“I want off, Captain,” Raynor said. His large, seamed face was set and hard.
“Off? What do you mean?”
“I want a transfer back to the diesel boats when we get back to port, sir.”
Captain Reinauer took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to the torpedoman, who shook his head. “Now wait a minute, Turk. You know what you’re asking for? You’re asking for the worst mark that could ever be put in your record, you realize that?”
“Yes, sir, I know that. I still want off, sir.”
“Let’s make it man to man,” Reinauer said quietly. “Word of honor, Turk. What you say to me is like saying it to one of your gang. What’s wrong? This is a happy ship, isn’t it?”
“It’s a good ship, Captain, and you’re a good skipper. The best. But I’m just tired of being a second class citizen in this submarine Navy. I want back on the diesel boats where I don’t have those damned nuke people to contend with.”
“Second class citizen is a pretty harsh phrase,” Reinauer said slowly. “You’re the leading torpedoman aboard. I’ve given you as high a quarterly marks as I could give, four-oh on deportment and everything else except three nine on proficiency in rate and no one is four-oh in proficiency. Not even the captain of a submarine.”
“That’s one of the things I want away from, sir. All the nuke people get an automatic four-oh on everything, direct order from Captain Steel. It isn’t fair, sir.”
“That’s something I can’t change,” Reinauer said. “Okay, we’re talking man to man, what I say stays with you. What you say stays with me. Let me tell you a few things you might not know.
“I’ve given you the quarterly marks you deserve and those marks are damned high. That makes you a good man in the Navy’s eyes. If you ask for a transfer out of nuclear submarines that’s a black eye for Captain Steel, if you see what I mean. He doesn’t want good men asking to get out of nuclear submarines
“What they’ll do when we get back to port and I submit your request is haul you up in front of a special board. The only way that board can justify the transfer of a good man is to find him unreliable to serve in any area where there is nuclear power or nuclear weapons.
“You know what that means? It means the end of your career. You’ll never make Chief. I doubt you’ll get diesel submarine duty. They’ll put you on some yard tug or as a Master at Arms in some recruit training camp until you get your twenty years in. How long will that be, three more years? Or they could send you to a weather station up on the deep frost line in Alaska. You’ll never make Chief, never.”
“I’m never going to make Chief anyway,” Raynor said stubbornly. “I’ve taken the Chief’s exam every six months for the past four years, sir. Never scored less than three nine. They don’t make very many Chief Torpedomen, you know that. Those they do make are all nuke dudes, that four-oh across the board on their quarterly marks gives them the edge they need to beat the non-nuke types. It’s a losing game, Captain.”
“It might change, you know that. A lot of things have changed since Vice Admiral Brannon took over as ComSubLant. The word I’ve been given is that he isn’t through making changes in some of Captain Steel’s directives.”
“That won’t change things much, Captain. This whole submarine Navy has to be changed, sir. We’re talking man to man, okay, let me lay it on you.
“I’ve been in the Navy for seventeen years. I’ve got a clean record, never been in trouble, always did my job. I’ve been First Class for nine years, sir. You’ve got Chiefs in this nuclear Navy who’ve only been in the Navy for five, six years! They ship in for nukes under that damned Ninety-Nine Zero One program, they go to school for two, three years, and they come out of school as Second Class Petty Officers. A year later they’re made First Class. A year after that they’re Chiefs.
“I know that Admiral Brannon has made changes. He’s a good man, I had him as a Squadron Commander when I first went to diesel submarines, when I got out of boot camp and sub school. When I went into the nukes the damned nuke sailors didn’t even have to carry stores and that was Captain Steel’s direct order. His nuke people didn’t even have to keep their living spaces clean! We guys, the second class citizens who hadn’t qualified for his nuclear schools had to do the dirty work aboard submarines. Sure, I know Admiral Brannon has changed a lot of that stuff but I’m still a second class citizen in this Navy, Captain.
“Look at this ship. It’s a damned good submarine and you’re a damned good Captain. But when we’re in port, which isn’t very damned much, we have two Officers of the Watch, one senior officer in charge of the reactor end of the ship, one junior officer in charge of the rest of us. We have two Chiefs of the Watch, two Watch sections. Last time we were in port I was Acting Chief of the Watch and the Senior Chief of the Watch was a nuke Chief Electronics Technician who’s been in the Navy six years and he never smelled salt water until he came aboard here six months ago. And he’s giving me orders! I’ve had it up to here, Captain. I want off, sir. And if they don’t like it they can give me my discharge.”
“You feel that strongly, Raynor? You’d throw away seventeen years of good service?”
Turk Raynor stood up. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Think it over,” Captain Reinauer said. “We’re probably going to be on this exercise for a week or more. See me before we get back into port and let’s talk again.” He smiled. “And thanks for leveling with me, Turk. I appreciate it.”
Eckert knocked at the cabin bulkhead and came in and found Captain Reinauer sitting at his desk.
“Here’s our ETA on station, sir, and our course. What did the Turk want, Skipper, anything important?”
“He wants out of nukes,” Reinauer said.
“My God, another one? The Chief Quartermaster put the same request to me earlier today. Two people in the radio gang feel the same way. It’s almost like a disease.”
“Call it the ‘Captain Steel disease,’ ” Captain Reinauer said.
“What the hell can you do about it?”
“Not much except what I’m doing,” Reinauer said. “Write another confidential letter to Admiral Brannon and fill him in on the way things are.”
The buzzer on Mike Brannon’s telephone console sounded. “Commander Fencer of Operations on the line, sir,” Brannon’s Chief Yeoman said. Brannon picked up the phone and punched the lighted button on the console.
“Commander Fencer, sir. We have a SOSUS report on a surface ship that cleared the Strait of Gibraltar. That ship then proceeded on an identical course followed by the Sharkfin and held to that course until it passed out of sensor range, sir.”
“You wouldn’t have an ID on that ship, would you, John?”
“So happens we do, Admiral. We footprinted her a year or so ago off the Aleutians. She was working as a target for Soviet submarines and she got over the SOSUS network there. We got her footprint and an aircraft visual on her, sir. She’s a Soviet general cargo freighter, ten thousand tons, cargo booms fore and aft. She’s got some sonar gear aboard. We heard her working the Soviet submarines.”
“Thank you,” Brannon said. “Please keep me informed.” He turned to John Olsen who had walked in with a thick stack of papers.
“Manpower reports on re-enlistments, Mike.” Brannon filled Olsen in on the report from the Black Room.
“What the hell is she doing running down the Sharkfin’s course line?” Brannon said. “How many Soviet freighters clear the Med and head out on that course? She’d be on a more southerly heading if she was going to Cuba.”
“We could find out,” Olsen said. “If Fencer has her foot-printed then he knows her name and registry. We could check with Lloyds. Where’s the Medusa?”