Attack of the Seawolf

For a moment Pacino said nothing. He no longer was registering Donchez’s words, nor seeing the vista of the Severn River in front of him. He was traveling a corridor of time, back to the moments he and Sean Murphy had shared as roommates, struggling against the hazing of their flrstclassmen. Back to the time that Murphy had risked dismissal from the Academy to go A.W.O.L. to see Pacino at the memorial service for Pacino’s father, when only a plea from the senior ranks of the Navy had been between Sean Murphy and life as a civilian. Back to happier times, the double-dates in town. Murphy crashing his car and Pacino picking him up in D.C.” Pacino speeding back to Annapolis to avoid having them both placed on report. Back to the moment before graduation when Pacino had had to pour Murphy into his dress whites, Sean being too hungover to stand on his own from the celebrating they’d done the night before. Back to the following year in Boston when the two of them had been at MIT, getting master’s degrees in mechanical engineering, but also prowling the bars of Boston in search of action. Back to the times of frustration and triumph in the nuclear power pipeline, the prototype nuclear plant training that had them working shift work twelve hours a day, seven days a week until they were qualified as reactor supervisors. Back to the three years they had spent on the USS Hawkbill during their division officer tours. Back to the day Pacino had been Murphy’s best man when he married Katrina, and to the day months later when the roles were reversed as Pacino married Hillary.

And now Murphy was a hemisphere away looking down the barrel of a Chinese rifle, and Sean Murphy’s wife might soon be a widow and his children fatherless.

After a moment Pacino realized Donchez was looking at him, waiting.

“What are we waiting for, Admiral?”

Donchez pulled a document from his pants pocket, sheets stapled together, the large stamp in black letters reading “ORIGINAL.” He handed it to Pacino. Buried in the official message were the words “REPORT FOR TEMPORARY DUTY AS COMMANDING OFFICER USS SEAWOLF SSN-21.”

“These are your orders. I’ve already talked to Hillary.

Get home and say good-by to her. I’ve had Tony pulled from school — he’ll be waiting for you. I’ve got uniforms on the jet for you. Just pack your shaving kit, maybe see if you can dig up your old dolphins.

We’ll have some poopy suits waiting for you on the boat. I’ll meet you at your place and take you to the airport. I’ll brief you in detail on the jet. I’ve had the Pentagon take care of your boss here. As of zero nine hundred this morning you no longer work here.

You’re back in the Navy now.”

Pacino nodded, held out his hand to Donchez, then turned and walked quickly to the row of cars parked near the soccer field.

Donchez watched Pacino drive away, thinking about Pacino’s handshake. There could be no mistake about it. The handshake he had given Donchez before he left was just as firm, but this time it had been dry as a bone.

Donchez threw the stub of his cigar into the creek and walked to the rental car, for the first time feeling that the Tampa was now much closer to freedom than she had been just an hour before.

CHAPTER 8 THURSDAY, 9 MAY 1845 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ALTITUDE: THIRTY-EIGHT THOUSAND FEET

Captain Michael Pacino sat in the deep upholstery of the Gulfstream’s wide seat staring out the window at the clouds below, thinking back to the scene at the house when he had told Hillary he was going back to sea. He had expected anger or tears from her, but she had looked at him with deep understanding. Her words still rang in his ears … “I’m scared to death of losing you, Michael, but I’ve seen what happens to you when you’re not at sea. You haven’t really been the same, not since—” Not since Devilfish sank, he had thought—”—and there’s something you need to finish out there, isn’t there?” She had seen right into him, past his eyes to the rusting wreck of his last submarine.

She had held their son Tony as Donchez’s staff car had pulled away, young Tony still crying, trembling in his mother’s arms. The only thing that had kept Pacino from turning the car around was the thought of Sean Junior crying in Katrina Murphy’s arms at the word of his father’s death, just as Pacino had when told that his father had gone down in the Stingray so many years ago.

Pacino’s jaw clenched. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to get to Yokosuka and take command of Seawolf. His hands seemed to itch for the feel of periscope grips, his ears for the sounds of torpedo launches. He stared out the jet’s window, not seeing the rolling countryside outside, but the blue waves of the endless stretches of the Pacific. It had been too damned long.