Attack of the Seawolf

All your resistance will do is make you sick — and delay the ship’s departure. We have said we need your statement only for public opinion. If the words are not your own, your people will understand. After all, you are being detained, they will not hold any of this against you. I would guess the only matter your commanders will be annoyed with is allowing your ship’s departure to be delayed by your insistence on not making the statement. Commander, if it were up to me, I would let it go without the confounded statement, but I have senior officers overseeing my missions.

Please see my side. We are not so different, you and I.”

The words washed over Sean Murphy, he barely heard them.

“I have a present for you,” Tien said, picking up a phone and speaking into it for a moment. After he put the phone down, he looked at the overhead as the Circuit One announcing speaker crackled with Lube Oil Vaughn’s voice:

“THE REACTOR … IS CRITICAL!”

Tien was as delighted as if he had just thrown Murphy a surprise party.

“You see, I told you we would get your ship ready to go. We replaced whole sections of your steam-piping loop and reinsulated the lines. I am told that several of the steam valves needed to be replaced. Otherwise, your propulsion plant is, as you say, shipshape. Our nuclear-power experts have been over the plant inspecting it for the purpose of getting the ship ready to leave so you can return home. They say the ship is amazing.”

The lights in the overhead flickered, and suddenly the ventilation ducts boomed into operation, blowing cool fresh air into the room. At least Tien had not been kidding about Vaughn starting the reactor and steam plants, even though they were probably only starting the plant to provide power. Without shore power the battery would soon have run out of juice and they would have had to abandon the submarine.

Probably they figured the statement could be gotten from him more easily aboard the ship than in a barracks ashore.

Again they brought in the camera and TelePrompTer, but before they turned it on, Tien popped a video in the VCR and turned on the television. He pressed the play button, and Sean Murphy’s front yard flashed onto the screen, with Katrina and Sean and Emily looking into the picture.

“Sean, honey, we love you and we miss you. I don’t know when you’ll get this,” Katrina said into the camera, her auburn hair blowing in the breeze, “but maybe you can play it at sea and remember how much we love you.”

His son said: “Hurry home, Daddy. Mommy says you’re poking holes in the ocean but I know you can’t make a hole in water. I told my class what you do at show-and-tell today. Everyone said it sounded neat.

Come home soon, Daddy—” Tien stopped the tape.

Murphy fought not to show his feelings as he became aware that the camera was focused on his face.

The TelePrompTer stared at him: “MY NAME IS COMMANDER SEAN MURPHY” … Murphy blinked hard and stared at the camera lens and began to speak, his voice a raspy croak.

“I am an American fighting man,” he said, trying to recite the Code of Conduct.

“I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense—” “No,” Tien broke in.

“That is not what the script says.” He waved to the guard.

“Bring in Tarkowski,” he said, resignation in his voice.

A shot of bile hit Murphy’s stomach as he realized they were going to torture Tarkowski for his benefit.

USS SEAWOLF

The control room began to seem confining, Pacino thought, impatient with the need to act, to fire weapons, to do something, anything, to get Murphy out.

Somehow the idea of trusting this rescue to swimmers who could only take out the hatch that they came in with seemed a bad idea. With the torpedo room full of weapons, with his number one and two tubes loaded with Javelin cruise missiles, both ready to fire, both tube outer doors open … For the second time in a half hour he asked Tim Turner the status of the Javelins.

He reported the units had the destroyers targeted.

“We can have both missiles in the sky within thirty seconds of your orders, sir.”

Pacino decided to risk a quick look at the surface.

There were no close contacts, no patrol boats or fishing vessels, or, God help them, a supertanker en route to the tanker pier. He did an air search, looking for the type of aircraft that Admiral Donchez hinted had detected Murphy. All he saw was the moon to the south, still going in and out of the clouds, and some dim stars to the north over the P.L.A piers.

Pacino turned the crosshairs onto Target Four, the Jianghu fast frigate, and rotated the grip of the scope to raise the magnification to high power. There was no activity. Further to the left was Target Three, the Udaloy destroyer, one of Tampa’s escorts. Not a soul in sight. A bit to the left was the rudder of the Tampa, the rest obscured by the stern of the Luda destroyer, the other escort for the Tampa. There was no evidence of the divers below the ships.