Chapter Five

April 10, 2006

St. Marys, Georgia:

 

As Jake returned his mud-covered off-road motorcycle to the garage, his cell phone rang. He ducked into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, rifled through his duffle bag, and answered the phone.

He heard a friendly voice.

“Hey, Jake. It’s John Brody. How are you?”

“Good to hear from the master and commander of the Miami,” he said.

“Best submarine in the world.”

“Why is it you sound like you have a shit-eating grin on your face?” Jake asked.

“Because I do,” Brody said.

Talking to Brody usually made Jake feel confident and upbeat, but not today.

“Not in the mood for games,” Jake said.

“Okay. I’ve got a main seawater valve that won’t shut all the way, and I’m bringing the Miami in for dry dock repairs at Kings Bay. I’m in that cockamamie swizzle stick of a waterway you guys call a navigable channel.”

“Right now?”

Jake heard the wind whipping over Brody’s receiver and knew he had asked a stupid question.

“Yes, right now. I’m on the bridge with my fingers crossed that I don’t beach my boat in the sand. I don’t know how the heck you guys steam through this channel in those bloated Trident submarines.”

“You’ll be fine,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Brody said. “I know. I should tie to the pier in about an hour.”

“How long are you going to be here?”

“The dry docks are full up in New London, so I’m going to get all my preventative maintenance done while I’m here. Several weeks at least.”

“Carole’s not going to like that,” Jake said.

Brody’s voice became a baritone whisper.

“I wanted to tell you over a beer,” Brody said. “Carole is leaving me. No one else knows yet.”

Jake remembered the last Christmas he had spent with the Brodys. He flipped his wallet open to a picture of John and Carole Brody wearing the matching sweaters he had given them. Nothing seemed to be going right.

“Let’s hang out tonight,” Brody said. “I need to drown my sorrows.”

“Sure. You want to go out in St. Marys or head down to Jacksonville?”

“Local,” Brody said. “Let’s keep it simple.”

 

*

Jake and Brody passed through the dining room and onto the hardwood floor where patrons could order pitchers of beer and eat casual food in Seagle’s Waterfront Café, a pub outside the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. It was a weekday and the clientele was sparse.

Brody kicked back his second draft beer while Jake was still sipping first.

“Come on,” Brody said. “You’ve got to keep up with me.”

“I have no problem with pickling myself if that’s what you want to do,” Jake said. “If anyone’s got a right to drink, it’s you.”

“I didn’t know who else to talk to,” Brody said.

“So what set Carole off?” Jake asked.

“She says I’m a failure and that I drink too much.”

“What made her say that?”

“I keep a bottle of whiskey in my stateroom, and the crew knows about it. So does my commodore.”

“That’s serious, but isn’t it an unwritten law that commanding officers are allowed to indulge now and then?”

“Maybe in the old days. Not anymore.”

“What’s this failure crap about?” Jake asked.

“The selection board convened. I didn’t make captain. I only have one shot left, and it’s a long shot.”

“The selection board is a bunch of morons.”

“Let’s drop it. Tell me what’s up with you.”

Jake tipped back his beer.

“You probably read an accident report about a hydraulic plant rupture,” he said.

“That wasn’t you, was it?”

Jake stood, lifted his shirt, and exposed a series of scars on his back.

“Damn!” Brody said. “How are you?”

“Life’s good, despite my little injury,” Jake said. “Full recovery. I’m running and lifting again and even riding the dirt bike. I have one more patrol before rotating to admiral’s aide duty for Sublant.”

“You’re going to be the aide for the commander of the Atlantic Submarine Fleet? That’s a great career move.”

Would have been, Jake thought. Won’t happen now.

“I talked to your executive officer a few months ago,” Brody said. “He said you’re the best tactician he’s seen.”

“You called my executive officer?”

“We did a midshipmen cruise on the same rust bucket before my senior year at Notre Dame and before his sophomore year at the Academy. I was just checking up on him. I thought I’d check on you while I had the chance.”

A waitress came by, and Jake ordered another pitcher and two shots of tequila. Jake’s mind wandered through a haze of inebriation. He studied the lounge and fixed his gaze on an attractive redhead in her mid-thirties clad in a tight sweater and jeans. He stared until her pale blue eyes caught his.

Ashamed, he turned away, although he saw her smile and flip her hair over her shoulder.

Three men dressed in Dockers and sweaters approached. Each greeted Brody as ‘Captain’, the traditional term for a commanding officer, and a crowd formed around the table.

“Hey guys,” Brody said. “What are you doing here?”

“Just a bunch of sailors in port prowling around town, Captain. There aren’t a whole lot of places to drink around here, so we figured we’d find you,” a tall lieutenant named Brian Keller said.

“You mind if we throw some down with you, sir?” asked Lieutenant Carlos Fernandez.

Brody made introductions and Lieutenant Keller’s eyes got big.

“You’re the one who saved the skipper?” he asked.

“Well, I helped,” Jake said.

“Bullshit,” Brody said.

The swearing told Jake that Brody was drunk.

“You saved my ass and don’t be shy about taking credit.”

The group huddled to listen.

“What is it now?” Brody asked. “Almost four years ago?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Almost.”

“I had just finished my executive officer tour on the Florida and took over as a battalion officer at the Naval Academy,” Brody said. “Having earned my commission at a superior academic institution-”

“Notre Dame? That’s hilarious, Captain,” Fernandez said.

“Pipe down, ‘Purdue’,” Brody said. “Anyway, I didn’t know the culture at the academy, so I just enforced the policies the commandant told me to enforce. Apparently, I built up the reputation as a hard-ass.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jake said.

“Anyway, no one can argue that I did the right thing by having a midshipman expelled for slapping a black plebe. Since I was the ranking black man on staff, word about the incident got to me first, and I took care of it.”

“A lot of people respected how you dealt with that,” Jake said. “They started opening up to you, and I think that’s when you stopped being a hard ass.”

“Yeah, well, Midshipman Livingston didn’t like it. He was waiting for me with a baseball bat. Can you believe that ass actually stalked me long enough to figure out my jogging patterns? Lucky for me, Jake passed me and ran across Livingston first.”

“Passing you was easy,” Jake said. “A turtle could have done it.”

Chuckles filled the air.

“He had the bat hidden behind some vans and said he was walking off a cramp,” Jake said. “Lucky I recognized him in time to turn around. Luckier still that I came back for you.”

Inquisitive eyes turned to Brody. He looked at his beer and smiled.

“As Midshipman Slate was passing me, I stopped him and fried him for jogging after Taps. I was going to have him restricted to the academy for weeks. Later, when that ass jumped out from behind the van and whacked my shins, my first thought was that God was punishing me for punishing Jake.”

“By the time I got there,” Jake said, “he was huddled on the parking lot and that redneck wasn’t stopping with the bat except to catch his breath.”

“Not until you showed up. One second I’m getting beat, the next, Jake’s throwing rocks at the guy, pissing him off, and luring him toward a van. Before you know it, Jake’s on top of the van, and the stupid shit tries to follow him up with the bat. Jake swoops down and has the guy’s arms behind his back in a – what is it?”

“Double arm bar,” Jake said. “I wrestled in high school. Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“You also didn’t mention that you were still thinking about becoming a Navy SEAL at that point.”

“I was crazy back then,” Jake said.

“And we decided the next morning that you would be much happier as a submarine officer,” Brody said. “I consider my sage and unbiased career advice a token of my gratitude.”

“Smartest move I made,” Jake said.

Jake felt happy until he remembered that the career move to submarines had led him to the accident that had left the damage lurking inside him that no one else could see.

 

*

Two hours later, Jake stared at tortilla crumbs, empty shot glasses, and beer pitchers. A waitress cleared the mess and took an order for two more pitchers and a plate of nachos.

Feeling his mind melting into a puddle of beer and tequila, Jake drifted in and out of a conversation about hockey returning to Hartford, but he woke up at the mention of a single word.

“...Severodvinsk,” Lieutenant Keller said.

“I read about the ‘Miami-Severodvinsk Encounter’ in the top-secret publications,” Jake said. “I didn’t expect to hear about it here.”

“When you get Miami sailors around pitchers of beer, you’re going to hear about it.”

“Eighteen months ago,” a bleary-eyed Brody said, “the technologically advanced superstar Russian Severodvinsk submarine went on its maiden deployment. So we sent the Virginia to spy on the bastard, but the Virginia had reactor problems and had to limp home on its diesel.”

“The Virginia had reactor circuitry failure after they botched some maintenance, and that’s end game for the reactor,” Keller said, “but it gave us a chance to kick ass!”

“We were deployed in the Atlantic when we got the radio message to take over the hunt,” Brody said. “I knew the Severodvinsk would be quiet, but it turns out this thing was practically a ghost.

“That Severodvinsk had all the newest goodies - updated hydrophone hardware and data processing. But we still kicked its butt. And I’ll tell you how. We outsmarted him, and we were better trained.

“I figured the Severodvinsk would conduct training attacks against the Truman battle group that was transiting to the Mediterranean. Russians still can’t resist stalking aircraft carriers. If they can still do it, they can sell the hardware and training to plenty of buyers.

“So I estimated an intercept course and waited on the Russian’s track. Then I slowed the Miami to reduce our noise signature and to listen. I caught that Severodvinsk moving by us at fifteen knots.”

The waitress returned with beer and nachos. Brody took a long swallow.

“We were taking in frequency data, sound power level, direction, screw blade rate and even heard his hull pop as it expanded when he ascended to periscope depth,” Brody said. “We had this guy nailed.

“Then we radioed in his position. The helicopters from the Truman used their dipping sonar to play ping-pong with him. The Russian had to turn tail and sprint home!”

Beer glasses clanked, Jake paid the bill, and the group staggered onto the curb in search of a taxi.

During the ride home, Jake regretted that his mentor, Brody, the legend of the ‘Miami-Severodvinsk Encounter’, had been passed over for promotion, reduced to heavy drinking, and now faced a failing marriage.

Everything he had believed about patriotism and the United States Navy imploded and filled him with rage. In his revenge, he would take no prisoners.