He walked swiftly into the manufacturing building, the security captain alongside them. Murphy came through the main door in the manufacturing bay and walked swiftly along the length of the hull until he came to the working crew. In the center of the men was Capt. Emmitt Stephens in oil-stained blue coveralls and a hardhat.
The man was shouting orders at the controller of the bridge crane high above, the team standing on the scaffolding at the hull where the next Vortex missile tube was about to be lifted and set. The atmosphere was tense, the bay coiled like a spring.
McDonne and Murphy stood in the chill of the bay watching Stephens work. Fifteen minutes slipped into a half-hour, then forty-five minutes. Finally, the missile launcher had been lifted up to its position on the flank of the hull and welded into place.
Murphy counted. There were five launchers on the starboard side. He walked under the Piranha hull to the port side until he was hemmed in by equipment and looked up. There were five launchers done on the port side. When he returned to McDonne he found a commander standing next to McDonne, his khakis bulging with arms of a stripjoint bouncer. The commander and McDonne saluted, Murphy returning it.
“Commander Phillips, sir. Bruce Phillips.”
“So this is your ship. When’s she going to sea?”
“Dayshift will be putting her back in the water. My crew is ready to go now. Ship systems will take a day to line up—”
“Line them up at sea,” Murphy said.
“Sir, the pre-critical checklist alone would normally take a week. This reactor’s only been in the power range twice.”
“Phillips, get Piranha to sea this evening.”
“I can’t start the plant that fast. It’ll take fifty to sixty hours. Anything faster could make the reactor run away.”
“Take the ship to sea shutdown. I’ll get a tug to take you into the sound. Your core will be cold iron. Go ahead and do your pull and wait startup in the river and the sound until you get to the fifty-fathom curve.”
“What good will that do?”
“It’ll keep your infrared signature cold. We’ll put some cellular phone calls out in the local area that your ship is a target for a live torpedo-firing exercise.”
“What are you saying?”
“If we can convince the Japanese satellites that the tug is towing your hull to sea so you can be a target, they won’t know you’re coming.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It might keep you from being targeted before you can get to the Japan Oparea. And maybe they won’t do a lot of thinking about what those bulges are on your hull.”
“And how am I supposed to get out to the Oparea with a dead reactor?”
“I recommend you submerge the ship when it’s dark, with the diesel on the AC buses using the snorkel mast. That way your infrared signature will be minimal and the Galaxy satellite that’s orbiting directly overhead won’t see a hot reactor submarine going to sea, one with a lot of suspicious bulges on the hull, one that is definitely a Seawolf class. If they don’t know you’re coming, they can’t get to you early.”
“If I’m going into combat in the Oparea, why should I worry about what’s out there?”
“Because Admiral Pacino wants all ten Vortex missiles in the Oparea, not three, not one, ten. Get there quietly. Undetected.”
“Is this your idea or Admiral Pacino’s?”
Murphy looked at Phillips and lied. “Pacino’s. I don’t have it in writing but he gave it to me on a secure VOX transmission on the way to the forward deployed carrier air group.”
Phillips looked up at the Piranha. “Okay, we’re getting underway tonight. Anything else?”
“I’ll check back with you this evening.”
“If you call after sundown you won’t get me. I’m not transmitting anything to anyone once I toss off the lines. You want me, send me a message on the broadcast but don’t expect an answer.”
“How will you be going to the Japan Oparea?”
“Under the polar icecap.”
Murphy was impressed. “Good luck. Come on, McDonne.”
They walked away. Murphy stealing a last glance at Emmitt Stephens, now joined by Commander Phillips, as they worked the crew loading the Vortex missile into the tube they had just erected onto the hull.
“Well, Admiral, welcome aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. We don’t have many VIPS who crash-land to get here.”
“Mac, how long has it been?”
“About five years. Patch.”
Pacino was set up in his visiting admiral’s stateroom, certainly not as glorious as Donner’s, but with two portholes, a civilian-sized bed, a small round four-piece conference table and a head that was more impressive than anything ever built into a US submarine. It would be damned hard to leave it to go to one of the battle group’s submarines. Particularly given the comfort of the stateroom’s bed, where Pacino had been ordered to stay until the doctor gave him a follow-up examination.
“How’s Brad Shearson?”
“They left that news for me to tell you, Patch. I’m real sorry. Shearson didn’t make it.”
Pacino looked up at Donner. Another life lost from his orders. He said something to Donner but couldn’t remember it. He was dimly aware of the doctor coming in and injecting him with a syringe, and darkness closing in on him despite his fighting it.
“Any questions?” Phillips asked the assembled crew in the ship’s mess, all of them dressed for December weather, the heat in the room making their parkas that much more uncomfortable.
“Sir,” a chief asked, “how long to get to the Japan Oparea?”
“Going under ice, maybe two weeks, maybe less.”
“I’ve been stuck under the ice before. Captain, back on the Chicago. It wasn’t great.”
“Well, it’s not gonna happen to us. Next.”
“Yes sir,” Lt. Pete Meritson said. Meritson was the sonar boss and the most senior of the junior officers.
Phillips said that Meritson had the sweetest disposition and the most pleasant face, that it was a shame that he wasn’t selling used cars — he’d have made millions.
Meritson was more than a pleasant presence on board the Piranha. His intellect was penetrating. With the modern sonar systems now being installed on the Seawolf class, it was more common that the “bull” lieutenant, the most senior and trusted of the junior officers, be a sonar officer than the main propulsion assistant to the chief engineer. In this case Meritson was the man for the job. He had been an electrical engineer at Cornell with a specialty in electronic communications, the major that was sailing so many graduates into the highest paid engineering jobs as the Writepads and cellular phones became as common as telephones had been in the previous century. But he had chosen to join the Navy, without the service paying a nickel of his education, just up and sauntered into a Navy recruiting office one day, spent three months in an officer-training program and a year in nuclear-power training and sub school, and scarcely a year after graduation was a submarine officer. The enlisted men joked that he was possibly the only one aboard who had paid for his own schooling, and was still doing “hard time” on board the submarine when he could be out making money.
“Go ahead, Meritson.”
“Sir, what exactly are we going to do when we get there?”
Phillips looked around the room as if wondering if it were secure enough to say what he needed to say.