Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

152 JEFF EDWARDS
ship’s Combat Systems Officer), Lieutenant Commander Peter Tyler (the
executive officer), and Captain Bowie.
On cue, the sizzling wedge of static interference appeared on the lower
left side of the screen. Like the previous time, it disappeared after a
minute or so, only to reappear a short time later on the starboard side of the
scope.
The XO cocked his head to the side and looked at Chief Lowery. “It’s
not a SPY casualty, is it?”
Chief Lowery shook his head. “No, sir. It’s not a hardware problem or
a software problem. It’s a potato.”
“A potato?”
“Yes, sir. That’s why we couldn’t find the source of the interference.
It wasn’t in the radar at all. It was completely external.”
“A potato,” the captain said.
Chief Lowery grinned. “I didn’t believe it myself, sir. But it’s true.”
The Combat Systems Officer gave the chief a hard look. “Would you
mind telling us how a potato made its way into our SPY radar system?”
“It didn’t, ma’am,” the chief said. “The potato is entirely external. Or
I should say potatoes, because there have been several of them. We’ve
just been seeing them one at a time.”
“You’ve dragged this out long enough, Chief,” Ensign Lance said.
“You’d better tell them the rest of it before they beat you to death.”
“Yes, sir!” Chief Lowery tried to bring his grin under control. “The
potato business has been going on for a long time. It’s sort of a secret
thing that the mess attendants keep to themselves. They’ve got these two
long bamboo poles. I don’t know where they got them from, but they keep
them stashed in one of the dry provision storerooms. Anyway, when one
of the mess attendants wants a snack, he drags out these two bamboo
poles. They can plug the narrow end of one pole into the wide end of the
other pole and make a single pole that’s even longer.”
“Where does the potato come in?” the CSO asked.
“They jam the potato onto the top of the bamboo pole, and then use the
pole to hold it up a few inches from the front of the SPY radar array. SPY
is pumping out more than four million watts of microwave energy. The
intensity that close to the array face is really high. It’s like the giant
microwave oven from hell. It’ll cook a potato in about a minute. If the
mess attendant brings along a pat of butter and a little salt, presto! Instant
snack.”
Captain Bowie half-smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know whether
to laugh or hang somebody from the yardarm.”