She gave it a moment of thought before she nodded. “I’m good to stay. I can’t say knowing we’re diving is going to be pleasant, but I’ll cope. The Nebraska is a huge place, Bishop, and crowded.”
“Boomers are the nicest subs in the fleet. A fast-attack is a bit tighter.”
“What can I get you, Commander?” the petty officer serving the wardroom asked.
“A cheeseburger and fries look fine, thanks.”
Bishop picked up the phone on the wall. “Captain, Bishop. Take us under at your discretion. A shallow angle, for our guest’s comfort, please.”
Within a minute the order “Dive, dive, dive” came over the Nebraska intercom, the dive alarm sounded, and the order to dive repeated. The ballast tanks filled with water with an encompassing whoosh. Bishop watched Gina, saw her look up.
“You don’t give a girl time for second thoughts.”
He just smiled. “If you have to know where we’re at, the station boxes throughout the ship will give you the keel depth and our location. If we were carrying missiles, the boxes would be dark, as it’s then classified information even for the crew aboard the boat.”
“I can avoid looking at that for a while.”
“We’ve met up with the Ohio and the Connecticut. They’re cruising about 20 miles to our west, confirming the area is clear with cross-sonar. We’re going to travel in a pack for the next eight hours. The plan is to get some sleep, then begin the sea trial at the start of the next watch. We’ll be approaching the Schoope Ridge by then, making the first test an ocean filled with geological sea noise. Then we’ll turn southwest and conduct a test over the Tufts Plain.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”
“You’ll sleep, and probably deeply,” Bishop predicted. The petty officer brought him in his meal, and Bishop reached for the ketchup. “After the first 10 to 20 hours aboard the boat, the newness wears off, and this is going to start to feel monotonous—a lot of traveling, running the sonar tests, and traveling some more. Once the first sea trial test is finished and we’ve been through the process, your constant presence in the sonar room won’t be necessary. Plan to sleep whenever you feel tired. We’ll wake you if we need you.”
Bishop felt the boat’s slight tilt ease off and glanced at the station box. They were 380 feet underwater. “We’re level now, will likely stay at this depth for the next several hours.”
“It’s smooth. I thought there would be a sensation of rocking like a boat has.”
He shook his head. “The transit on the surface from Bangor out to the Pacific was the roughest part of the ride. Once submerged, a submarine will stay smooth like this.”
Bishop ate a French fry, picked up the cheeseburger, and watched as Gina kept glancing over to the display showing their depth. “Feeling nerves about being underwater?”
“My stomach is queasy,” she admitted.
“If it helps, remember that we can be on the surface from this depth in under a minute in an emergency ascent. All a guy in the control room has to do is throw the chicken switches—the two heavy metal levers above the ballast tank status board—and we go up fast. It will feel like a very quick elevator ride.”
“I’ll remember. Sharon told me about angles and dangles.”
Bishop shot the lieutenant a look, not thrilled to hear it. Angles and dangles were designed to shake loose anything on the sub not attached and stored properly, which might make noise later in a patrol and cause problems. The sub would go through 20-plus-degree ascents and descents, angled turns and fast stops, over a period of 30 or more minutes. It was a roller-coaster ride and not for the faint of heart.
“She asked,” Sharon shrugged, amused at his look. “She also asked where you were bunking, but I wasn’t sure of that answer.”
Bishop glanced over at Gina. “The captain and XO both offered to share their bunks, depending on the watch.” He saw Daniel Field in the doorway and waved him in. The watch had changed. “If you’re good here, Gina, I’m going to go make a call on the chief engineer. He’s a friend from academy days.”
“I’m good. Thanks for talking me into this, Bishop,” Gina said.
“I’ll do my best not to steer you wrong,” he promised. “Daniel, get her to laugh. She’s nervous about the depth.”
Daniel grinned. “Glad to, sir.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” Bishop asked quietly. Gina had a game of solitaire laid out on the officers’ wardroom table.
“Wide awake,” she admitted. “The chief of the boat just left. We had a fascinating discussion about his career as a submariner. I’m glad you got me here, Mark. There’s so much to learn.”
“I’m relieved you’re enjoying it. Still nervous about being underwater?”
“Intensely, but not thinking about it. Until you asked me,” she added with a slight smile.
“Yours is a good solution,” Bishop replied with an answering smile, “and I won’t ask any more about that unless you want to tell me.” He filled a cup with coffee and sat down to keep her company. He’d spent the last three hours in engineering reminiscing with the man who’d been the best man at his wedding. He didn’t feel like turning in yet himself. He watched her scanning the cards looking for a move, reached over and tapped the red six to show her the last remaining play. She made the move, turned the card faceup, and it led to no further moves. The game couldn’t be won. Gina gathered up the cards and slid them back into the box.
“They are serving midrats—the midnight meal—if you would care for something to eat,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “I’ve eaten more in the last few hours than I do in a typical day.”
“It’s one of three primary things to do on a submarine. Work, eat, sleep.”
She looked over at him. “How does it feel to be out here at sea and not be in command?”
“Very odd,” Bishop replied, surprised she’d thought to ask the question. “The instinct to be in charge runs deep. Hence my own restlessness. I am impressed, though, by what I’ve seen. John Neece and his Nebraska blue crew do this job very well. They may win the battle E this year, and it would be well deserved.”
Gina got up and put the cards away, poured herself a cup of coffee. It was one of the few Bishop had seen her drink. When she sat down across from him, sipping at it, he thought it was more about having something in her hands than actually wanting the beverage.
Her expression turned serious, and she pushed the mug in a small circle on the table, then looked at him. “Would you mind talking to me about why you do the job you do, Mark? It’s been an underlying thread in a lot of conversations I’ve had on this sub, but no one discusses it directly. You would fire one of those missiles on a presidential order.”
“Yes,” he replied simply, leaving it at that.
“I don’t understand military life, how you can adjust to the knowledge you would be killing so many people when you do your job.” She glanced at him again, motioned with her hand in an apology. “I didn’t mean that as a criticism or an insult. It’s just . . . this is unlike any other job I’ve ever talked about with someone.”
He could tell she wanted to understand, and this was one of the rare cases where he would like to pursue the conversation so she did understand. “I’m a realist, Gina, with a deep appreciation of good and evil,” he replied. “You can’t simply hope that wars never happen again. The presence of a strong military is a deterrent to war. A functioning military is designed as much to keep the peace as it is to win a war when it becomes necessary to fight.”
“You don’t think a fleet of boomers carrying a bunch of nuclear weapons is a bit of overkill in today’s world?” she wondered.
“No. There is great hope my job will be a lifetime of peaceful patrols without a missile ever being fired. I pray for that. But the boomers’ presence at sea is a strong statement to anybody toying with the idea of unleashing their own nuclear or chemical weapons.” Bishop had these philosophical conversations occasionally
while fishing with fellow submariners, but he avoided them as a rule with civilians. Gina was listening carefully, wanting to know the why of it, and he decided to condense a lifetime of thinking about the matter into a few points that might help her.
“First principles, Gina? The building blocks?”
She nodded.
“God made a world that was all good, but because He also gave people free will, the potential for evil was there from the beginning. God didn’t make evil, but He allowed for the possibility of it in order for His gift of free will to have substance and be real. It took men using that free will to sin to make evil actually happen. Ever since that first conflict between what God wanted and what man wanted, evil has taken different forms. Murder has been in our history since the beginning. Nations going to war are simply a larger expression of that conflict between individual men.”
Gina pushed aside the coffee mug. “Having the most lethal weapons means you win the war if and when it comes.”
“Something like that,” Bishop agreed. “Gina, I’m neutral in answering the underlying question you pose—was it a good thing or bad that nuclear weapons were created? I’ve thought about it a lot over the years.
“Look at history before and after the development of nuclear weapons. World War I involved massive-scale chemical warfare. Ten million people in the military and another six million civilians died in that war. World War II killed sixty million people, twenty-five million in the military, and another thirty-five million civilians. We’ve had a very bloody history before there were nuclear weapons.
“Then nuclear weapons appeared at the end of that war. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed two hundred fifty thousand people, as the radiation of the blasts continued to kill its victims over the next few years. There is no question that nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive. But those nuclear bombs also brought to an end World War II, stopped the horrendous losses of life on the battlefields and in the camps.”
He looked across the table at her, still listening intently. “A credible argument can be made that nuclear weapons have stopped World War III from ever beginning. The weapons are sufficiently powerful to halt two large armies from colliding again directly. Thus the Cold War began, and proxy wars were fought in places like Vietnam. Deaths in wars have continued in the hundreds of thousands across the years, but not on the scale as in the first two world wars.
“I would launch a nuclear weapon on valid orders from the president because I understand there are circumstances where a nuclear weapon may be the lesser of two evils. No rational leader is going to use a nuclear weapon in times of peace. In times of war—” he paused a moment—“the use of a nuclear weapon to end a conflict might actually be the right thing to do. The deaths that would result are on one side of the ledger, seen against the deaths that would result from the war continuing on.
“The U.S. maintains a credible nuclear deterrent against other countries that might attack us with nuclear or chemical weapons. Our weapons stay aimed and ready to launch in order to keep that deterrent a viable and real-time truth. No one challenges that deterrent because it is sufficient and real. True power is the power to keep the peace.”
Gina carefully thought through his words. “Hence the term superpower. With such an overwhelming strength, our adversaries avoid direct confrontations with us.”
“Yes. You know, Gina, I think a lot about David, a man who fought a lot of wars but who also had a heart after God. I would prefer the world to be at peace. I pray for that. But I also know I am one of the final cards in the deck. There are 28 men this nation trusts with half the deployed nuclear arsenal. I’m one of them. The president can count on me to follow his orders if they ever come.”
“Does it feel like a burden?”
“It feels like the weight of the world on some days,” Bishop admitted. He breathed in deeply. “I treat the job with the utmost of care. The Nevada gold crew works hard to run the boat with excellence. From what I’ve seen of Nebraska blue, this crew is also exceptional. The boomers are manned by some of the most hardworking Navy men and women in the service. It’s an honor to serve with them. We all carry that burden to one degree or another, and none more so than the captain.”
She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “Why did you choose the sea? Of all the places you could have chosen to serve, why the Navy?”
He smiled. “I settled on being a submariner when I was 15. I grew up in Chicago, like you. Family vacations were a chance to visit the coasts. My parents like to explore historical sites, and my brothers and I, along with my sisters, loved to find a good beach.
“Oceans are huge. I’d look at the surface of the sea and wonder what was lurking beneath. The fact there was a job that would let me spend most of my days sailing around deep in the oceans seemed like an ideal adventure. And I guess I’m wired to protect people. A military life was a common mission with a group of like-minded men where I would easily find my place.
“I was smart enough that there would be scholarships to pay for college, but joining the Navy and heading straight through with them opened doors to some of the nuclear-engineering hands-on training, letting me pursue degrees at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College. I’ve never regretted that decision.”
He paused to finish his coffee, then said, “I’m like Jeff in many ways. Submarines are an open door to the exploration of new territories. I love being underwater in the middle of an ocean.”
“Jeff really loves the sea too. Every time I visit I can tell—he’s a man doing his dream job.”
“We both are.” Bishop set aside his mug. “What you are doing with sonar really matters, Gina. We are blind out here, dependent on what we can hear. No one values more what you’ve been able to contribute in sonar breakthroughs than we do.”
“It’s good science,” she agreed, then stopped. “Up until it starts to be used by others against the United States, making it possible for enemies to find you when before they could not.” She shook her head. “I’ve got security around me, Mark, around the clock. It’s pretty obvious how concerned the Navy is about the espionage threat.”
“There will come a day when what you’ve figured out is known by other countries, ones we wish would not have the knowledge,” Bishop agreed. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be prepared with new tactics long before that day arrives. Others would still have to have the technology to exploit it, would have to see us before we see them, and be close enough to do something with the knowledge. The key is the fact we know the science first. Don’t underestimate how valuable that timing is. It won’t come as a surprise to us. First knowledge gives us a significant advantage.”
He reached over and gently tapped a finger on her hand. “We need to know those ideas of yours, Gina. All of them. Don’t hold back. We need to know what you can discover, even if the truth comes with complex implications and new Navy departments to manage it. Cross-sonar changed this profession. Cross-sonar with an active ping may be on the verge of doing so again. And that’s a good thing, not bad. We’ll adapt and manage to the new reality. It’s what the Navy does.”
She looked away, then back at him, her expression troubled. “Do you understand how much pressure I feel when you say that? Ideas are dangerous, Mark. You can understand that better than most.”
He knew she needed to adapt to that pressure, needed to cope with what would inevitably be part of her work life. He changed the conversation slightly, curious about something. “Why are you afraid about where science might take you? Do you feel if you find something that has both good and bad implications, it’s something you should not have discovered?”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “What I do has consequences. I would rather work on something that has better odds of helping than causing problems.”
“An admirable goal. How many ideas do you dismiss because you aren’t sure what the good or bad implications might be?”
“
Lots—that’s a normal course of events.”
“You apply a moral filter to what ideas you work on.”
“Of course.”
Bishop understood it, but found her perspective interesting. “Science is the study of what God created. Your discovery of something doesn’t change its existence. It’s already there. If you figure it out, or someone else does, does that change things?”
“It does for me. I don’t want to find out things that are dangerous, Mark. It makes me feel queasy when I do.”
“That’s a lot of self-prescribed guilt to be carrying around, Gina, and not reflective of how things are. You can’t see the future, where something might go, or what one discovery might lead to that might improve the outcome of another one.”
“But I can be careful.”
“As long as careful doesn’t mean you are denying who God designed you to be—curious, smart, and figuring things out. I think you may be carrying the wrong burden, one I know you were never meant to carry. You don’t know where science will lead, but that’s the whole point of being as smart as you are. You’re on the edge of what is known, and there’s lots of new territory out there. Being afraid to step out and explore, to see what’s there, isn’t what God had in mind for you. I’m certain of that.”
“If I find something that will put Jeff in more danger, I should just accept that?”
“You’re assuming you’re the only one who will find it, Gina. Maybe you are the first, but you will not be the only. Answer me this. If today China could actively ping and we couldn’t hear them, the correct response on your part to protect your brother would be to figure out what they were doing so this nation—so Jeff—wouldn’t be vulnerable. You would be racing to solve this science as quickly as you could, right?”
“Yes.”