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Danny Jabo was not born to be a naval officer. There was nothing remotely nautical in his family heritage, nor was there anything suggesting he was destined to wear the gold braid of an officer, which even in the navy of the world’s greatest democracy carried the faint whiff of aristocracy. His father was the son of a farmer who’d learned to repair air conditioners at the county’s vocational school. He’d passed on to Danny a keen mechanical aptitude, which helped him in the Navy, and an uncomplaining, tireless attitude about hard work, which helped him more. His life had not been without drama or tragedy — he had a little brother die in the crib when he was just five, a loss from which his sad-eyed mother never completely recovered. But it was a solid, good upraising in Morristown, Tennessee, forty miles east of Knoxville, at the edge of the Appalachians. There was an old joke that navy chiefs told when asked where they would go upon finally retiring. I’m going to strap an anchor to my back, they said, and start walking inland. When someone points to me and says, “hey, what’s that thing on your back,” that’s where I am going to live. His hometown, Jabo thought, when he first heard that joke, is that place.

He’d learned about ROTC scholarships from his high school guidance counselor, and applied to both the air force and the navy, mainly because both services, on their brochures, seemed to offer something that was more technically alluring than the Army’s marketing literature. One part of the process required him to go to Fort Knox, Kentucky, home of the nearest available military hospital, and get a physical, an event that marked the first time he’d ever set foot on a military installation of any kind. Both services, impressed by his grades, his test scores, and his glowing recommendations, offered him full scholarships. The deal both services offered was this: they would pay for 100 % of his tuition to any school that he could get into that offered their particular flavor of ROTC. Danny and his father researched the issue carefully, and after a flurry of applications to southern schools, Vanderbilt was the most expensive school with ROTC that he could get into, and thus, they figured, the best deal. Vandy offered Navy ROTC but not Air Force. So before he even entered the Navy, Danny became a Commodore.

And eight years later, after three summers at sea, a college degree, and a year of the navy’s exhaustive nuclear power training, he found himself wandering the passageways of a Trident submarine. It was sometimes dizzying to think about, like he had just awoken one day and discovered that he was one of twelve officers on a nuclear warship. But at the same time, he knew he’d made the right choice, because he loved his job, and couldn’t imagine serving on a carrier, one of hundreds of officers and thousands of men, or on some supply ship or auxiliary, no matter how necessary those support ships were. He loved being part of an elite group at the tip of the spear, and he knew that he would miss that prideful feeling most of all when he resigned his commission.

He was looking for Hayes Kincaid. They were about to watch Enter the Dragon in the wardroom, and he knew Kincaid would want in. Soon, after the rigors of the three-section watchbill fully set in, he knew they wouldn’t be able to burn a flick together like that. Whenever one of them was off watch, the other would either be on the conn or in the rack, getting what sleep he could. So he thought they should enjoy it while they were able.

He suspected Kincaid was exercising in Missile Compartment Lower Level so he headed that direction. Kincaid was a dedicated athlete, and one of few men to return from a patrol in better shape than when he left. Their workout gear was limited, but Kincaid made the most of it with every spare moment, putting himself through punishing workouts. The centerpiece of his routine was the treadmill, on which Kincaid attempted to run five hundred miles every patrol, tracking each run on a sheet of graph paper.

As Jabo walked by the Officer’s Study, he saw that the door was closed, and wondered if Kincaid might be in there, perhaps reviewing some charts or writing a letter home for the impending mail call. He put his ear to the door before knocking; the way things were going he didn’t want to interrupt some high-level discussion between the XO and CO, afraid they might drag him into the conversation. He heard something, muted talking, muttering on the other side. He lightly knocked on the door with one knuckle and the talking stopped. He knocked again, and opened it.

The navigator sat alone at the table, a pristine chart in front of him.

“Oh, hey Nav. Just looking for Kincaid.”

The navigator didn’t say a word, didn’t nod or respond at all.

“You okay, nav?”