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“Are we finally going to find out what the hell is going on this patrol?”

Kincaid shrugged. “I already told you the plan. We’re going to go to sea, we’re going to screw around for three, four, five or six months, and then were going to come back. In a year, we’ll do it again.”

Jabo laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” Kincaid worked hard to always be the least impressed person about any event of shipboard life, whether it was a fire in the engine room or the new ice cream maker in the Crew’s Mess.

“Let me ask you something, Hayes. Was life on submarines really that much more exciting twelve years ago? Is it that much more boring now?”

“Let me tell you a secret,” he said leaning in and whispering. “Life on submarines has always been boring.”

“Fuck you, I don’t believe it,” said Jabo, laughing. “I’ve heard the stories. Plus, why would you stay in all this time?”

“I like the food.”

They stepped out of their stateroom and walked down the short ladder that took them to the wardroom.

• • •

The Captain was at his traditional spot, at the head of the table, while the XO sat literally at his right hand. The navigator, small and exhausted looking as always, was standing up in front with a tripod that held a chart, a chart hidden by a standard issue navy bed sheet. That was unusual — everyone in the wardroom had at least a top secret clearance, and Jabo felt again that maybe Kincaid was wrong about their patrol being boring. Jabo also sensed some tension in the silent room.

They were all three in their khakis, and Jabo felt a little underdressed in his poopie. Soon the other junior officers in poopie suits piled in, though, all of them just as eager as he had been to get comfortable. The noise level rose. They waited for Hein to arrive, who was being relieved on the conn by the engineer himself, at the XO’s insistence…whatever was going on they wanted Hein to hear firsthand. Hein finally arrived, looking slightly befuddled, and sat next to Jabo without saying a word.

The XO convened the meeting. “Everybody shut the fuck up.” They all quickly complied. The XO’s muscular arms bulged inside his khaki sleeves, and his bald head gleamed in the fluorescent lights. MS1 Straub, the head cook, stuck his head in from the galley door, doing his job and seeing if anything was needed. The XO nodded at him, and he got the message, retreating. The XO locked the door behind him when it shut — another unusual precaution.

“Before we get started,” said the Captain. “I’m tempted to ask what the craziest rumor each of you has heard. About our patrol orders, not about girl babies.” There was nervous laughter around the table. “Whatever you’ve heard,” said the captain, “I can assure you it’s complete bullshit. The XO and I were briefed the morning of our departure by the Admiral, and the navigator found out shortly after.” Jabo looked at the nav, whose face was impassive, haunted, exhausted.

“So here’s what we’re really going to do,” said the captain. “We’re taking this ship to Taiwan.”

There was some muttering around the table, and Jabo watched for just a moment as even Kincaid was unable to hide his surprise, before he slipped back into his mask of practiced nonchalance. But it was truly remarkable news. Because of the nature of their normal mission, they almost never went anywhere exciting. Unlike their brothers on attack submarines who deployed all over the globe with battle groups, Trident Submarines generally followed a fairly predictable schedule of leaving Bangor, Washington, going to sea for a few hundred days, and returning. If they were lucky, every other patrol or so, they might pull into Pearl Harbor. Once, on Jabo’s first patrol, they had to surface off of Kodiak Island, Alaska, to medevac a shipmate who’d suffered a heart attack. But foreign ports were just never part of the deal — their deployment schedule didn’t allow for it and most foreign nations were hesitant to allow twenty-four nuclear missiles into one of their harbors, with all the protests and controversy it would inevitably cause.

“The United States has a fundamental commitment to the nation of Taiwan,” said the Captain. “The nature of which, frankly, is too complicated to explain here. But, in short, we will surface two weeks from now one hundred nautical miles east of the island, we will pull into the Taiwanese navy base at Suao, and then we are going to remove sixteen warheads from one of our missiles, and give the government of Taiwan temporary custody of them. It’s all top secret, beyond top secret, until we pull into the harbor, and then the news media of the world will be invited to take pictures. You’ll probably all end up on the Nightly News.”

“Isn’t that a violation of the non-proliferation treaty?” said Hein. Hein had gone to MIT and was one of the smartest guys that Jabo had ever met. It didn’t surprise him that he would throw out a question like that.