Terminal Run

Pacino looked away from the note and stared off at the horizon. After all that had happened, how could he just leave he hind this defeat and take on some undefined new project as Patton had asked? And what would his dead friends think if he just returned from the sinking of the Princess Dragon to shrug and come home and work on Ration’s project as if nothing had happened? We’d applaud, an unexplained alien voice in his head said, startling Pacino at the intrusion of a thought not his own. This had happened to him perhaps only three times, and each time that external voice had been correct. A shiver ran down his back as he heard the voice say the two words again.

The next thoughts seemed as strange — the desire to get back to shore and leave this melancholy voyage behind. When he had first put to sea, there had been the weight of an anchor on his heart, and the circumnavigation had seemed the only way to heal, but now that he had paid his respects to his friends at the grave of the Princess Dragon, he no longer felt the need to sail on. Patton was offering him what he truly wanted in the first place.

Pacino raised his hand to his long hair and brushed it out of his face, his gaze rising to the sail of the Hammerhead. Next to the American flag behind the officers on the bridge the Jolly Roger banner of the Unified Submarine Command flapped in the breeze, the flag he had designed after his father’s submarine went down. And as he looked at the skull and crossbones, he felt his heart beat stronger, the ache in his stomach receding for a moment, and the answer seemed to land in his mind. He would do it, he decided. He stood up. the letter in his hands.

“I’m going to the Hammerhead, Lieutenant. But I don’t want to leave Colleen alone.”

“I’ll stay here while you take the Zodiac, sir. Hammerhead has a sailboat crew standing by to take Colleen back to Annapolis. Once you’re aboard the Hammerhead, a helicopter will be called to evacuate you and transport you to an air base where there’s a supersonic fighter standing by. You’ll be in D.C. before sunset, sir.”

Pacino nodded, his mind spinning as he found himself saying goodbye to the sailboat and climbing into the rubber boat. He started the engine and took in the painter, turning the boat to the submarine and bouncing over the waves to the sub, a glance over his shoulders at the majestic form of his sailboat. Several deckhands on the Hammerhead grabbed the boat and pulled him aboard. He was rushed to the hatch, with barely enough time to give Colleen a last look before he found himself in the weapons shipping hatch, the bright sunlight vanishing, replaced with the fluorescent dim glow of the overhead lights. The noise of the wind and the waves ceased, replaced suddenly by the soprano whine of four-hundred-cycle power and the deep baritone thrum of the air handlers. The electrical smell of the ship came into his nostrils, a brew of cooking oil, ozone, diesel fuel, cleaning solution, and amines, the perfume of it filling him with nostalgia. He stepped off the bottom of the ladder, shocked to see two straight rows of officers and chief petty officers. Someone shouted, “Hand, salute!” and the officers and chiefs saluted. Suddenly he was painfully aware of his beard and his mop of white hair and his old sweater and ratty windbreaker.

Ten hours later Pacino stood in the Pentagon E-Ring anteroom outside the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

4

The run to the continental shelf would take ten hours. Once Piranha passed the six-hundred-fathom curve, the ship would submerge and continue to follow the track line to Point November, the point where the secret-classified chart ended and the top-secret chart began.