“He's out of coffee,” the first class noticed.
“I’ll get him some.”
They nodded as the sailor hurried to the aft bulkhead where a coffeepot percolated continuously. Fresh coffee happened mostly in the mornings. After that, it was happenstance if the pot was ever started anew. Most times, someone just poured more water into already overworked grounds.
Garcia eased back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, clasped hands arched above his lap. He leaned forward and rested his chin lightly on his hands, watching the green-tinted screens of the consoles arrayed in front of him.
He tuned to the chatter between the SH-60 antisubmarine helicopters as they headed along their varied courses, two for each submarine contact out there. If the Chinese torpedoes had not run out of fuel before reaching Sea Base, he and everyone in this compartment would be either dead or floating in the Pacific. The Naval Research scientists believed it would take substantial battle damage to sink Sea Base. Of course, they based that on their mathematical models and statistical analysis.
He had overheard a master chief voicing what most believed. Sea Base was a floating accident waiting to happen. He dropped his hands and leaned back. He shut his eyes for a moment trying to recall how the boatswain mate master chief had phrased it. After a couple of seconds, the two words came to him: dark Pacific. Sea Base was another man-made accident waiting to join the others along the bottom of the dark Pacific.
To the far right along the port bulkhead sat a lieutenant commander manning a single computer console. The young lady’s job was to monitor the readout from the Sea Base servers and computers located in the main cargo hold of the USNS Pollux. Those servers and computers kept this floating eighty-plus-acre man-made island afloat. So much could go wrong — so much already had.
So far, all that had gone wrong had been man-made. He had been pleasantly surprised at how the complex algorithms racing at near light speed through the IT bowels of the Pollux had not produced a major catastrophe. Way beneath the hulls of the eight Fast Sealift Ships were sixteen gigantic sea anchors rising and falling as the Sea Base servers compensated for the ever-changing dynamics of the sea. But here they were five months into a six-month operational test and evaluation and they were still afloat. During those five months they had fought sabotage, North Koreans, and aircraft crashes, but not once had they fought the danger of a server malfunction.
His face crunched, lips pushing out, eyebrows pulling into a deep V. They were at General Quarters because the Chinese were trying to sink them. What next? He wondered for a moment if at the end of the next thirty days they’d be allowed to return to Pearl Harbor. That is, if Sea Base was still afloat. He knew the answer was no if the Taiwan crisis wasn’t settled.
Commander Stapler walked up and stood in front of him.
“What’s the status?” Garcia asked.
“USS Stripling will have its LAMPS helicopters over the contact datum within three minutes. We will need your orders to drop the torpedo.”
“Which contact is that?”
“Bears northeast of us, Captain; 010 degrees.”
“Has it turned away? I would think—”
“No, sir,” Stapler interrupted. “According to Sonar, there has been no course change. Sir, we will need your orders to attack. I could do it as the Tactical Action Officer, but you’re here, Skipper.”
Garcia nodded. He ignored the implication by Stapler that he should turn over the fight to him as the TAO. While he had confidence in Stapler to fight the ship, he knew the officer would fight first and worry about consequences later. He bit his lower lip.
“Sir?”
My orders. Someone always has to give the order to destroy or kill. This was his ship regardless of how little like a ship it looked.
“They’ll be overhead the datum any moment.”
When Garcia gave the orders, a helicopter outside the detection envelope of the Chinese submarine would drop a Mark-46 torpedo. The Chinese would pick up the splash. A fraction of a second after hearing it, they’d know what it was. The Chinese submarine would immediately start executing maneuvers to avoid, fool, or outrun the torpedo. It would fill the waters with decoys in an attempt to pull the torpedo away from the true target. Everything the Chinese Captain did would be designed to keep him and his crew alive. The Chinese Captain could also fill the waters with torpedoes aimed at Sea Base.
And through all of this, Garcia’s simple order would be directly responsible for killing a bunch of Chinese squatting and sweating inside a tube called a submarine somewhere hundreds of feet beneath the surface. Scientists, engineers, and he had tested the technology in the logic heads of those torpedoes in an attempt to defeat it. When the testing had been finished, the probability of a kill when he gave the order was ninety-nine percent.
“Sir?” Stapler asked, impatience bursting through the thin veneer of the war-fighter.
All of this because they tried to kill us. To the victor goes the first kill, he thought. Who said that? His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to recall. After several seconds, his face relaxed and his smile spread. He said it. It was his saying.
“Oh, man, we must really be going into some shit stuff,” the first class said softly.
The other sailor shook his head, standing there with a paper cup full of hot coffee. “He’s almost laughing, man. If it was anyone else, I’d be nervous.”
“Well, it’s not anyone else, it’s Iron Man. Look at Stapler, the asshole. He looks as if he’s about to wet himself the way he’s dancing from foot to foot.”
“I think Iron Man finds him funny.”
“That’s because he’s the Captain and he doesn’t have to put up with Stapler’s shit. Let him work for Stapler for a day.” “He’d grab the lanky zero and toss him overboard is what he’d do, then wipe his hands against each other and walk away whistling. We got one hell of a Skipper, Smuckers.”
“If he can smile when the rest of us are scared shitless, then he must have it under control.” The first class looked at the cup of coffee. “You’re not going to give Iron Man coffee in a paper cup, are you?”
The sailor shook his head. “No man, I ain’t that brave. I’m gonna lift his cup and pour it into it.”
The first class nodded in approval.
“What should I say?”
“What you talking about? You don’t have to say nothing. Just do it. You watch now,” the first class said, pointing at Garcia. “Iron Man cares for the troops. When you do it, he’ll be so calm, he’ll thank you.”
A minute later, the younger second-class petty officer was back alongside the first class.
“Well?”
“You were right. He said thank you, took a sip, and then told me it was good coffee.”
“He is the Iron Man, ain’t he? That coffee has been there all day. It’d take paint off a bulkhead if someone spilled a cup on it, and he thinks it’s good.”
They both shook their heads in amazement. “He’s a braver man than me.”
“Sir? Do you want to okay the attack now?”
The smile dropped and Garcia shook his head. “Let me know when they have positive contact, Commander. Until then, weapons tight. They are not to fire until I give the order.” Stapler rolled his eyes slightly and sighed loudly. “Aye, sir, but we may only get one chance once we have contact,” he said, and walked back to the console.