Terminal Run

Piranha’?” XO was Lieutenant Commander Astrid Schultz, a tall, slim blond woman with brown piercing eyes and a no nonsense toughness. She had smiled a greeting to Pacino in the wardroom before he came to the bridge, shaking his hand. The junior officers seemed to be terrified of her, but she had a den mother quality beneath her toughness.

The junior officers had been hurling insults and inside jokes at each other, the easy camaraderie of the ship making it seem like Pacino had stepped into a fraternity house where each officer, chief, and enlisted sailor knew and appreciated the virtues and flaws of the other crew members, the crew working together like a single organism. Pacino had heard his father talk about it, but had never quite believed that eighty people from such varying backgrounds could get along so well, welded into a pipe for weeks and months at a time. Pacino wondered what other words of truth from his father he had rejected.

The sun slipped lower in the western sky as the hour approached 1800. Alameda’s relief for OOD watch arrived in the bridge cockpit, a junior grade lieutenant named O’Neal, his first name unknown, the crew simply calling him “Toasty.” He was a tall, light-complected blond Academy grad, shy and easygoing, but awarded the Bronze Star for bravery the previous summer. O’Neal relieved Alameda, the hostile chief engineer vanishing into the access tunnel. O’Neal turned to Pacino and told him that he could go below, since there was no junior officer of the deck for the evening watch.

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to stay on watch until we submerge.”

“We don’t pull the plug until midnight, Mr. Pacino. You’re welcome to stay, but you’ll miss evening meal.”

“That’s okay, sir. But call me Patch.”

“I’m Toasty. Good to have you aboard.” He raised his binoculars and searched the horizon, silent for some time. Finally he spoke again. “So. You going subs like your old man?”

“I’m going to see how this run goes. I’m probably going to be all thumbs in a submarine.”

O’Neal laughed. “Jesus, you do a back-full ahead-flank underway without tugs, making those slacker DevRon 12 line handlers wet their pants, you put the ship dead center of the channel right under the nose of the squadron commodore, and you wonder if you’ll be any good at this? There isn’t an officer aboard who could have done that. Hell, I don’t think the captain could do that.”

Pacino’s face flushed. “Shiphandling is one thing,” he said, the binoculars at his eyes, staring ahead to the dimming horizon. “Being a competent submariner is another.”

“The engineer seems to think you’re a natural.” “Alameda? That’s strange. She treats me like garbage.” “She just doesn’t have much use for nonquals. Once you’ve earned your dolphins she’s okay, but until an officer or enlisted is qualified in submarines, she figures they are breathing her department’s air — she owns the atmospheric control equipment — and drinking her department’s water.”

“Well, she had me fooled.” Pacino raised the binoculars to his eyes, the two falling silent, and there was only the roar of the bow wave and the stretch of seawater from horizon to horizon.

Piranha sailed on, making way for the continental shelf as the sun set astern.

All too soon the watch neared an end as the control room called up that the ship was thirty minutes from the dive point.

“Stand up,” O’Neal ordered Pacino. “Take a last look around and take in a last breath of fresh air.” Pacino complied, watching O’Neal. “This will be your last look at the surface with your naked eyes and the last real air for weeks, so savor it.” Pacino did, aware that he was taking part in a ritual practiced for generations. “Now, crouch down in the access tunnel and hold the flashlight.” O’Neal reached up on the port side and rotated a metal plate on a hinge until it was horizontal above his head, partially blocking the starlight, the plate latching with a click. Another plate on the starboard side came up, a third aft, and the fourth forward. The last clamshell hatch shut out the stars completely and made the cockpit disappear. Their perch was now faired into the smooth upper surface of the sail.

Pacino lowered himself down the ladder into the red lamp lit vertical tunnel and paused to watch O’Neal come down and grab the upper hatch and slam it shut on the seating ring. He wheeled the dogging mechanism clockwise, and the metal claws unfolded and locked the hatch in place. Pacino then continued down until he emerged from the dim tunnel into the red-lit upper-level passageway. O’Neal followed, turning a switch to plunge the access tunnel into darkness. Then he pulled shut the lower hatch and dogged it the same way. Pacino clicked off the rig for dive checklist. The final item, the drain valve, was checked shut by O’Neal.