Piranha: Firing Point

“You know,” Admiral Richard O’Shaughnessy said! “Pacino did that for you, the letters reading SSNX. He knew you’d been taking heat about it, and he wanted them to remember that the SSNX was your baby.”

Wamer smiled at O’Shaughnessy. “Oh, shut up, Dick.

You don’t have to push him on me anymore. I’ll accept your recommendation. Pacino for Chief of Naval Operations.

Number one admiral in the navy.”

O’Shaughnessy smiled back. “I hate to leave this job, but it’s okay if I’m leaving it to him.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll mind too much, Dick, seeing as how you’ll be stepping up to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Hey, you know, that girl standing next to Pacino, she looks like your daughter.”

O’Shaughnessy stared. There on the television screen Colleen and Pacino were side by side as they left the ship, the two of them talking, both of them animated, both smiling and laughing.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he stammered. “He took Colleen to sea? On a combat mission?”

“Sorry, Dick, too late to change your recommendation.

But I think you’d better plan for more than just having Pacino be your Chief of Naval Operations. You’d better think about what it would be like having him as a son-in-law.”

PACIFIC OCEAN

ALTITUDE: 51,000 FEET

“Cyclops won this war,” Pacino said. They were airborne in the supersonic SS-12, making its way back to Pearl Harbor “It did okay,” Colleen O’Shaughnessy said, her tone modest, but brimming with happiness that he would say that.

“No, I mean it. Without Cyclops and the acoustic daylight, we’d still be out there looking for those damned Rising Suns.”

“Maybe it was in the right place at the right time,” she said, her deep brown eyes looking into Pacino’s.

“Like me.”

He smiled at her. “I like to think we would have come together one way or another, timing be damned.”

She reclined in her seat, shutting her eyes, her breathing deep. Pacino looked at her for a full minute, then reclined his seat next to hers.

The video phone beeped insistently. Pacino half opened one eye and clicked the video on. The face of Mason Daniels, Number Four, came up in the view screen.

“Number Four. Good to hear from you,” Pacino said.

Daniels grinned. “I got you a present for winning the war,” he said, laying into Pacino immediately. The video view moved from Daniels to an object right beside him.

“It’s a grill. I figure you’re an expert at it now. What are you, well done?” “Go to hell, Daniels,” Pacino said, clicking off but smiling.

As he shut his eyes, he thought about Dick Donchez, and about what he would have said if he had seen Pacino today.

PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII

UNIFIED SUBMARINE COMMAND

PACIFIC SQUADRON SUBMARINE PIERS

Pacino got out of the staff car and slowly walked to the end of the piers where the twelve 688-class submarines had been berthed before they had sailed for the East China Sea mission. For some time he watched the water washing against the piers. Then he turned and accepted a wreath from Colleen, dropping it into the water. The flowers of the wreath floated on the gentle waves of the harbor. Pacino stood there for several minutes before finally drawing himself to attention, his hand coming up in a ruler-straight salute, then dropping it by his side.

Reluctantly he turned and walked back to the staff car. He was still staring at the piers as the car roared off to return to the airport, where the SS-12 waited to take the next Chief of Naval Operations back to Washington.