“What’s up, Skipper?” said Rodriguez.
“ComSubLant, that’s what’s up,” Scott said. “The squadron commodore just called. Ellsworth wants to see me.”
“You in trouble?”
“No more than usual.”
“The commodore give you a hint what the boss wants to see you about?” Rodriguez asked.
“Possible change of orders.”
“Hell, Skipper, we already have our orders.”
“Change of orders for me.”
“What?”
The Tampa had just completed a refit and was scheduled to depart Norfolk for sea trials and, later, deployment. Scott had been the Tampa’s commanding officer for over two years and she was his home.
Whatever it was that Ellsworth had in mind for him, the admiral was in for a fight. Especially if it meant giving up command of the Tampa. She was his ship and he didn’t want anyone to take her from him. He thought about Tracy. Someone had taken her from him; now this. No, that wasn’t true: Tracy had left him. Big difference.
There had been all those intelligence-gathering patrols into hostile waters, all those weeks and months away from her. She had complained that he was more intimate with his sub crew than he was with her.
The phone calls had hurt too. Like the one on his first night ashore after a hellish sixty-day patrol off North Korea. He had picked up the phone and heard loud music in the background. A man’s voice said,
“Trace, it’s Rick. Wanna party, wear that red-hot outfit of yours?” “Not tonight,” Scott had said icily.
Click! At least he hadn’t walked in the door and found Rick’s face buried between Tracy’s legs. Why blame her? She just wanted a normal life, not the one he’d given her. He wondered if she had found her new life satisfying, if the things she liked to do in bed excited the guy she was running with now…. He caught himself in time and reeled back from the edge of misery.
Scott stood. “I’m to report to Ellsworth at fifteen hundred.”
“What about the party at the O club?” Rodriguez brayed. “You gonna make it?”
“Better stow it for now.”
Scott looked at all the untouched paperwork piled on the desk, reports and correspondence awaiting his review and signature. What he really wanted to do was shit-can all of it and get back to sea. He took a dirty work jacket down from a hook on the bulkhead. “Take care of my ship, Manny.”
Vice Admiral Carter Ellsworth, commander, Submarines Atlantic, peered through a pair of thick wire-rimmed glasses that magnified his pale blue eyes. The benign look on his face masked a cunning personality. His desk, except for coffee in a fine china cup, had been cleared of papers. Flags, framed photos of the president, the civilian service chiefs, and plaques bearing the names of U.S. submarines were the only items on display in Ellsworth’s spartan office.
“Consider yourself detached from the Tampa,” Ellsworth said without preamble.
Scott felt he’d been gut-punched.
“You’re detached for TDY. Chief of staff has your orders. You can pick them up when you leave, Captain.”
“Captain?” Scott said.
“You’ve been frocked for your new assignment.” Ellsworth tossed Scott a plastic bag containing a pair of silver eagle collar devices. “Meanwhile, see if these fit.”
Scott’s frocking was a mixed blessing. He’d bragged, had even worn as a badge of honor, that he was probably the oldest commander in the Navy, passed over for promotion to captain once and doomed if he was passed over again. But reassignment meant giving up command of the Tampa and he’d worked too hard rehabilitating himself to do that.
“Karl Radford wants to see you,” Ellsworth said. The cup rose to his lips; gold braid on his sleeve sparkled like a bolt of raw electricity.
Scott digested this. Karl Radford, a retired United States Air Force major general, headed the Strategic Reconnaissance Office, a supersecret intelligence agency with intelligence-gathering assets in place world-wide. Scott had always suspected that most — if not all — of the missions he’d conducted at sea had been ordered by the SRO. Perhaps even the one that had almost ended in disaster. And had been hung around his neck.
Ellsworth looked at Scott. He saw a man in his early forties, tall, with dark hair flecked with gray. He had rough-edged good looks and a bearing that indicated he knew how to handle himself in tough situations. “Any idea why he’d want to talk to you?”
Scott shrugged. “No, sir. Do you?”
Ellsworth ignored this and said, “Wrap up whatever you have pending. Radford wants you in Washington day after tomorrow. Any problem with that?”
“Perhaps he’d consider someone else in my place.”
Ellsworth set his jaw. “What are you saying, Scott?”
“That I’d prefer to retain command of the Tampa. Whatever General Radford has in mind for me can’t be more important than what I’m doing now.”
Ellsworth pushed the coffee aside. His pale blue eyes had turned dark. “Let me tell you something, Scott. You’re still hanging by a thread. You’ve had your second chance and admittedly you’ve made the most of it. A lot of men who have been in your position are out of the Navy. Some are selling appliances for Sears; others are reading the want ads.”
Scott felt pressure building at the base of his skull.
Ellsworth plunged ahead. “Those men didn’t deserve a second chance, but you did. I don’t intend to give you another.”
“Admiral, I fought hard for it and I don’t plan to end my career on the beach all used up.”
“Apparantly General Radford agrees. He wouldn’t ask for one of SubLant’s best skippers unless it was damned important. More important than driving subs. He knows your background and all the rest. He wants someone with a brain who knows how to use it. I told him you wouldn’t disappoint him.”
“Thank you.”
“Now let me give you some advice, Scott. A lot of people around here think you’re a hero and that you got the shitty end of the stick — that we brass hats needed a scapegoat and you were it. No need to go over old ground, what’s done is done. But keep this in mind: I know Radford, and he isn’t impressed by heroes. He’ll dice you up if he thinks even for a second that you might customize the orders he gives you. This time try sticking to the rules — his rules, not Jake Scott’s. I don’t think you’d be very successful selling appliances.”
Ellsworth stood. “That about does it. Oh, one more thing. Rodriguez. In your judgment, he’s fully qualified for command?”
Scott stood too. “He is.”
“I’ll be riding the Tampa during her shakedown. See how he handles it. The pressure, I mean.”
Scott put a hand to the base of his skull.
Ellsworth saw Scott to the door and shook his hand in a mechanical fashion. “By the way, it was Radford who wrangled your frocking out of BuPers, not me,” Ellsworth laid a finger beside his nose. “I gather it wasn’t easy.”
Scott finished a beer and wrapped up the remains of Chinese takeout in a brown paper sack. He gazed numbly at a muted CNN female talking head with plastic hair and Chiclet teeth yapping about the president’s upcoming summit meeting with his Russian counterpart in St. Petersburg, city of the czars.
And on Capitol Hill, the Senate majority leader…He punched the power button and she vanished.
Broken noodles, greasy paper bags, and cardboard containers went into a garbage pail. Was garbage picked up on Thursday? Or was that recycling day? He was out of sync with the daily rhythms of life ashore. But his apartment was cheap and close to the base, which was all he cared about. And that his neighbors minded their own business. A Marine Corps colonel two doors away had never spoken a word to him.