The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [170]
"There will be a security problem," Ghosn said quietly.
"Oh? Why is that?" Fromm asked, with a feigned bafflement that struck both of the others as the summit of arrogance.
"Quite so," Qati agreed.
"Next, we need sturdy tables on which to mount the machines."
Halfway point, Lieutenant Commander Walter Claggett told himself. In forty-five more days, USS Maine would surface outside Juan de Fuca Straits, link up with the tug boat, and follow Little Toot into Bangor, where she would then tie up and begin the hand-off process to the 'Blue' crew for the next deterrence-patrol cycle. And not a moment too soon.
Walter Claggett - friends called him Dutch, a nickname that had originated at the Naval Academy for a reason he no longer remembered; Claggett was black - was thirty-six years old, and it had been known to him before sailing that he was being 'deep-dipped' for early selection to commander and had a chance for an early crack at a fast-attack boat. That was fine with him. His two attempts at marriage had both ended in failure, which was not uncommon for submariners - thankfully, there were no kids involved in either union - and the Navy was his life. He was just as happy to spend all of his time at sea, saving his carousing time for those not really brief intervals on the beach. To be at sea, to slide through black water in control of a majestic ship of war, that was the best of all things to Walter Claggett. The company of good men, respect truly earned in a most demanding profession, the acquired ability to know every time what the right thing to do was, the relaxed banter in the wardroom, the responsibility he had to counsel his men - Claggett relished every aspect of his career.
It was just his commanding officer he couldn't stand.
How the hell did Captain Hairy Ricks ever make it this far? he asked himself for the twentieth time this week. The man was brilliant. He could have designed a submarine-reactor system on the back of an envelope, or maybe even in his head during a rare daydream. He knew things about submarine design that Electric Boat's shipwrights had never even thought about. He could discuss the ins and outs of periscope design with the Navy's chief optics expert, and knew more about satellite-navigation aids than NASA or TRW or whoever the hell was running that program. Surely he knew more about the guidance packages on their Trident-II 0-5 sea-launched ballistic missiles than anyone this side of Lockheed's Missile Systems Division. Over dinner two weeks earlier, he'd recited a whole page from the maintenance manual. From a technical point of view, Ricks might have been the most thoroughly prepared officer in the United States Navy.
Harry Ricks was the quintessential product of the Nuclear Navy. As an engineer he was unequaled. The technical aspects of his job were almost instinctive to him. Claggett was good, and knew it; he also knew that he'd never be as good as Harry Ricks.
It's just that he doesn't know dick about submarining or submariners, Claggett reflected bleakly. It was incredible, but true, that Ricks had little feeling for seamanship and none at all for sailors.
"Sir," Claggett said slowly, "this is a very good chief. He's young, but he's sharp."
"He can't keep control of his people," Ricks replied.
"Captain, I don't know what you mean by that."
"His training methods aren't what they're supposed to be."
"He is a little unconventional, but he has cut six seconds off the average reload time. The fish are all fully functional, even the one that came over from the beach bad. The compartment is completely squared away. What more can we ask of the man?"
"I don't ask. I direct. I order. I expect things to be done my way, the right way. And they will be done that way." Ricks observed in a dangerously quiet voice.
It made no sense at all to cross the skipper on issues like this, especially when he posed them in