Sea of Shadows (For fans of Tom Clancy and Dale Brown)
Page 41
“She put up a hell of a fight, sir,” a voice at his elbow said.
Captain Bowie turned to find Chief McPherson, her right arm still in a cast from shoulder to wrist.
The chief saluted with her left hand. “It’s tough to get used to saluting with the wrong hand.”
Captain Bowie returned her salute with a shadow of a smile. “It won’t be for much longer. You’ll be out of that thing pretty soon.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be all patched up and ready for battle.” She nodded toward the ship in the dry dock. “Just like the grand lady down there. Weld on a couple of hull plates, run some wiring, slap on a fresh coat of paint, and we’re both as good as new.”
She sighed. “We got lucky, sir. If that last sub had gotten past us, the Brits would be gearing up for war right now.”
Captain Bowie nodded. “We did get lucky, Chief. But I think our little tango in that minefield used up the last of my four-leaf clovers.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“They’re taking her away from me,” the captain said. “I got a heads-up call from SURFPAC this morning. Vice Admiral Hicks is hand-carrying my orders over himself.”
“I’ve never heard of SURFPAC hand-delivering orders before,” the chief said.
“I have,” said Captain Bowie. “Sometimes that’s how they do it when you’re being relieved of command.”
“What?” the chief said. “Relieved of command? They can’t do that!”
Captain Bowie smiled. “I’m afraid they can, Chief.”
“They’ve got no grounds to relieve you, sir.”
“Yes they do,” the captain said. “A ship under my command was sunk in combat, and that hasn’t happened since World War II. Not to mention that we lost every helo attached to our SAU. Apparently, the upper command thinks I mismanaged the situation pretty badly.”
“Mismanaged? Sir, with all due respect, that’s bullshit! Nobody could have done it any better than you did.”
Bowie shook his head and stared down into the dry dock at his wounded ship. “I worked for this my whole life,” he said. “I never gave a damn about making full-bird, and I never even thought about admiral. I wanted to command a destroyer at sea.” He shrugged. “I was lucky enough to live my dream, for a while anyway. I always knew that my time as CO of Towers would go by too quickly. But I never expected to get pulled out of the game early.”
He looked up the pier and pulled his walkie-talkie from its belt holster. “Quarterdeck, this is the Captain. Sound six bells. Admiral Hicks is approaching.”
“Quarterdeck, aye.”
A few seconds later, the ship’s bell rang six times—three groups of two bells each, followed by the Petty Officer of the Watch’s voice over the 1-MC. “Commander, Naval Surface Force Pacific—Arriving.”
Captain Bowie and Chief McPherson came to attention as the admiral approached. When he was about eight paces away, they both rendered hand salutes, the captain with his right hand and the chief with her left.
The admiral promptly returned their mismatched salutes with a snappy one of his own. “At ease.”
They dropped into slightly more relaxed postures.
Vice Admiral Douglas Hicks had a folder tucked under his left arm. He looked down and tried to brush a smear of dirt off the right leg of his uniform pants. “I shouldn’t have worn my whites to a shipyard,” he said. He looked up. “But this is an official visit, so it seemed appropriate.”
He retrieved the folder from under his arm and held it out to Captain Bowie. “Do you know what’s in here?”
Bowie accepted the folder but didn’t open it. “My orders, sir?”
The admiral smiled. “I like you, Jim. But I wouldn’t have bothered to trot my fat carcass down here to deliver an ordinary set of orders.”
Captain Bowie started to open the folder and then stopped himself. “I’m not being transferred, sir?”
The admiral shrugged. “That’s up to you, son.” He nodded toward the folder. “What you have there is what amounts to a blank check. They’re orders all right. Signed by the Secretary of the Navy himself.”
The captain looked puzzled. “Where am I going, sir?”
“Anywhere you want,” the admiral said. “You can take your pick of any O-5 billet in the Navy. And I have it on the highest authority that, if your dream billet is taken, the bureau will move somebody to make room. You think about it for a while and then get back to me when you’ve made up your mind.”
“I don’t need to think about it, Admiral. I already know where I want to go.” He pointed into the dry dock where cascades of welding sparks were falling. “Right there. I want to do another CO tour aboard the Towers.”
The admiral grinned. “You just won me fifty bucks. I told my chief of staff to pencil you in for the Towers. He said I was nuts.” The admiral reached out and shook Bowie’s hand. “You’re a good man, Jim. And Towers is a hell of a ship. I envy you. And on that note, I’ll have to take my leave. There’s a stack of reports on my desk a foot high, and my name is on every damned one of them.”
Captain Bowie and Chief McPherson came to attention and saluted. The admiral returned their salutes and then turned on his heel and walked briskly back up the pier.
Captain Bowie radioed the quarterdeck and shortly afterward they were treated to a 1-MC broadcast announcing the admiral’s departure.
When the speakers had faded to silence, Captain Bowie turned to Chief McPherson with a grin. “What do you think, Chief? Are you ready to do it again?”
EPILOGUE
WASHINGTON, DC
FRIDAY; 22 JUNE
3:07 AM EDT
The phone woke President Chandler on the third ring, but it took him five rings to grope for it and get the receiver to his ear.
“Mr. President, this is Lieutenant Feinstein in the Signals Office. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is requesting your presence in the Situation Room, sir. Something has come up.”
The president turned on the bedside lamp and did a quick check to make sure it wasn’t shining in Jenny’s face. “What kind of something?”
“Sir, it’s China.”
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Edwards is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, and an Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist. His naval career spanned more than two decades and half the globe — from chasing Soviet nuclear attack submarines during the Cold War, to launching cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf. Collectively, his novels have won the Admiral Nimitz Award for Outstanding Naval Fiction, the Reader’s Choice Award, the Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award for Adventure Writing, and the American Author Medal. He lives in California, where he consults for the Department of Defense.