George turned on the shower. As he waited for the water to get hot, he studied the bleary-eyed face in the mirror, which, much to his chagrin, was rapidly becoming middle aged. His Scottish-Irish ancestry had given him reddish blond hair and skin with a susceptibility to sun damage. He had always been freckled, and with his short-cropped military haircut, the freckles were even more pronounced.
He thought back to the day on the GenCon oil rig when they tested the SQID drive and then heard about the attack on Washington DC.
I was practically a kid then. Look at me now. I have lots of things I can blame on that day: a couple hundred freckles thanks to the sun; and thanks to DC, a dozen or so wrinkles and a neverending supply of nightmares!
The last five years had not been kind.
George currently served as the operations (ops) officer on the staff of the Commander, Submarine Force Atlantic Fleet, commonly referred to as COMSUBLANT. Headquartered at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, the admiral and his SUBLANT staff were continually monitoring world events and the locations of all U.S. boomers and attack submarines in the Atlantic Operating Region (AOR). George played a key role in preparing and presenting morning and afternoon briefings to the admiral, the first of which was scheduled for 0800 hours each day.
George turned on a small TV next to the bathroom sink while he showered and dressed. His usual news station was broadcasting events for the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Washington attack. He changed the channel to find something else, but every station was carrying the same stories. Arrgh! There was no escaping it — today, even more than usual, he would have to relive the horror.
Following the DC attack, the news media never relented. They seemed to feel it was their sworn duty to report every gruesome detail. People whose loved ones were missing in DC were keenly interested in the discovery of each additional body; but for the vast majority of citizens, the rising body count was just a constant reminder of the horrors of the attack. As the death toll passed 150,000 then 175,000 and then 200,000, most people stopped listening to the morbid news reports because they were too much to bear. A growing number of citizens groups and political leaders criticized the media for playing into the hands of the terrorists. By constantly reminding the world that the United States had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of al-Qaeda, they argued, the media was emboldening more radicals to join the fight.
Still, the media did not relent. After the initial deluge of news reports detailing the death and destruction, the networks gave birth to what they called the We Will Remember campaign. For years, newspapers, radio stations, local television stations, and national broadcast and cable networks ran personal stories chronicling the lives and deaths of those who died. There were interviews with anguished family members. Details of the lives of thousands of the nation’s most promising young people. Handsome young men. Beautiful young women. The best, brightest, and most compassionate. Brilliant young minds selected for White House fellowships. The brightest young law school graduates clerking for Supreme Court justices. Young people who became doctors, nurses, police officers, and firefighters because they wanted to help their fellow man. The stories went on and on. Most viewers became emotionally numbed to the news after just a few weeks, but the networks were unrelenting in their campaign.
Stepping out of the shower, George heard the familiar melody the media had selected for the campaign, meaning another story was about to be told.
“Not again!” he said out loud. George angrily slapped the on/off button on the TV. He briefly thought about taking the set and throwing it in the trash.
Who needed the darn We Will Remember campaign?
Who could possibly forget?
Chapter 5
Once out of the shower, George was eager to get his morning coffee. The distinctive peppery aroma of the chicory gave him encouragement to get dressed. He quickly returned to the bedside clothes butler where he had hung his khaki uniform the night before. He pulled on the trousers and then buttoned them with what seemed to be a little more effort than normal this morning. He stared down at his belt buckle. He jogged or worked out every day. What was happening to him?
George headed for the kitchen, got his favorite mug out of the dishwasher, and then filled it with steaming hot chicory coffee. Just the aroma was enough to remind you life was worth living! The empty coffee can on the counter reminded him to call Dwight. He was down to his last beloved can. George had become addicted to the chicory and coffee combination when he was working on the sub-fighter project with Dwight in southern Louisiana. Now, a morning without chicory coffee was like a day without sunshine… a dog without a bone… a body without a soul! Stepping into his cluttered living room, George looked around at the shelves lining the room from floor to ceiling. The shelves were filled with hundreds of scale-models: The lower shelves displayed submarines; the middle held warships; and the upper displayed fighter aircraft from around the world. The living room ceiling was painted with clouds, and the carpet was a disgusting shade of gray mixed with brown that could only be described as seafloor muck. The lack of a woman’s decorating touch was keenly evident. It was obvious the décor was Traditional Navy Bachelor — TradNavBach or TNB.
One wall, noticeably empty of shelves and positioned so that it was the first thing anyone saw when entering the house, was completely covered with military plaques and certificates commemorating George’s career. Navy personnel jokingly referred to this type of self-aggrandizement as an “I Love Me” wall. Nearly everyone in the navy had one, but married personnel were usually forced by their spouses to put theirs in a back bedroom or out-of-the-way home office.
George’s TNB décor extended into the dining room as well. What was supposed to be a dining room table was, instead, George’s model-building factory. The table had been covered with spread-out newspapers and pieces of models for so many years, George couldn’t even remember what the table looked like.
Sitting down to inspect his latest work-in-progress, a MiG-29 fighter plane which he had carefully glued before going to bed, George noted its perfect lines. Building a model with precision was George’s passion. He had mastered a technique for minimizing the amount of glue used to hold the pieces together. As a result, it was practically impossible to detect any glue lines on his models. With some tender loving sanding and painting, he built models as close to the real thing as humanly possible. The only problem with his technique was that after a number of years, the models tended to fall apart! Now, instead of building new models, George’s spare time was taken up rebuilding his old ones. This was probably the third time he had perfectly built the MiG-29.
George sat back, sipping his hot coffee. He set the mug down on the table and studied the military emblem emblazoned on its side — the coat-of-arms of the USS Annapolis SSN 760—with its red, black, and gold shield and crown overlaying crossed tridents, the symbol of sea power since the days the ancient Greeks worshipped Poseidon, the god of the sea. The submarine’s motto floated on a banner below: Born Free, Hope to Die Free.
George’s tour as the executive officer (XO) of the Annapolis had been both extremely rewarding and extremely difficult — constant patrols interrupted, of course, by the attack on Washington DC and George’s temporary reassignment to the joint-service operations unit surveying the damage after the attack. But then there had been the implications, even accusations, the Annapolis had been at fault — that they had failed to detect and stop the enemy submarine that delivered the nuclear warhead during one of their East Coast deployments. Anger swelled within him as he thought of the hard work and sacrifice of his crew and their families. Their professionalism and the pride they took in their work. All of that destroyed by conjecture and accusations from politicians who had no idea what they were talking about. The patriotic crew of the Annapolis was forever branded as failures, ashamed to mention they had served on her.