Authors: John Spikenard
USS
Louisiana
“I know, Captain, it’s a great plan, but it’s getting harder and harder to operate this boat with so few crewmembers,” complained the XO.
“Well, it’s going to get a lot harder, XO. You have to find ways to cross-train and rotate personnel. I know it’s not the way we were taught to do it, but these are extraordinary circumstances. We have to rely to a much greater extent on the automated capabilities of the boat. Remember, it’s just for a few weeks.”
“But Captain, we normally have a complement of a hundred and fifty-five crewmembers. We’re down to less than thirty!”
“On a normal patrol, with the full ship’s complement, we have a great many people routinely checking equipment just to make sure it’s operating normally. Others are performing preventative maintenance on redundant systems, which we’re not doing. Others are administrative people tending to necessary paperwork, and we’re not doing that either. Still others are mess-cooking for a hundred and fifty-five people, running the ship’s laundry, cleaning compartments, and performing other services necessary for supporting a hundred and fifty-five human beings living in a tube under the water. We don’t have those luxuries or the demands of that many people on this mission.”
“Still, sir, this is an extremely complex boat. I’m not talking about not having people to mess-cook or clean compartments—I’m talking about not having essential personnel to man the ship’s vital systems!”
“I understand, XO. To a great extent, we have to rely on the quality of the USS
Louisiana
to perform well and on her automated capabilities to operate without human intervention.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Captain.”
“I know you will, and I know you’ll do a great job. That’s why I selected you for this mission. Remember, though, we’re now headed down the east coast of South America, and several of our Spanish-speaking crewmembers are ready to obtain new identities in Argentina and other South American countries. That means another six teams, twelve more crewmembers, will be offloaded in the next two weeks before we round Cape Horn. By my calculation, that should leave us with a complement of fourteen people. We’re going to need those fourteen at battle stations. We’re bound to have a welcoming committee when we get to the Cape. The main ASW forces are deployed around Africa to block our exit around the Cape of Good Hope. But Cape Horn is the only other chokepoint for getting out of the south Atlantic. They would be totally remiss if it was left unguarded.”
“Captain,” said the XO incredulously, “I can’t imagine how we could possibly run this boat at general quarters with only fourteen people!”
“Well, XO,” said the captain, “you better think of how we’re going to do it with
twelve
because at any one time at least one of our fighters will be on patrol.”
“Control, we have a problem here!”
The panicked call had come from the Missile Command Center on the main deck just forward of the missile compartment where the extracted nuclear warheads were being stored. Within the missile compartment, the boomer’s twenty-four ballistic missiles were housed in two parallel rows of twelve missile silos, which ran fore and aft down either side of the large, open compartment. At the level of the main deck, there was a system of suspended, open-grid, metal walkways. A central walkway enabled crewmembers to travel through the missile compartment, a distance of 125 feet from the forward to the rear hatch. Three-foot wide arms of the elevated walkways also extended laterally between the silos, where they joined up with exterior walkways, which ran along each side of the submarine, between the silos and the hull.
“Missile Command, what’s the nature of your problem?” asked the captain.
“Captain, this is Seaman O’Connor. The problem is John Ellis, sir. He’s gone
insane
! Petty Officer MacKenzie and I were making our rounds, and when we got here to the missile compartment, Mr. Ellis threatened us and screamed at us to get out. He was holding one of the peanuts, sir, and two of the three arming lights were
RED
!”
“I’ll be right there! XO, you have the conn!”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
By the time the captain reached the forward hatch to the missile compartment, a small crowd had gathered there. Sergeant Ramirez stood at the hatch, armed with a .45 caliber pistol and an M-16 assault rifle.
“All right, who can tell me what’s going on here?” the captain asked as the crowd made a hole for him to get through. “Where’s John Ellis?”
Petty Officer MacKenzie stepped forward and said, “He’s still in the missile compartment, Captain, and he has a warhead…I mean peanut…that he is apparently arming. We don’t know why. The way he was screaming, sir, we didn’t want to provoke him. When he said ‘get out,’ we got out!”
“That was good thinking, Mac. You did the right thing. Where was he when you last saw him?”
“He was aft, on the main deck on the starboard side. Captain, he looked and sounded pretty crazed when we saw him.”
“How far aft?”
“I’d say just one or two silos from the aft bulkhead, sir.”
“Sergeant Ramirez,” the captain said.
“Yes, sir?”
“I may need your and Corporal Williams’s special talents. However, you won’t be needing that M-16. The quarters are too close in the missile compartment for a rifle. It’s like Sherwood Forest in there—no opportunity for a long-range shot. Besides that, even though we took the warheads off, we’ve still got missiles in those tubes and they’re loaded with highly volatile rocket fuel. If the situation deteriorates to shooting, we can’t afford to have any missile silo hit by a stray bullet. We might as well let John Ellis blow us up—either way, we’d be just as dead. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Where’s Corporal Williams?”
“He’s aft, sir. He was making rounds in the engine room and reactor compartment.”
“Good. If Ellis is still in the same position, he’s ten or twenty feet from the aft hatch. Sergeant, get Williams on the horn and tell him to stand by at the aft hatch—
pistol only
. I’m going to try to find out what’s bugging Ellis and see if I can get him to disarm that warhead. If I’m unsuccessful, we’re going to have to take him out.”
After quickly briefing Corporal Williams, the captain stated, “All right, I’m going in to talk to him. Sergeant, step in with me, but stay here at this end of the compartment, concealed behind a missile silo until we determine Ellis’s current location and state of mind.”
“Yes, sir,” the marine replied.
The captain opened the hatch and looked into a seemingly empty missile compartment. With Ellis nowhere in sight, the captain and Sergeant Ramirez stepped quickly but quietly onto the elevated walkway and closed the hatch behind them. Once the sergeant had concealed himself behind the first missile silo, Captain Adams began to walk slowly along the central elevated walkway through the compartment toward the aft hatch. At each intersection between silos, he nervously checked right and left for any sign of Ellis, but there was none. About halfway through the compartment, the captain stopped and called in a loud voice, “John Ellis, it’s George Adams.”
“Don’t come any closer, Captain. I’ve got an armed peanut, and I’ll blow us all to quarks and bosons!” Ellis shouted.
He was still aft, at least three or four more missile silos from where the captain stood, and still on the starboard side.
“John, don’t be rash; I’m just here to talk to you. I need you to tell me what’s wrong. What is it that you want?”
“I want to take this peanut and get off of this sub,
immediately
!” Ellis screamed back.
“But John, that’s not part of the plan. Back on Platform Alpha, you said you fully supported the plan.”
“Screw your plan, Captain. I said that when I thought your plan included blowing up Mecca as a sign of our determination and capabilities. No one ever explained to me that you were just delivering an unarmed RV. I won’t have it; I won’t go along with that!”
The captain could hear Ellis sobbing in despair. He took a few more steps through the compartment hoping to get where he could talk to Ellis face-to-face.
“But John, we can’t do that. If we blow up Mecca, we’ll be killing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of innocent people. That makes us no better than the terrorists.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” John screamed back. “You didn’t lose everyone you loved, everyone who meant anything to you in DC.”
George stopped. How could they have missed
that
in John’s background investigation? There had been
nothing
about John Ellis losing relatives in the attack on Washington DC.
“John, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had family in DC. While it’s true I had no relatives there, I lost some very good friends. And many of the other members of this crew
did
lose relatives. The XO lost his wife and daughter, and even
he
agrees revenge is not the right answer.”
Ellis, still out of sight, continued to sob.
“John, if we target a single nuke against Islam’s most holy city, the number of radicals will expand beyond our wildest dreams. We will have opened up a can of worms that no one will be able to control. With that many radicals, it would be a virtual certainty they would strike us again with another nuclear weapon. Then we would be forced to retaliate.”
There was no reply.
“We’re not trying to
cause
a nuclear holocaust,” the captain continued, “we’re trying to
prevent
one!”
“Those assholes destroyed Washington DC, the capital of the free world. In return, Mecca, the capital of the Islamic world, should be destroyed as an example!”
“John, in this game, revenge doesn’t work. The Israelis and the Palestinians have demonstrated that time and time again. If we hit Mecca in revenge for DC, they will just hit us again in revenge for Mecca. I don’t want to get into a high-stakes pissing contest like that.”
“So then your plan doesn’t work at all!”
“Yes it does. First of all, we hope that by showing restraint and compassion, we will win over the hearts of the majority of Muslims in the world. To date, only a handful of Islamic nations have put forth even a halfhearted attempt to locate and capture terrorists. We intend to provide them with incentive to take on this task
with all their heart and soul
.”
“You’re just planning to hit them tit for tat, Captain. Sounds like a high-stakes pissing contest to me!”
“No, we’re not promising to hit them tit for tat. Our message to the world is that if there is another terrorist attack with a weapon of mass destruction, we will respond with our full force. In other words, if they strike again with a single nuclear weapon, we will respond by striking Islamic targets throughout the world with our one hundred and twenty nuclear weapons. Every Muslim holy site and major city will be destroyed. Our response will not be limited or measured; we will raze Islam from the face of the earth.”
George took a few more steps, until there were only four missile silos between him and the aft hatch. He still could not see Ellis, concealed further aft and somewhere off to George’s left side. George looked at the aft hatch where he could see the eyes of Corporal Williams watching him intently through the small glass porthole.
“John, our plan to re-introduce the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is the best response—”
Ellis burst out onto the walkway, just two missile silos in front of the captain!
“Bullshit!” he yelled. “I’ve got my own plan, and it’s pure revenge! This timer is set for thirty seconds, and I’m engaging it
NOW
! If Mecca is not going to blow, then
we
are! It’s
peanuts
for you—Ha! Ha! Ha!”
The captain raised both hands over his head in a prearranged signal. Ellis looked momentarily confused, as if he thought the captain was surrendering, until he heard both the forward and aft hatches crash open. Heavy footsteps behind the captain were approaching from the forward hatch, and Corporal Williams rushed in through the aft hatch with his pistol at the ready. Ellis quickly ducked back behind the missile silo.
“Don’t shoot the silo!” yelled the captain as he hit the deck. He immediately heard two shots ring out in rapid succession followed by a thud and the crash of the warhead hitting the deck. The captain was momentarily dazed and confused. There was no way Corporal Williams could have gotten around the silo and made those shots. So who did?
“Target is down!” the captain heard. It was Sergeant Ramirez’s voice. He had apparently used the starboard outboard walkway to make his way aft along with the captain. When Ellis ducked behind the silo to escape Corporal Williams, he had come face-to-face with Ramirez, who had not hesitated to take him out.
“Get the warhead!” the captain yelled as he scrambled to his feet. “We’ve only got about
ten seconds
!”
“Already on it, Captain,” responded MacKenzie, whose footsteps the captain had heard behind him. MacKenzie had run straight for the warhead when the captain gave the signal. “Should have it in…
DONE!
She’s safe, sir!”
“Verified!” confirmed Ramirez as he looked over MacKenzie’s shoulder at the warhead.
Ellis’s training had been good. Very good.