Submarine Warriors: The Enemy Beneath (4 page)

“What about the report from Alaska’s XO that their sonar gear didn’t hear an explosion when the Omaha Beach self-destructed?” the Secretary pressed.

“That data is inconclusive. They were headed away from the scene at flank speed and the explosion took place behind them in their baffles. Trust me, Charley Keller and the rest of the Alaska crew will fall in line and do their duty. This is too important.”

“I’m bringing the Alaska home early.” The SECNAV stood up to leave the Oval Office. “They’ll return to Bangor next week so we need to get another Trident to cover their target packages.”

“Give the crew a couple of days to decompress and then I want a full debriefing of what really happened out there,” ordered the President. “I want to know more about the glowing pyramid from the video. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” replied the Secretary of the Navy as he left the room. 

Poulsbo, Washington

Located on the Kitsap Peninsula and situated between the Hood Canal and the Puget Sound, Poulsbo was home to many Trident submariners. Caroline and her friends lived and went to school there.

Driving around Liberty Bay in her mother’s car, Caroline noticed the sign that greeted visitors to her Norwegian town, “Velkommen til Poulsbo.” She was home after a long plane trip and ferry ride from Seattle, but it didn’t bring her any solace.

“How are we going to live without Dad?” Caroline asked her mom.

“I don’t know, darling. We’ll just have to take it one minute, one hour, one day at a time.”

After a sad week of staying at home with nothing to do but cry or zone-out playing video games, the children of the fallen sailors returned to school. Annie, Chrissie, Mike, Nick and Caroline were all in middle school and the fall semester had just begun. Their teachers gave them lots of breathing room as their emotions fluctuated between sadness and anger over what had happened to their fathers. The children didn’t notice their friends’ attempts to reach out to them in the hall between classes. They just numbly walked through a constant haze of despair.

Caroline stared blankly across the room while pretending to eat lunch in the cafeteria. Sitting alone at the table, she wondered where the strange, buzzing sound was coming from.

“Am I daydreaming? “

“Oh, my phone’s on vibrate,” she uttered aloud, snapping back to consciousness.

Her phone displayed a white number 1 inside the text messaging tile on the Start screen. She tapped on the tile to see what the SMS said:

“NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS. UR FATHER & THE OTHERS MIGHT STILL BE ALIVE @ LATITUDE: 47.81 LONGITUDE: -126.71. FIND UR GRANDFATHER.

HE’LL KNOW WHAT 2 DO. XOXO”

Caroline’s eyes locked on the message and didn’t look away for the next several minutes.

“No phones allowed on school grounds.” The cafeteria monitor abruptly pulled Caroline out of her frozen state. “Give me that phone!”

Caroline quickly ran to the girl’s bathroom, where the male cafeteria monitor couldn’t follow her. She closed herself in a stall to collect her thoughts.

“This has to be a prank,” she said under her breath, settling down from the excitement. “How could anyone be so insensitive, sending me a text about my dad?”

Caroline sobbed quietly as she tapped the People tile on her phone and flicked her finger upward until she found “Granddad” under the G’s. She tapped the phone number under his profile picture.

“Admiral Connery speaking.”

“Granddad, it’s Caroline.”

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Not too good. I’m a little freaked out right now. I just received a text message saying that all our dads might still be alive. It gave me some GPS coordinates and told me to contact you.”

“Do you know who it’s from?” the Admiral asked.

“That’s what’s so weird. There’s no phone number listed, just the letters SAT.”

“A satellite phone,” he thought to himself.

“The end of the message kind of creeps me out,” Caroline continued. “It’s the symbols for hugs and kisses. I wonder if it’s from some kind of stalker.”

“I’m sorry, Caroline; I’m not up on the texting lingo of your generation. What are the symbols for hugs and kisses?”

“XOXO,” Caroline replied.

“I remember those symbols when I received Valentine’s letters from your Grandmother. It’s a long-shot, but it’s possible that the one person in the world who truly knows if your dad is alive just contacted you through a satellite phone.”

“Huh?”

“I think it’s Charley Keller,” said the Admiral. “He’s the Alaska’s XO and a man with undying loyalty to your father.

“Uncle Charley?” asked Caroline.

“Yes. Keep this to yourself. Gather your friends together - the sons and daughters of the lost sailors. Meet me at your friend Nick’s tree house tonight at nineteen hundred hours. Remember, don’t tell anyone.”

Caroline couldn’t stop herself from smiling. When she got home from school, she called Nick, Mike, Chrissie and Annie and told them they all had an important appointment to keep. And no, she couldn’t tell them why.

Tree House

At the edge of the Hood Canal in Nick’s back yard, a giant tree house was suspended twenty feet in the air connected to four Douglas Firs. Not an ordinary tree house; this place was big enough to hold a dozen friends with a high ceiling so even adults could stand upright without bumping their heads. Though constructed mostly of wood, on the inside it looked more like a miniature NORAD or NASA mission control.

Electricity made it possible to have all kinds of things inside like lighting, laptops, flat panel TVs, Wi-Fi, a small refrigerator and lots of charging Smartphones and iPods. Most of the power came from the solar panels on the roof, combined with small panels in the tops of the trees. The rest came from small windmills along the banks of the Hood Canal. The tree house was also full of special, high-tech light bulbs that projected a variety of wallpaper designs on the walls. They could also project text, images and touchable controls on any flat surface. Most everything about the place could be controlled by voice, camera input, or Smartphone apps. Frank Lloyd Wright would be proud of the architecture.

The kids began to arrive at 7:00 pm and made their way up the rope ladder to this special place.

A hidden camera above the tree house door scanned Annie’s face to see if it recognized her as the daughter of Quartermaster First Class Love. Of course, recognizing her was only half the equation. She had to know something secret and convey it to the camera, if she wanted to get inside. She made special gestures with her hand that looked like the ones used to communicate with the aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The door unlocked and opened. As she entered the tree house, the wallpaper changed to a full-motion scene of a tropical beach where Annie was playing with dolphins.

The rest of the kids made their way through the open door and sat at their seats in front of their work/play stations. Individual messages from IM, Twitter, SMS, Facebook and email were projected on each of the kid’s tabletops by the special light bulbs above.

The daughter of Radioman First Class Grant, Chrissie flicked through messages from her friends with her finger, without ever touching the table.

Nick resumed wandering around a virtual wasteland in Fallout.

Suddenly, the projected wallpaper changed to the image of Admiral Connery standing at the bottom of the rope ladder.

“Nick,” the Admiral shouted up. “I’m too old to climb this thing.”

“Step onto the bottom rung of the ladder and hang on,” Mike yelled down to him. Sonarman Timbers’ son turned a virtual knob projected on his desk and a mechanical reel began to pull the rope ladder and the Admiral upward.

Once the Admiral arrived at the top, he entered the tree house through the open door.

“Hey guys, this is my Granddad.” Caroline motioned to the Admiral. “He’s here to talk to us about our fathers.”

Everyone in the room knew Caroline’s grandfather was a famous, retired submarine Admiral. One couldn’t help but notice the statue of him at Subase Bangor.

“I hope you’re not here to give us another pep-talk like those stiffs back in Washington D.C.!” Mike blurted out.

“No, I’m not,” replied the Admiral. “What you’re about to hear is Top Secret. Caroline, pass around your phone to let everyone see the text message.”

Chrissie, Mike, Annie and Nick all took turns examining the message on the phone.

“This message is strange,” Annie mumbled.

“The message is from the XO of the USS Alaska, and those GPS coordinates point to a location off the coast of Washington,” Admiral Connery proceeded. “The XO has risked his career in the Navy to send us this message because he thinks your fathers are all still alive.”

It took a moment for the news to sink in.

The Admiral popped a flash drive into a nearby PC, and an image of the Pacific Ocean appeared on the wall. He spread his hands apart and the scene zoomed-in on a location just one hundred miles off the coast of northern Washington State.

“This spot marks the GPS coordinates,” the Admiral pointed. “Notice how they’re due west of the opening to the Strait of Juan de Fuca? Your fathers’ submarine would’ve transited directly toward that location on its way out to sea. If they’re alive, then that’s where they are.”

Nick’s eyes widened at the prospect that his dad might be alive.

“But we just got back from their funeral in Washington D.C.” Chrissie had a confused look on her face.

“Yeah, the President said they were doing science experiments and had an accident,” Mike chimed in. “The President of the United States wouldn’t lie to us…right?”

“I checked the GPS coordinates the XO sent to Caroline and the location appears to be a popular place,” the Admiral added. “A cruise ship with thousands of passengers disappeared there several weeks ago and no one can explain what happened. I still have a lot of friends in high places throughout the military, and they’re telling me that our orbiting satellites have spent a lot of their time looking at these same coordinates.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” murmured Chrissie.

“Listen, I’m not here to have you second-guess the President, and I’m not trying to invent a conspiracy theory,” the Admiral said. “But I don’t think your fathers were conducting a science experiment. I think they were on a Top Secret mission to investigate the sinking of that cruise ship and something went wrong. Something the President can’t talk about. The Navy and the government have already written them off as dead. Due to the compartmentalized nature of their mission, the Navy will never admit that your fathers may be alive and therefore won’t try to find them.”

“So they just made all this stuff up?” asked Annie.

“That’s exactly what they did,” replied the Admiral. “They told everyone a story about an accident during a science experiment with a research sub that conveniently cannot be found.”

“So what are we supposed to do about it?” said Annie, looking incredulous. “We can’t exactly call the police.”

“You’re right, we can’t tell anyone what we know. We’re going to find them ourselves.”

“That’s crazy,” Mike belted out. “We’re just kids.”

“Yeah, how are we supposed to find our dads out in the middle of the ocean?” Chrissie asked.

“We’re going to steal a submarine.”

Chapter 3 > The Plan

Tree House

“Steal a submarine…,” Caroline proclaimed, “…nice.”

“I think we’ll need to send in Master Chief to pull off something this big.” Nick referenced his favorite video game.

“I’m sure the submarine we’re borrowing will have a Master Chief onboard,” the Admiral replied, with a perplexed look.

“I doubt anyone in the Navy has gone through the SPARTAN-II Augmentation Procedure,” Nick added.

“So, what’s the game plan?” Annie asked the Admiral, who was still looking confused at Nick’s comment.

“Well, since I’ve never stolen a sub before, we’re going to do like the Marines and improvise,” the Admiral answered.

“Fake it till you make it!” Mike exclaimed.

“My contacts at the Pentagon tell me that the Alaska has cut short its patrol and will be arriving home tomorrow afternoon,” the Admiral resumed. “We’ve got to get down to the Delta pier and make our way onboard the Alaska while most of the crew is onshore. You guys will have to help operate the ship. Just keep suspending your disbelief and you’ll be okay.”

“It sounds like an awful lot of things will have to go right for us,” Annie commented.

“You have no idea,” the Admiral remarked.

“In a nutshell, we have to take control of the Alaska and drive it to the GPS location given to us by the XO. Along the way, we have to navigate the sub up through the Hood Canal Bridge, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and dive into the Pacific. Once we reach the coordinates, some of you will have to suit-up in deep sea diving suits, leave the Alaska and try to find your fathers in their DSRV or wherever else they may be.”

“Sounds like mission impossible,” Mike remarked under his breath.