She thought a moment, then nodded. “When my job winds down, yours will just be getting started—what to do with the information contained in a photo when it prints.”
“The Tactical Command Center is going to take the brunt of that impact, and I think it’s likely Hardman assigns me to that working group while I’m onshore,” Mark agreed. “I won’t minimize how much this is going to change the Navy. Combined with the prior two discoveries, the photo will mean a radical rethinking of how submarines deploy. My workload will be both intense and heavy for at least the next year, and in the middle of that I’ll be heading back to sea on patrol in May for 90 days. That’s going to make its own set of pressures for us.”
She blinked, realizing he still was talking about the future on the assumption she would say yes. She couldn’t help her smile, oddly grateful he was still willing to be sure of her decision. She needed one of them to be that confident. She wanted to be loved, she wanted what he offered. She just hadn’t reached the point she could say “I love you” to him, and accept what he so willingly offered. One of them needed to hold on to the faith that this would have a happy ending.
Mark took the empty mug out of her hands and got up to pour her the last of the coffee. “You’re still cold, so drink that, please.” He slid the sugar bowl over, then leaned back against the counter.
She stirred sugar into her mug, glanced up at Mark. For the first time in months, at least for the moment there were no more immediate decisions to make.
“We’ll be okay, you and I,” he said.
“Promise me that?”
He nodded. “I love you, Gina. I got to the final destination before you, that’s all. I’ll wait. You’re going to arrive there too—I have faith in that fact.”
He took the last swallow of his coffee. “I didn’t say this earlier, because it wasn’t appropriate to bring further pressures into your decision, but I want to mention something I see.”
She straightened on the stool, giving him her full attention. “Okay . . .”
“You’ve been turning on the lights in the ocean this entire year. This photo is simply the latest in a series of discoveries. A cross-sonar ping can actively search out a sub. Listening for the silence created by a sub’s presence can locate a sub at great distances. Now, for a brief few days after a solar flare, the oceans yield an extraordinary photo showing us the locations and types of all the submarines out there. I don’t think your discoveries this year have been random accidents.
“I don’t think it is chance that you had a deep familiarity with the oceans, were handed such a wide array of satellite data after a solar flare, were curious about the sparkles, and had the intelligence and technical skills to figure this out. I think God put you at this place and time for a reason. There may be a purpose for why these discoveries have come now.”
She was startled at the idea he was suggesting. His tone was serious; this wasn’t a casual thought, but something he’d been pondering for a while.
“If there ever was a reason God might change what we know about sonar and visibility at sea,” Mark continued, “it would be when nations are heading toward a collision. China and Japan are edging toward war. North and South Korea are an incident away from conflict. Russia and Iran once again are the center of new global tensions. Maybe with the right knowledge, the U.S. can influence what comes to pass. Maybe God just turned on the lights so we can see what’s coming. And He used you to do it.”
“You believe that?” she whispered.
Mark nodded. “There’s a statement in Hebrews that talks about Jesus, now at the right hand of God, sustaining everything by the power of His command. He is in charge. He’s building His kingdom with the church. Governments are in His hands, to rise or fall as God decrees. I don’t think it’s happenstance you’ve spent this year shining a spotlight deep into the ocean. I don’t think God wastes our time or our talents when we follow Him. I believe He knows these discoveries are going to be necessary in the days ahead. And He equipped you to find them.”
“Do you have any idea the pressure that makes me feel if you’re right?”
“I didn’t mention it to cause that, Gina, and there’s no need for it to feel like pressure. Do what you were made to do—continue to discover things, be curious. You don’t have to figure out how everything fits into the big picture. That’s God’s territory. He’ll put together the pieces where He wants them to be. But I’m intrigued that what’s unfolding right now might be something we’ll look back on decades from now and see as the moment when God rearranged scientific capabilities for His own purposes.”
“It’s an interesting idea,” she finally replied.
“It’s fine to be skeptical of the idea,” Mark said. “Just consider a year from now if I wasn’t on to something with the thought.”
22
Commander Mark Bishop followed the duty officer into Rear Admiral Hardman’s office. “Thank you for fitting me in on such short notice, sir.”
“No problem, Bishop,” Hardman said, in the midst of filling a briefcase open on his desk. “You don’t say ‘urgent’ unless it’s warranted.” The admiral glanced at the map tube Mark carried but didn’t comment. Instead he said, “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you, sir, but premature. I’m dating Gina Gray and hoping for a yes to a marriage proposal.”
“You’d be a fortunate man.”
“Agreed, sir.”
“And she’d be a fortunate woman.” Hardman didn’t wait for a response. He finished loading his briefcase, locked it, and handed it off to his duty officer. “Set that by my suitcase for the flight. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, sir.”
The admiral waited until the duty officer had closed the door. “You’ve interrupted the beginning of a month of R and R,” he mentioned. “Should I be sitting down for this?”
Bishop smiled at the half-humorous words. “We’ve got an issue, sir, the makings of a new discovery . . . and some inherent problems it presents.” He slid the photo from the tube, unrolled it across the desk. He’d penned notations alongside the objects’ locations and depths, adding as well the sub names Gina had given him.
Hardman’s eyes swept across the photo, then went back again to study the various objects for a few moments before looking up at Bishop. “Gina?” he asked. At Bishop’s nod, he said, “Come with me.”
Mark rolled up the photo and slid it back into the tube. The admiral led the way out of the office, bypassed the elevator, and took the stairs down three levels to the subbasement. Hardman used his palm print and punched in the security code, nodded to the armed security officers on duty, and then proceeded into the Tactical Command Center.
The room’s lights were dimmed to half strength. Theater seats stretched along the east wall for those watching events unfold. Large screens shared data feeds and tracking maps of the worlds’ oceans, coordinating with Kings Bay and the Pentagon on the facing walls. The three-location Tactical Command integrated all known information about subs at sea—the U.S. fleet along with those of allies and enemies—and coordinated plans with Strategic Command and the Battle Surface Groups. This was the place where everything related to operational matters for the American submarine fleet came together, and all tasking orders for the fleet anywhere in the world originated here. This also was where sea rescue headquartered should a sub get in trouble.
Captain John Strong, in command of the TCC, came to meet them. “Sir.” He had commanded the USS Ohio for three years, moved on to command a sub squadron, and now ran Tactical Command at Bangor. When it came to men with operational experience, Bishop felt like he was standing with two of the nation’s best officers.
“You know Commander Mark Bishop,” Hardman said. “I need to see everything we knew about the world’s oceans on November 2nd, 20:17 hours.”
Strong was a professional with too many years behind him to do more than lift an eyebrow. “Yes, sir.” He spun around. “Lieutenant Stacks. P
lease give me November 2nd, 20:17, on the boards.”
The three men watched the giant screens on the wall scroll back through the stored files and stop at the requested date and time. There were dozens of submarines mapped to areas with varying degrees of certainty. Four blue grids marked boomer patrol boxes for those on hard-alert that evening. A red square with a widening red-dashed circle marked a Russian Akula that with time could have moved from its last contact into a range of ocean waters. Green trails showed the tracks of two British subs being picked up on a seafloor hydrophone line south of Iceland. Several submarines were black-flagged—known to be at sea, away from their home port, but with no data on their present locations.
Rear Admiral Hardman looked over. “Let’s see it again, Bishop.”
Bishop laid out the photo on a nearby table, and the three men huddled around it, made silent comparisons. Gina was not only spot-on with the locations, every submarine unresolved on the board was represented on her photo, signifying both location and depth.
“I’d like to have more of these, sir,” Strong said while studying the image. “It would be a whole lot easier to do my job. That’s as beautiful an image as I have ever seen, even while it makes my heart land up in my throat.”
“Strong, hand off to your lieutenant. I need you for the next hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Strong moved away to do so, Hardman picked up a phone and told his duty officer to reschedule his flight. He then led the way to the adjoining conference room, turned on lights, and pulled out the first chair. “Bishop, your lady is having quite a year.”
“She moved to studying the sun to get away from working on sonar, only to tumble into this. It’s deep-ocean reflections off hulls after a powerful solar flare.”
Hardman half laughed. “You have to love the woman.” He tipped back in the chair and sighed. “All right, talk to me.”
Captain Strong joined them, and Bishop laid out the details in as orderly a fashion as he could. Gina had begged off being here for this conversation, and Mark felt the responsibility to handle this for her and do it well.
“What does she need?”
“She needs to be copied in on a lot of satellite data—in real time, if possible—during the weeks after a solar flare occurs. Computing power. A place to work. She thinks processing time can fall to an hour for a preliminary photo. It’s not going to be in real time, but it’s going to be pretty close and useful.”
Hardman and Strong looked at each other, smiled at the understatement.
“I suggest we give her an office here,” Strong said. “We’re going to want to see the photo as it develops, and, ideally, the data never leaves the TCC. We’re the sink for security purposes.”
“Makes sense,” Hardman agreed. “Find her space just off the floor, even if you have to credential her out of the Pentagon to make it happen.”
“Yes, sir,” Strong replied.
“For the satellite data, Bishop, see what existing hubs at NOAA and NASA can give us, pick up a mirror of the data with them through a research department at DARPA. What they don’t have, let’s figure out how to get without having the Navy’s fingerprints on the final destination. You’ve got the list to work from?”
“Yes, sir,” Bishop said, making notes for himself. “She’d like to see 32 satellites in total, but she doesn’t know about the military ones sniffing for nuclear- and chemical-weapons tests. She might find those instruments helpful as well since some of the data is recording over the oceans.”
“Approved. For computing power, it makes sense to hit the clusters if she can disperse the processing—so tap NSA, DARPA, DoD, and NASA. Once there are a few photos developed and there’s a sense of the capacity needed, we’ll dedicate or shift computing resources as necessary.”
Bishop said, “I’m proposing she put together the paper and video at her home in Chicago, sir, while we set up for her here. She’s been trying to move away from Navy work, and I need to give her the assurance she will have some distance from it eventually. I’m thinking six months into next year, once processing time has been optimized, she’s able to hand off this capability to others.”
“Agreed in principle. We want her next game-changing idea. We don’t need her spending time managing the concepts she’s already discovered. Talk to the Undersea Warfare Group and figure out what names make sense to consider for the technical talent. Strong needs to sign off on them, as they’ll be working here and reporting to him once the hand-off is made.”
“Will do, sir.”
“How soon on the paper?”
“The week before Christmas, hopefully. It depends on the next solar flare. The idea is to develop a second photo as proof this is repeatable, even if it takes several days to gather the data she needs and process it.”
“Agreed.” Hardman lightly tapped his fingers on the table. “The photo gives us actionable intelligence on how everyone is configuring their forces.” He looked at Strong. “Give me a print of our display for this same date and time. I’m taking both ours and Gina’s for a sit-down with the SecNav tonight. I have a feeling tomorrow morning I’ll be showing them to the president.”
Strong rose from his chair. “I’ll get it printed for you now, sir.”
Hardman turned back to Bishop. “Is Gina up for a meeting with the SecNav?”
“She’s going to push back hard on the idea if I ask it of her. I’d prefer not to ask.”
Hardman nodded. “The Nevada goes to sea in May?”
“Yes. I’d like to still be in command, sir,” Bishop added.
“You will be, Mark. I’m merely wondering who we slot to be her buffer when you’re gone. The Seawolf is going to be busy this year with both the Jimmy Carter and the Connecticut in dry dock. I doubt Jeff Gray will be ashore much beyond brief supply stops.”
“Daniel Field, sonarman with the Nebraska. She trusts him.”
Hardman made a note. “When the Nebraska is back in port, I’ll want a conversation with him. Tell me this, Bishop. Is there any way we can get her on the government payroll for more than an idea or two? If she gives us motion video of the oceans next”—Hardman shook his head even as he smiled—“she’s changing this job. Mine and a whole lot of others, and more than any other individual I know. You do realize, don’t you, that she’s got a gold override flag on her file? Meaning she can work on any research project, covering any topic, associated with any government funding grant, and it’s given automatic approval. Her hiring would even trigger additional research funds for the project. She’s got carte blanche—she just doesn’t use it.”
“She likes to drift, sir, rather than do any particular thing for very long. She’s worked on sonar and topology because it makes Jeff safer, on the sun because it’s an interesting data set. Beyond that it seems to be whatever comes along that’s interesting. She doesn’t like to be bored. She’s got some model rockets on a table at her Chicago home with exhaust forms I’ve never seen before. One day I’d be interested to see what she’s thinking about them.”
“For security’s sake, I’d like to see her on this base, with an office here, exploring any subject she wants. We can drop a secure connection to any university in the world if that’s what it takes to keep her in one place.”
“I’m beginning to think long term about something similar, sir. It’s useful to know there are those options.”
Hardman glanced at his watch. “I’m going to be in the air within the hour. Will you be around to take a call tonight if the SecNav wants a word?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hardman smiled. “Tell her thanks, Bishop. The Navy appreciates this.”
“She wanted to burn the photo,” Bishop mentioned, knowing that keeping Hardman in the loop on the details was one of the best assets he could give Gina.
Hardman blew out a long breath. “Scary thought, but I would have been tempted to think the same in her place.” Hardman got to his feet. “Keep me in the loop, Bishop. Anything you need wit
h getting her set up and comfortable here, I’ll clear the way for you.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
They had been back in Chicago for 10 days. Mark was staying at a hotel nearby and would often walk over to Gina’s home in the morning, spend most of the day with her. He had missed this part of being in a relationship: the lazy walks together holding hands, talking about nothing more important than what they should have for dinner or which movie to watch that evening. She had finished writing the paper, laying out the science behind the photo, and was planning to start work on the video later that afternoon. By unspoken agreement, they were both avoiding any topic related to marriage. They were simply spending time together. He loved walking with her, letting the conversation wander across topics.
Her phone chimed, and Mark paused while she slipped off her glove and pulled the phone from her pocket to look at the text message.
“Promising?” he asked.
“JPL,” she confirmed. “A solar flare happened six minutes ago.” She scrolled through the numbers. “Moderate strength, but it’s edging toward center quadrant, so this will be a glancing hit to the earth. It should be able to generate a photo, but the resolution of sub to class type will be soft.”
“A good step toward finding out where the limits are,” Mark said.
“First data is 60 hours away.”
He looked at his watch, calculating. “We can do a lot in the intervening hours. What catches your fancy? A museum, art gallery, shopping mall, bookstore?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“I don’t mind carrying your books, precious,” he replied with a smile.
“I like that word,” she whispered, glancing over at him. “You’ve used it a few times. Is that your favorite choice of endearment?”