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To my mind, this confirmed the unsubstantiated rumors I had heard. One of the three key leaders on
Cole
could no longer be trusted to back Chris and me in our decisions about our future. The ship and crew could not afford this. Decisive action must be taken. Pacing back and forth near the inflatable boats, I summoned Master Chief Parlier.

“Master Chief, I understand you have been going around the ship questioning my authority,” I confronted him. “I heard you don't think the ship is safe and that the crew can't handle another attack. How dare you undermine me in front of the crew? Why didn't you come talk to me? Why didn't you come tell me about this before?” I loudly and heatedly demanded.

The look on his face was one of complete disbelief. He just stood there with his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. After a few seconds of tense silence between us, he spoke softly. “Captain, I never said any of those things. I know the crew is still nervous about the ship but I would never say any of those things about you.”

I didn't believe him. The stress of the attack and body identifications, lack of sleep, the possibility of a follow-on attack, and growing paranoia that I might be relieved of command at any moment all converged viciously in fury aimed right at the man standing before me.

“Master Chief, if I ever hear of you undermining my authority on this ship again, I will relieve you of your duties and send you home on the next plane out of here. Do I make myself clear?” I tightly said to him, leaning menacingly forward into him.

In a voice cracking with emotion, his eyes pleading for me to understand and have faith in what he had told me, he just said, “Yes, sir. I understand, but, Captain, I didn't do it.”

I felt as if I were in a vise. My breaths were coming short and shallow. My temples thumped with the rhythm of a runaway heart. I wheeled about and stormed toward the quarterdeck and my makeshift office. Rather than going back to work, I grabbed my flashlight and announced to no one in particular that if anyone needed me I would be walking around the ship. I needed to cool down and try to make sense of what just happened. I didn't need to worry about surrendering my command to anyone; I was doing a fine job of losing it all by myself.

The walk around the ship was intense and hurried. The overload of adrenaline slowly dissipated, but only after an hour of struggling to burn it off. Eventually, my dark and overheated cabin in the forward superstructure became my refuge. Long since abandoned and left undisturbed for the most part since the explosion, it seemed like a faded memory that now haunted me. Sitting in a chair with the back to the desk, I surveyed my dark, unpowered, and unlit surroundings.

The flashlight pointed straight up at the overhead and cast a faint light about the dark room. Odd shadows with soft edges highlighted some features while others disappeared into the inky darkness. The round table once centered in the room and toppled over by the flexing of an exploding ship stood upright and shoved to one side. A slight dusty haze slowly floated in the air. As my head sunk down into my chest, the large coffee stain on the dark blue carpet stared back at me as if to say I had created a blot that now soiled the ship, my command.

This issue could not fester. My reaction, without absolute concrete proof, was not that of a leader. The crew deserved better and certainly, the Command Master Chief deserved better. Slowly, with a tired sense of failed resignation, I pulled myself up to go find Chris and talk with him about it. Composed but unsure what to do next with the Master Chief, I walked down the ladder and back out into the brilliant heat of the day. The sun burned my eyes. Hopping back up onto the fender, Chris was already clearly aware of what had passed between Master Chief Parlier and me. He cut straight to the point: he did not know of any instance nor had he heard any circumstances where the Master Chief had purposely challenged my authority. His meeting with the chiefs had not gone as well as it could have, and while he may have said some things that were best left in private, he was still loyal to the ship and us. Still on edge and slightly defensive, I just listened intently. He told me that Master Chief Parlier was devastated by the accusation and even more by the threat of being fired.

Not more than a few minutes later, the cell phone in my pocket rang persistently for attention. It was Master Chief Greg Pratt, the Fifth Fleet Commander Master Chief, who told me that he and Master Chief Parlier had just spoken about the incident. True, the discussion with the chiefs may not have gone as planned, but Master Chief Pratt was adamant that Master Chief Parlier was absolutely supportive of what I wanted to do with the ship and crew. That gave me a lot to think about. Perhaps I had been wrong. This incident with the Master Chief had to be addressed but I wasn't ready to face it again—at least not yet.

Near the end of the day, everyone—the crew, the FBI/NCIS team, the divers, and other support groups—was mentally spent. As the day wrapped up, the grumbling in our stomachs returned with a vengeance as everyone looked forward to an overdue hot meal. By 1830, though, nothing had arrived for dinner. A few minutes later we heard over the radio on the missile deck the announcement of a boat puttering into the harbor from
Tarawa
. With the bridge security team notified of its approach to the pier, it slowly swung in a gentle and unhurried arc to a stop at the landing area. The crew again hopped out and unloaded a stack of several large boxes onto the pier. Just as quickly, they motioned that the boxes needed to be
brought on board. Quickly they were stacked on the flight deck as the boat crew cast off their lines and headed back out into the harbor on a return trip to
Tarawa
.

Chris and I watched from the aft missile deck as both of us thought the same thing. This can't really be happening. Sure enough, when the crew opened the boxes, dinner was served: tuna fish snack packs with crackers. This was almost too surreal to comprehend. What was the crew on
Tarawa
thinking—or were they thinking? Chris started to head toward the communications suite when I stopped him.

“I'll handle this, XO,” I told him. The day had already gone through a number of highs and lows, so what the hell; let's just express our frustration with a pointed radio transmission.

Captain Hanna was going to go through the roof when he found out, but a more forceful and direct approach was needed to get my frustration across to
Tarawa
and the support from the amphibious ready group. Clearly, they just didn't get it. Instead of the telephone, I picked up the radio handset. Chris looked at me with surprise but said nothing. The Joint Task Force Determined Response headquarters, as well as every ship and command element operating off the coast of Aden in support of USS
Cole,
could hear everything that was said on that radio circuit. They were about to get a blunt lesson in Navy communications and chain of command etiquette.

With everyone in earshot listening to me, I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and keyed the microphone, “JTF Determined Response, this is
Cole
actual, over.”

“This is JTF Determined Response, roger, over,” came the quick reply.

“This is
Cole
actual, request to speak with Commodore Hanna, over.”

Only a couple of seconds passed before Captain Hanna was on the radio. He must have been standing nearby and jumped up to answer my call, “This is Commodore Hanna, roger, over.”

Without giving even a second to pause, I waded in, speaking in a very clipped tone that, while maybe bordering on disrespectful, was even so hardly adequate to express the dissatisfaction and annoyance at my crew's
not being fed, again. “This is
Cole
, roger, break. Commodore, once again we did not receive a meal from
Tarawa
. All we got from them for dinner was another load of tuna snack packs with crackers,” I said. After only a momentary pause, I continued, “If this is the level of support we can expect from
Tarawa
and the ARG, request you detach them to proceed on duties assigned and bring back
Donald Cook
and
Hawes
who at least know how to take care of this crew, over.”

The words seemed to hang in the airwaves for what seemed an eternity as the slight hiss and crackle from the radio penetrated my ear. The commanding officer, executive officer, and amphibious ready group commodore were all senior Navy captains; several years in seniority and experience to me. But they had rolled into Aden with an arrogant attitude that did not measure up anywhere close to what I felt my crew needed for support and sustainment. To ask the commodore to “detach them to proceed on duties assigned” not only publicly embarrassed them by calling them out over the radio, it was a blunt request to have them fired from their mission. They were failing my crew, and after what we had been through, I was not going to let anyone do that.

Expressing little tolerance for what my tone just expressed toward senior officers but flush with his displeasure at the
Tarawa
's failure to feed us, Captain Hanna just as curtly replied, “I will take care of the problem, out!”

Putting down the handset, I recognized that this could mean more trouble for everyone. In this instance, I didn't care. This crew had done too much, sacrificed too much, and had endured too much not to get something as simple as a hot meal delivered by one of the most capable and robust support platforms within 1,000 miles of Aden. If
Tarawa
and the other ships in its group thought they were so good, let them prove it by doing their job right.

The evening did not get much better. Word came back to us that
Tarawa
had refused to feed us. Even after the radio transmission, no food was expected for the crew until morning. I was furious and in a foul mood. Staying upbeat and positive was my job but this tested the limits of even
my tolerance. If the crew was tender, the incidents of this day had done nothing to prepare them for another hit.

Shortly before sunset, it was time for me to set things right with Master Chief Parlier. Seeking him out, I asked him to walk with me up to the forecastle. It started as a long, silent stroll. Inviting him to sit down next to me on a set of bitts, we both looked back down at the ship for a few moments before either of us spoke.

“Master Chief, I'm sorry that I said what I did to you earlier today,” as I started what was sure to be a difficult conversation. “You are too valuable to this ship and crew to send home. I'm not sure what caused me to doubt you but it seems like no one understands what we need to do here. This crew has been through a lot and I just want to do what's right for them.”

It was now his turn, “Captain, I feel like I've let you down. When I met with the chiefs, I just wanted to do what was right for the crew but it didn't come across right. I'm sorry.”

We spent the next half hour in a deep and sometimes emotional conversation. While I had never intended to hold anything back, there was a lot of information that he had not been aware of that suddenly opened his eyes to the myriad issues going on outside the crew's view. In detail, we covered the complete spectrum of problems and challenges that we had faced over the past week but also the prospect of what lay ahead for us. It was as much an emotional “Come to Jesus” meeting as it was an opportunity to lay out the plan for our remaining time in port.

In the end, I just looked at him and said, “Master Chief, this crew deserves the honor and privilege to get this ship out of Aden and, once that mission is done, to get on a plane together, meet our loved ones on the tarmac and give them a hug, and show them we're OK, and what we did together.”

With these words, we became forever bonded together not only as professionals but as two lifelong friends. Through a crucible defined by the attack and its aftermath, we each passed through a transition point that defined our relationship for the rest of the time in port. Trust was not only reestablished, it was reinforced, and became an unbreakable bond.

Sensing that most of Thursday had been a day of emotional extremes and complex work, John had stayed aboard after his team left for the day. In the early evening, he patiently listened to my explanation of the episode with Master Chief Parlier and the climactic conversation between us on the forecastle. Thinking that maybe the captain himself was long overdue for some counseling, he asked how things were going. I said I thought that with a few minor exceptions, such as today's debacle of not getting fed, the crew was holding up remarkably well. We discussed the plans for getting the ship ready to leave port and where the crew would be going. We also touched on how I was handling my own exposure to the recovery of remains, but he could see I wasn't responding to the point of his question. This conversation was not about what was being done for the ship and crew, it was about me; I knew it and was doing an artful job dodging any discussion. Growing up with a psychologist for a father has its advantages and disadvantages.

John finally got to the point by asking me what I thought about the task force commander's assessment that the crew was too “tender,” could not “take another hit,” and my subsequent reaction to that judgment. I stubbornly stood by my assertion that as a crew in harm's way, we did not have a choice; we had to be ready to fight and save the ship if we were attacked again. He then hit me with a hammer blow. “Well, sir, maybe you're right,” he said. “
A
crew might be ready for another hit, but not
your
crew.” Looking at him with a growing sense of what was coming, I challenged him, “Please elaborate, I don't understand.”

“I think your crew could ‘take another hit' if
you
were a better leader,” John said.

This simple but blunt observation brought my actions of the past week into sharp focus. He didn't say it directly, but implicitly he was saying I had to recognize my shortcomings and possible failure as a leader and commanding officer. He knew he had to keep going with me, and he continued on, pointing out the growing disconnect between my expectations for the crew and their ability to live up to and achieve those objectives. I was preoccupied with the idea of being commanding officer in charge of
a ship in combat. But the crew had been inadvertently influenced into misconstruing their circumstances, becoming overly concerned with their immediate safety, and seeing it unnecessarily jeopardized by my keeping them so long in Aden.