Attack of the Seawolf

The right pocket, an oversized collarbone-to-waist container, held a MAC-10 submachine gun, official weapon of all self-respecting American drug dealers, complete with “hush puppy” silencer, with the additional burden of four 30-round magazines, each filled with jacketed hollow-point rounds. An upper central pocket stocked five flash-bang grenades and ten pounds of C-4 explosive. Below that pocket was a pouch containing the Inter Sat scrambled VHF walkie talkie with its lip-mike headset. The vest, fully loaded, weighed over fifty pounds. On Lennox’s thighs were pouches stuffed with Mark 114 satchel charges, each containing two charges, each charge a hefty twelve pounds with its wire reel for the parallel connection to the floating detonator receiver. On his back Lennox wore the combined buoyancy compensator vest and Mark 20 Draeger bubble less scuba lung, the tanks feeling even heavier than the vest and the satchel charges.

With his mask on, Lennox felt like his head was in a goldfish bowl. He took it off and let it hang from his neck. He had always tried to hide a tendency to claustrophobia. Strange, it didn’t bother him in the tight spaces of a submarine but surfaced when he found himself in large crowds. Of course, if the Navy shrinks ever got word of his problem his career would be over in a hurry. Ever since his Navy scuba training, he had stayed away from diving. Anxiety attacks could paralyze him. Now, in addition to having to overcome that fear, he would have to dodge bullets as they tried to take back the Tampa.

For a moment, as Lennox stood there in the passageway, he thought about his wife Tammy and the leave they had spent touring Japan. He had been shocked and happy that she had come. The WESTPAC deployment of the Tampa had come at a particularly bad time for them, only a week after he had caught her in another man’s car, in their own driveway, the car windows fogged, but not enough to hide his too vivid view. He had returned from the ship early at nine in the evening. He had told her he’d be aboard the ship for three nights straight attending to pre-underway emergencies, the staples of submariner’s lives, but after one night on the boat he could no longer stand the loneliness, the mournful deep hum of the ventilating ducts, the moaning cry of the ESGN ball as it spun at thousands of RPM in its binnacle aft. In frustration he had left the ship and driven home, picking up a bottle of wine on the way. He had also found a florist who was still open that late on a weekday and bought Tammy’s favorite red roses. He had craved one last romantic night before Tampa got underway. What he got was a black Mercedes in his driveway, the license plates spelling “RACY,” the windows dewy, his wife inside. He had caught only a glimpse of her raising her head from below the steering wheel, her hair a mess, the car door opening, the sound of the wine bottle shattering on the asphalt, the roses now a bad joke.

He had thought about divorce, moving out right then. But in the early weeks of the deployment, all he could think about was how much he still wanted her, how he didn’t want to lose her, and why in the hell he was in the middle of the Pacific welded into a steel pipe with one hundred and fifty other sweating men when his wife might be … He tried to block it out of his mind.

Captain Murphy had insisted that Lennox go on leave, and when they made landfall in Yokosuka, Tammy was on the pier. Murphy had radioed Squadron to ask Tammy to come, even flying her out on a military hop. After a few days in Japan, Lennox’s troubled marriage seemed to be healing, when the phone rang one evening at the hotel. A bureaucrat from NAVPERS had been on the phone, ordering him to report for duty aboard the Seawolf.

Goddamn Murphy, Lennox thought. Of all people, why did he have to get caught by the Chinese? Best skipper in the fleet, and now he was at gunpoint. A man who was more than Lennox’s commanding officer — he was also Lennox’s friend. At least the thought of being involved in an attempt to save Murphy made the claustrophobia recede for a moment.

The men from the first platoon opened the hatch to the huge escape trunk, the metal sphere with watertight hatches at the side and top. They began loading equipment into the hatch — heavy RPG grenade launchers and AK-47 machine guns. Bundles of Mark 114 satchel charges.

Claymore mines. C-4 plastic explosives. An Inter Sat radio for talking to the COMMSAT high above. When the gear was stowed, SEAL Commander Jack Morris climbed into the hatchway with his executive officer, a scrawny young lieutenant named Bartholomay, known to the SEALs as Black Bart, perhaps because of his jet-black hair.