Attack of the Seawolf

Murphy closed the spiral notebook he had been writing in before the call from the wardroom. The notebook was a long letter to his wife Katrina, whom he hadn’t seen in ten weeks since Tampa deployed to WESTPAC; in the next six weeks the book would be filled with his daily notes to her, the only way he knew to ease the ache of being away from her and nine year-old Sean Junior and two-year-old Emily. Murphy tucked the photo of Sean and Emily into the notebook and put it in a cubbyhole on the aft wall of his ten by-ten stateroom, grabbed a red baseball cap from a hook near the door and walked out to the passageway, down the ladder, and into officers’ country and the crowded wardroom.

As he entered the wardroom, a familiar feeling took over as he saw the collection of his officers and men, waiting for him at the table and on the bulkhead sofa seats, some standing, leaning against the bulkheads.

The feeling was an odd mix of affection, gratitude, and obligation. These men had given up their lives and families to go to sea with him, to submerge for months in a steel pipe hundreds of feet underwater, all to drive a nuclear submarine, to poke holes in the ocean in the name of service, the defense of America, in a time of peace, when few if any at home noticed or cared. It was more an honor to be their commander than to command the magnificent machinery of the Tampa itself. As wonderful as the hardware was, it was nothing next to these men. Centuries before John Paul Jones had said, “Men mean more than guns in the rating of a ship.” That was as true in the space age as it had been in the era of wooden sailing ships.

Near the head of the table the Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Jackson “Lube Oil” Vaughn, stood and nodded to Murphy. Vaughn was Murphy’s age, his career delayed by leaving the Navy for several years after his first submarine sea tour. Finding something missing in civilian industry, Vaughn had volunteered to go back to sea. Vaughn’s nickname had survived from a decade before, from his first submarine, Detroit, when he had repaired a DC main lube oil pump himself after the Mechanic Division chief had given up on it. But in the process Vaughn had also flooded engine room lower level with lube oil, requiring a complete main engine shutdown and twenty-four hours with the entire ship’s company to clean up the oily mess. The incident’s survival in his name had always irked Vaughn, but Murphy knew that aboard Detroit he had been much more a hero than a goat from the incident, and the Detroit crew had affectionately called him Lube Oil ever since. Now that he was chief engineer on Tampa, he was rarely called anything other than “Eng,” unless one of his division officers was kidding him on liberty or at a ship’s party.

Vaughn was a solidly built and tall Texan with graying hair and a cowboy drawl. His at-sea beard was fully grown in, since he had quit shaving the day they had left San Diego ten weeks before. Vaughn was a serious officer, which was an advantage when entrusted with the sleeping giant of the ship’s powerful and potentially dangerous nuclear reactor system. Still, Vaughn was capable of sudden bursts of humor and a grin that took over his entire face. But when things went wrong Back Aft, Vaughn was as likely to raise his voice, a stern frown clouding his face, preaching to his officers and men, sometimes even lecturing broken equipment. Ship’s folklore held that more than one stubborn repair problem had been solved shortly after one of Vaughn’s episodes of “counseling” the offending machinery.

“Morning, Skipper,” Vaughn said as Murphy took his seat at the table and Vaughn sat down beside him on the right side.

“How’re you doing, Eng?” Murphy said in his gravelly voice, a signature hoarseness left over from his days as a two-pack-a-day smoker.

“Ready to break the plant?”

“No, sir, just test it a little,” Vaughn drawled, turning to address the men in the room.

“This drill session will start with a reactor scram initiated by the Captain.”

When he finished his briefing, the men grabbed their red caps and left the room for the engineering spaces aft.

Murphy took his place in the forward part of engine room upper level, where the electronic cabinets were jammed forward of maneuvering. Maneuvering was the nuclear-control room, a cubicle twenty feet square where three enlisted nuclear-qualified men operated the reactor under the supervision of a nuclear trained officer. Vaughn walked up to Murphy in the red cap, the red indicating that the wearer was part of the drill team and was to be ignored by the watch standers

“We’re ready, sir,” Vaughn reported.

Murphy nodded and reached into the cabinet next to them, pulled the Plexiglas cover off a switch marked MANUAL SCRAM, and turned the rotary switch lever to the position marked GROUP SCRAM.

All hell broke loose.

* * *