Free Counter Poised by John Spikenard

yourself, you would get an excellent fitness report. A one-percent REP fitness report (meaning top one percent and Recommended for Early Promotion) signed by an admiral was like gold when your record went before a promotion board or a commanding officer (CO) selection board. The submarine CO selection board was meeting next month, and George Adams was up for command selection. He could not afford to screwup now.
    “I don’t like this situation,” George confided to Petty Officer Harris. “Admiral Yates will be looking to me as the ops officer, and to Lannis as the intel officer, to provide answers about this latest threat. I don’t have any answers, and I’m pretty sure Lannis doesn’t either.”
    “Admiral Yates is not one to take ‘I don’t know’ as an answer,” Petty Officer Harris reminded him.
    “That’s true, but those are really Intel questions. Intel has to tell us about the threat. Ops is responsible for coming up with a response once Intel has defined the threat. At least it’s going to be pleasurable to watch Lannis squirm. Somehow, that guy always manages to come out of the admiral’s briefing smelling like a rose. Admiral Yates banters questions with him and even seems to enjoy the process and the personal interaction.”
    “You sound a little jealous to me…”
    “Yeah? Well, maybe I am. It’s clear Lannis’s part of the briefing is the admiral’s favorite, and I have to admit, I find that really irritating. Surely Admiral Yates can see through that brown-nosed apple polisher!”
    “Whoa, you sound more than a little jealous!”
    “Lannis is a real smack , that’s for sure!” George continued, using the vernacular he had learned years ago at the Academy—smack, of course, being a lightly veiled reference to an ass kisser. “Some people get ahead by ass-kissing. I’ve always preferred to distinguish myself through hard work and superior performance.”
    Petty Officer Harris could see this conversation was going downhill fast and opted to say nothing. After a few awkward moments of silence, George continued with the briefing preparations.
    “Ok, I’m pretty sure Intel is not going to have any answers about where, when, or how al-Qaeda plans to get this weapon or weapons into the U.S.,” he said. “For our part, we’ll concentrate on a plan to increase the number of submarine patrols off the coast. We’ll maximize the number by accelerating some maintenance activities and getting as many attack boats on station as we can muster. And depending on Intel’s threat assessment, we may also throw out the question of whether the admiral would consider using some boomers in the attack role.”
    “Well, wait a minute,” Petty Office Harris responded. “I thought attack submarines were designed for the mission of seeking out and destroying enemy submarines and enemy ships. Their crews are trained to do that either independently or in coordinated hunter/killer groups. Right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And isn’t the mission of boomers to stay hidden for sixty days or more while always being ready to launch their ballistic missiles at a moment’s notice?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, can the boomers do both at the same time?”
    “Probably not,” George responded. “It would mean giving up some strategic assets until this crisis is over.”
    “Sounds like a risky thing to suggest to Admiral Yates,” ventured Petty Office Harris. “He probably won’t like the idea of pulling strategic assets out of their patrol areas. You know how he is.”
    “Yeah, I know. The guy’s a dinosaur. He still has a coldwar mentality while the threat to our security has totally changed. I realize there has always been a well-defined line between strategic assets that would be used in a nuclear war and tactical assets that would be used in lesser conflicts, and it’s almost unheard of to use strategic assets to perform a tactical mission. But if the threat changes, and you have an asset out there that can help