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Show was as if they had never left the womb. But not me. Or at least not me any more. Boats made me seasick and waves scared me. I was no fish and a poor Navy Junior. Before long, the Dramamine started working and I began to fall asleep on the plastic red cushions that doubled as life preservers. They were faded by the sea air, smelled of salt, and looked as if they couldn't save themselves let alone my eighty-pound body. But they made a decent pillow, the stiff fabric growing warm in the morning sun. Having found the freedom of open water and no longer wed to posted speed limits and the restriction on wakes, the fishing boat turned straight into the waves, headed for the deep sea. I knew from my father that "deep sea" was geographically defined and was an almost lawless space where the rules of engagement slackened and a nation's legal jurisdiction ended. In my mind it was a wild place, the wilderness heart of the ocean where pirates and outlaws commandeer unprotected boats, and ships disappeared without a trace. Uncivilized and raw, it was also where the tuna and the mahi mahi live, and we were hours from it, so I gladly yielded to the drug. Lapping at the edges of my mind as I drifted off to sleep was the thought that a submarine may silently swim beneath us; its bullet-shaped body moving through the water, darting in and out of the coral reefs like a giant fish. Stacy's father captained a nuclear sub commissioned in the Sturgeon class, the "new" class of Fast Attack subs commissioned between 1967 and 1975. These subs were the U.S. Navy's response to the Cold War, a 37-member school of nuclear vessels whose sole purpose was finding, tracking, and destroying Soviet subs. Stealthy and lethal, the subs in the Sturgeon class were named after fish. The USS Tunny, a tuna, could surely be below. I tried to remember if I had seen Mr. Kaup in the last days or even months. The fact that I could 169 |