“Get Warrant Naylor in here,” Commander Thompson ordered, turning to the lieutenant.
“Yes, sir.”
“Call the members of my team, too,” Crocker added. “I need to know if we lost any gear. I’m assuming we still have time to get things flown in from the Vinson if we need to.”
“We should be able to accommodate that. Yes.”
Warrant Naylor appeared to be navy-issue all the way-medium height, thinning light brown hair, watery blue eyes, straight back. As he sat across from him sipping from a mug of coffee, Crocker laid out the reasons it made sense to swap the copilot out for Akil or Davis, both of whom had completed advanced SDV training after BUD/S.
But Naylor wasn’t buying any part of it. “Chief, I appreciate where you’re coming from. But this mission will be pushing the envelope as is. Taking into account ocean currents, possible live ordnance in the water around the island, and other considerations, guiding Sleeping Beauty to the target will be a sphincter-tightening two-person job. Any additional pressures could push the mission past the breaking point.”
“Sleeping Beauty?” Crocker asked. “That’s the name of the vessel?”
“We named it that because it resembles the coffin from the movie.”
“Never saw it.”
“My copilot Hutchins has got a six-year-old daughter.”
“Naylor, here’s the long and short. This is gonna be a tough mission, and one where we’ll be facing lot of unknowns when we reach our target. That’s why I need you to work with me and squeeze in five operators.”
“Nope. Not happening. I hear we might be taking a hostage out. So four operators max. That’s the law.”
“What law?” Crocker asked, trying to remain calm.
“I’m not trying to bust your balls, chief. Even with four, you’re gonna feel like you’re squeezed. The fifth means you’ll have to severely minimize your gear.”
“How about flying in a second SDV and crew?” suggested Crocker. “What would be the timetable on that?”
Naylor thought for a minute and answered, “The closest one is in Hawaii, and its electrical system is down.”
“Never mind.”
“We’re looking at a four-hour ride through frigid seas in wet suits breathing through tanks, and a two- or three-hour ride back. Any weather could throw us off course and kill our chances of returning.”
Crocker, who had taken long rides in SDVs before, didn’t need to be reminded of the conditions. Without Davis, he’d be depending on three other operators, one of whom he’d never worked with before. “What’s the weather look like?” he asked.
“Clean and calm tonight,” answered Commander Thompson. “Tomorrow fifty percent chance of precipitation and accompanying winds blowing in from the north.”
“Then we’re launching tonight. Show my teammate Akil the amount of cargo space we’re dealing with, and prepare to deploy at 2100.”
“Chief,” Naylor started, “I just want to say that my co-pilot and I have heard a lot about you, and we’re both honored to be working together.”
“Thanks, Naylor. Let’s get it done.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sometimes you gotta let shit go and say “to hell with it” and move on.
– Eminem
Dawkins hadn’t been the same since the episode in the amphitheater. Something inside him had shut down, severely reducing his energy and affecting his ability to remember simple things-like the names of his assistants or how long he had been held in captivity. He sat for hours in the workshop staring at the partially assembled missile guidance system, vaguely aware of the engineering problems involved in fitting the gyro-stabilized platform, battery, power distribution unit, and missile guidance system together. His assistants Pak Ju and Yi-Thaek stood at his side, looking concerned.
“Battery work, yes?” Pak Ju asked, pointing to the wires running from the lithium pack to the laptop-sized computer that had been specially configured to slip into the platform. Sometimes the ingenuity of the NK engineers surprised him. On other occasions they seemed useless.
“What battery?” he asked, remembering the lullaby Sung had taught him about the peasant woman leaving her baby to search for food.
He found the lithium pack on the bench, and as he picked it up he imagined her looking at the infant’s face, trying to communicate without words. Then he was holding baby Karen and recalling the sense of connection between them as strong as anything he’d ever felt.
“How do you measure that?” he asked out loud.
“Measure what, Mr. Dawkins?” Pak Ju asked.
“Is there a way to correlate that to newtons?”
Pak Ju and Yi-Thaek looked confused. The baby-faced interpreter leaned over Dawkins’s shoulder and said, “They don’t understand.”
“Newtons,” Dawkins answered, rubbing his forehead. “It’s how we measure gravity. The acceleration on Earth is 9.8m/s2. On the Earth’s surface 0.98 newtons equal the force of gravity of 100 grams mass, right?”
“Yes…”
What he felt for Karen and Nan was even stronger. Did it transcend time and distance, too? Didn’t it compel him to behave in certain ways?
“I mean…is there any way to measure that?” he asked out loud.
As the interpreter translated, Pak Ju and Yi-Thaek shook their heads. The both seemed to be saying the same thing: the American has lost it.
“According to Einstein, the measurement of space and time are altered by the motion of the observer,” he said, looking from one assistant to the other. “What about the observer’s emotional state? Mustn’t that alter the perception of space and time as well?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Dawkins. I don’t understand.”
Dawkins wasn’t sure he did, either. He was reaching for something. “I mean…attraction and repulsion. They are forces. But do we measure them in a scientific way? Do we understand how they imprint the universe and affect physical time and space?”
He seemed to be getting emotional as he stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at his feet.
Pak Ju stepped closer and, squinting through his glasses, asked, “Mr. Dawkins, you feel sick?”
A tear rolled down his cheek. He turned away and brushed it off with his sleeve. “Ju, you have children, don’t you?”
Ju nodded. “Yes.”
“You love them?”
“I love children, correct. But job…to complete guidance system. We fall behind schedule. This bad for us.”
Dawkins furrowed his forehead and nose and nodded. “Sometimes you have to leave the people you love…It’s not necessarily of your own volition. There’s a need you have to fill. A responsibility. Like the mother in the lullaby. I’m sure you know it. When the mother left her baby, do you think the infant understood that she would return?”
Pak Ju looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Now Dawkins placed his hand on his shoulders and leaned into him. “Of course he did,” Dawkins said emphatically. “Because the baby saw something in his mother’s eyes.”
“Mr. Dawkins…”
“That’s the force I’m talking about. That’s the one that I believe is more powerful than gravity. It pulls us together. It ensures the survival of our species. Through time and distance, past this life and into the next. We have no way to measure this force, even though it’s the most powerful in the universe. The best word we have to describe it is…love.”
Crocker and his team faced a series of complications, mostly having to do with the volume of gear that could fit into the tight cargo space of the Mk 8 Mod 1 SDV. Now crouched in the very tight Dry Doc Shelter (DDS)-the sledlike device mounted on top of the sub that held the SDV in place-he pushed the button that illuminated the face of his Suunto dive watch and saw that it read 2142.