Terminal Run

“No,” Catardi said, looking off into the distance. “Let’s see what he’s made of.”

Relief flooded her. She cleared her throat. “Aye aye, sir. Anything else, Captain?”

“That’ll be all, Eng.”

She shut the stateroom door behind her. Catardi stared at nothing for a few moments, remembering his younger days, back to a time when the nine most frightening words in the English language were, “Captain Pacino wants to see you in his stateroom.” If the youngster had a tenth of the old man’s character, he’d make one hell of a submariner, Catardi thought.

The sun had long vanished over the horizon and the drydock floodlights had come on, their glow shining in the half-closed blinds of Michael Pacino’s dockside office. The only other light in the room came from a reading lamp, casting a pool of dim yellow on the scattered sketches on the oak library table. To the side, Pacino’s pad computer had five programs open, calculating hydrodynamic friction functions and thrust curves, with a drafting program showing a three-dimensional rotating diagram of the tail of the SSNX submarine.

Pacino had been in the office since before dawn, immersed in his idea for the torpedo evasion ship alteration. There was really nothing to come home to, not with Colleen still working out of her D.C. offices as her testimony before Congress continued. He leaned back in his seat for a moment, thinking of her, and realizing guiltily that he hadn’t been much of a husband to her since the sinking of the cruise ship. Since Pacino had sailed to the Princess Dragon gravesite, he had felt more like himself, but he still had to make up the year to Colleen. That would have to come later, he chided himself, the beeping of his computer at the end of a complex calculation returning him to the problem at hand. He was bent over the display, barely aware of the office door coming open. Assuming it was one of the shipyard engineers, Pacino kept concentrating on the computer until he could reach a stopping point, when he heard the female voice from the doorway.

“They told me I could find you here. You working the swing shift or just putting in day shift overtime?”

Pacino stared up at his wife, dumbfounded, imagining for a moment that his thoughts of her had conjured her up. She was dressed in a dark suit that accentuated her slender form and her long legs, a string of pearls her only jewelry other than her wedding ring. As usual after not seeing her for weeks, she startled him with her beauty. Her raven-black hair swept to her shoulders framing a beautiful face, with strong cheekbones, large brown eyes, a perfect nose, and a smiling mouth with red lips curving over movie-star teeth. For the thousandth time, he realized he didn’t deserve her as a wife, but the guilt he’d felt a moment before evaporated in his excitement at seeing her. He stood up so fast his chair tipped and crashed behind him. He hurried to her and swept her into an embrace. She laughed in surprise but returned his kiss, then pushed him away.

“You must be feeling better,” she said breathlessly. “I thought maybe I could steal you away for dinner and you could tell me about what you’reworking on.”

“I thought you were in D.C. for the next month,” he said.

“I am. But today is Friday. I don’t have to be back until Sunday night.”

They found a cozy restaurant a half hour from the shipyard, and caught up in a secluded booth. Pacino told her about the sailing trip, Patton’s submarine, and his orders to run the torpedo evasion program and the Tigershark project. Colleen put her fingers to her lips, waving him to silence.

“We’ll talk about that when we’re back in your office,” she said. “Tell me about Janice’s call and Anthony.”

Pacino recited his ex-wife’s conversation verbatim, including Janice’s facial expressions. Colleen’s ability to read Janice’s mind from a distance was uncanny.

“So, are you worried about Anthony Michael?” Colleen asked.

Pacino refilled their wineglasses and thought about it. “I never wanted him to go into the submarine force,” he admitted. “But it might do him good to make this one deployment.”

Colleen nodded. “There’s nothing wrong with him,” she said. “He’s only in trouble all the time because he’s an innovator — like his father.”

Pacino shook his head. “I don’t want him wasting his life chasing mine, trying to be a younger version of me. I want him to find his own way. If he’s doing this because it is all he’s ever wanted, I’ll give him my blessing. But I’m not convinced this is his destiny.”

“You said he’s under the command of Rob Catardi, who you trained on the Devilfish. What kind of skipper is he?”

Pacino stared into the distance for some time, lost in the past. “He’s the best there is,” he finally said.

“Then don’t worry,” Colleen said. “Anthony will be fine, and he’ll learn something.”

A look of doubt crossed Pacino’s face.