Making waves

In January, Naval Special Warfare boat crew members squeezed in among mainframe computers, pipes, valves and bundles of wire running across the walls and ceiling of a ballistic missile submarine. The two three-member crews stood out in their camouflage fatigues and war paint among dozens of submariners dad in blue overalls. The special boat operators paced, waited and reviewed plans for their nighttime mission. At the submarine captain's order, they would climb out a narrow hatch to the USS Florida's hull, inflate rubber Zodiac rafts, toss them about 15 feet overboard, dive into the Atlantic Ocean, clamber onto the rafts, rev up their outboard motors and roar off to a small Bahamian island three miles away.