Terminal Run

A boiling erupted at the rudder, a geyser of water ten feet tall. Pacino counted to five, waiting for the water flow to build up and roll over the rudder so that the rudder would bite into the river against the current. He had to give the next order quickly before the massive power of the screw parted the single line holding her and cut a line handler in half. The deck trembled beneath his boots from a hundred thousand shaft horsepower kicked into full reverse. Pacino waited with his heart rushing until he could no longer stand it.

“Take in line two!” he shouted to the deck. The pier crew scrambled to grab the hastily eased thick rope and toss it over to the accelerating submarine. The instant the line was no longer fast to the bollard, the Piranha was officially underway, the pier suddenly moving away from them as the ship surged backward. He turned to his lookout, a petty officer he’d met in the wait on the bridge.

“Shift colors!”

The lookout scrambled to hoist a huge American flag from a temporary mast set up aft of the captain. Pacino grabbed a handle in the cockpit near the bridge box, the compressed air horn, and pulled the lever. The ship’s whistle, announcing she was underway, blasted out a screaming shriek, louder and throatier than the biggest ocean liner’s horn. Pacino let it blast for a full eight seconds, watching the ship’s motion in the downstream current as the horn continued to wail over the water of the base. The lookout hoisted the Unified Submarine Command flag next to the stars and stripes, the skull and crossbones leering in the breeze. The horn blasted on, Pacino holding the lever with one hand while craning his neck to look aft.

Pacino had the barest impression of the pier moving away from them, jogging speed at first, then faster, and he saw an admiral standing on the concrete with his hands over his mouth and his eyes bugging out, and the ship rocketed backward into the river. Pacino looked aft at the wake boiling up at the rudder, and prayed for the stern to turn up into the current. Submarines handled like pigs near the pier, and if the screw “walked the bottom” the ship would turn the opposite direction from the rudder order, which could result in the ship turning to head north instead of south, and the entire world would see that the sub was out of control. The pier was speeding away from them in a blur, the end of it in sight and drawing next to the sail, then speeding past beyond the sonar dome. Piranha was free of the slip and roaring backward into the channel, a white frothing wake at her bow. Come on, rudder. Pacino thought, turn the god damned stern upstream. For two tense, endless seconds it looked like the ship’s stern would go the wrong way. but then finally it began to respond, and as the pier moved further away, the rudder finally bit into the river water and broke her upstream and the ship turned, rotating so the bow was pointed south. Pacino could hear a cheer from the deck crew below.

“Helm. Bridge, all ahead flank! Rudder amidships! ” “Bridge. Helm, all ahead flank, aye, rudder amidships, aye,” the reply crackled out of the bridge box. “Throttle advancing to ahead flank, my rudder is amidships. Bridge, Helm, indicating revolutions for ahead flank.”

There was a chance that the ship’s momentum and turning impulse would not obey the latest order. The ship might continue backward and put her screw into the upstream pier, wrecking the hull on the jutting concrete. The deck jumped, shaking violently as the screw turned from full revolutions astern to ahead flank at one hundred percent reactor power. The wake frothed in anger aft of the rudder. Pacino checked that the rudder was back in line with the centerline of the ship, then turned forward to watch her progress ahead. For a few seconds the ship froze in the river. In the action’s pause, Pacino realized that his palms were sweating, his heart was pounding, and he was panting as if he’d sprinted a mile. Finally the ship surged ahead, a bow wave forming below them. “Helm, Bridge, all ahead one-third. Steady as she goes.” “Bridge, Helm, all ahead one-third, throttle eased to all ahead one-third, steady as she goes, aye, steering course one eight two, sir!”

“Very well, Helm,” Pacino called. “Navigator, Bridge, ship has cleared the pier, recommend course to center of channel.” Pacino’s heart was still hammering, with an almost sexual exhilaration.

Crossfield’s voice was incredulous as he spoke into the circuit. “Bridge, Navigator, aye, stand by.”

Behind Pacino the periscopes rotated furiously as the navigator’s piloting party plotted visual fixes. The radar mast high overhead rotated, making a circle every second. The wind blew into Pacino’s face in spite of the Plexiglas windscreen erected at the forward lip of the cockpit, flapping the fabric of the flags, the stars and stripes and the skull and crossbones presiding over the dark dangerous form of the streamlined submarine.