Petty Officer Dirkson, one of the screen watchers said, “This is hopeless. This is fucking hopeless.”
“Secure that talk Sailor,” Orzo barked. “I can’t control what you people think, but I can goddamn well control what you say in this room. Stow the word ‘hopeless.’ ”
Everyone in the room knew that Orzo was right. The guy may be a pain in the ass, but he’s right. All they can control is their attitude, and it may as well be positive.
At the White House, Chief of Staff Bill Daley entered the Oval Office.
“Mr. President, the Coast Guard Sector Commander wants to know if we should convert the operation from Search and Rescue to just Search.
“No!” shouted Obama, smacking the desk. “Until further notice this is a Rescue operation. Any change will only be on my direct order.”
Obama knew that, of the many tasks of a Commander in Chief, one of them is to give the people hope.
Janet Sampson is at the beginning of a busy day. Besides being choir mistress at church, a job that took a surprising amount of time, she taught a few courses at a local community college. She has classes at 11 A.M., noon, and two more in the afternoon.
She’s glad that she’s busy because she is frantic about her husband Rick, the Chaplain of the California. Cancelling classes and sitting in front of the TV is a stupid option, Janet thought. Rick, a man she both loves and looks up to, had long ago convinced her of the power of surrendering to God things that you can’t control. “Give it up to God, Rick would say.” Still, the tension wrapped around her like a python. She thought of Rick, and of their mutual friend, Ashley Patterson. It’s in Ashley’s hands, and God’s, she thought.
The comedy writers for the Leno and the Letterman shows were having a tough morning, and so were the writers at Saturday Night Live. It’s an unbreakable rule of comedy that you can’t make jokes of a bad situation until the situation is resolved. Not only couldn’t they make humor of the California situation, they were wondering if they could write jokes about anything for the upcoming show. Like the days after 9/11, laughter was temporarily on hold.
Daytime TV anchors were earning their large salaries. “There’s nothing new to report” is not journalism, not entertainment, and not worth watching.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing yet another sea captain on the dangers of life on the ocean.
Fox News anchor Sheppard Smith interviewed people who had been lost and almost given up for dead. These segments were good, judging by the ratings, because viewers remember those days of waiting for miners to be rescued, a lost skier to be found, or a boy scout who got separated from his camp. All of these segments had one thing in common: hope. It’s what the country wants. It is also something the country is starting to lose.
Commander Hester, skipper of the Coast Guard Cutter Gallatin, pondered the old saying, “ignorance is bliss.” He wished he had some of that, some ignorance. But he didn’t, he had knowledge. He is an expert in sonar, and he knows the situation is hopeless. As a military commander he would never say that to anyone in his command, but he didn’t have to say it to himself. He had lost hope. He was just going through the motions. He awaits word from Washington, and he knows what the word will be: suspend operations. He just doesn’t know when the word will come.
As the Gallatin passed over the target coordinate one more time, he felt a rumbling, a slight bumping against the ship’s hull. The sky started to turn dark, as if a storm cloud suddenly rolled in. The bumping stopped, the sky brightened, and he thought the same thought that went through the minds of the entire crew: “What the hell was that?” He checked all systems. Satellites okay, radar okay, sonar okay. He put in a call to Washington. No problem with communication. He checked his email on his phone. He had just gotten a message. No problem.
Decades into the future, theoretical physicists would label what the Gallatin had just gone through as “skirting the wormhole.” Of course that would be just a label. The actual phenomena would be explained by pages of mathematical formulas.
The Gallatin had just skirted the wormhole and remained in 2013.
It was 10:30 a.m. on April 10, 2013.
The California has been missing just over seven hours.
Chapter 94
On August 14, 1861, the California had been executing seemingly endless circles in the ocean off Charleston, South Carolina. They had been doing this nonstop, day and night, since August 7, a full week. The weather was typical of South Carolina at that time of year, hot and humid. The ship’s speed was 15 knots, the exact speed she was doing when they hit the wormhole and the Daylight Event four months before.
Seasickness is a chronic malady; you either have it or you don’t. Modern science over the last few years has worked marvels to combat the problem, with patches you stick behind your ear, stuff you put under your tongue, or pills you swallow. But even salty veterans of sea duty on the California were feeling queasy. The turns every three miles were relentless. At 15 knots the ship turned every five minutes. Five minutes of relative steadiness before you had to brace yourself for another turn. Cheese and crackers was the meal of choice in the crew’s mess and the wardroom. One sailor, seeing a stew sloshing around in a pot on the chow line, had to make a dash for the nearest head.
In his morning report over the loudspeaker, Ivan Campbell tried to lighten things up a bit. “The uniform of the day will be service fatigues and barf bags.”
To relieve tension, Captain Patterson ordered that a Rolling Stones song be played over the PA system every 45 minutes. I KNOW, IT’S ONLY ROCK & ROLL, BUT I LIKE IT.
Would it ever end? Five minutes, lurch to port. Five minutes, lurch to starboard.
SEAL Petty Officer Pete Campo suspended his martial arts classes until further notice. Instead he organized a line dancing class. Hundreds of sailors discovered that, on Campo’s timed command, when they switched their weight from one foot to the other, it compensated for the ship’s roll. Petty Officer Simon Planck, the hero of July 2, joined the class. He was healing from his shoulder wound. Planck thought he may have a future in ballroom dancing, maybe with the lovely young Marine corporal he always lined up next to.
Ashley took her exercise bag down from its chain. The constant swaying nauseated her.
Commander Joseph Perino, the ship’s medical officer, attended to Petty Officer Bill Jordan, the man who suffered a severe heart attack in April. His condition has steadily worsened since then. His immune system is compromised, and he suffers one infection after another. He recently contracted pneumonia, and his condition is grave. Having lost over 40 pounds, he barely has the strength to speak. Perino had taken a liking to this poor guy, and the feeling was mutual. They would talk for hours about their mutual love, carpentry.
At 1355 hours, Jordan drew his last breath. Perino called the Captain to inform her. How sad, thought Ashley. The poor man would never see his old century again, not to mention his family. She called Father Rick. The chaplain’s office handled all arrangements for burial at sea.