal Snow experimented with the idea of increasing depth if the Russian were directly under him. The idea might work initially according to the computer, but Caesar also pointed out the damage that could be done to Imperator’s underside, depending on the location of the much smaller Russian, if they made contact. So in the end, the idea was only viable in an extreme situation. And, according to the computer, a solution could only be delivered at the time events were actually taking place.
After studying Caesar’s limited projections, Snow returned to paperwork in his cabin, and leafed through reports on spaces and machinery within Imperator that he’d never inspected himself. She was no different than an aircraft carrier in size, and Snow doubted that any man had ever toured every single compartment and void within a carrier. Her ballast tanks were greater in volume than the capacity of many tankers that still plied the world’s oceans. To pass from Imperator’s bow to her stem involved a trip of much more than her overall length. There were ladders, catwalks over machinery, numerous watertight doors to open and secure, and passageways that would end with a sharp turn to port or starboard to bypass a secure space. Not only was an interior tour not a straight line, it was a maze, and so complex that no single individual could claim detailed knowledge of Imperator’s entire length.
Going through the reports, Snow found his mind wandering. The cause was Carol Petersen, but she wasn’t the immediate subject of his thoughts. Instead, he was contemplating the most unpleasant memories of his two wives.
The first, like him, had been much too young. They’d married shortly after his graduation from the academy. It had seemed the right thing and, in retrospect, they were probably in love at the time. But she’d been as irresponsible five years later as she had been when they’d first met. She loved the uniforms and the excitement of the military life at first, and Hal Snow was the answer to a young girl’s romantic dreams — or so it seemed.
She was unable to adjust to the rigors of his nuclear training, the reality of extended deployments, or the ensuing years on submarines without shore duty. There was no romance in any of that. And those poor kids born in the first five years had never been the answer either. In the end, if there was one thing she considered revenge for the romantic Hal Snow who never really existed, it was to move away with the children so that he became a stranger to them. Hal Snow never forgave her for that. He never did know his children. Even today, if someone were to ask him their birthdays, he’d often resort to the dates in his wallet. Only on rare occasions could he admit to himself what an irresponsible father he was — more often he was able to convince himself it was their mother’s fault.
His second marriage, to the girl who romanced him shortly after he’d been given his first command, had been short-lived. She came along for the ride, a social climber from a military family. She intended to show off her husband’s dolphins, the scrambled eggs on his hat, and his command-at-sea star to her set. She had been a lousy lover, a lousy cook, a lousy homemaker — a dreary’ litany Snow could still recite in his sleep. But what had bothered him the most with her, the one thing that had really hurt him — the only thing — was that she was a tramp. Sleeping around was unacceptable enough, but the fact that she did it in the confined submarine community was inexcusable. Snow often wondered if she was much of the reason he’d eventually resigned from the navy — partly because she’d been screwing around with too many senior officers. Or was it because he suspected the promotion boards knew what she was doing? Either way, it had been time for him to go.
After the second time around, Snow promised himself that he was going to be a loner. It was much easier that way. He’d had two wives that had made his life miserable, and he had two kids he could lose track of for six months at a time. Carol Petersen wasn’t as good-looking as either of them, but one thing he could say for sure — she was one hell of a lot smarter than the two of them put together — and she was a lady. For all the powers of concentration that he prided in himself, here he was thinking about her again, even comparing her to the others — while two Soviet submarines were closing Imperator on an intelligence mission that could turn extremely dangerous any moment.
At his age, things should fall into place in a logical, systematic way. He knew they should. Then Snow sighed and shook his head knowingly. But they never do…