After an hour and a half spent working on corrections to the problem with W, Ben and Faircloth went across to admin, where they were immediately admitted to Rear Admiral Paul Huggard’s office. The two-star was in charge of the Navy Yard overall, but at this moment in time, W was his top priority by a very wide margin.
Faircloth was carrying several sheets of blueprints under his left arm, and Ben had brought along his rough drawings and calculations in a copybook marked TOP SECRET on the front cover.
The admiral, his jacket off, was seated behind his desk when the two men walked in, came to attention, and saluted crisply. Huggard returned the salute and smiled.
“Civilians don’t salute,” he said.
“Old habit, sir,” Ben said. “But we have a problem.”
Huggard, who was one year shy of retirement, was a silver-haired bear of a man, standing well over six feet and weighing 220 pounds on a good day. But he still put in a credible workout at the base gym, often beating men half his age.
“I figured as much,” he said, his smile fading. His career-capping goal was to see W operational. And each time Ben and Faircloth showed up in his office with what he called “the look,” he could see his goal fading.
“Maybe we should go into your conference room so we can spread out the blueprints, sir,” Faircloth said.
“Big problem or little problem?”
“Big problem,” Ben said.
“Shit.”
“But I think that it can be fixed.”
“Oughta be fixed, can be fixed, or must be fixed to save the boat?” the admiral asked. His Ph.D. from MIT was in naval engineering, and he was damn good. Among the best in the navy, which was why he’d been picked to manage this project.
“Must,” Faircloth said.
“Ben?” Huggard said.
“I’m in complete agreement.”
The admiral reluctantly got to his feet, and the three of them went to the adjoining conference room, which could seat eight comfortably. In the past year he had come to call the place the Hemorrhage Palace, because every time Ben and Faircloth came over with a problem, the navy would end up hemorrhaging money, and the blame would fall on his shoulders.
“Okay, what is it this time?”
Faircloth laid out the first page of the blueprints, and Ben held them in place with four ship’s coins he’d brought over for the purpose.
“The drive tubes,” the admiral said. “Or the drive itself?”
“The MHD unit works per specs, but it’s the tubes,” Ben said. “Stress fractures.”
“We expected it.”
“Which is why we specified hardened titanium for the support struts.”
“So?” Huggard asked.
“At two specific frequencies, each covering a narrow band of less than fifty cycles per second, we think that a harmonic wave is induced into the struts. From there it’s transferred to the drive tubes, and the tubes open up.”
“A hole in the hull?”
“Holes in the hull, collectively big enough to sink the boat,” Ben said, pointing out the eight places along the tubes that he’d marked with a yellow highlighter.
“Are you suggesting we scrap the entire project?” the admiral asked.
“No, sir,” Faircloth said. “Ben has come up with a couple of fixes.”
“I’m all ears, gentlemen,” Huggard said. “Impress me.”
“The cheapest fix—in fact the one that would cost almost no money—would be simply to reprogram the MHD’s operational computer to bypass the two frequency ranges that cause the problem.”
Huggard saw the issue immediately. “The operational capabilities would be impaired.”
“But not seriously,” Ben said, though he didn’t believe it.
“We couldn’t know that until we had precision sea trials. Under simulated battle conditions.”
“Yes, sir,” Ben said. “Evasion maneuvers in which speeds would have to be randomly and quickly changed to confuse the enemy’s targeting computers.”
The admiral took only a moment to make his decision. “That’s out. We’re not going to send personnel to sea putting their lives at risk because of a design flaw.”
“Yes, sir,” Ben said, very glad that the navy had seen fit to send the right officer to administer the project.
“You mentioned two fixes.”
“Ben came up with it, and it’s ingenious,” Faircloth said.
“Ingenious as in how many tens of millions of dollars?” Huggard asked.
“Actually I’m thinking more like eight hundred—” Ben started, but the admiral interrupted him.
“Eight hundred million?”
“No, Admiral. Eight new struts at one hundred thousand dollars each. Eight hundred thousand total, plus maybe one month for the retrofitting, and then we’d be ready for sea trials.”
“Show me.”
Ben opened his copybook to the sketches he’d made, along with the underlying calculations, and laid it on top of the blueprints.
“The solid titanium struts go into harmonic vibrations at the two frequency ranges we talked about. I’m suggesting we use thick-walled but hollow struts and fill them with nitrogen gas at pressure to dampen the harmonics.”
The admiral looked at Ben’s math. “At what pressure?” he asked. “If it’s too high the struts themselves could pose a danger of exploding, sending shrapnel though the boat’s hull.”
“I did some of the math in my head on the way over. But we’ll need to run a simulation on the mainframe to check me out.”
“As I said: Impress me.”
“I’m thinking in the range of twenty-five to thirty-five psi.”
“Pounds per square inch. The same pressure in an automobile’s tires,” the admiral said. “I’m impressed.”
On the way back to the warehouse Faircloth was upbeat. “Impressing an admiral is not an easy thing to do, pal. But you sure as hell knocked it out of the ballpark.”
“We did,” Ben said absently. He’d been thinking about Cassy.
Faircloth stopped. “Okay, Ben, it’s me you’re talking to. What’s up?”
“I’m a little worried about Cassy.”
“Do you think that she’s running around on you? I mean, you’re bright and all that, but frankly you’re not much to look at.”
Ben had to chuckle. “It’s nothing like that. But something is going on at work, and I think it’s got her…”
“Worried?” Faircloth asked.
“Frightened.”
“Call her right now, and then let’s have some lunch. Arguing with a two-star has always made me hungry.”
Cassy’s cell phone rolled over to voicemail after five rings, but it wasn’t terribly worrisome to Ben. A lot of times she switched her phone to silent mode when she was deep into a new project.
He called her shift supervisor, Francis Masters, who answered on the second ring.
“Masters.”
“It’s Ben Whalen. I’ve tried to reach Cassy, but she’s not answering her cell. Can you ask her to give me a call whenever she’s free?”
“Sure thing, but it’ll have to wait until after lunch.”
“She’s busy?”
“She’s not available,” Masters said, and he hung up.
Cassy had said her immediate supervisor was a jerk, and this confirmed it. Ben’s worry went up a notch. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his gut.