Attack of the Seawolf

“About this baby, I am. Okay, you don’t see any fall-water planes on the sail. This boat uses bow planes up forward for better depth control. The sonar system is the BQQ-5E advanced BAT EARS suite, with the advanced hull array and the supersensitive spherical array forward. There’s even a baffle-viewing sonar in the lower rudder, although so far it doesn’t work. The combat-control system is the ANBSY-2 Mark II advanced firecontrol system, a master computer that links sonar and navigation and keeps records of everything you do at sea. The control room is in the middle level deck so you have the ship’s full width for the room. Still a bit cramped, though. You’ve got the type20 periscope. The forward escape trunk is set up to lock out ten men at a time, more if they squeeze together.

That will come in very handy when you’re locking out the SEALs. And as I already told you, you’ve got fifty room-loaded weapons and eight torpedo tubes. Well, that’s about it. You ready to meet your crew and take a look inside?”

“Hell, Admiral, lead on.”

Donchez stepped onto the gangway and saluted the American flag flying aft on the deck, then saluted the sentry.

“Request permission to come aboard,” Donchez barked.

“Granted, sir. Welcome aboard. Admiral.”

Pacino repeated the ritual. As he stepped off the gangway onto the spongy anechoic-tiled deck of the Seawolf he felt like he’d come home again. He followed Donchez toward the amidships hatch, the weapon-shipping hatch. As Donchez lowered himself down the ladder and disappeared Pacino took a look around the harbor, a habit from the old days, when he would look one last time at the world before vanishing into a steel pipe that would take the world away. When he found the rungs of the ladder and stepped into the massive hull, he smelled the smell, the unique smell of a submarine. He shut his eyes for a moment and drew the air in, savoring the smell like a wine expert lingering over the bouquet of a familiar vintage. The smell defied description, but Hillary had once tried to analyze it during one of her rare visits to his old boat — she had correctly identified diesel oil, lubrication oil, cooking grease, cigarette smoke and sweat. But she also had said there was something else there that she couldn’t identify. Pacino hadn’t told her, but what she couldn’t label was the smell of raw sewage from the sanitary tank vents, flavored with ozone from the high-voltage electrical equipment.

As Pacino’s feet hit the deck the Public Address Circuit One system crackled with the voice of the topside sentry:

“COMMANDER IN CHIEF, UNITED STATES PACIFIC FLEET, ARRIVING! CAPTAIN, UNITED STATES NAVY … ARRIVING.”

Pacino and Donchez were standing at the base of the ladder to the amidships hatch, which was in a narrow passageway. The walls, the bulkheads, were paneled in dark grain wood. Pacino reached out and touched it — it wasn’t imitation Formica paneling but honest-to-god mahogany wood. The passageway extended forward for about seventy or eighty feet. A few feet down the passageway Donchez stood talking to an officer who wore starched cotton khakis and the emblems of a lieutenant commander on his collars, with gold dolphins over his left pocket and a key with a braided chain around his neck. The duty officer. The man’s nametag read KEEBES; of medium height, in his mid-thirties, the most prominent thing about him his severe crewcut and horn-rimmed glasses. Pacino, thinking back to Donchez’s briefing, recalled that Keebes was the navigator and acting captain.

“Mikey, this is Lieutenant Commander Greg Keebes. Mr. Keebes is a Seawolf plank owner. Mr. Keebes, this is Captain Mike Pacino, the man we’ve been telling you about. He’ll be taking command as soon as you’re ready.”

Keebes said he had a course plotted but only to point Alpha.

“Our track past the dive point isn’t on the clearance message. Too highly classified.”

“I’ll brief the officers once we’re underway, Nav,” Pacino said.

“You’ll be able to plot the track as soon as we’re at sea. Now I’d like to take a look around at this boat before I take command.”

Keebes led the way forward.

“This whole deck is devoted to crew living,” Keebes said.

“Officers’ country is on the port side. Four large staterooms and a head, and the wardroom. Starboard is the chiefs’ quarters aft and the crew’s mess and galley forward.”

At the end of the passageway, Pacino found himself standing next to a curving metal bulkhead. The shape of the surface seemed spherical. A round hatch was set into the side of the sphere.

“Forward escape trunk,” Keebes said.

“It can lock out a dozen men at a shot. We use it for commando insertions, diver ops, that kind of thing.”

Keebes proceeded to a ladder leading down to the next level, lowered himself down the ladder and Pacino followed.

“Sonar and firecontrol computer room,” Keebes said. He opened a door on a starboard bulkhead.