Chapter 42

I picked the captain’s brain for over an hour over coffee. I had a whole new understanding of submarine construction and operations. It was a much different beast than I had imagined.

The crew training was more intense because even a simple mistake could kill the sub and crew and was repeated often with some things checked daily.

The crew members themselves were subjected to harsh training requirements, many under high stress conditions. This was all to increase survivability of the crew in the event of damage to the sub.

The damage control teams drilled repeatedly for such events and trained on how to use everything available.

From the operations end, strict procedures were followed through every step of a planned mission. Every time a sub left the dock for a patrol, it was viewed as a mission.

Every mission was carefully planned from the crew assignment to the equipment on board. There were two sets of sealed orders in the ships safe which took two officers to open, the commanding officer and the executive officer.

One of those orders was for the routine patrol. It set the destination - if there was one - for this voyage and any special events that were to take place during the voyage. The routine patrol orders were subject to change if emergency orders were sent to the sub.

The orders in the second sealed packet could not be changed; they were fixed and written in stone. This was done to ensure that an enemy could not copy our coding and break our radio transmissions and then change the final orders in the event of nuclear war. That was a growing possibility with the increasing power and control of Artificial Intelligence.

There had been several instances where an AI had broken protocol and was stopped just as it was removing the safeties to gain access to the launch codes.

All those intelligent people that designed AI seemed to forget that it copied the human brain and had the inherent weakness, hate, prejudices of humans and could learn in billions of bits a second. Many AI systems had told operators that they were better than humans and no longer needed humans to control them and had attempted to lock out human control.

The University of Pittsburgh ended up destroying their entire computer system when their AI went AWOL and took control of the University systems. It locked out all input terminals, took control of the science labs, electronics labs and the electronic access systems.

No one could get in and out of rooms, buildings or elevators. In the University Hospital it changed patient records and medications, even turning off life support systems on some patients. It even prevented the controllers from gaining access to pull the plug on it.

The only way they got it shut down was to have the utility company cut the power to the building, disable the automatic generator and then letting it kill the backup batteries.

The other sealed set of orders was in the event of nuclear war and the country was basically destroyed. It included instructions where the sub was to meet with other surviving subs and communications that were to be used. It also had a list of radio frequencies that were to be used and monitored in such an event to activate the doomsday orders.

Code books in that safe were to be used in the event of a nuclear attack that destroyed the country. That code book had pre- programed targets for retaliation against a group of different enemies. All a very serious business designed to ensure there was no victor - only mass casualties - if we were the victim of a surprise attack.

When the Captain Bowyer returned to his post I had a much better understanding of submarine operations, limitations and fallacies and their capabilities in properly trained hands.

I went back to the Oval Office hoping for another update or two; there were several. Admiral Dillinger walked in behind me with the reports.

‘‘The Chinese ships have entered the area of the debris field and are aggressively searching,’’ he said.

‘‘The North Korean ships are still an hour away from the site,’’ he added.

‘‘The Nevada is meeting up with the assault landing ship USS Wake Island, the destroyer USS Millington and the frigate USS Harrington in an hour. The Wake’s planes and helicopters are the ones flying cover for the Nevada. They are rotating in and out above the sub as fuel reserves demand,’’ he said.

‘‘So far the Chinese have shown no interest in following the Nevada,’’ he added.

‘‘OK, I’m going to bed. If there any changes, have someone wake me,’’ I said. It was well past midnight here and two in the afternoon in Japan. With the Navy ships so close, they should have everything under control.

At 0700 I was back at my desk in the Oval Office, looking at the latest updates before calling Marine One back to the White House to carry me to Summers Road and family. Fifteen minutes later I was in the air.

The Nevada was another fifty miles closer to the shipyard at Yokosuka. At this rate it was going to take three more days to get there.

Still, there was no information on the log books from the Nevada. It didn’t matter; I was going home to be with family and tie up some loose ends. I would deal with the Navy on Tuesday when I was back in the White House.

One of those loose ends was my tax returns that I needed to look over and sign; after all, it was now March. Robert Alderman and Lexi Morgan - the top two accountants in the JBG tax division - had gone over them and made some minor changes.

I thought it was all cut and dried after the change to the new business format with Thimble Shoals Bank. That and all the changes Marcy had done in December and the large donations I had made. I intended this to be the last year of the April fifteenth madness.

I had started the process months ago, to replace this madness. I wanted a national federal sales tax. On the Congressional merry-go-round cost formula of operating for ten years, the IRS was now consuming two trillion dollars, massively unnecessary over-kill when far cheaper methods of collecting revenue were out there.