Terminal Run - Страница 4

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Nostalgia hit Pacino then, the smell whisking him back in time to his youth, the harsh electrical smell of the ship making him remember his father’s submarines. He sniffed the air, the scent a mixture of diesel oil and diesel exhaust from the emergency generator, ozone from the electrical equipment, cooking oil, lubricating oils, and amines from the atmospheric control equipment. The narrow passageway ended at a bulkhead just beyond the ladder. The passageway was finished in a dark gray laminate, the doors and edges crafted from stainless steel like the interior of a transcontinental train compartment. The passageway led forward to the crew’s mess and galley, doors opening on either side, the passageway bulkheads covered with photographs of the ship’s triumphant return from her victory in the East China Sea.

Alameda shoved a cigarette-lighter-sized piece of plastic at him. “This is called a TLD for Thermo-Luminescent Dosimeter. Measures your radiation dose. Put it on your belt.”

Alameda’s radio crackled: “Duty Officer, Engineering Officer of the Watch.”

“Duty Officer,” she said into the walkie-talkie. “Go ahead.”

“Maneuvering watches are manned aft, ma’am. Precritical checklist complete and sat. Estimated critical position calculated and checked. Request permission to start the reactor.”

“Wait one,” she said, and put the radio in her pocket. “Come with me,” she ordered Pacino. They walked down the passageway past the opening to the crew’s mess to the stairway to the middle-level deck. Pacino followed her down the steep stairs, ending at the forward part of the control room. It was nothing like the Seawolf control room of his youth. The periscope stand and the periscopes were gone, a two-seat console taking their place. The ship-control panel and ballast control had been ripped out and replaced with an enclosure cubicle with two seats, a center console, and wraparound display screens. The clutter of the overhead with pipes and cables and ducts was cleared out, leaving a circular continuous display screen angling between the bulkheads and the overhead, and the starboard row of consoles that had been the attack center was gone, replaced by five cubicles. The only remaining recognizable fixtures were the twin navigation tables in the aft part of the room. There was far more, but he could not absorb the vast changes as he hurried through the room behind the engineer.

Alameda led Pacino to the aft passageway and knocked on a door labeled COSR, the abbreviation for Commanding Officer’s Stateroom. The door opened and a man stepped out into the passageway and shut the door behind him. He was a scowling, hard-looking Navy commander in a working khaki uniform, Pacino’s height, in his late thirties or early forties with crow’s feet at his eyes, and a touch of gray at the temples of his black hair running down his long sideburns. He had olive-colored skin and the blackest eyes Pacino had ever seen, with deep dark circles beneath them and coal-black eyebrows above, set in a round face with a square jaw and defined cheekbones. He looked at Pacino, and his previously grim expression melted into a smile that seemed to light up the passageway, a raw enthusiasm suddenly shining out of him. The change in the captain’s expression from a dark haunted look to an effervescent brightness was so stark that Pacino doubted he’d seen right. The commander’s hand sailed from out of nowhere and gripped Pacino’s as if he’d seen a long-lost friend.

“Patch Pacino, great to see you again.” His sharp Boston accent rang out through the passageway, the pitch of his voice a smooth tenor. “You probably don’t even remember me, but I’m Rob Catardi.” He stepped back, looking Pacino over, his expression becoming one of approving wonder. “My God, look at you. Last time I saw you, you were five years old, sitting at Devilfish’s firecontrol console, asking your dad what a fixed-interval data unit was.” Pacino searched his memory, coming up blank. Catardi’s hand clapped Pacino on the shoulder board “I was a green junior officer on the Devilfish under your old man. Gutsiest god damned submarine captain ever born. We worshiped him. He taught me everything I know about driving a combat submarine. I was transferred off before the old girl went to the bottom.”

Catardi let go of Pacino’s shoulder, a deep sadness coming to his face. “It’s a damned shame what happened last summer, Patch. How is your dad?”

Pacino grimaced, the memory one of his most painful. The summer before, Pacino’s father had been the Chief of Naval Operations, the supreme admiral-in-command of the U.S. Navy. A year into his tour as the Navy’s commander he had come up with the idea to take his senior and mid grade officers to sea on Admiral Bruce Phillips’ company’s cruise liner Princess Dragon for two weeks of “stand-down” to discuss tactics and equipment away from the drudgery of the fleet. Princess Dragon had left Norfolk under heavy guard, with an Aegis II-class cruiser, two Bush-class destroyers, and the SSNX submarine screening her for security. Eighty miles out of Norfolk the stand-down plan went horribly wrong. The first plasma torpedo cut Princess Dragon in half and sent her to the bottom. The rest had taken out the fleet task force. Admiral Pacino had been sucked deep underwater with the broken hull of the cruise ship. He hadn’t been found until hours later, and by then more than a thousand of the Navy’s leading officers perished in the surprise terrorist attack. Almost every friend the admiral had lay dead at the bottom of the Atlantic or vaporized by the fireballs of the plasma detonations.

The admiral had resigned from the Navy as soon as he was well enough to walk, and had done nothing since except putter with his sailboat. The elder Pacino was deeply depressed, Anthony Michael thought, but he couldn’t just say that to Captain Catardi.

“He was in bad shape for a while, Captain, but he’s getting better.” A thought occurred to Pacino. “Sir, how did you know my nickname is Patch?”

Catardi looked at him with a sort of recognition. “It’s what we used to call your father,” he said gently. Pacino swallowed hard.

“Excuse me, Captain,” Alameda interrupted. “Request permission to start the reactor and shift propulsion to the main engines.”

“Start the reactor and shift propulsion to the mains.”

“Start the reactor and shift propulsion, aye, sir. If you don’t mind, sir, I need to get Mr. Pacino settled.”

Catardi held up his palm, holding off the energetic chief engineer. “Patch, you’re driving us out. Get with the navigator and get the nav brief. You need to know the current and tides cold, and memorise the chart. You done much ship handling.”

Pacino blinked as his stomach plunged, his armpits suddenly melting. “Well, sir, they have ship handling simulators at the Academy with a submarine program, and radio-controlled four-meter models in the seamanship lab. I’ve driven the yard patrol diesels.” The answer sounded lame, Pacino thought glumly.

“You’ll be fine. I know conning a Seawolf-class special project submarine is an intimidating order, but Alameda and I will be up there with you. And I’m expecting a trademark Pacino back-full-ahead-flank underway.”

Pacino raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure, sir?” Pacino’s father used to say that back-full-ahead-flank under ways were dangerous and risky, even though he always did them. He hated tugboats and pilots, and wanted to make sure his crew knew the ship was rigged for combat. But his bosses had always reprimanded him for the maneuvers.

Catardi nodded. “I want you to show my people how a Pacino goes to sea. Think you can do it?”

“Yes, sir.” Pacino swallowed.

Catardi smiled. “We’re going to be pretty busy on this run, Patch, but soak up what you can. When things calm down, don’t hesitate to ask any question you want,” Catardi said. “And welcome to the Submarine Force. We’ve been waiting for you.” Catardi disappeared back into his stateroom and shut the door. His last words left Pacino staring after him.

* * *

The captain’s stateroom was a fifteen-foot-square cubbyhole with a bunk, a desk, and a small conference table headed by a high-backed leather command chair. Commander Rob Catardi stood at the closed stateroom door, deep in thought. He looked at the mess of his stateroom, beyond the clutter of papers and computer displays to the enlarged photographs bolted to the bulkhead. The face of his daughter, Nicole, smiled out at him, her pigtails tied high on her head, the amusement park ride in the background.

The photo had been taken last summer, the summer he and Sharon had first talked seriously about the end of their marriage. In the winter Sharon left him and made plans to take Nicole with her, back to Detroit. Catardi had tried to fight her from taking his daughter out of state, but the critical courtroom hearing had been scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon. Piranha had been given emergency orders to sortie to the Atlantic the evening before, and while the family court hearing officer decided Catardi’s fate as a father, he had opened the main ballast tank vents and taken Piranha to test depth east of the continental shelf, his legal case — and his daughter — lost. That was the story of his failed marriage — at every turn when his family needed him the most, the Navy demanded even more.

Catardi sank into his deep leather command chair and looked over at the man sitting next to him at the table. He was shorter than Catardi, about his age, wearing a civilian suit with a red-patterned tie. The man wore a deep frown, his bushy eyebrows knitted over his brown eyes.