Free Thunder In The Deep (02) by Joe Buff

sixteen of the crew."
    "But—"
    "I helped build Challenger, Captain. I'm a plank owner, like most of the men. You got here two months ago. Me playing devil's advocate with you is not a knee-jerk game." Jeffrey opened his mouth, but Bell cut him off.
    "As an African-American myself, I am well aware of the problems of bias. I have never once sensed that with you, which is to your credit. But your blatant reaction to Miss Milgrom as a female submariner, a woman in uniform serving on this warship, simply has to change."
    Jeffrey's face was burning. He realized Bell was right on every count, but still Bell didn't quit.
    "You're responsible to the people, the chiefs, the junior officers, the department heads, and me. They're all courageous and tough. But at this point, if they could, as a matter of principle half the crew would put in for immediate transfer to another front-line boat. Think how that would look in your service jacket." Jeffrey sat there, stunned. It would ruin his career.
    "It is my considered opinion, sir, that the crew now believes that if you continue your current tactical and leadership style, it will be a miracle if we ever complete this rescue mission and reach the East Coast of the United States alive." A half hour later, Jeffrey sat alone in his stateroom. This time the door wasn't just closed—unusual enough for him—it was locked.
    Spread across his fold-down desk were the formal orders, and briefing papers and data disks, from the Cape Verde courier's envelope.
    Jeffrey was feeling much better than when Bell left to take back the conn. He was also feeling much worse. RE-CURVE ARBOR.
    The powers-that-be did trust Jeffrey, and the crew, after all. They did know what Challenger could really do, even when damaged.
    This damaged, though? Jeffrey blushed, thinking about his attack on the U-boats, and about what Bell just said. Half of Jeffrey wished he'd opened the envelope sooner. On the pages in front of him, he was directly ordered to avoid all contact with the enemy whatsoever until reaching the USS Texas.
    But Texas was a red herring. It wasn't a rescue mission at all. Challenger was ordered to stop at Texas only long enough to take off her specially trained surviving SEALs with certain unique items of equipment, including two briefcase atom bombs. Challenger was being tasked to complete the job originally given to Texas. They were going all the way. Up through the narrow, shallow waters between occupied Denmark, and occupied Norway and aggressively neutral Sweden, to
    penetrate the impenetrable German bastion, the Baltic Sea. When they got there, they were to pull off a nuclear demolition raid that made Durban, as frightening and important as it was, seem routine by comparison. A demolition raid so vital, apparently, that the rest of the men on Texas had to wait.
    Jeffrey's tactical personality might indeed get everyone on Challenger killed. But now, he hoped, considering what they were up against, his on-the-edge way of war-fighting at least gave them a chance to succeed and survive.
    Their involvement at Durban was, and had to remain, covert. Their role now was direct action. Jeffrey saw this -new mission was also meant to aid the lasting effects of the Durban raid, as a double bluff: If Challenger set off A-bombs in Germany's face, so soon after the mysterious mushroom cloud in South Africa, then the U.S. wasn't behind the previous blast. Jeffrey hoped it worked.
    Jeffrey thought some more about what Bell had said and implied. Jeffrey had been selfish, and too judgmental of people whom he needed and who needed him, and they'd seen it all over his face in the control room: It was just like with his family twenty, thirty years before. Second-guessing, and not listening. Condescending, burning bridges that might never be rebuilt. Walking out on them.
    Jeffrey'd seen—too late—how it felt to be on the receiving end of that. After Iraq, during his year of painful rehab, when he'd struggled to learn to