"Hey, Chief Toynbee," one sailor called out from the back of the mess hall. "You're married to a Formosan girl, ain't you?"
"Yeah, Burke, I am." Suddenly, Toynbee's voice was cold, with a hard, wary edge to it. "What of it?"
"Just that kind of explains why you like the chinks so much, huh?"
"What's to explain?" The question was a growl. Toynbee lurched to his feet, his fists clenched, his expression dangerous. "We're talkin' about people here. Not chinks. Not slants. Not—"
"Yeah, yeah, okay, Chief. No offense, right?"
"I'm not so sure about that. Sometimes I find you damned offensive, Burke."
"Easy there, people," Garrett said. "Both of you stand down!"
"Maybe I will after I swab the deck with that damned snipe," Toynbee said.
"Cool it, Chief!" Dougherty snapped. "You heard the XO!"
Another chief, EMC Yolander, was already on his feet at the other end of the compartment, talking quietly with Burke. After a moment Burke got up and left with Yolander, who was the Seawolf's Master at Arms — essentially the boat's senior policeman. But if Burke was a "snipe," as Toynbee had called him, he was also part of Seawolf's engine room gang and therefore in Yolander's division. A quiet word with the man in the passageway outside ought to be enough to settle things, at least for now. Garrett made a mental note to talk with the MAA at the first opportunity and see if there was an ongoing problem here.
The near confrontation left Garrett thoughtful as the movie began a few minutes later. The U.S. Navy was an interesting cross-sectional mix of American culture, beliefs, and attitudes, with some cultural peculiarities all its own thrown in for good measure. People did not shed their prejudices and small-town bigotry with their civvies when they signed up. In boot camp, new recruits from Smalltown, Ohio, found themselves living with former gang members from Chicago, Black Muslim street kids from Philadelphia, Latinos from Miami, Moslems from Los Angeles. The Navy was a melting pot of cultures, religions, and ethnic backgrounds.
And sometimes — especially aboard ships or within the claustrophobic confines of a submarine — the pot became something more like a pressure cooker.
That had always been the case. During Vietnam, the Navy had struggled with racism and racial hatreds, mostly between blacks, whites, and Latinos. In World War II, African Americans in the Navy had been largely restricted to duty as mess attendants and stewards' mates, conveniently ignored, while officialdom struggled with widespread prejudice against Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. Always, it seemed, there was someone to hate, someone over whom you could feel superior.
But in the years since the September 11 terrorist attack, especially, traditional American isolationism had been more manifest as a mistrust, a fear, as an outright hatred of anyone different — anyone who spoke a different language, worshiped a different God, expressed a different culture. Lately, in fact, Navy personnel had been required to attend sensitivity training classes, view movies, engage in cross-cultural role playing, and receive special counseling, all in the name of keeping the lid on the bubbling stew of religious and ethnic bigotry.
At the same time, Navy personnel were far better traveled than most American kids, both those from small-town America and the street kids from the cities. "Join the Navy and see the world" was more than a recruiting slogan. It was a big part of what life in the Navy was all about, and those people willing to have their eyes opened quickly found that different could be interesting, fun, even beautiful. Every duty station where Garrett had been had its share of sailors who loved the place because it was new and foreign and exotic, balanced by its share of men who hated it because it was different.
Quite a few old hands who'd been in the service long enough to be stationed overseas for several years had married local girls. A higher-than-usual percentage of
Navy chiefs and first-class petty officers were married to women they'd met while stationed in Japan or the Philippines, or while on liberty in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Thailand.
Hell, Garrett thought, he'd been thinking seriously about asking Kazuko to marry him, a year after meeting her at Atsugi. He wasn't sure yet that he wanted to take that step so soon after the divorce from Claire, but he loved her deeply. The idea of crossing cultural — or racial — boundaries didn't bother him in the least.
But there were lots of men who were bothered, men who assumed that different was bad or, at the least, inferior.
And those kinds of assumptions could be big trouble when bottled up on board a submarine.
Garrett found himself becoming absorbed in the movie. He'd forgotten that Steve McQueen's character had a Chinese girlfriend and that the movie dealt heavily with the racial and cultural tensions between the fictional San Pablo's American crew and the Chinese. Had things changed so little since the historically realistic days of the movie's setting? That was pretty damned depressing.
He did wonder how the sudden change in the Seawolf's mission would affect things on board. Tensions had been on the rise since he'd joined her in Japan. Everyone knew that the PLA had a brand new fleet of hunter-killer submarines out and that they were tossing warheads at Taiwan. If every man on board didn't expect a war to break out soon with China, at least every man was braced for that possibility. That realization put a lot of stress on the crew.
Then a radio message from Washington arrived, directing them to cruise into Hong Kong with flag flying, ambassadors of American goodwill. That kind of thing could cause an acute case of emotional whiplash. Pent-up stress could be released in unexpected ways. How well captain and crew handled that release, Garrett thought, would tell a lot about their training, their experience, and their dedication to the boat.
He just wished he could be sure the Chinese were as interested in Seawolf's goodwill visit as the State Department seemed to be. Seawolf was an extremely valuable, extremely expensive American asset, and moored to a dock in Hong Kong, she would be in-the-crosshairs vulnerable.
This, he decided, was going to be a damned interesting cruise.
11
"All clear topside," Garrett said, walking the scope around in a full circle. "Take us up, Mr. Tollini."
"Now surface, surface, surface," Tollini called over the boat's intercom. "Up bubble, ten degrees. Helm, steady as you go."
"Up bubble, ten degrees, aye aye," the planesman announced.
"Helm steady as she goes, aye," the helmsman added.
"Blow main ballast," Garrett said.
"Blow main ballast, aye." Tollini brought his palm down on the main ballast release, sending high-pressure air into the sub's ballast tanks.
The deck tilted, and Seawolf rose from the darkness of the ocean depths.
This was, Garrett thought, an unnatural act, akin to a reluctant paratrooper's lament about jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Modern submarines did not belong on the surface… and he hadn't needed the Board of Inquiry after Operation Buster three years ago to tell him that. Submerged, an attack submarine was one of the deadliest and most formidable of all modern weapons platforms, hard to find, hard to kill; on the surface, she was remarkably vulnerable and weak, visible to all, with a hull so thin even a lightly armed patrol boat or aircraft could take her out.