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The wives in port adhered to a hierarchy that roughly mirrored the one their husbands followed at sea — it just made thing easier. The captain’s wife was in charge, the XO’s wife was second in command, the rest of the officers followed in line, and the enlisted men’s wives followed a whole separate organization, one of petty officer’s, chiefs, senior chiefs, master chiefs, and the Chief of the Boat, a system of rank and protocol that even after six patrols Angi only vaguely understood. But one rule was crystal clear: the divide between the wives and the men in uniform could never be broached. She could call the captain’s wife, but never the captain.

But Angi was on her last patrol, was pregnant, and was pretty sure the navy had something they should be telling her. She felt like the navy owed it to her. She dialed one more number. And after speaking to a yeoman and a civilian secretary, she finally got through.

“Captain Soldato.”

“Mario, this is Angi.”

“Angi, how are you feeling?”

“Captain, did something happen on the boat?”

He cleared his throat. “Angi, you know I can’t talk about stuff like that. If there’s word to go out, it will come through the usual channels…”

“Mario, please, I won’t tell anybody, I just really need to know…”

“I’m sorry, Angi, I hope you understand…” Angi could hear the regret in his voice, and desperately tried to read his tone for clues…she regretted that she hadn’t driven onto base to ask him in person. She had considered it, but thought it might give Cindy Soldato enough time to let him know about the rumor. She felt her head spinning with fear, she couldn’t even picture what it would mean to have a fire on a submarine. What was there to burn? What would happen to the air?

“Captain was there a fire?” she could hear the desperation in her voice.

There was a long pause, she could feel in the silence Mario considering telling her the truth, and she could feel him rejecting it.

“Angi, I’m sure everything is fine.”

• • •

Captain Soldato hung up and felt horrible. It was the plague of ships at sea, the way the wives could seize on any grain of information and work themselves into an absolute frenzy. Cindy had called him earlier this morning and told him about the rumor — Angi had not been the first to call her. He told Cindy pretty much what he’d told Angi — that even if something had happened, everything was okay now. And he couldn’t say anymore, which pissed Cindy off. He wished he could just tell her that they’d had a fire in the damn laundry, no one was hurt, and in a couple of weeks even the laundry would be repaired. But to disclose that would disclose that the ship would get a new washing machine in two weeks, which meant it had a port call in two weeks, which would lead to a million other questions, a million other rumors. As much as he hated to leave poor Angi in the dark like that, he had to.

But something he wouldn’t tell Angi, or Cindy, and that he even hated to admit to himself: he was worried too. He’d poured over the Alabama’s message, and was able to piece together from the scant information inside that the fire had been serious, not just a smoldering pile of poopie suits. There’d been water damage on three levels, which indicated several hoses had been brought to bear. The ship had fought electrical grounds for two hours after the fire was extinguished, some of them serious, meaning a lot of water had been discharged from those hoses. And then the ship had to ventilate with the diesel for almost two hours. Meaning there was a lot of smoke. A lot.

But the most disturbing thing in the message was a single line about how the fire hose closest to the scene had been made useless, pressurized and immovable in its rack. It disturbed Soldato because most of his comrades at squadron took it to mean that someone onboard Alabama was really fucking stupid — some dumbass had arrived at the scene and flat-out panicked, turned the valve lefty-loosey and taken a fire hose out of service. And he didn’t believe that. Some captains he knew liked to look back at their old boats and see how things deteriorated once they stepped away. But Soldato knew too many of the men, respected the captain and the XO too much. The ship, and the crew, were not fuck ups.

Which left a disturbing alternative — someone had done it on purpose. It was the one thing that all the engineering genius in the world couldn’t account for. It was the reason they worked so hard to screen the men before they even set foot on the boat, and that in the history of the force, submarines had accepted only volunteers. A saboteur was a nightmare scenario, and the idea of it worried the captain so much that he missed a refit review meeting for the USS Florida, as he sat at his desk and brooded.

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