"Tell me this, son. While you were in that chair, watching the scope… did youfeel on top of things?"
"Beg pardon, sir?"
"Did you feel in control? Did you feel as though you knew what you were doing and that you were able to handle any situation that might come up?"
"Uh… no, sir. I didn't."
"Explain."
"Well… there was just so much going on, you know? And Chief Kurzweil was talking and pointing out things on the screen, and I was having trouble figuring out what anything was. I mean, the buoys with radar reflectors are pretty obvious, and so are the larger ships. But the little ones look just like waves sometimes. And sometimes, all I was getting was this kind of smeared green mess. I didn't know what to look at!"
"So… what did you do wrong?"
"Uh… I didn't identify the speedboat, sir?"
"No. Chief Kurzweil didn't spot it right away, either. He was right there, and he has a lot more experience than you do. If it had been that obvious, he would have spotted it." He should have spotted it, Garrett thought, but he didn't tell Wallace that. "Nope, what you did was fail to tell Chief Kurzweil that you were in over your head. He put you in that chair, gave you the watch. You should have told him that you were having trouble separating out the potential targets or correctly identifying them."
"Oh… "
"Always ask for help if you don't understand something. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Don't worry about feeling stupid or foolish or anything else. Your shipmates' lives depend on you knowing what you're doing. If you don't, sound off!"
"Yes, sir."
"To drive that home, I'm giving you twelve hours extra duty. One hour a day. You'll log 'em with the MAA here."
"Yes, sir." Wallace looked crestfallen.
"I'm letting you off easy, son, because I don't think what happened is entirely your fault. I want you to think, next time. Let someone know if you're in over your head. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Dismissed."
"Aye aye, sir!" Wallace turned and fled through the door.
"You were light on him," Giangreco said. "Twelve hours is a slap on the wrist."
That, Garrett knew, was very true. A captain was authorized to hand out stiff punishments indeed at mast — up to and including two hours a day extra duty for forty-five days, thirty days correctional custody, or a fine amounting to half of two months' pay.
"You know and I know, Chief, that he wasn't the problem. He shouldn't have been there in the first place."
"Poor judgment on Kurzweil's part, I agree, sir. What are you going to do about it?"
Garrett sighed. "There's not much I can do. I cannot and will not undercut the authority of my CPOs. Letting Wallace know I've talked to Kurzweil about it is as much as I could get away with. And I can't let Wallace learn the lesson that it's okay to goof off on watch… or to just let things slide when he's not sure. Otherwise I would have dropped it."
"I think Wallace is a good kid, sir."
"I think so, too. He's eager to please. I think he'll do okay. I'm more worried about Chief Kurzweil. He's going to have to prove to me that he understands the men in his charge. What they can do. And what they can't do."
"You want me to say something to him, sir?"
Garrett shook his head. "No. He knows he's on notice. We'll see what happens."
"I expect so, sir. You know, being locked up in one of these things for months on end is just about guaranteed to bring out the worst in men."
"True. It also brings out the best."
In Garrett's experience, it was tough predicting which would have the upper hand.
A knock sounded at the open door. Commander Jorgensen stood in the opening. "Captain Garrett? Fourteen hundred hours, sir. Time to break out the orders."
"Thank you, Pete. Call in Lieutenant DeKalb and the COB, will you?"
"They're both here, sir." He moved aside so that Garrett could see both Lieutenant DeKalb, Virginia's navigational officer, and Senior Chief Bollinger standing in the passageway.
"Ah. Well, come in as much as you can."
"Everyone inhale," Giangreco joked.
"Master-at-arms, I think our business is concluded."
"Yes, sir. Time for me to make my rounds, anyway."
Giangreco squeezed past the others. The exec took his seat, while the navigational officer and the chief of the boat both stood just inside the doorway. Garrett keyed in the combination of the safe, opened the door, and pulled out Virginia's sailing orders. After the exec verified that the seal was unbroken, Garrett used a penknife from his desk to cut the string and pull out the sheaf of papers inside.
The others waited while he read.
TO: COMMANDING OFFICER, USS VIRGINIA, SSN-774
FROM: COMSUBLANT
RE: OPERATIONAL ORDERS
HAVING DEPARTED NEW LONDON NOT LATER THAN 1200 HOURS 27 MAY 06, USS VIRGINIA WILL PROCEED SUBMERGED VIA THE LABRADOR SEA TO BAFFIN BAY BY WAY OF THE DAVIS STRAIT….
"Well, my informants were right," he said at last.
"What course, Captain?" DeKalb asked.
"North. We're going under the Pole." He heard the intake of breath from the others. "Our orders are to evaluate Virginia's under-ice capabilities and technologies. And after that, we take the Bering Strait south, putting in at Yokosuka for supplies."
"Japan!" Bollinger said. "It's been a while."
"Should be interesting," Garrett said. "If you think Greenpeace is a pain in the ass over nukes, you should see the Japanese."
"They have reason," Jorgensen said.
"It's not like we have nuclear weapons on board," DeKalb pointed out. "Just a nuclear reactor."
"Some folks over there are still touchy about that," the COB pointed out. "They assume any U.S. warship is carrying nuke warheads, and, of course, official U.S. naval policy is to neither confirm nor deny…."
Garrett was paying little attention to the animated conversation as he dropped the orders on his desk. Japan! Already he was wondering if he would be able to wangle the time and the opportunity to see Kazuko while he was there.
If he could just talk to her, convince her that they could make their relationship work….
General Han Do Liu grinned broadly, spreading his arms. "Welcome, brothers, to Small Dragon Island!" He spoke in broken Arabic, for the benefit of the visitors. Captain Jian masked the scowl he felt behind a bland and indifferent face. Han was going out of his way to impress these… foreigners.
The irony of that thought surprised him. The word he'd used was gwailo, used much in the same manner as the Japanese gaijin … and meaning, roughly, "foreign devils." That was what the citizens of the Middle Kingdom had called the foreign barbarians for centuries, but by the nineteenth century it was synonymous with the white foreigners of Europe and America. These foreigners were sworn enemies of the Americans, and somehow the name didn't seem to quite fit.
On the other hand, foreign barbarians were pretty much the same, whether they came from New York City or Karachi.
Or Kabul.
They sat around the long, broad table in the base conference room, Jian and Han and members of their staffs, and the motley collection of al Qaeda fanatics. Men so dedicated to their religion that they were willing to die for it were an enigma to Jian. A lifelong atheist, he did not trust such people, or their motives. Men dedicated to a cause, however, he understood well indeed, and he tried to focus on that aspect of the visitors.