Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 167
Chief McPherson didn’t begrudge the officers the few perks they
received, and she didn’t think that most of the crew did either. General
consensus treated the wardroom as an upscale version of the Chief Petty
Officer’s Mess, but Chief McPherson knew that it was more than that. It
was, among other things, a symbol: a line drawn in the dirt that clearly
delineated the distinction between the enlisted crew and the officers who
commanded them.
In ages past, the line between commissioned officers and their enlisted
subordinates had been so obvious that it had needed no elaboration.
Officers had been the military’s version of the aristocracy: educated,
frequently wealthy, and well mannered to the point of gentility. By
contrast, enlisted men had often been illiterate, ill mannered, and so nearly
destitute that the majority had lived from payday to meager payday.
Over the years, such distinctions had faded far enough to blur the line
between officers and their subordinates. The typical twenty-first–century
petty officer was college-educated, technically skilled, well mannered, and
financially solvent. In point of fact, the wealthiest man currently stationed
aboard Towers was a second class Electronics Warfare Technician with a
bachelor’s degree in economics and an uncanny flair for predicting the ups
and downs of the securities market.
The extravagant (by comparison) trappings of the wardroom served as
a subtle reminder to the crew, and to the officers themselves, that the line
between officer and enlisted was still in place—and that it was there for a
reason.
Chief McPherson focused her attention on the trio of oil paintings that
hung in a neat row on the wall behind the captain’s chair. The center, and
largest of the three, was a portrait of the ship’s namesake, Vice Admiral
John Henry Towers. Obviously based on a photograph taken early in the
man’s career, the face staring out of the portrait had the sort of squarejawed,
wavy-haired good looks that were more readily associated with
motion picture heroes than with actual warriors. But the man had been an
actual warrior; only the third airplane pilot in the history of the U.S. Navy,
Towers had been designated Naval Aviator Number 3 in 1911. Present at
the very birth of military aviation, he had guided the development and
growth of the Navy’s fledgling air wing through two world wars.
To the left of the admiral’s portrait was a painting of the first ship to
carry the name of Towers. Shown plowing through heavy seas under a
storm-darkened sky, the old Adams Class guided missile destroyer looked