Free The Trident Deception by Rick Campbell Page A

the ship’s Captain. He required nothing less than 100 percent effort on every occasion, and his expectations were almost impossible to meet. But as demanding as the SOB was, Tom found it hard not to like Commander Brad Malone. He judged and criticized everyone evenly and consistently, and when an officer or an enlisted struggled in the performance of his duties, he took the time to point out what improvements were required and how to make them. On the rare occasion the watchstander or watch section lived up to his unreasonable standards, he was quick to praise them for their superb performance.
    As grueling as it was to run and rerun the endless drills, Tom knew and appreciated the reason why. The single most important rule for submariners was to make the number of Surfaces equal to the number of Dives. Everything they did throughout the days, weeks, and months underway was focused on ensuring they could accomplish their mission and still be alive to surface the submarine and return home.
    Another day of drills was over. Tom had thought life would be dull on patrol, lurking in the ocean depths, hiding from everyone, waiting vigilantly for orders he prayed never came. But the opposite was true. Sleep was a precious commodity as the crew constantly trained: fire, flooding, reactor scram, steam-piping rupture drills. And when they weren’t running engineering or ship drills, the crew manned Battle Stations Missile and Battle Stations Torpedo, attempting to accomplish their mission and defend themselves in endless scenarios, combating a never-ending affliction of things that went wrong. Then there was the classroom training—tactics, reactor plant, and in-rate professional topics. Hours upon hours each week.
    No, life on patrol wasn’t dull. But even though the hours were long, the sleep scarce, and the training constant, Tom enjoyed it. There was something exciting about being the Officer of the Deck in the middle of the night, a twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant in charge of a two-billion-dollar submarine, taking it to periscope depth, with his eye pressed to the periscope as it broke the surface of the water, the safety of the ship and crew in his hands. Or manning the Bridge on the surface at night, the stars shining brightly above, the phosphorescent trail in the water marking the submarine’s passage as it headed toward port after a long patrol, the distant lights on the shoreline growing steadily brighter as the crew returned home. It made the endless drills and the training worth every minute.
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    An hour after dinner, Tom wiped the sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve as he rounded the aft end of Missile Compartment Upper Level, starting his twentieth lap. There was enough space in the compartment, and the length was long enough, for a decent run. One mile was seventeen laps around, and Tom had decided to take advantage of the submarine’s non-Alert status to get in five miles.
    Although the ship had two treadmills, Tom enjoyed running the old-fashioned way. Once the submarine commenced her strategic deterrent patrol, the treadmills would have to suffice, since running in the Missile Compartment would be forbidden. The sound of Tom’s feet pounding onto the steel deck would be transmitted through the ship’s hull, and as faint as that sound was, it could give away the submarine’s presence. As he passed down the starboard side of the ship, he paid no attention to the missile tubes or their contents. His thoughts were two thousand miles away, with his family, and how he would break the news to his father.
    Tom was third-generation Navy. His grandfather had graduated from Annapolis and retired as an admiral. Tom’s father had also attended the Naval Academy, and while Captain Murray Wilson wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, he hadn’t cared which community—air, surface, or submarine—as long as Tom carried on the family tradition. Unwilling to disappoint his father, Tom had also