Voyage of the Devilfish

Admiral Richard Donchez’s staff car pulled up to the house, a redwood three-story structure on wood pile-stilts driven into the sand of the wide beach just north of the North Carolina border. The name on the carved wood sign read “Pacino.” Donchez got out of the car and went up the steps to the entrance deck, located twenty feet above the elevation of the sand. Hillary Pacino came to the door, and despite his mission Donchez could not help noting how attractive this woman was, even in a shapeless Annapolis sweatsuit, her pretty face without makeup.

“Dick,” she said, “come in.” When she saw the staff car waiting for him below she looked back at him, taking in his dress blue uniform.

“Mommy, who is it?” Tony’s voice behind her. She didn’t answer him.

“Hillary,” Donchez said, “it’s Michael. There’s been an accident. We think the Devilfish went down.”

“Oh, God,” was all Hillary could get out, collapsing in a chair. Finally she looked up at him. “What happened?”

“Hillary, we’re not positive, but it looks like Devilfish was returning early from the mission, trying to get back before Christmas. There was a flooding accident. Crew couldn’t stop it. The reactor shutdown and we think her battery exploded. We’re starting a search for the hull now… I’m sorry, Hillary. God, I’m so sorry.” He hated the lie, but it was what the White House and Pentagon had ordered him to say. Hillary put her face in her hands. Tony began to cry. Donchez crouched down and took the boy in his arms. After a long while Donchez left, hating the Russians, himself, the whole damn world.

CHAPTER 27

WEDNESDAY, 22 DECEMBER

ARCTIC OCEAN

BENEATH THE POLAR ICECAP

USS ALLENTOWN

Corpsman Denny Halloway sat at his small desk in the space he used as an “office” and locker for his medicines. Duckett tapped twice on the door frame.

“Doc?”

“C’mon in, Cap’n.”

“Well,” Duckett said, “they still alive?”

“Yes sir, Rapier and the Russians are sleeping. I think the Russians’ll pull through. Rapier… he could go either way. Captain Pacino, well, I’m not sure we did him a favor, resuscitating him. He’s in a deep coma. It wasn’t just the hypothermia.

I checked his and Rapier’s dosimeters, you know, the little widget on your belt, measures radiation.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Pacino and Rapier both got big doses of radiation. Pacino’s seems worse, though. They must have taken a nuke torpedo or melted down their reactor core. Maybe both.” Duckett thought about the bad blood between him and Pacino, going back to his first-class year at Annapolis. Pacino’s plebe year. He remembered his resentment that Pacino seemed to have it made… athletic ability, academic success, street smarts, self-assurance… all things he had to struggle for. All that plus his stunts, his one-upmanship. He’d damn near hazed him out of the Academy. Until Pacino’s father died and he laid off the plebe’s case. But something of the old feeling had persisted, like after that exercise when Pacino again got the better of him and his boat. But now… “Will Pacino live? Can you save him?”

“Cap’n, he’s got radiation sickness. Complicated by hypothermia. The cold restricted circulation to his arms and legs. He may need an amputation, a blood transfusion and a bone-marrow transplant — which is damned hard to do because finding a match for bone marrow ain’t like a bloodtype match. And the loss of oxygen to his brain, probably from partial cardiopulmonary failure in the cold, has put him in this coma. We don’t have the gear to test him here, but he doesn’t respond to light or touch or sound-You put all that together…” He didn’t need to spell it out further. Duckett grabbed the phone and dialed the Conn.

“Off sa’deck, increase speed to full… I know, I know, I’ll take the risk on collision with the ice. Keep me posted on our ETA to the MIZ. Soon as we’re in the marginal ice zone I want to pop up and radio for a chopper, then get down and flank it till the chopper meets us.”

“Doc, once we’re in open water, if we can fly these guys out, where will they go?”

“Navy Hospital in Faslane, Scotland. They’ve got a good hypothermia unit. Maybe we could ask for that miracleworker doctor who did all those bone-marrow transplants after Chernobyl blew up. And we’ll request a brain specialist, someone who knows his way around a coma.”

Duckett nodded and walked slowly to SES, the Sonar Equipment Space up forward. The makeshift sickbay consisted of a few cots set up in between the sonar electronic cabinets in SES. Michael Pacino lay on one of the cots, shrouded in blankets, an IV bottle snaking into his arm, twin-oxygen tubes penetrating both nostrils, a catheter tube coming out from under the blanket terminating in a urine-collection bottle. His frostbitten face was completely wrapped in a moist bandage. Only his eyelids and lips showed. For a long time Duckett stood and looked at Pacino.