The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  “I saw us turn. You sure they aren’t just running drills?”

  Caveman shook his head. “I asked the navigator, but she said she wasn’t allowed to say. But everyone’s got this look on their face like it’s a big deal.”

  Victoria frowned. “Thanks.”

  She walked through the wardroom and to her quarters. Grabbing the phone, she dialed the captain. “Sir, it’s Airboss. I just finished working out and—”

  “Please come up now, Airboss. This is important.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She hung up and walked quickly down the passageway, up the ladder, and headed to his stateroom. His door was closed. She knocked and entered.

  The master chief, XO, and communications officer were in there.

  The captain nodded to her. “Please have a seat, Boss.”

  She sat in a small chair that was pressed up against the wall, using her white towel to attempt to dry off her sweaty shirt and face.

  “COMMO just gave me this.” The captain held up a sheet of paper. “Flash message. We’re to rendezvous with the Ford CSG and proceed towards Pearl Harbor at best speed.”

  Victoria looked at the other men in the room. Their faces were somber. “I take it something has happened?”

  “About an hour ago, we bombed North Korea. We’ve already contacted the Ford CSG and chopped back to them. The commodore wants me on board to attend a meeting this afternoon. I’ll need you guys to take me. They’re about one hundred miles away right now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain looked around the room. “COMMO, that will be all, thank you. Please contact me immediately if you get anything else. And let me know what you need.”

  The junior officer nodded and left the space, closing the door behind him.

  The captain said, “Alright, let’s hear it. What are you guys thinking?”

  The XO said, “Captain, if North Korea starts shooting, it’s going to be a mess. And I worry how China might respond, considering their recent leadership change.”

  Victoria said, “I agree.”

  The captain said, “Worst-case scenario, then, we have to consider the possibility that a Pacific war is about to begin.”

  No one replied.

  He continued, “What I want to know from you all is what do we need to do to get ready?”

  The XO said, “We need more personnel. We’re still twelve short from where we were before the missile strike.” His voice lowered a bit, out of respect for the deceased. “And we’re supposed to have about fifty more on board, according to manning requirements.”

  Victoria said, “We could use another helicopter to maintain that capability. With one aircraft, we’ll be limited on how often and how much we can fly. And we need to replenish some of our ASW stores. We used a lot of buoys last month, as well as a few torpedoes. We need to resupply.”

  The captain nodded. “Master Chief?”

  “Captain, we need to continue to train. Some of our crew have just switched into new jobs. They need to improve their expertise in those areas. I recommend GQ at least once more per day. But while we need to keep on the alert, we also need to pace ourselves. If this thing really blows up, the crew is going to be bracing for immediate combat. And we might get it. But the Pacific is a big ocean. It could be weeks or more before we see combat. We need to be ready, but I don’t want us to burn out before we meet the enemy.”

  The captain listened intently. “Alright. Let’s start thinking about changes we can make. And make a list of everything we need. XO—you be on point for this. Make sure the supply officer has a request order for everything on your list. I want to see it on the next replenishment at sea. I expect them to schedule us for two of them on our way to Hawaii.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Boss, you work your magic with the carrier. I need a deck hit today, prior to the admiral’s four o’clock briefing. Please work with whoever schedules that stuff.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Commander Boyle was flown to the Ford by one of the carrier’s MH-60 Sierra helicopters. It landed him on the flight deck in the early afternoon, in between the cycle of fixed-wing aircraft launching and recovering.

  Commander Boyle was escorted from the helicopter and over the flight deck by one of the white shirts. They helped him into the interior of the carrier, where he knew his way around. He had been a part of the ship’s crew until recently. The death of the Farragut’s former CO had created an urgent hole to fill. Commander Boyle was the answer.

  Inside the skin of the ship, he walked through the O-3 level, where most of the officers lived, passing by several offices run by men the same rank as he.

  As the captain of his own destroyer, the Farragut, Commander Boyle was the highest-ranking officer on his ship. But the moment he stepped onto the aircraft carrier, he was just one O-5 among dozens. There were also several O-6s—Navy captains—one of whom was his boss, the commodore. The highest-ranking person in the entire carrier strike group was Rear Admiral Arthur Louis Manning IV—by coincidence, father to Commander Boyle’s new airboss. Almost all these officers would be at the meeting he was scheduled to attend.

  Boyle walked through the maze of white passageways and blue linoleum flooring, stepping through opened watertight compartment hatches, and around a few poor young seamen who were chipping paint and cleaning. Arriving at his destination, he knocked on the commodore’s door three times.

  “Enter,” a voice bellowed from within.

  Boyle walked inside to see two Navy captains—the commodore and his deputy—as well as two lieutenants. The lieutenants were sitting on a worn blue fabric sofa. One of them typed on a computer, editing a PowerPoint presentation that appeared on a flat-screen monitor fixed to the wall.

  “Ah, glad you could join us, Commander Boyle. Please have a seat,” said the deputy.

  The commodore nodded to acknowledge him and then resumed squinting at the PowerPoint.

  “You misspelled airborne. There’s no E at the end,” grumbled the commodore.

  “Sir, I think there is,” replied the lieutenant in a nervous voice.

  “Look it up, then. And change the font. Who put this in Calibri font? The admiral’s staff has put out specific guidelines for all his briefs. We’ve been over this.” He shook his head in disgust. “Calibri.”

  The baggy-eyed lieutenant typing at the computer mumbled something under his breath. Boyle didn’t catch it, but the deputy smiled.

  “What was that?” said the commodore.

  “I’ll fix it, sir.” He made a few changes and began rearranging the words on the screen to fit better.

  Commander Boyle smiled inwardly. Senior officers, during speeches to their junior officers, often liked to say that they envied them. But the truth was that Boyle didn’t miss this staff officer bullshit one little bit.

  Boyle’s career was a winding road. He had stepped on and off the golden path towards admiral too many times to count. There was one unbreakable commandment known to all military personnel organizations. Thou shalt not have a gap in thy service record. And James Boyle didn’t just have a gap.

  He had a chasm.

  A 1990 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Boyle had served honorably for eight years as a surface warfare officer. His first assignment as a junior officer had been aboard the USS Missouri, one of the last of the US Navy battleships. He had stood watch on the bridge in 1991, the night they had begun firing their sixteen-inch guns into Kuwait, the booming of which still reverberated in his chest cavity.

  After eight years as an overachieving junior officer, James Boyle had decided—against all advice from his chain of command—to get out and go civilian. The choice for him had been about family. His kids had barely seen him, and his wife was tired and stressed out from raising them alone for months on end.

  Things had gone well in the private sector. He’d excelled at his job and had been rewarded with rapid promotions and generous bonuses. His wife and he had decided to p
urchase a new car—a BMW, which delighted his mother-in-law. They’d joined a country club. He’d begun networking more—playing rounds of golf with company executives and getting calls from high-end headhunters.

  But something was missing.

  Behind the smiles and raised glasses of congratulations was an emptiness that James Boyle couldn’t make go away.

  But he missed the brotherhood, and he missed the sense of fulfillment that came with a life of military service. His corporate friends were often awed by his stories—but he no longer wanted to tell them. Boyle was barely thirty years old in 2001, but he felt like he was already turning into an old man—reminiscing about the good old days, when he was miserable aboard a ship.

  After long talks with his wife—some featuring her wiping teary eyes—she’d agreed to support him in his quest to go back to active duty. It wasn’t quick or easy. The Navy personnel weenies had made him go through all sorts of medical screenings and jump through paperwork hoops. But eventually, James Boyle had been recommissioned back into active-duty Navy service.

  That was in August of 2001. Just before the world had changed overnight.

  Within weeks, he was underway, and sailing toward the Middle East. His ship was sortied in response to the September 11th attacks, and by October he was standing watch while his destroyer fired Tomahawk missiles at targets in Afghanistan.

  As it turned out, getting out of the Navy had only hurt his career so much. He was promoted to commander, and he was even selected for a coveted commanding officer billet. He wouldn’t make admiral. There were too many holes in his record for that. But he might just make captain someday. More importantly, he was happy. His time in corporate America had given him a new appreciation for everything that the military had to offer.

  After his recent change of command six months ago, Boyle had been temporarily assigned to the USS Ford as she went through sea trials, and while he awaited his next set of orders. Then the call came a few weeks ago. The Farragut needed a captain. And like any good officer, Boyle was more than happy to take another command.

  Now, he stood on board America’s newest aircraft carrier, with a new command and a new challenge on the horizon, watching two junior officers squirm under the scrutiny of his new boss.

  At times like this, when he watched young junior officers as they tried to appease the nitpickings of their senior officers, all he could do was laugh to himself. To the JOs, their whole world was right here on this ship. The commodore was their god. And thus, two of the best and brightest that the United States had to offer were held in brutal misery over which font must be used in the daily PowerPoint brief. These two junior officers would go on to do great things. But for now, this was their penance for having that privilege.

  “Sir, I just checked—airborne has an E at the end.”

  “That’s what I said,” came the commodore. The lieutenant glanced up but didn’t say anything. He just made the change. The commodore said, “Easy there, Lieutenant. It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong.”

  The lieutenant looked back up.

  The commodore said, “I’m not a big man.” Then a large grin broke out on his face.

  The lieutenant smiled nervously back at him and resumed typing. Boyle stifled a laugh. At least the commodore had a sense of humor.

  Both of these young officers were on the commodore’s staff. One was the Destroyer Squadron (Desron)’s operations officer. The other was the future operations officer. There must have been fifty people on board the aircraft carrier with the term operations officer in their job title, each one working for a different staff or squadron. The operations officers were essentially the managers who planned things like ship movements and aircraft missions.

  In a lot of ways, working on the carrier reminded Boyle of working in a large corporation. There were dozens of silos, each one filled with personnel that were very experienced in their own function, but had much less understanding of what lay in the other silos. In a business, there might be separate departments for IT, human resources, sales, marketing, finance, manufacturing, and R&D, each silo filled with people dedicated to performing their specific task.

  On the aircraft carrier, it was the same thing. The different groups formed their own cultures. The nuclear engineers who operated deep within the bowels of the carrier hadn’t seen sunlight in two weeks and had strict safety schedules about how many minutes they could stay in their hot duty spaces. But they would be like a deer on a highway if they went topside onto the carrier’s flight deck. The flight deck crew who spent all day launching and recovering aircraft, on the other hand, were highly attuned to that environment, but they probably couldn’t tell you the first thing about nuclear power. The junior officers on the commodore’s staff, who spent all day meticulously planning what each ship was going to be doing for the next six weeks, were flabbergasted when they met some of the F-18 pilots who didn’t even know the name of the destroyer only ten miles away. Everyone had a job to do, and they became experts at those jobs. The carrier environment was so complex that few, if any, were experts in everything.

  That’s why men like the commodore, the CAG, and the admiral got the big bucks.

  There were significant differences between life on the carrier and in corporate America, however. When Boyle had worked in the business world, he had often heard his colleagues complain of never being able to detach from work. They were always answering emails and many times had to work at night after putting the kids to bed. Boyle laughed at that sentiment. On deployment, work really was constant. You lived with your fellow employees. You often ate with—or at least in sight of—your boss at every meal. The phone often rang at all hours of the night because there was something that the watch standers needed you to know about. Work was literally 24/7. And there was no family, video chat, or phone calls. Not until you pulled into port every eight weeks. And the “time off” during port visits was spent with none other than your fellow employees. Eat, sleep, drink, work, play. It made no matter. Military life was all-consuming. And that was just the Navy. It was nothing compared to what some of the ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan had to go through.

  That wasn’t to say that it was all bad. Sometimes separation made the heart grow fonder. Sometimes separation lead to…well…permanent separation. Relationship details were the subject of many conversations between shipmates. Not Boyle, though. His happy marriage was a private one. He missed his wife and kids dearly, and he had planned on seeing them soon. Would that still happen?

  The Ford’s excursion was only supposed to last a few days. But a lot had changed in the past few weeks. Now, Boyle had a different boss, a new command, and no clue when he would next see his wife and kids.

  The commodore said, “Commander, I’m sorry for keeping you waiting. The admiral’s brief is in thirty-five minutes. We just need to put the finishing touches on this, and then I’ll be with you.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  The commodore was in charge of all of the ships in the carrier strike group, with several notable exceptions. He was not in charge of the shotgun ship—in this case, the USS Michael Monsoor. And he was not in charge of the carrier itself—the USS Ford. Both of those were commanded by men who were equal in rank to him—O-6s, or US Navy captains. The commodore was in charge of all of the other warships in company—the destroyers and littoral combat ships, the Navy’s newest version of frigates. Were they calling them frigates now, or were they still littoral combat ships? Boyle couldn’t keep it straight anymore.

  Boyle kept his mouth shut for now, but what he saw surprised him. The carrier strike group was headed towards Pearl Harbor, just like he’d expected. But there were two paths. A contingent of ships labeled SAG 131 was headed on a southwestern course.

  There were several three-letter identifiers underneath the SAG 131 symbol. One of them had the letters FAR. Farragut. James watched carefully as the commodore, his deputy, and the two lieutenants walked through the brief. It looked like thei
r surface action group was to be made up of destroyers and littoral combat ships, and one supply ship. They were headed to the South Pacific.

  For what, he wasn’t sure.

  “Attention on deck!”

  The members of the admiral’s conference room on the USS Ford rose from their seats. Boyle stood just in front of one of the many seats lining the wall. Dozens of squadron COs and staff officers stood with him, surrounding the conference table. The seats at the center table were reserved for the most senior officers. Mostly O-6s. Admiral Manning marched in with his chief of staff and admiral’s aide in tow, saying, “Seats.”

  The room sat in silent unison.

  A Navy captain in digital utilities stood at the front of the room. His warfare pin hinted to Boyle that he was the admiral’s new information warfare commander. This meant that he oversaw the collection and dissemination of intelligence for the strike group.

  “Admiral Manning, good afternoon. As many of you now know, we have recently received specific intelligence that points to a growing Chinese naval threat. Over the past twenty-four hours, tensions have escalated in the Western Pacific theater. So far, North Korea’s response to the bombing raid on their nuclear site has been merely verbal. But both North Korean military and Chinese military assets are on high alert. And there is now a Chinese naval unit that is suspected to be transiting east of the second island chain.”

  There were murmurs around the room. Some were hearing confirmation of these events for the first time.

  Admiral Manning said, “This is the group of merchant ships?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Continue, please.” The room quieted.

  The briefer began going through slides. A large map of the Pacific theater. Large gray circles overlaid parts of the map as a way to depict the ranges of surface-launched missiles.

  “The Office of Naval Intelligence has indications that Chinese naval vessels are on high alert and may even now be intending open hostilities towards US naval forces in the Western Pacific. We believe that the merchant ships transiting the South Pacific are the first wave of a Chinese supply convoy.”