“I guess I’ve never thought about it, XO,” Pacino said, trying not to stare at the senior officer to figure out what was going on.
“Well, then, pay attention. The top line is the fill line for inport — or submerged. The lower-level line is the fill point for high seas, when we’re rocking and rolling. Makes sense, yeah?” Quinnivan smiled warmly at Pacino.
“I suppose so, sir.” The executive officer’s charm was taking this somewhere, Pacino thought.
“So, lad, do you know why I called you here?” Quinnivan stared seriously into Pacino’s eyes.
What had Weapons Officer Spichovich said the first night out of AUTEC on this run, when Pacino tried and failed at the last few hands of poker with him, Dankleff and Lomax? Patch, you have no poker face. You couldn’t bluff your way out of a wet paper bag. You’d better work on that, boy. Someday you’ll be in command and on the business end of a bad guy’s torpedo, and the entire crew will be looking at your expression to see if they’ll live or die. If your face shows fear and resignation, all is lost, the battlestations crew will go limp, or worse. If your jaw tightens and you glower with a determination to fight the ship against the odds and win? Well, hell, maybe you will. And if not, you’ll go down with a crew to whom you gave courage in their final moments. Not so bad a way to die, eh?
But lying to the XO, whether through words, omission or his facial expression, that seemed more than wrong. Pacino took a deep breath.
“Well, XO, I suppose this has something to do with Weps asking to take me off Nav’s watchsection and put me on his.”
“Bingo, yeah? And pray tell, young non-qual, why would he do that?”
Pacino considered telling the XO that it was about having more face time with his boss, to keep Spichovich up to date on the goings-on of the sonar division, and to get qualification checkouts during prime time, when Pacino could actually sit at the sonar stack or the firecontrol console, and in truth that was part of the answer. But the real answer was that Navigator Romanov was freezing him out and it was straining his nerves.
“Well, sir, I came to him and the engineer for advice.”
“About?”
“I’m not getting along very well with the navigator, sir.”
Quinnivan unexpectedly laughed, his head tilting back in mirth. He picked up the phone and dialed a number, then said into the phone, “Weps? I win. That’ll be a hundred bucks, as soon as Mr. Pacino shoves off.” He replaced the phone and looked at Pacino. “Sorry for the interruption. I had a bet with the weapons officer about your answer. He insisted you’ve been working on your poker face and your bluffing skills.”
Pacino could feel the color rise to his cheeks. Quinnivan opened a bound diary and made a notation in it, then shut it and looked seriously at Pacino. “Mr. Pacino, report for duty with Mr. Spichovich on this evening’s eighteen-to-twenty-four watchsection. He may have you on copilot watch for a while to get a sense of your knowledge level, then pilot watch, then he may put you on the sonar stack, and finally junior officer of the deck. I expect that before we get to Point Echo for the run northeast, you’ll have all your weapons department qualification signatures and you’ll be operating smooth as the junior officer of the deck.”
“Yes, sir,” Pacino said, wondering if he should stand.
“That’s all, lad. If you would, send the weapons officer to my stateroom.”
Pacino grabbed his tablet computer and vaulted to his feet, opened the door and almost ran into Spichovich, who smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder before shutting the XO’s door behind him. Pacino walked back aft to the wardroom, wondering it there would be blowback from the navigator for his complaining about her. Not that his relationship with her could get any worse, he thought.
Lieutenant Commander Spichovich shut the XO’s stateroom door behind him and took a seat in the chair just vacated by Pacino.
“Well, XO?”
Quinnivan just smiled his crooked smile and pointed to his open palm. “Well, my Irish ass. I need one-hundred-dollar bills, fresh from the ass crack of a Fort Lauderdale stripper, in my hands, right fookin’ now.”
Spichovich withdrew a huge wad of cash from his coveralls and snapped off five crisp, newly-minted twenties and handed them to Quinnivan. “I should probably get a receipt,” he said. “You’ll forget tomorrow I paid up today.”
Quinnivan put the money in his safe, smiling to himself.
“So XO, your secret evil plan to put a wedge between Silky and Patch-slash-Lipstick all went to plan,” Spichovich said, smiling.
“I have to admit, I had my doubts Wanda Styxx would just go ahead and do as you asked, when the ask was that big. What did it cost you?”
“A favor to be named later, XO.”
“So — expensive.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Well, we’re back on an even keel now. Good order and discipline, Weapons Officer. Good order and discipline.”
Spichovich grinned. “And what about the Nav?”
“Ah,” Quinnivan said, waving his hand in the air. “She’ll get over it. Just like with you.” Quinnivan drilled his eyes into Spichovich’s. “Except that with you, she moved on, but you’re the one who’s still hostile. If you’d just lighten up on her, just a little, it’ll all be cool.”
Spichovich stared sadly at the deck. “Yeah. I guess I’d better work on that, XO.”
“You do that, Weps.”
“Good order and discipline, right, XO?”
“Yes, Weps, my thoughts exactly.” Quinnivan was smiling again. Spichovich stood.
“You need to see anyone else, boss?”
“Nah, I think I’ll grab a little bunky before the evening watch. Those fookers on the eighteen-to-twenty-four watch are morons.” The 1800–2400 watch belonged to Spichovich.
“Fuck you, Bullfrog.”
“And your mother too, Sprocket,” Quinnivan said, grinning.
“Have a good nap, sir.”
14
At 1220 Zulu time, the Vermont reached Point “Delta,” the bottom of the great circle route from the Bahamas to South Africa, and the turning point to due east toward the Indian Ocean. In another seventeen hours, the ship would reach Point “Echo,” marking the start of the northeastern run up the coast of Africa toward Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Oman. The ship was due at Point “G,” the entrance to the gulf, five days after that, on the afternoon watch of Monday, May 30.
Reaching Point “Delta” also marked a change in the ship’s routine. Up to now, the submarine’s flank run south had been uneventful, steaming full-out during the day, rising one time per 24-hour period sometime during the mid-watch to periscope depth, the PD period busy with obtaining a navigation fix to correct the inertial navigation unit, executing trash disposal and steam generator blowdowns, and receiving a passive intelligence update from the CommStar, which would automatically update all their intelligence news files and archives. Then back down below the thermal layer and speeding up to get back to “chasing PIM,” in which “PIM” was their point of intended motion, or “where the brass wants our ass,” as the navigator would say. The officers worked quietly on division business, worrying over equipment that might break down or had already fallen out of repair, writing endless personnel evaluations, generating the hundreds of status reports on the health of the submarine for the maintenance facilities and the squadron engineer. The SEALs onboard had been passing the time in poker games in their berthing room on the lower level adjacent to the torpedo room or working out. The chiefs stood their watches, worked on their division chores during the day, crashed in their space, the “goat locker,” a sort of combination conference room, movie screening area, berthing area and head, segregated from the rest of the crew. The enlisted sailors stood their watches, occasionally rousted for “field day” to clean up the ship or participating in the many “school of the boat” sessions to learn the ship’s systems and procedures in the course of their own qualifications, attempting to earn silver dolphins just as Pacino was striving to earn gold ones.