Terminal Run

From the mid-hull hatch an officer in a working khaki uniform leaped to the deck and hurried down the gangway. Pacino stared at the officer, startled that he was looking at a woman. She was short and petite, her gleaming black hair pulled back in a ponytail. The rank insignia on her open collars was a silver double bar. She wore a blue baseball cap with the gold embroidered letters spelling uss piranha ssN-23 with a gold dolphin symbol above the brim. Beneath the brim, her dark almond-shaped eyes glared at Pacino below arching brows. Her nose was slightly upturned, with a small constellation of freckles on it. She had strong cheekbones and a model’s chin, her sole physical flaw, on a first glance, her jug handled ears protruding below the ball cap and her ponytail. Above her left shirt pocket she wore a gold dolphin pin, the emblem of a submarine-qualified officer, resembling pilot’s wings, but up close consisting of two scaly fish facing a diesel boat conning tower. The woman moved jerkily, practically jumping out of her skin. It was easy to imagine she’d downed an entire pot of coffee. Pacino came to attention and saluted. He looked into her narrowed eyes, the woman’s face hard and unfriendly, her jaw clenched.

“You must be Pacino,” she said, her throaty voice pouring out the firehose stream of words. “Welcome to the Black Pig. I’m Lieutenant Alameda, Piranha’s chief engineer. Captain

Catardi wanted me to meet you and introduce you to the ship, then bring you to his stateroom.” She turned toward the vessel. “Follow me.”

Pacino stepped off the gangway onto the hull. The black surface was smooth and rubbery like a shark’s skin, the anechoic coating covering the entire hull for sonar quieting. The lieutenant vanished down the mid-hull hatch. From his childhood memories of submarine etiquette, he leaned over the hatch opening and shouted, “Down ladder!” then tossed down his bag, lowered himself into the hatch ring feeling its oiled, shiny, cool steel surface as his feet found the rungs of the ladder. He put his feet outside the ladder rails and slid all the way down to the deck in one smooth motion, his shoes hitting the deckplates with a thump.

Nostalgia hit Pacino then, the smell whisking him back in time to his youth, the harsh electrical smell of the ship making him remember his father’s submarines. He sniffed the air, the scent a mixture of diesel oil and diesel exhaust from the emergency generator, ozone from the electrical equipment, cooking oil, lubricating oils, and amines from the atmospheric control equipment. The narrow passageway ended at a bulkhead just beyond the ladder. The passageway was finished in a dark gray laminate, the doors and edges crafted from stainless steel like the interior of a transcontinental train compartment. The passageway led forward to the crew’s mess and galley, doors opening on either side, the passageway bulkheads covered with photographs of the ship’s triumphant return from her victory in the East China Sea.

Alameda shoved a cigarette-lighter-sized piece of plastic at him. “This is called a TLD for ThermoLuminescent Dosimeter. Measures your radiation dose. Put it on your belt.”

Alameda’s radio crackled: “Duty Officer, Engineering Officer of the Watch.”

“Duty Officer,” she said into the walkie-talkie. “Go ahead.”

“Maneuvering watches are manned aft, ma’am. Precritical checklist complete and sat. Estimated critical position calculated and checked. Request permission to start the reactor.”

“Wait one,” she said, and put the radio in her pocket. “Come with me,” she ordered Pacino. They walked down the passageway past the opening to the crew’s mess to the stairway to the middle-level deck. Pacino followed her down the steep stairs, ending at the forward part of the control room. It was nothing like the Seawolf control room of his youth. The periscope stand and the periscopes were gone, a two-seat console taking their place. The ship-control panel and ballast control had been ripped out and replaced with an enclosure cubicle with two seats, a center console, and wraparound display screens. The clutter of the overhead with pipes and cables and ducts was cleared out, leaving a circular continuous display screen angling between the bulkheads and the overhead, and the starboard row of consoles that had been the attack center was gone, replaced by five cubicles. The only remaining recognizable fixtures were the twin navigation tables in the aft part of the room. There was far more, but he could not absorb the vast changes as he hurried through the room behind the engineer.