A chorus of groans sounded from the ranks. Drake glared at the men, and Tangretti barked a sharp, "As you were!"
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Olivetti's start of surprise, followed by a scowl. Collecting on that bet would be amusing. One of the small perks of senior rank was occasionally having a bit of extra insight into what the hell was going on. The night before, back at Coronado, Mayhew had informed the detachment's senior NCOs that there would be no liberty when they got to Hawaii. The schedule was going to be way too tight.
"Tonight," Drake continued, as if nothing had happened, "we will load our munitions and supplies on board the Ohio and get settled in to our quarters. The Ohio will depart Pearl at zero-six-hundred hours tomorrow morning. We do not expect to see daylight until we reach our final destination, off the coast of Iran in the Straits of Hormuz."
Drake ran through a few more formalities, then turned the formation over to Mayhew. At his command, they shouldered their sea bags and walked across the tarmac to a line of waiting trucks.
At least Drake didn't order them to march to the trucks in formation.
Jesus, Tangretti thought. Next thing you know, the Teams are going to be wearing black shoes, just like the regular Navy.
But when you'd been in the Navy long enough to make chief, you'd learned to adopt a philosophical attitude. Commanding officers came and commanding officers went, some of them good, some bad. It was a fact of Navy life.
"You knew about liberty being cancelled tonight, Chief," Olivetti growled as they clambered onto the back of the truck. "Didn't you?"
"Oh, I might have heard something in a briefing last night," Tangretti admitted with a grin. "And you should know better than to count on liberty. Liberty is a—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Liberty is a right, not a privilege.' " He had his wallet out and was peeling off a couple of twenties, one for Hutchinson, one for Tangretti. "Been there. Done that. Caught the clap."
"There's shots for that."
"Yeah, you pecker checkers are all alike. Got a shot for everything."
"If you don't go on liberty, you won't need the shots, right?"
"So what's the word, Chief?" Hutchinson asked, leaning forward on the hard bench they were riding on. "What'd they tell you at the briefing about this op?"
Tangretti thought about the meeting, an informal session in Captain Jacobson's office. Was it all classified? Or just the bit about their target, and the operational aspects of the mission?
"Not a whole lot," he said, truthfully enough. "It's
Iran."
"Shit, everyone knows that," Olivetti said.
"Let's hope 'everyone' doesn't include the Iranians," Tangretti said. "I'd like this to be a picture-perfect op, right out of the textbook, know what I mean?"
Hutchinson nodded. "In, get the job done, and out, with no one even aware we were there."
"Fuckin' A," Olivetti agreed.
"Exactly." Tangretti leaned back against the railing, eyes closed. "The only trick is to get the bad guys to go along with the script…. "
9
"Ship's comp'ny… attention to port!"
Long, low, black, and sleek, the SSGN Ohio slipped through the waters of Pearl Harbor, slowly making the broad turn to starboard that would take them into Merry Loch and the submarine base. North, beyond the gray loom of the USS Missouri, lay the monument dedicated to the USS Arizona, whose skeletal remains still lay in the waters along the eastern shore of Ford Island. Sixty-seven years before, that stretch of shoreline had been Battleship Row, and early on a certain December morning, sky and sea had burned as Japanese aircraft launched their surprise attack.
Now, sky and sea burned again, but in the more peaceful, silent glow of a dazzling red-orange tropical sunset.
Ohio's deck party stood in a silent row, facing the memorial as the submarine completed her turn.
"Salute!"
The men in ranks did not salute, but the chief in charge of the deck party did. High atop Ohio's weather bridge, Stewart and his XO both faced the memorial and rendered crisp, tight salutes. As Ohio entered the submarine loch and the memorial was lost to view, Stewart dropped his hand.
"I guess some things don't change, Captain," Shea said.
"What's that?"
"Oh… well, it's just the Japanese launched their sneak attack against us, and then sixty years later al-Qaeda launched theirs. Both strikes started a war. And submarines took a major part in World War Two in the Pacific, and, if we're lucky, they'll play a major part in the war against terror."
"Ah." Stewart nodded. Wayne Shea, he was learning, was something of an armchair historian, and at times had an interesting perspective on current events. Sometimes, though, his thinking was a bit obscure and hard to follow. "Subs have already played their part in this war. Lots of long-range deployment of commando forces. And some of the cruise-missile attacks launched by SSNs on Iraq and on Afghanistan, of course."
"Yes, sir. But the Ohio, now… she's something special. We could make a real difference out there."
Stewart nodded. "We could. If we can find the right target. That's the problem with the War on Terror. It's tough to sort the bad guys out from the good guys, and there's always that unpleasant possibility of collateral damage."
The dock that had been designated for Ohio was just ahead, inside the submarine facility. The light was fast failing, but there appeared to be a welcoming committee… Marine guards and a tight little coterie of high-ranking brass waiting on the dock.
Stewart picked up the intercom handset. "Helm, Bridge. Come right five degrees."
"Helm, come right five degrees, aye aye."
"Maneuvering, Bridge. All back one-third."
"Maneuvering, engines all back one-third, aye aye."
He felt the tug as Ohio slowed, her single screw reversing against her forward drift. Her bow swung gently away from the pier. The deck party that had been rendering honors to the Arizona was dividing now into three line-handling parties, one moving past the sail forward to the bow, one moving astern, and one spreading out amidships near the ASDS canister aft of the sail.
"Whatcha think, XO?" he asked. "How many points if we take out the brass gallery?"
Shea shot him a nervous look, and Stewart cracked a grin and winked at him. It was pure showmanship, to hide his nervousness. He'd had the Ohio out for trials earlier, out of Bremerton, and knew he had a good crew… but it always made you a bit nervous when someone was watching.
And from the look of things, this someone watching was a rear admiral, complete with entourage. A miscalculation in docking at this point, especially one that damaged either submarine or dock, would not be a career-enhancing move.
"Helm, Bridge. Come right two degrees."
"Helm, come right, two degrees."
Docking an Ohio-class took a light touch and a good sense of balance. Ohio was long—unwieldy and precariously balanced on the revolutions of her single screw mounted all the way at the aft end of her 560-foot length. Her surfaced displacement of over seventeen thousand metric tons did not stop on the proverbial dime, either.