“Admiral,” Murphy’s gravelly voice called, at the entrance to the office. As soon as Pacino saw Capt. Sean Murphy, his tension evaporated. He and Murphy went back decades. They’d been roommates at Annapolis from sophomore year on. They had doubledated when Pacino had first met Janice, who had introduced Sean to Katrina. Now, twenty-five years later, Katrina and Sean had two children, Janice and Pacino had one, although Katrina and Sean were inseparable while Janice and Pacino were filing for divorce. But their professional lives had been just as close. They had been aboard the same subs during their junior officer and department head tours, both men teaching at the academy during the shore tour in between. Six years before, Murphy had been in command of the USS Tampa, then the newest Improved 688-class attack sub, which had been taken hostage in the Go Hai Bay outside of Beijing by the Red Chinese. Pacino had been commissioned by Admiral Donchez to take the then untested Seawolf into restricted waters and rescue the crew of the Tampa in a mission so classified that only the president’s inner circle were aware of it. Murphy had taken two bullets and almost died, but after two years of physical therapy he had regained his strength. Murphy was tall and lanky, blond and tan, his skin wrinkled around his eyes, his voice a deep growl from an old smoking habit. He looked good, a slight smile haunting his lips, his blue eyes dancing with the same mischief they had held when he and Pacino had pulled pranks on the first-class midshipmen when they had been lowly plebes.
“Murph,” Pacino said, feeling like hugging his ops officer.
He reached out and grabbed Murphy’s hand and gripped it hard. Murphy’s own grip painful, their old ritual. “Have I got a deal for you.”
“Oh? Where are you sending me now?”
“That’s the deal — you’re staying home. Where’s CB McDonne?”
“Sir!” McDonne called from the door.
“You’re late,” Pacino said good-naturedly. “Get your butt in here.”
Carl B. “CB” McDonne waddled into the office and shut the door. CB was the deputy commander for administration, the workhorse who made the trains run on time, kept the orders flowing to the ships of the fleet, tended to the requests coming up from below and the orders going down from above. CB loved it, every paperwork nightmare of it. If Pacino’s personality were a photograph, CB McDonne would be its negative, yet they got along as if they were brothers. CB had come to the admin post as a “hard labor” tour, done to improve his fitness report, to rehabilitate him for problems he had had in the past trying to get command of his own sub. Part of CB’s problem was his weight. He defined obese, and the Navy doctors disqualified him for sea duty until he could lose over a hundred pounds. It would be a challenge to find a McDonne body part, at least one that was visible, that was not fat. The man was nearly spherical, and bald. The absurdly generous flesh, however, covered a razor sharp intelligence, a steel-trap mind that remembered everything. He could quote whole paragraphs from the Reactor Plant Manual like southern Baptist preachers could quote scripture. He had once memorized operating instruction 27, “Normal Reactor Startup,” a procedure that was over forty pages long, and had recited it to his wardroom while they tallied up his errors. He had promised the junior officers that he would buy them each one beer for every mistake. The bet had cost him quite a party, but it had come to only two sixpacks each. Twelve errors from a memorization forty pages long.
Not surprisingly, there was something of an edge to McDonne’s sense of humor, which seemed to be easing now that he had been with Pacino for a year. In addition, his daily six-mile walks were beginning to melt off the bulk. Although still ponderously huge, McDonne’s uniforms were starting to hang on him.
“About time you got in here,” Pacino said, shaking McDonne’s huge hand. “Sit down, gentlemen.”
For the next twenty minutes Pacino outlined the debate with the president and her men, including some of what Wadsworth had said. He finished with: “Listen up. I’m going to sea. CB, I want a call put in for transportation to the aircraft carrier Reagan.”
“What’s on your mind? We need you here. Or in Pearl. At sea you’ll be tied up by the other officers in the battle group. You’ll need to get permission to transmit, and your radio messages will be scanned by the surface pukes.”
“Hold on, Murph. I’ll get off the carrier as soon as they can helicopter me to one of the battle group’s escort submarines.”
“We won’t be able to transmit to the fleet, and—”
“It’s not we, it’s me. You both are staying here at HQ. You’ll be running the operation from here. Here’s your big chance to show that you’ve got what it takes to wear an admiral’s stars. And as usual, you get the job description first, much later the rank and the title. CB, I want you to help out Captain Murphy with this to-do list.”
“Aye aye, sir,” the men said, puzzled.
It was not to be part of the briefing why Pacino intended to send his orders from the radio room of a forward deployed submarine, as Donchez had suggested. With Wadsworth coming back, the only way Pacino figured he could remain in command was by staying away from the man. Wadsworth could only relieve him at sea if he could prove Pacino was doing something flagrantly wrong. In an office, Wadsworth could unseat him for having a’ messy desk.
“Guys, we have a very unusual situation here. You’re both going to have to live outside your comfort levels. We’ll all be very uncomfortable in the coming weeks. Particularly if the president orders us to blockade Japan. Now here’s the deal — CB gets me something to take me to the USS Reagan as soon as we leave this meeting. I’ll put together a message to the force commander saying that I need to get out to one of his attack subs. I’ll put the draft of that on the megaserver in your admin directory, CB. You get it in the right format and throw it out to the Reagan with immediate priority. Now, which subs are assigned to that battle group?”
McDonne, who had been scribbling, his finger whirling across his Writepad, stopped and tapped a fingernail at a software button displayed at the top of the notepage display. A menu flashed onto his page, and he selected another button, until finally the information he sought blinked on the display.
“Pasadena and Cheyenne.”
“Who are the commanding officers?”
“Pasadena is run by a Jackson Vaughn—”
“Lube Oil Vaughn,” Pacino said, grinning. “Murph, Lube Oil was with you on the Tampa, right?”
“Good man,” Murphy said, looking at the far wall, but lost for a moment in a memory.
“He was my XO on the Seawolf.” Lube Oil Vaughn was damned good, Pacino thought, feeling some guilt for not keeping up with him.
“Cheyenne is commanded by one Gregory Keebes. I think he was also on the Seawolf with you. Admiral.”
“Navigator. Smart guy, cool as they come. Unflappable. While I’m out, Sean, you’re in command. We’ve got some new priorities. Everything you were doing before this meeting, I want you to forget. Drop it. No reports, no paperwork, no wives’ bake sales. You need to stay absolutely focused.” Pacino’s intensity was getting through to Murphy, who on the outside looked calm but his finger tapping his thigh gave him away.