Chapter 21
Monday, 30 December
Pacino looked up from the dock as the wind suddenly picked up, nearly blowing off his hardhat. The wind gusted, then calmed, then again roared through the dock. He checked his watch — almost 11:00 p.m. and the water level in the dock had barely risen to the bottom of Seawolfs cylindrical hull after flooding for almost an hour. The ship looked eerie, almost surreal under the harsh floodlights, but also somehow important, like a NASA shuttle lit up for launch. The green of the hull added to the unreality. Pacino still could barely believe he was going to sea within hours — the dull disconnected feeling of being in the shipyard with a helpless vessel hadn’t left him yet. The frantic mood of the pre-underway checklist did not, somehow, feel right here in a graving dock. A pier should be the place a submarine left from to go on a vital mission, not this giant hospital for ships. Still, he felt good that he would get to take the ship down one last time. Up to now he hadn’t focused much on the mission. It was all he could handle just to get the shipyard out of his hair, but now that the boat was really cleared for sea he felt a certain familiarity. He had lived this before. This was what he’d been created to do, a task reserved for him alone — that only he could do.
He began to rebuke himself for being so self-important when Captain Emmitt Stevens rolled up in the white pickup truck. Stevens was grinning as he got out and joined Pacino at the dock lip.
“I think you’ve spent the whole yard availability mooning over your ship from this handrail.”
“I don’t like seeing the old girl in the dock, Emmitt. It’s just not right for a warship to be high and dry like this. And I’m just as out of place here as she is.”
“I don’t know about that— after the meeting this evening I’d say you can run a shipyard. The way you put old Donchez up to overpowering Douchet, it’s too bad you’re going to a staff job. You could get a lot done here. We could use you.”
Pacino smiled. “I didn’t talk to Donchez. He just wants us underway.”
“Still, it was good to see that hard ass put in his place.”
“Well, in a way he’s right, you know. I am risking the crew going down with that weld as it is. But sometimes you’ve got to take risks … What brings you here?”
“Donchez. He’ll be here in a half-hour. His Falcon is landing at the naval station at NOB at twenty-three-thirty. He wants to make sure this boat leaves on time. He also said he wanted to brief you personally. This must be some mission, Patch. The C.N.O comes to wave his hanky as you shove off. How come?”
“My dad and Donchez roomed together at Annapolis. They served on a couple subs together. Donchez took over the Piranha when my old man was the last skipper of the Stingray.”
Stevens’s face went serious. It was common knowledge in the sub force that Stingray sank in 1973 when her own torpedo exploded and the flooding took her down below crush depth. There were no survivors.
“I’m sorry, Mike. I had no idea”
“It’s ancient history. Donchez wanted to watch over me when Dad went down but at the same time he didn’t want to show favoritism.”
“After that China mission I’d say you’ve done it on your own.”
“Anyway, he probably wants to kick my rear end, motivate me. I’d better do a walk-through of the boat. Do me a favor and keep flooding the dock. I want out of here by zero five hundred.”
“Will you be starting the reactor in the dock? You know Douchet will have a heart attack”
“If the plant is ready I’ll pull rods here. If not I’ll leave with tugs towing me and I’ll start the plant in midchannel. I don’t care either way, but at oh-five, we’re out of here.”
“CAPTAIN, OFF’SA’DECK, SIR,” Pacino’s walkie-talkie squawked.
“I’ve gotta run. Patch. Hang in.”
“Thanks for everything, Emmitt. I hope I never see this god damned shipyard again.”
Stevens waved and roared off in the pickup.
“Captain here,” Pacino said to the radio.
“SIR, ENGINEER REQUESTS PERMISSION TO PERFORM A NORMAL REACTOR STARTUP. AND THERE’S A PHONE CALL FOR YOU FROM MRS. PACINO, SIR. SHE SAYS IT’S URGENT.”
“Tell Mrs. Pacino I’ll call her back from the security shack in five minutes. And tell the engineer I’ll call the engine room on the security line. Captain out.”
The radio clicked twice in acknowledgement. Pacino stepped to the guard shack and nodded at the sentry and reached for the phone. The phone buzzed twice before the engineer’s voice came over.
“What’s the status, Eng?”
“We’re nonvisible, sir,” Hobart said, annoyed. “We’ll have to do a pull-and-wait startup. We’re so low in the startup range I don’t even see reactor power on the startup meter.”
“How long will it take?”
“Could go as long as twenty-four hours. We’ve been shut down so long the core’s barely radioactive.”
“Engineer, abort the pull-and-wait startup and pull rods to criticality. We’re a few hours from clearing the dock and I don’t have time to wait on the procedure.”
“Sir,” Hobart’s annoyed voice came back, “before I can do that I have to ask, is this a tactical situation as defined by the reactor-plant manual?”
Pacino felt Dave Hobart would have made a hell of a lawyer, but something had called him to the sea and now he wore a poopysuit instead of a vested suit. Despite Pacino’s heavy reliance on Hobart’s expertise on Seawolfs highly complex reactor systems, he would have to be overridden. Procedures were for peacetime. Hobart was worried that the level of neutron activity in the core was so low that he couldn’t see the power level, and by pulling rods he could add enough reactively to go prompt critical — and blow the reactor apart— before he would be able to stop the runaway reaction. But Pacino knew the protection circuitry would scram the plant if that happened, and even if it wasn’t fast enough, it was a risk they had to take. The Destiny out there, somewhere in the Atlantic, didn’t give a damn about the health of their core.
“It is,” Pacino said, referring to Hobart’s question about the tactical situation.
Hobart paused, then: “Aye, aye, sir. Pulling to criticality. We’ll note it in the log that you ordered this.” Hobart was trying to see if Pacino would forget the dangerous order if he threatened to log it.
“Captain, aye. Also note we’ll be heating up with emergency rates once you’re critical. I want the plant on line. Immediately.”
“Aye, Captain.” The phone clicked as the engineer returned to his pre-start-up work. Pacino hung up and dialed his own home at Sandbridge. Janice answered, her voice soft and quiet as it was when she first woke up.
“It’s me.”
“Michael, Dick Donchez called. He said he wants to meet you here at midnight. And come to think of it, I want to talk to you myself.”
“On the way.”
Pacino called the officer of the deck on the radio and told him he’d be at home for a few hours, found the executive officer on the phone and turned over the drydock flood operation to him, then walked to his car. Walked and wondered what Donchez was doing that required a personal appearance.
The wind blew spray onto the windshield a half-mile from the beach. By the time Pacino parked the old Corvette under the stilted house the car was covered with the slimy saltwater from the restless Atlantic. In front of the house was a black Lincoln with multiple antennae poking out of the trunk and the roof. The rear license plate had the emblem of COMSUBLANT — Admiral Steinman’s car. The windows were blacked out, but Pacino thought he saw the silhouette of someone moving in the front seat. He looked up at the massive beach house, a monument to Janice’s old money, and saw that every light in the house was blazing.