Code of Silence — Larry Lavoie

Two days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese submarines are already sinking merchant ships off the Pacific Northwest. The citizens of San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon are in near panic, afraid an attack on the West Coast of the United States is imminent. To be certain he can trust the intelligence coming to him, Roosevelt needs a man he can trust for a secret mission. He chooses an unlikely candidate, Gaston Carson, a fourth year midshipman at the naval academy in Annapolis. His mission is to give Roosevelt firsthand accounts of enemy activity in the Pacific Northwest. Reluctantly, Gaston abandons his dream of one day commanding a ship, and drops out of the academy, to serve FDR. Gaston soon finds himself in the middle of a war unlike any he had trained for at the academy. Enemy submarines are operating off the coast of Oregon with impunity. We have no defense against them and no way of bringing the fight to them. Reluctant to move troops to protect the coastline, the Navy adopts a plan based on denial and deflection. Tragedies go unreported, news accounts are censored, and murders are covered up. As a civilian, Gaston must find a way to fight the enemy our government claims doesn't exist. Gaston is in the middle of a war of deceit and deception, and the enemy is both on dry land and at sea. As strange as the concept is, he realizes this is a war that cannot be won without a Code of Silence.