by Joe Buff
“But you weren’t even there!”
“He knows that.”
“Can’t you try to talk to him again? The stuff you’ve done, since that phone call anyway, it should make a difference.”
“Right. Except it’s all highly classified. He has no idea what I’ve been up to, and he never will, will he?”
“I guess not. I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. Just try to forget about it. It’s not something I like to talk about.”
Jeffrey looked away from Ilse. There was nothing she could do to help him anyway.
Simultaneously, on Voortrekker, in the Indian Ocean
In the control room Gunther Van Gelder gripped his armrests as Voortrekker wallowed sickeningly at periscope depth, moving very slowly, in a race against time. Minutes before, Voortrekker had launched three dozen Mach 2.5 cruise missiles at Diego Garcia, four hundred miles away, the vital Allied forward bastion in the Indian Ocean. The nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan’s aircraft were doggedly hunting Voortrekker now, because of the noisy launch datum Jan ter Horst made. The Reagan was much closer to Voortrekker than Voortrekker was to Diego Garcia, and Reagan’s planes were almost as fast as ter Horst’s missiles.
Van Gelder watched his tactical screens warily and nervously. His sonarmen and fire-control technicians were also on edge. Van Gelder could smell their sweat, feel their inner tension, see their worried faces clearly in the control room’s daytime lighting. Eight brilliant decoys had been running in different directions for half an hour or more. Voortrekker hoped to be lost amid the distraction of the decoys, but Van Gelder had serious doubts, for a simple reason.
Voortrekker had both periscope masts up. Her satellite-communications antenna dish was also raised. This was exceedingly dangerous, despite their low-observable radar-absorbing designs, but ter Horst insisted. Jan ter Horst wanted to watch his handiwork at Diego Garcia unfold live.
“Soon now,” ter Horst said. “You can see the antiair defenses getting more intense.” He leaned closer to the full-color video feed from the satellite, monitoring the target on his main console display. Van Gelder watched identical imagery, windowed on his own screens. Sometimes large waves, outside the hull, buried Voortrekker’s antenna dish, and the picture went blank, then resumed. Even submerged, the ship rolled heavily, recovered, rolled hard the other way.
“Watch your trim,” ter Horst snapped at the helmsman and chief of the boat. “Don’t let her broach!”
The satellite was in high earth orbit, passing overhead. It belonged to a neutral Third World country, but had been built in Germany before the war. When the bird was launched its owners had no idea it carried extra circuitry they didn’t pay for, covertly embedded military data-relay links the Allies wouldn’t try to shoot down or jam, because they wouldn’t know to.
But these satellites had no spy cameras, which would have been too obvious. The uplink feed came instead from an unmanned aerial vehicle, a stealthy recon drone launched by a German class 214 modern diesel sub. The sub lurked north of ter Horst’s target, in support of his mission. The drone kept a close eye on Diego Garcia, from a few thousand meters’ altitude, sending pictures up to the satellite by a focused microwave beam. Voortrekker herself was well to the south of the enemy’s island base, hiding from visual detection beneath thin overcast. She was observing radio silence, just receiving the downlink feed.
Van Gelder forced himself to stay outwardly calm, to keep his men calm. It wasn’t easy. Visibility under the overcast was good. With little warning, low-flying aircraft armed with nuclear depth bombs might spot Voortrekker’s masts at any moment.
The Pentagon
Ilse heard voices from inside the meeting room. The voices were muffled, but Ilse knew people were arguing, shouting. She heard an especially deep, booming voice, which sounded accusing and irritated. Others answered harshly, including at least two women, as tough as the men. The marine guards stood there stoically.
Ilse turned to Jeffrey. “Not a good start to the day.”
“Last night was not a good night in New York.”
Ilse rolled her eyes and nodded when it hit her. The taunting humiliation of that Mach 8 cruise-missile raid would preempt anything else on the agenda. She glanced at the double doors. How long have they been in there? Since 5 A.M? Since last night?
The discussion quieted down. A navy captain came out. He was shorter than Ilse, maybe five foot five, balding, aloof, and arrogant. He introduced himself and curtly shook hands with Ilse and Jeffrey. He was the senior aide to the vice chief of naval operations, the four-star admiral who chaired the meeting.
“Exactly what group are we addressing?” Ilse asked.
“That’s classified, who’s on what committee. We don’t publish organization charts these days. They’re ready for you.”
Ilse took a deep breath and stood up as straight as she could. She followed Jeffrey and the captain into the meeting room. In spite of the inconvenience of the trip, she’d been looking forward to this chance to show off what she’d done. Now, still emotionally numb from those few horrible minutes atop the Empire State Building, she saw twenty very senior faces stare at her from around a huge mahogany conference table. There were more generals’ stars on their shoulder boards and admirals’ rings on their jacket cuffs than she could count.
An atmosphere of conflict lingered heavily in the room, and in the body language. Not one person smiled, and their eyes were hard and unreachable.
On Voortrekker
Voortrekker was jarred by thunder that came right through the hull, building to a harsh crescendo, dying off abruptly. Nasty vibrations sent pins and needles up Van Gelder’s arms and legs. “Loud explosion,” the sonar chief shouted, “bearing two seven zero!” West. “Range eighty thousand meters.” Forty nautical miles. “Classify as an Allied nuclear depth charge, twenty-kiloton yield!”
“Ooh, they’re using biggies.” Ter Horst tut-tutted. “They’re clueless where we really are. They’d need a lucky shot to even come close.”
“Sir,” Van Gelder said, “that must be enemy aircraft, searching for us, attacking one of the decoys.” He was doing his job, giving ter Horst a tactical assessment.
“Yes, yes. Carrier planes from the Reagan. Relax, Gunther. We’re not submerging now. We need this imagery.”
Telling Van Gelder to relax only heightened the tension in the control room — younger crewmen squirmed in their seats.
“Aye aye, Captain,” Van Gelder said. “It’s a big ocean they have to search, and our antenna mast is stealthy.” He said that for the men, sounding as cocky as he could, trying to believe it so that they would.
I knew ter Horst was aggressive, but this is cutting things really close.
The Pentagon
By the time Jeffrey’s second briefing slide came on the screen, the generals and admirals started arguing again — it was as if he and Ilse weren’t there. They argued about the missile raid on New York, and the lack of supplies to the dwindling but crucial Central Africa pocket. They argued about the whole course of the war. There were accusations thrown between the army and navy and air force, and counteraccusations. The marines and coast guard argued too. It got so ugly the vice chief of naval operations had to call a fifteen-minute break.
The VCNO’s senior aide came up to Jeffrey and Ilse. “You didn’t hear any of that. After the recess, you two go on like it never happened. Understand me?”
Ilse nodded. Jeffrey said, “Aye aye, sir.” Ilse asked directions to the ladies’ room.
Jeffrey decided to walk some distance from the conference room. He didn’t want to stand at a urinal next to someone from this crazy, trouble-filled meeting.
Jeffrey found a rest room in a hallway that seemed quiet. He entered and got the shock of his life. Standing there in a business suit, taking a leak, was his father.
FOUR
Jeffrey’s dad turned and noticed him, and did a double take. “It is you,” Michael Fuller s
aid to his son. Jeffrey felt his chest tighten. The man began to wash his hands, half ignoring Jeffrey. Testing me. Challenging me. Jeffrey knew too well he and his father both had their egos, especially with each other.
“I, um,” Jeffrey stammered. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “How come you’re here?”
Michael Fuller used his reflection in the mirror to look at Jeffrey. “That’s the best you can manage? ‘How come I’m here?’ Not ‘Good to see you, Pop’? Not ‘How are the nieces and nephews’?” Jeffrey had two older sisters, both married and with kids.
“Sorry. It’s been a rough couple of days.”
“Yeah.” His dad was sour. “For all of us.” He turned to face Jeffrey, and grudgingly made conversation. “You stationed in the Pentagon now?”
“No. Just came from out of town, for a meeting. You?” Conflicting emotions flooded through Jeffrey as his father grabbed some paper towels. Part of Jeffrey wanted to run, in shame. Part of him wanted to talk to his dad here forever, to beg forgiveness, to make up for lost time. Jeffrey realized he was regressing — meeting parents often does this to people. He made himself maintain his dignity.
“I work in the DOE now,” Michael Fuller stated. “That’s the Department of Energy. Well, you’d know what DOE means. You sailor boys do love your acronyms.”
Jeffrey winced.
“Right here in Washington,” his father said. “They made me a deputy assistant secretary. Energy conservation on the home front, that’s my bailiwick. The DOE’s on the cabinet, and needs to be, with this war.”
“That’s great, Dad. Sounds like a real big promotion.”
“I’m one of the top twelve people in the department.”
“It, uh, it must have happened fast.” Like in the last eight weeks.
“Yeah. There’ve been a lot of shakeups since the war’s been going so badly. Peacetime yes-men and timeservers who couldn’t hack it, they’re out on their butts.”
Jeffrey nodded. “That’s happened in the navy too.” Which was why the job as executive officer in Challenger had been vacant back in October, when Jeffrey got his transfer to the ship from a fast-track planning job at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. The war broke out in July, and Challenger’s previous XO did not meet Captain Wilson’s high demands preparing for combat.
“They liked what I’d been doing in Missouri,” Michael Fuller went on. “Somebody liked the cut of my jib, to use your lingo. Reached over there for me, and here I am.”
Jeffrey’s father finished drying his hands. He stuffed the paper towels in the trash bin harder than he needed to, almost resentfully.
“I’m supposed to be good at getting people to cut out the blame games, cut out the turf fights, get them to work together better. That’s what the secretary told me, anyhow…. I did a lot of soul-searching after you left home, asking myself where I coulda gone wrong, you turning out the way you did, all those fights and games in the house, a stranger to your own family…. Maybe I married too young…. Maybe I shoulda stopped with two kids. I always seemed better at raising daughters…. I guess it paid off, sort of, all that thinkin’ because of you, paid off at work anyhow. Me, the Great Compromiser. And here I am.”
Jeffrey studied his father. The man’s face was deeply creased with worry lines. His middle-age spread was gone. His suit looked expensive. He wore a perfectly knotted silk tie, not the polyester clip-ons Jeffrey remembered from when he was a kid. His father exuded an air of active intensity and drive that Jeffrey had never seen before. But maybe it had always been there, and he’d been too self-absorbed and immature to notice.
Michael Fuller peered at his son as if to take in every inch of him. “You look older.”
“War does that to people,” Jeffrey said.
“Tell me about it…. You look good in that uniform.”
“Thanks.” This was the closest thing to a compliment Jeffrey’s dad had ever paid his naval career. Jeffrey decided to take a chance and reciprocate. “I like your suit.”
The man’s face softened. “One has to look the part. I got a big staff now, spend time at the White House, testify before Congress…. I’ve been hearing rumors about you.”
“Sir?”
“You don’t have to call me sir. I’m your own goddamn father. I’ve heard things, whispers. Scuttlebutt, I suppose you navy types would call it. About stuff you’ve done. Recent stuff. Good, important stuff, to make a man feel proud.”
“I can’t talk about it, Dad.”
“Yeah, yeah. The walls have ears. Loose lips sink ships. It isn’t funny anymore…. But I hear you’ve been doing a fine job out there. You know, where it matters, the sharp tip of the spear?”
“I guess so.”
His father looked at Jeffrey very appraisingly. “It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Since you were a kid? To be a big naval hero, in a big shooting war?”
“Dad, nobody wants to be in a war. Jesus, especially not like this one.”
“So you did learn something, since reading all those books. Good for you…. How’s your old wound doing?”
“It’s okay.”
“In other words, it still hurts.”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
His father seemed lost in thought for a minute, lost in the past. “I know those were tough times. Nancy dumping you and all.” Nancy was Jeffrey’s ex-fiancée, from the mid-1990s — she’d walked out on him while he was in orthopedic rehab after being hit in the thigh by a bullet on a secret SEAL operation in Iraq. He got a Silver Star and a Purple Heart; then, while he fought the pain to learn to walk again, Nancy returned his ring. Once more on active duty, Jeffrey was rated unfit for Special Warfare missions because of that wound. He loved being underwater, in scuba gear or otherwise, so he chose to transfer to subs; he wanted to stay in a specialty where each individual could really make a difference.
“This war’s forced me to think about a lot of things, son. I–I sometimes wish I’d been there for you better, back then.”
“I didn’t make it easy, Dad. I know a lot was my fault, from way back.”
“Big killing wars make people think, son.” Michael Fuller looked off into space again, as if he hadn’t heard the last thing Jeffrey said. “You see neighbors get the telegrams… yes, they still use telegrams…. You see black ribbons in the windows. It makes you realize how much you have, how easy you can lose it, lose everything. It — it reminds you of mortality, this war does, of how very little time we really get.”
“I know. I’m almost forty.”
“Crap, I just turned sixty. Don’t rub it in.” Michael Fuller actually smiled at Jeffrey. Tears nearly came to Jeffrey’s eyes, for this small moment of closeness with his father, and for the decades of closeness he could have had but threw away. He saw his dad’s eyes moisten too, for just a second. “You got a land job now?”
Jeffrey nodded.
His father’s face grew tough.
“You don’t look happy,” Michael Fuller said, almost accusingly. His dad had seen right through him.
“A lot’s been happening….”
“Don’t lie to me. You want to get to sea again.”
Jeffrey hesitated. “Yeah.”
“Christ, haven’t you learned anything? Haven’t you done enough? Have you been to Arlington Cemetery lately?”
Jeffrey shook his head. He knew what was coming, and that only made it more painful.
His dad grew sarcastic. “It’s practically around the corner from here, damn it. Like some kind of cause and effect, the pair of them, the Pentagon and Arlington… Have you seen the daily funerals, crowds of mourning relatives, all the fresh-dug graves? No, I thought not. Well, I see the statistics, the real ones. People out there on the ocean are getting creamed! What use is a dead hero to me? You wouldn’t be my son anymore, you’d just be dead, fucking dead… forever dead.”
“Dad—”
“Didn’t you hear anything I told you when you were a kid? There ain’t no
glory in war! There ain’t no honor in being a corpse! Warriors get paid to die. I lost my own brother to Vietnam, and it still hurts every day. In your line of work we’d be lucky if there was enough left of you to even bury! Think how that would make your mother feel.”
Jeffrey wondered if this was his father’s way of expressing love, this worry and anger, just like years and years before. Had it always been Michael Fuller’s way of showing love to a rebellious son — a disrespectful son, one hell-bent on military service — and Jeffrey didn’t see it?
How to explain to the man that some people needed to volunteer, that preparedness for a big war couldn’t wait for the shooting to start? How to convey that there was just no substitute for experience at sea, and Jeffrey had the experience, and when your country needed it, your soul ached for you to go? How to convince his father that Jeffrey did miss his uncle too, a man he’d never known except from photographs, killed in the Tet Offensive seven years before Jeffrey was born?
“A guy your age should be settled down, raising a family already. Not gallivanting off to win another medal, and get roasted alive in some mushroom cloud.” His father turned away. “There’s enough death as it is. Way too much death… I–I just—”
Someone barged into the men’s room. “There you are, sir,” he said to Michael Fuller. The intruder — that’s how Jeffrey thought of him — was in his late twenties, handsome, smooth, and smug, in a gray pinstripe suit. “They’re ready to start again.” He seemed impatient, and glanced at Jeffrey in his uniform as if he were some kind of alien creature.
Jeffrey’s father frowned, and looked at Jeffrey, and looked at the younger man. “Tell them I’ll be along in a minute.” The younger man left.
His father sighed. “Look, I gotta go. Big meeting. I can’t keep half the Joint Chiefs waiting.”
Jeffrey glanced at his watch. “I’m late too.”