Terminal Run

McKee instructed the driver to drop them at the security fence rather than at the berth of the USS Hammerhead. McKee wanted to see the ship from a distance first, and watch her grow in his view. If he were honest with himself, he would admit to loving the collection of high-yield steel, uranium fuel assemblies, and electronics that formed the first ship of the Virginia-class. He would never forget the first moment he saw her, the day he had rechristened her Hammerhead in honor of the World War II submarine his great grandfather had sailed and his father’s Cold War Piranha-class ship. A photo in McKee’s study at home showed all four generations of McKees on the deck of a fishing boat, four-year-old Kelly proudly holding open the jaws of a hammerhead shark they’d caught, the smiling faces of his ancestors behind him. When Patton had asked McKee to take the submarine to sea — when she wasn’t even completed yet — his only condition was that they change her name, and Admiral Patton had reluctantly agreed.

And now here she was, a ship of his command, but the days of being a submarine captain now behind him. He felt an ache in his soul daily that his command at sea was over. The only possible comparison was that of being a former moon astronaut, the experience of walking on another world a defining experience, and when it was over, that sense of identity seemed to fly away, and being a senior flag officer at his young age of forty-three held none of the thrill of SSN command. When it came time to pick a submarine to be his command platform for the upcoming war, he had been torn. Common sense would tell him to take one of the less effective ships, so that the war zone would not be deprived of a first-string sub, and the skipper could avail himself of the admiral’s experience to improve. But fixing a deficient ship was not the mission, and in truth there was no dog of the fleet — all the ships were front line fighting SSNs, no one candidate suggesting herself to be the one ridden into the op area. So McKee had picked the ship that still appeared every night in his dreams, the ship of his past.

As he got closer to her, her breathtaking sleek lines made him ache, just as the face of a beloved exgirlfriend would. He stopped fifty yards aft of her and stared, the currents of the past made real to him. He tried to shake the emotions, forcing himself to see the ship as a machine. There was her simple slab-sided rudder protruding from the black water of the slip. Further forward her hull sloped gently out of the water, where the aft escape trunk hatch was latched open, an electrician watching as the shore power cable gantry slowly retracted into the pier like a rocket’s fuel boom rotating back to the tower just before liftoff. Forward of the aft escape trunk the hull was a perfect cylinder, the top curving surface of her glossy and black, her skin the same as a shark’s to lower skin friction and absorb sonar pings. A hundred feet further forward the tall sail rose starkly from the hull, the conning tower a simple fin, vertical at the forward and aft ends, but in cross-section, teardrop shaped. Three masts rose out of the top of the sail, each one with a mottled gray-and-black-painted fairing. McKee could see the stainless-steel rails of the flying bridge above the cockpit with its Plexiglas windshield. Forward of the sail he could see the forward access hatch opened, and there the bullet nose sloped down into the water. There was no doubt, he thought, she was a beauty.

“Admiral?” a booming voice asked from far away. McKee tried to bring himself back to the moment, and saw the husky athletic form of Commander Kiethan Judison standing in front of him, at attention, his hand to his garrison cap in a rigid salute. Judison’s trademarks had been his struggle with his weight, his too-loud voice, and his mop of hair, but it seemed he had won the battle of his waistline, his hair was short, and only the foghorn voice remained. McKee came to attention and returned the salute, then broke into a wide grin at his former navigator, who was now in command of the ship.

“Kiethan,” McKee said. “Great to see you, and my apologies in advance for cramping your style with a flag rider. You know I hated that when I was CO.”

“I know, Admiral,” the captain of the Hammerhead said, “but this is different — this time it’s you. And now the baddest submarine in the fleet just got badder. Welcome aboard, sir. And good to see you again, ma’am,” Judison said to his former executive officer. Karen Petri smiled at him and returned his salute. “Would you like a tour?”

“I’d love a tour, Commander,” McKee said, grimacing at his watch, “but we need to go. I’ll walk through with you after we pull the plug.”

Judison grinned. “Well, let’s go then.”

After the deck sentry announced their arrival, Judison shouted up at the bridge, “Off’sa’deck, lose the gangway!”