And now it was Garrett's turn. The president of Electric Boat was introducing "the exceptional young officer" who'd been selected to take the Virginia out on her first operational deployment, her "voyage into the crystalline waters of the twenty-first century, and beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Commander Thomas Frederick Garrett, the new captain of the USS Virginia!"
Bemused, he stood and walked to the podium. Exceptional young officer? He was old for a commander — thanks to his passing up the rank of captain. And right now he was feeling pretty old. His first wife had divorced him when he couldn't give her a normal kind of life, with a husband who came home from work at night and wasn't gone six or eight months at a time. And then there's been Kazuko….
Being a submarine skipper, it seemed, precluded anything like actually having a life.
"Like Commander Fitch," he said, placing the single sheet of paper with his speaker's notes before him on the podium, "I won't speak for long. I'm a sub driver, not a speech-maker. This is, after all, the silent service. Submariners put a high premium on being quiet."
The audience laughed, and a few people applauded. They were as tired of this ritual as he was, he decided. He glanced again at his notes and decided to ignore them. Garrett was better at speechmaking when the words came from the heart rather than from notes, and he knew it.
"We've already heard all about what a fine boat the Virginia is, about the tradition of superb shipbuilding at this yard, about what marvelous technology we put into our submarines, about what fine young men Virginia has as her crew. All true.
"But one thing more we haven't mentioned yet… and that is the dedication of the men who serve aboard this nation's submarines.
"You know, there are certain perks about submarine service. The food is the best in the Navy. The pay scales are good — at least so far as the Navy is concerned. And submariners know that they're the best. We are an elite, and we know it. That translates as self-confidence, as competence, and as an esprit de corps that just won't quit. We have a saying in the submariner service, you know. There are only two kinds of ships in the Navy: submarines… and targets. We are the hunters, the stalkers, the killers.
"But all of that comes with a price, and all of us wonder, sometimes, if the cost is worth it. Service on board a submarine is tough, and it is demanding. We stand watch and watch, usually, which means our internal clocks are always out of sync with the rest of the world, and that half the time we're trying to sleep when everybody else is awake and making more noise than you'd think was possible on board a submarine.
"Unlike the rest of the Navy, we don't have women aboard as part of the crew, and, submarines being what they are, we're not going to. We go for so long without even seeing the fair sex that we forget what they look like." He paused as the audience laughed.
"And it's crowded. Things are a little better, I hear, on the boomers — the big ballistic missile subs — and the Seawolf had a bit of room to spare, at least when we didn't have a team of Navy SEALs on board — but the Los Angeles-class attack boats, and now, the Virginia, just have too many men living in too small a space. You have to 'hot bunk'—racking out on a mattress just vacated by someone else going on watch. There is no such thing as privacy. I've seen closets bigger than the quarters used by a boat's officers, and if you're an enlisted man, the only nod toward privacy is your rack — a space seventy inches long and just eighteen inches high, walled off from the corridor by a curtain.
"And yet, every man on board an American submarine is a volunteer. He asked to be there, and had to jump through some pretty demanding hoops to be accepted. Submariners are among the smartest kids in the Navy. I think they're also the craziest, giving up a sane, normal, spacious life ashore or on board one of those floating cities we call targets in order to live like a sardine, wedged into a claustrophobe's nightmare with over a hundred other sardines, sometimes not even able to see the sun or taste fresh air for months at a time.
"They are volunteers. And by volunteering — and by sticking it out — they show a level of sheer, raw dedication, to their country, to the service, to their shipmates, to themselves, that is, to my mind, astonishing.
"And that, people, is what makes the Virginia an amazing submarine. Not her technology… but the dedication of her crew.
"I only hope I can live up to the standards they will set."
The speechmaking was over at last. Wallace had been transfixed by the last speaker — Commander Garrett, his new CO. He sounded like an okay kind of guy, an understanding guy, not at all like the tyrants he'd heard so many stories about in boot camp and school.
He was also older than Wallace had expected. During the inspection following the speeches — when Commander Fitch and Commander Garrett walked up and down the ranks of sailors on the dock — Garrett passed right in front of him, two feet away. Garrett seemed to possess an energy that felt… restless, barely contained, but it was an energy reined in by a formidable self-control. Wallace's own father had never possessed that aura of maturity.
Wallace found he was less worried now about being "found out" by his shipmates than he was about living up to this new commanding officer's expectations.
4
Garrett trotted up the steps of the graceful, turn-of-the-century mansion housing the headquarters of Naval Submarine Group Two, returning the salute of the two Marine sentries outside the door. It was a beautiful New England spring day, with gulls wheeling and keeking overhead. He'd been at the dock supervising the provisioning of the Virginia but Admiral Fore's summons had been brutally direct, with an air of urgency. What could be the problem?
Vice Admiral Richard Fore's office was a bastion reached through layers of outer offices and official buffers of progressively higher and higher rank. Garrett was passed through with little delay until he was ushered through into the carpeted office of the commanding officer of Submarine Group Two. SUBGRU Two was the command organization for all SSNs — attack submarines — in the Atlantic. The strongest such fleet in the world, it included SUBRON 2 and SUBRON 10, as well as SUBDEVRON 2 which evaluated new undersea technologies, all based out of New London. It was also the headquarters for SUBRON 4, down in Charleston, South Carolina, and for SUBRONs 6 and 8 operating out of Norfolk. At any given time, SUBGRU Two might command as many as forty-five attack submarines, various tenders and support vessels, and the special Navy Research submarine NR-1.
He came to attention in front of the admiral's massive oak desk. "Commander Garrett, reporting as ordered, sir."
Fore glared up at him from beneath a formidable pair of shaggy white eyebrows. "What the hell were you playing at, Commander?"
"Sir?" Garrett scrambled through his memory, searching for whatever it was that might have made his boss this angry. He couldn't remember….