Seas of Crisis Read online

  Jeffrey very carefully entered the combination on the big envelope’s keypad, to disarm the self-destruct. The last thing he wanted was to set it off by accident. The envelope opened safely; he emptied it onto his desk. His heart began to pound.

  Among the papers and data disks, and another, inner, sealed envelope, were two metal uniform-collar insignia—silver eagles, which meant the rank of Captain, United States Navy, the rank above commander. The actual rank of captain, not just the courtesy title that every warship’s skipper received. Jeffrey snatched the hard-copy orders and read as fast as he could.

  His entire demeanor changed. He realized that his mind had been playing nasty tricks, in the vacuum of feedback from above, running toward doldrums that were probably a symptom of his own lingering reactions to the traumatic events in the Med.

  Challenger’s trip to the U.S. East Coast was a cover story. Five mysterious passengers, embarked at Pearl, belonged to a Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team; SERTs were elite shadow warriors from among the Navy’s mobile combat construction battalions. They gathered unusual intel and did mind-boggling tasks at the forward edge of the battle area. Interesting.

  Jeffrey was hereby promoted to the rank of Navy captain. He was awarded a second Medal of Honor, though this award was classified. There’d be no bright gold star, for the blue ribbon with small white stars already adorning his dressier uniforms, to denote the second Medal. But the selection boards for rear admiral, Jeffrey reminded himself, would certainly know about it when the time came. Challenger’s whole crew had been awarded another Presidential Unit Citation, although this was also top secret outside the ship. Excellent. Morale will skyrocket.

  Once through the Bering Strait, gateway to the Chukchi Sea, he still would turn toward Canada. In the ice-choked, storm-tossed Beaufort Sea, above the Arctic Circle, Challenger would rendezvous with USS Jimmy Carter. Carter was an ultrafast and deep-diving steel-hulled sub of the Seawolf class, uniquely modified with an extra hundred feet of hull length. This gave her room to support large special operations commando raids, plus garage space for oversized weapons and off-board probes.

  Bell was being promoted to full commander. He’d take over Challenger from Jeffrey, who from now on was commanding officer of an undersea strike group consisting of Challenger and Carter. Bell and Carter’s captain would be his subordinates. To avoid confusion between these different roles and ranks, Jeffrey was granted the courtesy title of commodore.

  Jeffrey read further into his orders, more slowly now to absorb every detail. Crucial portions of the mission required that two submarines be involved, but there was much more to it than Challenger and Carter together having greater firepower while covering each other’s backs. This piqued Jeffrey’s curiosity; no explanation was given of what it meant. Even more cryptically, Jeffrey was told to brush up on the Russian he’d studied in college, and to practice his poker face. The SERT passengers would help him on both counts, starting right away. His eyebrows rose, involuntarily, as he took this in.

  After the rendezvous and a joint briefing to be held aboard Carter, he would lead his two-ship strike group westward, into the East Siberian Sea—Russian home waters. His assignment, the orders warned, was to do something draconian, and utterly Machiavellian, that would decisively force Russia to stop supporting the Axis against America while Moscow outwardly kept claiming legal neutrality. Specifics were inside that inner envelope, to be opened only once the rendezvous was made.

  This was exactly the sort of high-stakes mission his command personality needed and craved. Revealing the whole plan in stages, for security, was something he’d gotten used to.

  Yet one thing puzzled Jeffrey. For this mission, he came under the control of Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, an Air Force four-star general. In the present wartime military organization, that general oversaw the readiness and possible use of America’s thermonuclear weapons—hydrogen bombs. Challenger carried no H-bombs, and never had. Her nuclear torpedoes bore very low yields, a single kiloton maximum. H-bombs had destructive power a thousand times as large, and their vastly greater radioactive fallout drifted globally.

  The Axis, shrewdly, owned no hydrogen bombs and made sure the whole world knew it. This kept America from escalating past tactical atomic fission devices set off only at sea—not that anyone sane in the U.S. would want to further escalate this war.

  Jeffrey began to suffer a rising unease. Why am I suddenly reporting to Commander, U.S. Strategic Command?

  Chapter 2

  Jeffrey stood to move around and stretch, breathing in and out slowly, to relax. There were important things to discuss. He returned to his desk, shoving everything back into the orders envelope but not resealing it. He grabbed his intercom and dialed the control room. He no longer felt so cold. He felt as if his blood burned and every neuron fiber tingled.

  “Messenger of the Watch, sir.”

  “Get in here, son, soon as you can.”

  “Right away, Captain.” Jeffrey could hear him jump to attention at the steel he’d put in his tone this time.

  The messenger arrived in seconds. The captain’s stateroom was only a few paces aft of the rear of the control room. Jeffrey told the messenger to come in and shut the door.

  “Yes, sir.” The kid wore the blue cotton jumpsuit that was universal garb among enlisted submariners on patrol, and was also popular with most officers. He was typical of many in a fast-attack sub’s crew: eager and honest and open, a devoted team player, with the bearing of a techie since every job on the ship required strong technical skill. This young man had a large Adam’s apple, and wore eyeglasses—as did about a third of Jeffrey’s people—adding to the effect of a likable warrior-nerd. He was apprehensive at first, then quickly picked up on the new electricity radiating from his captain.

  “Find the XO and tell him I want to see him in ten minutes. Also the Nav.” Bell, and Sessions.

  “XO and Nav in ten minutes, aye, sir.” Messengers were trained to repeat things back, to avoid mistakes.

  “Then go find the one of our passengers named . . .” Jeffrey hesitated. He wasn’t positive how to pronounce it. The five strangers had come down the airlock ladder, after the minisub from Pearl Harbor docked, wearing enlisted dungarees and work shirts, as if they were pierside hands. There were no markings on their sleeves to show their rates—enlisted rank—or their ratings—enlisted specialty—but up close they were clearly too old and hardened to be raw recruits. They hadn’t even brought luggage, except for whatever they fit inside a single canvas tool bag. To the on-watch junior officer of the deck who met them first, they presented orders that listed no names, then gave him the sealed orders pouch for Commander Fuller to put in his safe.

  “Dashiyn Nyurba,” Jeffrey said, slowly and carefully. “Tell him I opened the outer pouch early, and we’re ready to meet.”

  Jeffrey didn’t know which one of the five was this Nyurba. The group had kept very much to themselves. Because enclosed gathering places were in short supply, they held long meetings, barred to outsiders, in a small compartment crammed with ship’s computer equipment. They worked out on the ship’s exercise gear when the fewest crew members were around—well after midnight. They slept in enlisted racks on a lower deck, they wordlessly wolfed down meals in the enlisted mess in a booth they would commandeer for barely ten minutes without any mingling, and they seemed to avoid Jeffrey altogether. The crew accepted such behavior, being used to CIA agents and other “spooks” who’d act this way for whole deployments.

  “Er, could you spell that name please, Captain?”

  Jeffrey did. “I want him to join us half an hour after the XO and Nav get here.” Dinner had already been served in the wardroom—where Jeffrey and his ten officers ate—and in the enlisted mess—where the ship’s fourteen chiefs also ate, by shifts, in a six-man booth unofficially reserved for them. The whole crew numbered one hundred twenty, which created endless overcrowding. Her weapons stocks fully replenished in Australia, sleeping
racks were precluded in the huge torpedo room.

  Jeffrey stopped. He’d noticed that he was still thinking too much like a submarine captain, and not like an undersea strike group commodore should. The transition would not be smooth sailing for Jeffrey—or for Bell.

  He wished to be hospitable to Nyurba, whom he knew now was seniormost among his guests.

  “Have the mess management guys provide us with coffee service for four. And some danish, cookies, whatever they got, warmed a bit, preferably. Time it for when Nyurba gets here.”

  The messenger repeated this, Jeffrey nodded, and he left.

  Using his dressing mirror, Jeffrey undid his commander’s silver oak leaves from his collar points, replacing them with his new eagles. The sweet irony wasn’t lost that he’d vacate this captain’s stateroom a lot sooner than he ever expected.

  Sessions was first to arrive. His shirt was neatly tucked into his slacks, and his hair was nicely combed, because of the unexplained summons to see his captain. Jeffrey knew this wouldn’t last long, Sessions being Sessions.

  “Have a seat,” Jeffrey told him, deadpan, watching Sessions react with a jolt when he noticed the different collar tabs.

  “Are congratulations in order, Captain?”

  “Yes indeed, but hold that thought till the XO gets here.” Jeffrey was enjoying himself. Celebratory occasions of this magnitude didn’t happen often, and he wanted to savor each moment: the one thing more satisfying that being promoted, as a naval officer, was informing one of your people that he or she had received their own well-earned promotion.

  Someone knocked. Bell came in, took the empty guest chair, and did a double-take.

  Jeffrey stood. “I won’t mince words. Lieutenant Commander Bell, by an act of the United States Senate you’ve been promoted to Commander. And Lieutenant Sessions, you are now Lieutenant Commander Sessions. Put on the appropriate insignia.”

  Bell, a bit wide-eyed, removed his gold oak leaves and gave them to Sessions, then picked up the silver oak leaves from Jeffrey’s desk and put them on.

  Sessions, never outwardly competitive or demonstrative in his ambitions, donned the gold oak leaves of a lieutenant commander. He held his two old twin-silver-bar lieutenant collar tabs in his hand and stared at them dumbfoundedly.

  Jeffrey couldn’t hold it in anymore. He cracked into a big smile. “I want to do the change of command ASAP, then hold an award ceremony in the morning. . . . Make it at zero-six-hundred, right after breakfast. Enough of the crew should be awake and off watch, to participate. The PUC award.”

  “Sir?” Now it was Bell who sat dumbfounded.

  Jeffrey cleared his throat for dramatic effect. “We aren’t going home for a while after all. You’re taking Challenger, permanently, and the Nav here is being made the XO. You’ll both be under me as part of a two-ship undersea strike group that shall form up with USS Jimmy Carter once we reach the Beaufort Sea. In my role as strike group commander, I’ll present the Presidential Unit Citation, with you as the recipient unit’s, Challenger’s, skipper. It’s classified, so no gold stars on top of the one we have, but I’d say, coming from our commander in chief, it’s the thought that counts.”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  “Challenger is to be my strike-group flagship at all times, for reasons my orders say will be obvious later. Commander Bell, since you’ll take over this stateroom as skipper, and Lieutenant Commander Sessions will shift from his officers’ three-man stateroom to the XO quarters next door, I’ll use the VIP rack and make my office in there.” It was standard on American subs for the XO stateroom to have a fold-down second rack for VIP passengers. By Navy custom, not even the President of the United States could displace a naval vessel’s captain. “Yes, that part’s straightforward enough. . . . Concur?”

  “Concur,” Bell said.

  “We already know certain tactical doctrine and acoustic-link signals for working with another American nuclear sub.”

  Bell and Sessions nodded.

  “We’ve tons to discuss re Challenger getting through the Bering Strait unobserved by our Russky friends.”

  “Sirs?” Sessions asked. “Who’s the new Navigator?”

  “Promotion to lieutenant came through for Lieutenant Junior Grade Meltzer. You can give him those railroad tracks.” Slang for a navy lieutenant’s insignia. “My final act as commanding officer of Challenger is to decide to make Meltzer the Navigator. My first act as strike group commodore will be to appoint him my part-time executive assistant.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Sessions said.

  “As XO, your first act can be to tell him.”

  “Yessir!”

  Jeffrey fixed his gaze on Bell, and became more officious. “I want to make the changeover right away. You’ve completed your daily walkaround of my submarine?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “You’re satisfied enough with her material condition and crew competence to sign off on that, this minute?”

  “Er, of course, sir.”

  Jeffrey brought up a form on his computer touch screen, then rotated it to face Bell. “There’s the stylus. Render your electronic signature in the places indicated, please.”

  Bell kept scrolling down the screen, signing at each point required until he got to the end. “Sir, I am ready to relieve you as commanding officer of USS Challenger.”

  “Very well. Commander Bell, I am ready to be relieved.”

  “I relieve you, sir.”

  “I stand relieved. Congratulations, Captain,” Jeffrey said, shaking Bell’s hand. “XO, you too.” He shook Sessions’s hand.

  Sessions beamed. “I wish I could tell my folks.”

  “You will, after we carry out compelling business.”

  Someone else knocked. “Speaking of which,” Jeffrey said half under his breath. “Enter!”

  A tall and muscular man in his early thirties came in. His features and complexion were Asian, maybe Mongolian. By the fierceness in his eyes, the tough set of his lips below a jet-black mustache, and the unmistakable coiled strength in his presence as he merely stood there, Jeffrey thought he resembled a latter-day Genghis Khan.

  “Commander Nyurba, CEC, I presume?” CEC meant the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, officers with advanced degrees who could also lead in frontline combat.

  “The pleasure, the honor, are mine, Captain Fuller.” Nyurba’s voice resonated in the small compartment. His accent was totally American, but his speech had that velvet quality that came from central Asian genetics.

  Nyurba possessed a very broad chest. His arms and legs were massive, and toned like a bodybuilder’s. Jeffrey could tell all this on sight: Nyurba, for the first time while on Challenger, wore nothing but swim trunks and a T-shirt adorned with the Seabee logo—an angry bumblebee gripping a machine gun and tools in its six insect arms.

  “Sorry to interrupt your exercise.”

  “Not exercise, Captain. Now you’ve read your orders, light dress is to get me acclimatized. It’s cold where we’re going.”

  Hmm. “That’s what we need to start talking about.”

  Nyurba nodded soberly—too soberly for Jeffrey’s comfort. Commander, Strategic Command, he reminded himself.

  Sessions yielded his chair to Nyurba, and perched against Jeffrey’s filing cabinet. With the four of them packed in the stateroom, it was cramped. Jeffrey preferred to think of times like this as cozy.

  Another knock at the door. “That ought to be refreshments. . . . Come in!”

  A mess management specialist—also highly trained as one of the ship’s paramedics—held a heavily laden tray into the compartment, which Sessions, the closest, accepted. The others passed it from hand to hand until it sat on Jeffrey’s desk. Mouth-watering aromas filled the stateroom.

  “The pastries are optional,” Jeffrey said, “but we’re definitely going to need the coffee. . . . You do drink coffee, Commander? We can get hot water and a tea bag if you prefer.”

  “Thank you,” Nyurba said, “b
ut Navy coffee is fine by me. The closer to Mongolia you get in Siberia, the more you see coffee, not tea. Tea is a Russian thing. I mean ethnic Russian. Seven time zones west of the village where I spent my infancy.”

  “Ha. Learn something new every day.”

  Nyurba smiled warmly, his eyes sparkling in a sprightly way; he had a soft side after all. He also had crooked front teeth, a flaw that made him more human, approachable, not vain.

  “My parents moved to Umiat after the Berlin Wall came down.”

  “Umiat?”

  “On the Colville River, in north Alaska. They run a mom-and-pop general store.”

  “The rustic life? Sounds nice. . . . Well, let’s dig in.” Jeffrey poured coffee for everyone. “Oh, and from now on, you may call me Commodore.” He made it sound routine, matter-of-fact, an afterthought tossed in casually.

  The others acknowledged. Bell and Sessions shifted their postures, settling in more comfortably, both physically and psychologically. They already looked older, more mature than when the meeting began. They were growing into their new roles quickly, as they knew they needed to, following Jeffrey’s example. He sipped his coffee, strong and hot and black.

  “Commander Nyurba, how much can you tell us now about what your team is supposed to do?”

  Dashiyn Nyurba had prepared thoroughly for this initial briefing, and knew he had to proceed with caution. Commodore Fuller was an intelligent man, and fearless, but there were higher considerations that weighed on Nyurba heavily. It was why he’d been given a cyanide capsule to keep nearby at all times.

  “It’s not my team, Commodore. I’m second in command.”