“How about if we did it in secret and then somehow alerted the Chinese Navy that your submarine had sunk the Kilos, as a way of holding on to the export order and keeping us happy at the same time,” Admiral Morgan said impassively.
Harcourt Travis went white. The ambassador made no reply. And the Navy attaché just shook his head.
“Admiral Morgan, I do not think even you would try to pull off something like that,” the Ambassador said finally.
“Don’t you?” growled the Admiral.
It was now clear that the Ambassador was not going to change his President’s mind despite Harcourt Travis’s firmly reasoned statements. The meeting was going nowhere. And he called it to a close by informing the Russian Ambassador that he had an official communiqué from the President of the United States, “who formally presents his compliments to the President of Russia, and requests that he give very serious consideration to not fulfilling the Chinese order for the submarines.
“We are formally submitting this request through your diplomatic offices and would like your assurances that it will be transmitted to your President within a half hour.”
“You have those assurances, Mr. Travis, despite the disagreeable hour. It’s about 0200 in Moscow now.”
“Thank you, Ambassador. We are giving your President exactly forty-eight hours to inform us that he has canceled the order before we shall be obliged to consider different options.”
“I understand, Mr. Travis. And hope, most respectfully, that this does not affect our own personal relationship in the future.”
He held out his hand to receive the white envelope. And Admiral Morgan added, “A whole lot of things are going to be affected most respectfully if those goddamned Chinese make even one move toward shutting us out of the Taiwan Strait. Especially if Russian-built submarines are deemed, by us, to be the culprit. And that you guys, knowingly and willfully, let it happen.”
The time was 1810 when the Ambassador left. “I guess we just have to wait it out,” said Harcourt. “Want some dinner?”
“No thanks. I wanna get back to Fort Meade to see what’s going on in the world. I’ll get a sandwich there. Since the die is cast and time is running out, the whole drift is now toward the CNO. The President does not wish to be informed further, and as you know, the communiqué asks that the Russian reply be directed to the Navy office.”
“I realize that, Arnold. It’s a pretty weak attempt to lower the profile. But it’s better than nothing. Anyway, I don’t think there’s going to be a reply. Let’s have a chat sometime tomorrow. In private.”
“Sure, Harcourt. Anything big happens, I’ll let you know later.”
Two days later, on December 14, the digital clock on the wall of the CNO’s office showed 1830. No message had been received from the Russian government. Admiral Morgan was checking with the White House and the State Department. There was nothing. Admiral Mulligan was pacing the length of his office. Commander Dunning sat quietly in an armchair. Like the Russian President, he too would say nothing. He had a great deal on his mind.
As the clock went to 1836, the CNO said: “Okay. Let’s go down and see the Chairman.” They left the office, walking briskly onto the eerily deserted E-Ring.
The guards in front of the Chairman’s office immediately escorted them into the inner office, where Admiral Scott Dunsmore awaited them.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “Any news?”
“No, sir,” replied Admiral Mulligan. “We have received no reply to the President’s communiqué.”
“Very well. I believe we are all clear as to the wishes of the President,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “I would like you to set those plans in motion immediately. Needless to say the operation is Black. No one will discuss this with anyone who does not already know—just the President, Harcourt, Bob, and the Director at Fort Meade.”
All three men nodded. No further words were spoken. The ruthless near silent efficiency of the US Navy was on display for their military leader. Admiral Mulligan led the way out, followed by Admiral Morgan. Commander Dunning brought up the rear. And as he made his exit, he heard the Chairman say in a soft voice, “Boomer…good luck.”
3
JO DUNNING WAS NOT HAVING MUCH LUCK attempting to back the family Boston Whaler into the garage for the winter. She had run over and probably ruined an expensive deep-sea fishing rod, and had somehow succeeded in jamming the white forty-horsepower Johnson outboard motor on the stern of the boat firmly into the right-hand wall of the wooden garage. She was not anxious to drive the jeep forward, in case she went over the fishing rod again, and anyway she was half afraid the entire building might cave in.
The phone was ringing in the house, however, and with huge relief she opened the door and fled the hideous scene, hoping against hope that the call would be from Boomer. Even harassed and angry, dressed in old jeans and a white Irish-knit fisherman’s sweater, Jo Dunning was a spectacular sight. Her long, dark red hair, long slim legs, and what Hollywood describes as “drop-dead good looks” somehow betrayed her. It was impossible to believe she was merely a Naval officer’s wife: here, surely, was a lady from show business.
Half right. Jo was very definitely the wife of the nuclear submarine commanding officer Boomer Dunning. But she had retired from her career as a television actress on the day she had met him, fifteen years previously. This was not, incidentally, an incident that had threatened to bring CBS to its knees, since at the time Jo had been resting for several months and, in the less-than-original words of her own mother, was wondering if indeed her “career was down the toilet.”
And now, as she ran to the telephone in the big house that would one day be theirs, she hoped her luck on this wretched day would change—that Boomer would be calling to confirm their plans to spend three days at Christmas together with the children in this waterfront house on the western Cape.
But Jo’s luck had not turned, except for the worse. The voice on the line was that of a young lieutenant junior grade from the SUBLANT headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, where Boomer was now stationed.
“Mrs. Dunning?”
“Speaking.”
“Mrs. Dunning, this is Lieutenant Davis down here at SUBLANT calling to let you know that Commander Dunning has been assigned to a special operation, beginning immediately. As you know, it will be difficult for him to speak with anyone outside the base. You may of course call here anytime, and we’ll do our best to let you know how long he’s going to be. But for the moment, he’s terribly busy—he’ll try to call you tonight.”
Jo Dunning had had a few conversations like this before, and she knew better than to probe. She was so anxious about Christmas, however—which would be their first together for three years—that she asked the question directly.
“Will he be home in a few days?”
“No, ma’am.”
Her heart fell. “How long, Lieutenant?”
“Right now, he’s expected to return toward the end of January. We’re looking at a five-week window.”
“A five-week widow,” she murmured. And then, “Thank you, Lieutenant. Please tell my husband I’ll be thinking of him.”
“I certainly will, ma’am.”
“Oh, Lieutenant, are you going with him?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell him to drive carefully, won’t you?”
“I sure will, ma’am.”
At which point Jo Dunning put the phone down and wept. Just as she had wept last summer when all of their plans were ruined because of another operation at the end of the world down in the South Atlantic. Except she had not known at the time where he was.
And as she sat now in her father-in-law’s wooden rocking chair, staring out at the sunlit waters of Cotuit Bay, she could think only of the terrible, deep waters in which she knew her husband worked, and the monstrous, black seven-thousand-ton nuclear killing machine of which Boomer Dunning was the acknowledged master. No one, in all of military history, had ever hated an
ything quite so badly as the lovely Jo Dunning loathed the United States Navy at this particular moment. Her tears were tears of desolation. And fear. No one ever said it, but everyone even remotely connected with the submarine service knew the dangers and the anxiety that pervaded every family whose father, son, or brother helped to operate America’s big, underwater strike force.
It was not that she couldn’t cope with it. Jo thought she could cope with anything, even, if it came to it, the death of her husband in the service of their country. It was only the hateful unfairness of it all. Why Boomer, why her wonderful sailor-husband, and not someone else? But she already knew the answer to that. She’d been told often enough. Because he was the best. And one day he was going to be a captain, and then an admiral, and then, who knows, she said aloud, “President of the Universe for all I care.”
Jo composed herself quickly. At thirty-eight, she still looked perfect, and she was still dewy-eyed over her husband. She adored even the sight of him in uniform, this handsome, commanding man, about a half inch taller than six feet, blond hair, massive arms and tree trunk legs. Boomer looked like what he was: an ocean-racing yachtsman when he had the chance, a man who was an America’s Cup-class sailor, a true son of the sea. His father had been very much the same but had left the Navy after World War II, as a lieutenant commander, and proceeded to make a great deal of money with a Boston stockbroking firm.
Jefferson Dunning was close to eighty years of age and was busily spending some of it wintering on a Caribbean Island. But he had deeded the house on the Cape to Boomer years previously, in order to skate around heavy Massachusetts inheritance taxes. Boomer was a better sailor than his father had been, just, but was not as financially astute. He would have no need to be. He would inherit a reasonable amount of money, and Jo herself would one day share with her two sisters the legacy of the family boatyard up in New Hampshire.
She was a curious dichotomy, Mrs. Boomer Dunning. A lifelong dinghy sailor, she was an ace racing the local Cotuit skiffs, and she could handle any powerboat around. She’d been doing that all of her life. Jo was, however, a lousy driver. Which was why at this moment the Boston Whaler was jammed into the side of the Dunning garage. Jo judged water distance better than land distance.
She was never really comfortable amid the glitz of the acting trade, although her looks might have carried her far. She had quite enjoyed living in New York and attending acting classes. But her first television soap opera part had been, well, a bit wooden. The Hollywood producer who had once written of Fred Astaire, “Can’t act, can’t sing, can dance a bit,” would probably have remained unimpressed had he studied the young Jo Donaghue in screen action.
She had a couple more chances, including another soap, which ran for eight weeks, after which things went quiet. At twenty-three, she was going nowhere. In the spring of 1988 she was introduced to a young Navy lieutenant at a yacht club dance in Maine. Cale Dunning had just crewed on a big ketch up from the Chesapeake. He was from Cape Cod, and they were married within five months, just before he decided to spend his career in the submarine service.
Even now, on this sunny but now depressing Saturday morning, Jo would not have traded one day of her life as Mrs. Dunning for the leading role in any movie. All she wanted was for him to come home for Christmas. And that was not going to happen.
Their own house was in Groton, Connecticut, near the big US submarine base, New London. But she and their two daughters, Kathy, thirteen, and Jane, eleven, often came up to their grandparents’ Cape Cod house during the winter when it was empty. The whole family had been together here during the Thanksgiving holiday three weeks ago, and this particular weekend had been arranged for Jo to put the house in shape for Christmas next week. Now none of that would be necessary. Jo and the girls might as well stay in Groton, where there were other Naval families close by, old friends who would invite them to parties where no one would mention the absence of Commander Dunning. Special Ops were like that. They cast a cloak of secrecy over their participants, and all of those on the fringes. Jo knew she could be talking to a colleague of Boomer’s who had at least some vague idea of where Boomer was on Christmas Day, but that nothing would ever be mentioned between them. That was how it was, and she was not some skittish television actress anymore. She was the wife of a US Navy nuclear submarine commander, and she might one day be the wife of an Admiral.
Jo wandered outside to retrieve the stupid fishing rod and to work out a way to remove the Boston Whaler from the right-side garage wall without driving the Jeep into the other side. She stepped once more out into the cool bright December morning and gazed along the water, up the narrows and into North Bay. There was still some foliage left on the trees lining the opposite shore of Oyster Harbors, since it had been a warm and late fall. The reds and golds on the Cotuit side were brighter in the midmorning sunlight, and the flat, calm, empty channel out beyond the open harbor made her think, as she had many times before, that this place was indeed paradise.
The sailing boats and the fishing boats were almost all put away for the winter now, except for those that belonged to the Cotuit Oyster Company. The only sign of marine movement was the big Gillmore Marine tugboat Eileen G, now chugging quietly out of the Seapuit River, beneath the steady grip of the master dock-builder and waterman George Gillmore himself.
Soon the winter would set in here, and North Bay might freeze right over, and docks might move in the ice. George Gillmore would soon be working overtime to protect the waterfront bulkheads and piers all around these bays. The high winds would swing in from the Canadian northwest, and snow would cover the summer gardens, and the spring would be cold, and wet, and late coming. But the weather neither inspired nor depressed Jo Dunning. She considered this place to be paradise in wind, rain, or shine. And rarely a day went by without her thinking of the years she and Boomer would have here together when, finally, he retired from the Navy.
Jo stared out to the horizon, across Deadneck Island to the waters of Nantucket Sound. Her husband might well be driving Columbia in the near future out into what he cheerfully called his “beat,” the vastness of the North Atlantic and the terrible depths of an ocean that had petulantly swallowed the Titanic, and a thousand others, not so very far from these tranquil bays. She looked back out across the harbor and waved as the tugboat went by. George replied with a resounding, short, double blast on the horn, which scattered the cormorants along the docks. Basically, George Gillmore did not require that much of an excuse to make Eileen G sound like his own fighting ship. Boomer always said the tall, bearded Gillmore might have made a pretty good captain of a Naval warship.
As Jo reflected, Boomer himself was in private conference in a specially fitted and specially guarded Operations room, euphemistically called a “Limited Access Cell,” at SUBLANT HQ, which would serve as the command center for all the US dealings with the Chinese submarines.
Here the US Navy Black Ops team would finalize everything—their various positions on the ocean, their patrol areas, their cycle of operations, their dates, their orders, their rules of engagement, their overall targeting, their charts—everything required for the efficient management of a small force of submarines with a special tasking.
Even the signals left this room carefully encrypted. If you took papers in—any papers—you couldn’t take them out again without special signatures and meticulous logging. Armed guards stood before the doors. No one was allowed access without a special pass. And these were issued only on a need-to-know basis. Even executive officers and navigation officers were not permitted inside, except for prepatrol and postpatrol briefings. Four communications staff kept watch behind those doors at all times.
The successor to Admiral Mulligan, and now the new Commander of the Atlantic Submarine Force, was Admiral John F. Dixon, an austere and rather forbidding man with a narrow, serious face, renowned for his meticulous preparation. This severe appearance, however, shielded his subordinates from a reckless, youthful past, which had al
most caused his removal from the US Naval Academy. There was something about a large bronze statue of a departed admiral, which had been, mysteriously, filled with water by an unknown expert with a small drill; the statue peed for three days from a tiny hole in the front of its dress trousers.
Admiral Mulligan always called Admiral Dixon “Johnny.” The statue incident was rarely, if ever, recalled, but there were those who felt that its distant, hysterical memory among those senior officers who were there might yet prevent the efficient submarine chief from making it to CNO.
Before the small meeting began, Commander Dunning was requesting that despite the long mission he was about to undertake, he still be guaranteed the one-month sabbatical he had been granted throughout the month of February. Admiral Dixon approved the request. Columbia was due in for maintenance that month anyway, and he knew that the Cape Cod commander would be away for four weeks. Should there be a foul-up in the North Atlantic it was unlikely that Columbia would be required to pursue its quarry around the world, and Admiral Dixon did not anticipate a foul-up.
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