Terminal Run

“Let’s just say you won’t be getting out of bed and leave it at that,” Colleen said, and took his hand and led him out of the office. Pacino smiled, trying to forget the technical troubles and enjoy his newfound lightness of heart.

But that night in his dreams the skeleton on the motorcycle overtook the bus and smashed it to pieces with his mace.

“Have a seat, Mr. Pacino,” Executive Officer Astrid Schultz said, pointing to a chair on the inboard side of the wardroom table. It was the hour after the evening meal, the normal time for the wardroom to be set up for a movie, but tonight Pacino would face the qualification board for diving officer of the watch. Facing him on the outboard side next to Schultz was Chief Engineer Alameda and Damage Control Assistant Duke Phelps. At the end of the table Captain Catardi sat silent, watching the diving officer qualification board for Pacino. Duke had said Catardi would ask the last question based on Pacino’s answers to the other board members’ interrogation. If Pacino passed the verbal test, they would observe him take the ship to periscope depth, and if that went well, he would be qualified to stand the diving officer by himself. And being on the watch bill meant he was no longer a parasite, a rider. The term “rider” was one of the worst insults used on the submarine, referring to someone who did not pull his weight.

Pacino’s stomach churned and bile rose to his mouth as he sat. It came down to this qual board, he thought. If he blew this, he would be considered unworthy of being his father’s son. Since he’d been aboard, the officers and chief petty officers had at first acted strangely around him, the references to his father’s former position sometimes subtle, other times blatant. A chief petty officer mechanic showing him the trim pump motor starter in the auxiliary machinery room would crack that he should know its location, because after all, he was a Pacino. A sluggish approach to periscope depth was condemned by another chief, mocking him that a Pacino should be able to put the submarine on the exact depth in an instant. But the crew had seemed to be testing him for any signs of arrogance or hubris, and finding none, they seemed to adopt him. Some had never warmed up, insisting that until the day he wore gold dolphins he remained an air-breathing rack occupying nonqual rider. The chief of the auxiliary mechanics, “A-gang,” Chief Keating, the man most responsible for training Pacino, stated in a Texas drawl at the start of every watch, “Mr. Patch, you breathin’ my air, you eatin’ my food, and you got a rack all to yourself while some of my boys is still hot rackin’. Far as I’m concerned, you a nonqual rider, and an officer besides”—the term officer used pejoratively—” settin’ in your wardroom, drinkin’ your coffee with your pinky in the air, pushin’ your papers while we do the real work of runnin’ this ship. You best be livin’ right when you stand watch as dive on my ship, mister.”

“So, Mr. Pacino,” Schultz said, beginning the inquisition, “go to the white board and draw the trim and drain system, and explain how to get a one-third trim on an initial dive after a shipyard availability.”

Twenty minutes later, Pacino took his seat, his armpits soaked. Phelps continued with the next question, about how to line up to snorkel. Alameda asked him a dozen questions about how to rig the ship for dive, the locations of the valves and switches. Schultz asked about ship stability and why a submarine didn’t behave like a surface ship during a roll, Pacino’s answer and the follow-up questions taking another hour. It came time for Catardi’s question. He simply leaned forward and said, “Bowplanes jam dive.”

Pacino shot back, “All back full, switch to emergency hydraulics, try to pull out, sound the general alarm, prepare for the OOD’s order to emergency blow forward.” The immediate action for a jam dive. The diving officer and officer of the deck would take instinctive action, without orders, to try to keep the ship from descending below the depth where the pressure would cause the hull to implode.

“Why not back emergency instead of just back full?”

“A back full order reverses the direction of the main motor and speeds it up in reverse until reactor power reaches fifty percent, the highest power level for running natural circulation. If we order back emergency, maneuvering has to energize the reactor circulation pumps and bring reactor power up to a hundred percent, and the pumps in fast speed come off the non vital bus and are less reliable. There is a possibility that a hurried crew lining up for reactor forced circulation could power-to-flow scram the reactor, and then you’d be in a jam dive with a propulsion casualty. Better to use a reliable safe backing bell at fifty percent and use a forward group emergency main ballast tank blow if back full isn’t enough to pull us out of the dive, sir.”