take place on a large TV screen instead of along the horizon.
Besides, being on the bridge gave him room to pace, a way of working
off the nervous energy he always felt at sea.
His officers and crew encouraged it. It made him easier to live
with.
He felt the bridge team getting nervous, could see it in the small
movements they made adjusting equipment that didn’t even need to be
touched, in the snapping of a pencil point by the navigator on a chart,
in me insistent queries to Engineering to reassure themselves that all
was well with the main propulsion. He wasn’t helping any, he knew. His
nervousness was transmitting itself to them, adding on to the worries
of the present tactical situation. With a sigh, he forced himself to
slide into the large brown leatherette captain’s chair located on the
starboard side of the bridge, made himself prop his feet up on the
window ledge and finish the cup of coffee calmly. It had an immediate
effect on him.
“Thirty minutes,” the officer of the deck said.
The captain finished sipping on his coffee, swallowed, and then made a
point of not answering immediately. “Be good to see the ship actually
work,” he said finally, his voice determinedly casual.
“Yes, Captain, it will.” The OOD seemed on the verge of unbending, of
saying more, but then fell silent.
That’s what we’re here for, you know,” the captain said, raising his
voice without seeming to so that every member of the bridge crew could
hear. “We’re saving lives. No aircrews shot down, no SAR missions,
just ordnance on target.” He took another sip of coffee, silently
assessing the impact of his words. “We don’t want to do too well,
though.
The aviators will be after our commands.”
The small joke, which referred to the requirement under law that an
aviator be in command of an aircraft carrier, provoked a flurry of
nervous chuckles from the crew. None of them would have put it past
the naval aviators. Not at all.
The OOD cleared his throat. “Captain, they’re asking for you in
Combat. If it’s convenient.”
Captain Heather sighed. He drained the last of his coffee, climbed
carefully down from his chair, and handed the empty ceramic mug to the
quartermaster on watch. “Stick this in a drawer for me, will you?
I’ll be back up for a refill after we shoot.”
The quartermaster nodded and wedged the cup between two volumes of
Button’s Navigation in the bookshelf behind him. “It will be right
here where you can get to it, Captain.”
It was odd, he thought as he strode back to Combat, how small things
seemed to reassure the crew. The fact that he would soon be back on
the bridge, having a refill on his cup of coffee, steadied them.
He wished it could do the same for him.
WOO Local (+5 GMT) Fuentes Naval Base The ancient Foxtrot diesel
submarine moored to the pier was rust-streaked and battered. It had
been five years since she’d last done anything more than turn over her
engines on routine maintenance, longer than that since her last
operational mission. A long-ago gift from the Soviet Union, she served
mainly as a source of electrical power for other ships tied up at the
pier, a naval war vessel in name only.
From the conning tower, a thick steel pipe rose ten feet in the air.
In contrast to the rest of the submarine, it looked smooth and well
maintained. Not unusual, given the fact that the rusted and corroded
snorkel mast had been replaced the day before. As first one and then
another of the Kolumna diesel engines kicked over, black smoke belched
out of the mast, fouling the air around the submarine and settling in a
fetid pool on top of the water. The line handlers standing along the
pier choked and tried to cover their noses with wet cloths.
As the engineers warmed up the engines and adjusted the fuel mix
feeding into them the exhaust gradually cleared.
The gentle breeze wafted away most of the fumes, and the sailors soon
grew accustomed to the smell of half-burnt diesel fuel.