Ann started climbing again. She was so tired that she had trouble lifting her feet enough to make it up the steep incline of the stairs. And the rolling of the ship wasn’t doing anything to steady her.
Even Sheldon, Mr. Perpetual Happy-face, was showing signs of wear and tear. He didn’t look quite as bad as Ann felt, but the fatigue was visible in his face. They’d been travelling for fifteen or sixteen hours since Narita. First the van ride to the Air Force base, and then three helicopter flights, with stops to refuel the aircraft on two ships along the way. They’d probably crossed a couple of time zones in there somewhere, but Ann’s brain was too tired to do the math.
Her ears still felt numb from a very long day spent listening to the shriek of poorly-insulated aircraft engines. Little creature comforts, like soundproofing, were evidently not a priority to the U.S. military.
It was after ten o’clock, and the lighting in the ship’s hallways had been dimmed from bright white, to soft red. In Navy lingo, it was after Taps. Couldn’t they just call it lights out, like everybody else on the planet?
They reached the top of the stairs, and Sailor Boy led them through a short passageway toward a door that Ann recognized as the entrance to the ship’s wardroom.
She stopped, and lowered her bags to the floor. “Wait a second,” she said. “Can’t you take us to our staterooms first? I’d like to drop off my bags.”
What she really wanted was to get a few hours of sleep. Her brain felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. Did the Navy boneheads really think they could drag her out of bed at three in the morning, jerk her all over the Pacific for sixteen hours, and then put her straight to work?
The young Sailor smiled. “Just leave your bags here in the passageway. I’ll take them down to your staterooms. The captain wants to see you right away, Ma’am.”
The kid’s tone of voice pushed Ann’s annoyance up another notch. She resisted the temptation to parrot his words right back in his face. ‘The captain wants to see you right away, Ma’am.’
The kid was probably only nineteen years old — twenty at the outside — and the Navy already had him mentally conditioned. He honestly could not conceive of someone not giving the exalted ‘captain’ exactly what he wanted.
Automatic obedience was dangerous. Couldn’t these people see that? Couldn’t they see what it could lead to? Ann wondered what Sailor Boy would say, if she told him that his almighty captain could go to hell.
Sheldon lowered his bags to the floor and nudged Ann gently with his elbow. “Come on, let’s go save the world.”
Ann didn’t budge.
Sheldon cocked his head and showed Ann his most elaborately pitiful puppy-dog face. “Am I going to have to sing the ‘Kitty Paw’ song?”
Against her will, Ann felt herself smile a little. “Alright, asshole,” she said. She nodded toward the young Sailor. “Let’s go, Popeye. The excitement has arrived.”
The Sailor knocked on the wardroom door, and opened it, but didn’t enter. He stepped to one side, holding the door for Ann and Sheldon.
Sheldon muttered a thank you as he stepped past the Sailor. Ann followed Sheldon into the wardroom without comment.
Captain Bowie stood when they entered the room. He smiled, and motioned for them to sit.
“Welcome aboard Towers,” he said. “It’s good to have you back.”
He nodded, and a young Sailor in a blue smock jacket and white paper hat stepped forward to place cups of steaming coffee in front of the only two empty chairs at the table.
By the looks of it, nearly every officer on the ship was present. At least Ann thought they were all officers. She had never bothered to learn to distinguish military rank insignias, but they all wore khaki uniforms.
Ann took the chair on the right. She skipped the preliminaries, and reached straight for the sugar and cream.
Sheldon returned the captain’s smile as he settled into the chair to Ann’s left. “Thank you for inviting us back, Captain. We’re glad to be here.”
Ann raised her eyebrows, but didn’t comment. They hadn’t been invited. They’d been freaking summoned. And she was, most assuredly, not glad to be here.
She sipped at her coffee, and was mildly surprised to find that it wasn’t horrible. Not as good as coffee in the real world, but better than the acrid glop they usually served aboard ship. No doubt the improvement had something to do with the presence of the captain. When the big boss was in the house, the cooks probably put in a little extra effort.
Ann took a larger swallow. Well, maybe not too much extra effort.
Captain Bowie took his seat and pulled his own coffee cup across the table toward himself. “I realize that we got you up before the roosters,” he said. “And I know you’ve been in the air most of the day. I’m sure you’re both exhausted, so we’ll try to keep this as short as possible.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sheldon said.
“We’ll sketch out the basic tactical situation tonight,” the captain said. “Then we can sleep on it, and get into the details tomorrow morning.”
Sheldon fought off a yawn. “Works for me.”
The captain faced one of his people, a redheaded woman with a rounded face that seemed out of proportion to her trim build. “Chief McPherson, can you get us started?”
Chief McPherson stood up. “Aye-aye, sir.”
She laid a navigational chart on the table top, and unrolled it, weighting the corners with coffee mugs so that the curled paper didn’t roll itself back into a tube. A series of lines and symbols had been drawn on the chart using colored pencils. “Before we jump into the tactical situation,” she said, “how covert is your Mouse unit’s underwater transponder system?”
Ann shrugged. “We don’t really know yet.”
“What do you mean?” the chief asked.
“The Navy contract requires Mouse to be capable of covert operations,” Ann said. “So the transmissions from his acoustic modems are designed to mimic natural ocean sounds. Wave action, biologics, stuff like that. In theory, his communications should be really difficult to detect or identify.”
“How difficult?” Chief McPherson asked.
“We’re still in the development process,” Ann said. “The system has only been tested against a handful of underwater sensors. We won’t have hard data until the detection vulnerability surveys are complete, and they’re not scheduled to start until the end of the year.”
Captain Bowie spoke up. “So you think it’s covert, but you’re not certain?”
“That’s right,” Ann said. “I can’t give you a better answer until we finish the testing.”
The captain rubbed his chin. “I don’t think we can risk an unknown that large. The plan we have in mind depends on keeping your Mouse unit hidden from the submarine.”
Ann shifted in her chair. “What submarine?”
The chief turned her eyes toward Ann, and then to Sheldon. “How much do you know about what’s been going on in Kamchatka?”
“A little bit,” Sheldon said. “We caught some of it from the TV news in Japan, but that was in Japanese. Our hotel rooms had CNN on cable, so we got some follow-up in English. We know that there’s been some kind of military revolution in one of the Russian territories. And the rebels launched several nuclear missiles toward California, but they were intercepted. We know there’s pandemonium on the West Coast, and all of the flights are canceled.” He raised his hands and dropped them. “I guess that’s about it.”