Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
United States Navy Commander Betty Hollister accepted a Diet Coke from her warrant officer and turned her attention back to her display. At thirty-nine years old, she was the first woman in her family to make it out of her ancestral home in Mobile, Alabama, and the first woman to ever command a ballistic nuclear missile submarine for the Navy.
The USS Wyoming had been steaming north-northwest for seven days since leaving their new home base of Pearl Harbor, and they were making good time. All mission parameters were within acceptable ranges except for an intermittent vibration in the screw at eleven knots. If all went according to schedule, the sub would arrive at its duty station in the Bering Sea in the next forty-eight hours. The plan was to patrol for thirty days before moving on to their next duty station, the location of which had yet to be revealed. Commander Hollister took a sip of her drink and placed it in the gimbaled holder beside her right hand. The drink holder was designed to allow her drink to remain level as the sub moved around it.
Life as the first female commander of a boomer exceeded her wildest expectations. When she had first put in her papers to transfer from the carrier service to the submarine forces, her commanding officer, a grizzled veteran of the first Gulf War had given her a quizzical look and raised an eyebrow. “You know the trailblazer takes all the arrows, don’t you?”
Her response had been simple. “I don’t have a choice, sir.” The Navy was all she knew, and like every other aspect of her life, she found she could only move forward, taking on ever-increasing responsibility in an unrelenting quest to remake herself, to leave her past behind.
Hollister’s initial enlistment in the Navy had been a calculated move to avoid suspicion related to the accidental death of a classmate during her senior year of high school.
Only she knew the death was not accidental. Far from it. It had all started the summer between her junior and senior years when her best friend since elementary school, Susan Crawford, had stolen her boyfriend, humiliating her and destroying what had seemed like the perfect relationship with the perfect boy. Hollister was devastated, unable to accept the betrayal. Something shifted deep inside of her, some fundamental piece of her psyche she neither understood nor controlled. With a resolve and cunning that would serve her well in her future naval career, she suppressed her rage and acted as if she accepted the betrayal, even going so far as to offer her congratulations to the new couple, assuring them she bore them no ill will. And then, she waited. Four months later, on the night of homecoming, she made her move.
Shortly after midnight at a post-game party at a classmate’s house, Hollister discovered her ex-boyfriend passed out cold in an overstuffed La-Z-Boy.
Hollister didn’t hesitate. She was alone with him, and she knew Susan was at the other end of the house doing tequila shots with a group of girls from her field hockey team. Pinching his nose closed, Hollister cupped her hand over his mouth and counted to a hundred. The boy barely struggled, throwing out only a few halfhearted kicks as his autonomous nervous system reacted belatedly to the dwindling supply of oxygen. But it was too little, too late.
If I can’t have you, then neither can she.
After verifying he was dead, Hollister slipped from the room and returned to the party. She stayed for another half-hour, acting as if nothing had happened, before slipping out and returning home.
Word spread quickly about the death at the party, and while the official cause of death was ruled an accidental asphyxiation, Betty was able to sleep through the night for the first time in months, finally satisfied justice had been served.
She had enlisted in the Navy the next day. After her first tour of duty, she applied to the Naval Academy, and from that point on, her career took off like a rocket.
Her transfer was official two months after graduation from the Naval Academy. She became the first female executive officer, or XO, serving aboard the USS New Mexico—the only female among an all-male crew. The first few weeks at sea had been brutal, but the crew eventually adjusted to the new reality as she demonstrated her competency as a senior officer. It didn’t hurt that she ruled with an iron fist. Two years later, she had gotten her chance to command the Wyoming.
The Wyoming was loaded with a full complement of twenty-four Trident II D-5 missiles, each carrying eight W88 warheads rated at four hundred and seventy-five kilotons, for a total of over ninety-one megatons of firepower, or over seven thousand times the explosive force unleashed on Hiroshima. It was an awesome responsibility, one Commander Hollister did not take lightly.
She focused on her screen, tabbing through a diagnostic program containing information ranging from water pressure on the double-walled titanium hull down to the status of individual valves and sensors scattered throughout the leviathan. The software was a recent upgrade to the Ohio-class boats, and the Wyoming was the first to employ it in a live setting. So far, Hollister was impressed.
She changed screens to a crew roster and traced a finger down the list of names, reciting them to herself. Her crew was top notch, her executive team hand-picked. She trusted them with her life as they did with theirs. Yawning, she checked the time. There were only two more hours in her shift.
The Navy operated on an eight-hour day while at sea. That practice made some things easier for the people at the bottom of the food chain, but it made life a nightmare for the commander. Although her shift was almost over, she was never really off duty.
“Commander, we have an EAM,” her chief communications officer announced. Tapping and swiping her screen, Hollister pulled the message from the submarine’s central computer to her personal workspace.
“Acknowledged.”
She tried to remember if there was a launch exercise scheduled for today. They occurred periodically during every tour as a tried-and-true means of ensuring the crew was prepared for action. She opened her personal calendar to check and didn’t see anything. Why the Emergency Action Message then?
She paged her executive officer, Lieutenant Andrew Pollard, and began to read.
EAM: 1015Z. IMMEDIATE STRATEGIC WEAPON RELEASE AUTHORIZED. TARGET PACKAGE XT-234. AUTHORIZATION YTB778BAC.
Hollister sucked in her breath and reread the message. Emergency action messages were short by nature. The system relied upon a miles-long antenna array towed behind the submarine collecting ultra low frequency radio transmissions from enormous land-based radios scattered across the globe. EAMs were wrapped in several layers of encryption and unreadable by anyone other than herself.
She leaned back in her chair and surveyed the bridge crew. She opened a window on her console and pulled up a list of target packages. Hollister didn’t recognize the ‘X’ designator in the targeting package and, as far as she knew, there were no conflicts in the world that could possibly warrant a strategic nuclear response of the magnitude specified in the EAM. Confused, she rubbed her temples.
The target package database appeared, and she paged through the list searching for X-234. When she reached the bottom of the page and didn’t find it, she scrolled back to the top, double-checking in case she had missed it. On the right side of the screen was a slowly pulsing link marked FCON. She scratched her head. She had never noticed it before, despite endless hours on the simulator. She clicked the link and the screen flashed once, and was then replaced with two boxes. The first requested her command authorization code, and the second asked for a mission profile.
“What the hell?”
The command authorization code was a secret string of digits assigned to each officer possessing nuclear weapon release authority. The code served as one half of a key, the other half being provided with the EAM launch profile.
She punched in her code, along with the mission profile, XT-234. The screen flashed red, and the boxes appeared again, empty, but shaded a bright orange. Entering through the forward hatch, her XO finally arrived on the bridge. He came to her side, making a point of not looking directly at her display. He had served with her as far ba
ck as her carrier days and was her most trusted advisor.
Biting her lip, Hollister plugged in the command authorization code and the mission profile, and then she pressed Enter.
She gasped in surprise. The screen displayed twenty-four XT-level targeting packages. But it wasn’t the number of packages that alarmed her, it was the targets.
The first entry, XT-102, covered Western and Southern Europe. The next entry, XT-118, had targets in South America—Lima, Rio de Janeiro, São Paolo—as did the next several profiles. She continued scrolling, looking for XT-234. It was at the bottom.
Seattle
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Sacramento
Las Vegas
Boise
Phoenix
Honolulu
Portland
The list went on and on. She blinked several times to ensure she wasn’t seeing things. Honolulu. That’s Home.
Hollister slid from her chair and motioned for Pollard to follow her. “Come with me,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“Commander?” Pollard asked once they were in her quarters. Hollister didn’t reply. Instead, she went to her sea locker and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out a full bottle of Glenmorangie scotch and two plastic tumblers. Technically, alcohol wasn’t allowed on Navy vessels. But as commander, she had the authority to bend the rules when she saw fit. And this situation called for a lot of bending. She splashed two fingers into each cup, and then added another. Shoving one toward Pollard, she motioned for him to drink up.
“Is it the EAM?” he asked.
She sighed and cast her eyes at the floor as she drained her scotch. It burned going down, and she felt a familiar ball of warmth blossom in her gut.
She snapped back. “Yes, Andrew. It is about the goddamned EAM.”
“May I ask what is said?”
She nodded. “Full strategic launch. Target package XT-234.”
Pollard gave her a puzzled look. “I’m not familiar with that package.”
“Neither was I.” She went to her terminal and rerouted the display from the bridge. When the list filled her screen, she spun the display around so Pollard could see. Bending in close, he recited each name under his breath as he worked his way to the bottom.
He sucked in his breath and looked up at Hollister when he finished reading. “Holy mother of God! Is this for real?”
She shrugged. “I assume so. I’m not aware of a countermand EAM.”
Pollard drained the remains of his scotch in one gulp and held out his cup for a refill.
Hollister poured for both of them. “I don’t know about you, Andrew, but this violates every oath I’ve ever taken. This is insane.” He looked thoughtful for a moment as he evaluated her statement, then took a sip of his scotch. Hollister knew that by questioning the validity of the targeting package, she was offering him an opening to question her authority and possibly judge her unfit for duty. However, the expression on Pollard’s face and his body language told her that he was just as shocked as she was.
Straightening in his chair, he broke his silence. “I recommend we proceed to periscope depth and attempt direct communication with Pearl.”
Hollister hid her relief. “I concur. Send the order.”
Pollard began entering commands for the bridge while Hollister got up and stalked around the tiny cabin, inspecting, but not seeing the numerous commendations arrayed on the bulkhead. She sensed an abrupt tilt in the deck as the officer at the helm implemented Andrew’s request.
Together, they watched as the depth display on her computer rolled backward with agonizing slowness. Neither said a word, each lost in their own thoughts.
As they approached the surface, Hollister began to tense. She was breaking protocol by ignoring the EAM and surfacing in the open ocean. But she felt she had no choice. She had to know why she was being instructed to launch against the United States. They reached their target depth a minute later, and a hidden series of jets and pumps automatically adjusted the ballast, locking them in place.
Pollard bypassed the radio room and accessed the secure ship-to-shore communications subsystem. This mechanism was much more effective than the Ultra Low Frequency transmission by which they had received the EAM, allowing instantaneous communications either by satellite or direct line-of-sight broadcast to the shore.
“Calling Pearl,” he said, as he pressed the connect icon on the screen. They waited. Hollister started to get a bad feeling. This was highly unusual.
“Try San Diego,” she said after a few seconds, fear percolating inside. Pollard’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he rerouted their request. San Diego was quiet as well.
They spent the next several minutes running through the various contact points in their chain of command before straying outside, first to the other naval vessels, and then to other branches of the armed forces, all to no avail. The military nets were silent.
“Do you know how to tap into the commercial infrastructure?” Hollister asked, frustrated. She knew it was possible, but she had never done it.
“Maybe,” Pollard replied thoughtfully.
“Do it.”
“We should be close enough to Russia to pick up terrestrial digital broadcasts. And we should be able to tap into some commercial satellites as well, pick up international traffic,” he said, chewing his lip. “But you can kiss any hope of keeping our position disguised goodbye.”
She ran her hands through her close-cropped hair. “I don’t care.”
Pollard fiddled with the controls, and a moment later the screen changed to a pixilated broadcast of an empty street. “I think this is Moscow,” Pollard whispered.
Cyrillic lettering scrolled across the bottom of the screen. “Do you speak any Russian?” Hollister asked.
“Nyet,” Pollard said, shaking his head. “I took a semester at the academy, but that was a long time ago.”
“I was afraid of that…” She leaned forward. “Can you turn up the volume?”
Pollard double-checked. “It’s all the way up.”
“Try another channel.”
As he reached for the switch, Hollister grabbed his forearm. “Wait!” Pollard withdrew his hand. “What’s that?” She pointed at the side of the screen where a figure had entered the frame.
They leaned in closer to get a better view. The figure resolved itself to a man after a moment. He was staggering directly toward the camera. There was no intelligence in his eyes, no awareness he was being watched.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Pollard murmured.
Hollister squinted. “I think you’re right...”
As the man drew closer, Hollister gasped. The man, or what was left of him, was a patchwork of flesh and bone, a gnawed travesty of something that should by all accounts be dead. A gaping hole in his midsection glistened in the murky twilight, a slick, hollow cavity devoid of life-sustaining organs. Yet he was walking, moving about as if out for a pleasant stroll.
Hollister and Pollard watched in silence as the man reached the camera and then passed it, going out of view. In the distance, more figures appeared. A healthy-looking young woman sprinted into the frame from somewhere behind the camera. She stopped in the middle of the street and looked around as if searching for a place to hide. Then, she darted from one locked door to another. She turned her head as if she had heard something, and then raced off in the opposite direction.
A moment later, a group of fifty or sixty of the walking wounded entered the camera’s view, moving in the same direction as the woman. They seemed to focus as one, moving in lockstep. A minute later, they disappeared around a corner and were gone.
Hollister cracked her knuckles. “Can you get CNN International?”
“Sure. Hold on a second.” Pollard adjusted the frequency. The screen snapped to life, all traces of pixilation gone. The familiar CNN banner filled the screen. A line of blinking text underneath said ‘Feed Unavailable.’ That was enough for Hollister
. Something had happened on the surface, something terrible.
She fixed Pollard with a stare. “Take us to launch depth. Proceed with launch on my authority, Commander Code 83889348HHY-44BN.” Andrew gulped and began relaying her orders.
From her seat, Hollister felt the ship pitch forward, nosing back into the welcome embrace of the ocean.
Not yet an epitaph
I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind.
Ezra Pound, In Durance