“Wow,” Anthony said. “What happened?”
“You remember Uncle Dick Donchez?” Donchez had commanded the submarine force back in the day. “Dick pulled me out of retirement to command the rescue mission. I took over Seawolf and went in with a platoon of SEALs. My dad used to talk about projects around the house, grumbling that a particular chore took every tool in the toolbox. Well, this particular chore used every SEAL, torpedo, and cruise missile in the inventory and we still came up short.”
Anthony looked at his father, his eyes wide. “Is this where your cryptic ‘famous naval saying’ comes from, the one engraved in brass on the wall of the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall? I still have one torpedo and two main engines. I always wondered what that was all about.”
Admiral Pacino nodded. “There were multiple Chinese frigates and destroyers attacking us. They had our position nailed down and were depth charging us to Hell. I was preparing to surface the boat and wave a white flag, and that’s when the SEAL commander put a loaded .45 to my temple and threatened to blow my brains all over the periscope if I surrendered. Gun to my head, I looked him in the eye and said, ‘I still have one torpedo and two main engines.’ I surfaced and sent a junior officer to the bridge to wave that white flag, and while the Chinese surface task force prepared to board us, I shot my last torpedo and sank one destroyer and rammed the other with the sail while half re-submerged, and I cut it cleanly in half and it sank on the spot, but the other surface forces gathered around us like angry hornets. If not for the fighter wing aboard the Ronald Reagan, which shot that surface force into splinters, Seawolf would have been lost. The fighter that blew away the destroyer that was sending down depth charges right over my head was flown by one Lieutenant Commander Paul Carlucci. I don’t know your politics, Son, but at the next election, you might want to consider voting for him.”
Anthony stared at his father, not knowing what to say or how to react. Finally he managed to croak, in his hoarse voice, “What happened to Tampa? Did she make it out?”
“Tampa made it out. They lost most of her officers and chiefs to Chinese executions or torture, but we got her out. And made it out ourselves. So I guess the moral of the story, Son, is even if you and your ship get captured in enemy waters, you will never be forgotten. America will come for you. Guns blazing.”
Anthony shook his head. He’d heard his father’s career was a storied one, but he’d never heard about any of this.
The door to the hearing room opened and a female lieutenant in tropical whites motioned to Anthony.
“They’re ready for you, Lieutenant Pacino.”
“Good luck, Son.”
Anthony stood, looked into his father’s eyes, and nodded dejectedly.
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino nodded a solemn farewell at his father after begging off the old man’s offer of dinner. The elder Pacino would undoubtedly want to talk more about the accident and the inquest, but that was the last thing the younger man wanted. He walked slowly out to his old ‘69 Corvette, climbed in, tossed his officer’s cap onto the passenger seat and turned over the engine, the more modern LS-2 power plant he’d installed himself with the low profile supercharger. The engine throbbed with power, but Pacino’s mind was too far away to enjoy it.
The words of the inquest commander still rang in his mind.
We find Lieutenant Pacino blameless in the fire that broke out on the middle level of the USS Vermont’s forward compartment due to the extenuating circumstances arising from him and his crew being immersed in a completely realistic training drill scenario, so real, in fact, that none of the participants recognized the fire as being a separate event from the drill’s script, and as the fire progressed, with no rescue coming from the shipyard’s force, and with smoke blowing mind-altering chemicals into the control room, the drill participants all came to truly believe that the drill’s simulated reality was the actual reality, and they acted accordingly until such point as the shipyard rescue forces finally entered the hull. In fact, up to the point of his losing consciousness, this Board of Inquiry finds Lieutenant Pacino’s actions to be in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Submarine Force and the U.S. Navy. Accordingly, this Board of Inquiry is concluded with no punitive findings for Lieutenant Pacino or any member of ship’s force. Mr. Pacino, you’re free to go, with my best regards to you, sir, and please convey our very best wishes to Navigator Romanov and Senior Chief Nygard, with this board’s hopes that they both make a full recovery.
Of course, the question was, did the board’s findings arise from them being leaned on by Pacino’s father, or Vice Admiral Catardi, or even the president himself? And even if not, in his own mind, was he truly blameless for what had happened? When he had screened the conn open mike video, he’d searched for signs of incompetence or wrongful action, and although he still had no memory of anything that happened after the underhull of the cold water scoops, the actions taken by the figure of himself in the control room all seemed appropriate, although having unfortunate consequences for Rachel Romanov and Senior Chief Nygard. The answer to his father’s second question nagged at him, though—if it had been a real fire in that scenario, what would you have done? Surface the boat, admitting to the Russians you were illegally trespassing in their territorial waters and surrendering to capture, or scuttling the ship with the loss of all hands aboard? Including yourself?
He couldn’t answer the question without regaining his memory, but the fact that he’d demanded to know propulsion plant status from the reactor plant watchstanders made him think he had been getting ready to sail the boat down below crush depth. And that would make him a suicidal mass murderer, certainly one with exigent circumstances — to keep the top secret, front line attack submarine and crew out of Russian hands — but could he really have given orders that would kill the whole crew? And himself? To avoid capture by the Russians? Thinking about this was madness, he thought.
Without conscious thought, he realized he’d driven to the parking lot of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, the hospital that was part of Norfolk Naval Station. He cut the engine, engaged the parking brake, grabbed his cap and walked slowly toward the entrance, realizing he must look absolutely foolish still wearing his starched choker whites with full medals, but he honestly didn’t care. Almost as if in a dream he watched himself ride the elevator to the eighth floor, the burn unit ICU. Pacino found himself in the hospital room and saw Rachel lying there, completely helpless, with burn dressings on her abdomen and legs. She was fed oxygen by a ventilator, multiple IVs snaking into her forearms. He became aware of a second person in the room, the man solid and at least four inches taller than Pacino, dressed in jeans and a golf shirt, with a shaved head and a square jaw, looking like a middle-aged boxer. Slowly Pacino realized he was staring into the face of Commander Bruno Romanov, Rachel’s soon-to-be ex-husband.
“Bruno,” he stammered in his hoarse voice, not knowing what else to say. “Commander Romanov.” An intense stab of guilt sliced into him then as he glanced at Rachel, then at Bruno. He was forming the words to apologize to Bruno for almost getting Rachel killed.
But Bruno smiled down on him kindly, almost in a fatherly way, and put his arm around Pacino’s shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault, Patch,” he said in a gentle but booming deep voice with a slight Eastern European accent. “You did what you thought was right. I heard about the Board of Inquiry. They cleared you, so you’re cleared in my book.”