Voyage of the Devilfish

“Sir, the Russians are laying down their cruise missile nukes before the U.N. Someone must have forgotten to tell the shipyard that the Cold War is over. Or maybe they’re finishing this thing to provide jobs.” He was just testing.

“We know what we see. Commander.” Donchez stood up, his face stony. “Come on back to my office. I’ve got something to show you.”

Back in the admiral’s office Pacino sat in a deep easy chair and accepted a cigar from Donchez’s humidor. The sky outside the plate glass windows was dark. Pacino’s watch said it was almost eight in the evening. His stomach growled. Donchez’s head was stuck in a safe, looking for something. Finally he found it. Pacino picked up Donchez’s lighter, a worn Zippo with the emblem of the USS Piranha, SSN-637, lead ship of the class. Donchez had commanded her years before. Pacino lit the cigar and tasted the smooth smoke on his tongue. When the admiral sat back in his chair, his expression was dark. He flipped Pacino a bound report marked “SECRET” in black letters on the binding.

“What’s this?” Pacino asked.

“It’s been more than twenty years, Mikey,” he said. “It isn’t declassified yet. The report on the loss of the Stingray.” Donchez’s tongue was thick.

“Admiral, why are you showing me this?” Pacino felt like he did the day he was a plebe and Donchez had come to the Officer of the Watch’s office and told him his father was gone.

“It’s exactly what I told you that day. I wrote that.”

“Yes, sir?”

“And it’s all bullshit, pure bullshit.” Donchez’s voice wavered.

“What do you mean?” His old, faint suspicions at the time reviving.

“Mikey, that report as written would suggest that your dad screwed up. Didn’t turn the ship in time to inactivate the hot-run torpedo. Didn’t set material condition in time.” Donchez looked down at his desk and continued softly.

“Commander Anthony Pacino was the best damned combat submarine officer I ever knew. Except for one.” He looked back up at Pacino, who said nothing. “Patch Pacino did not die in the Atlantic Ocean. And he didn’t die from his own damned torpedo. Patch Pacino was a hero, which are in short supply, especially these days. The USS Stingray was on a top-secret operation under the polar icecap. She was getting an SPL of a VICTOR III.” Donchez walked over to a wood cabinet and opened twin doors, revealing a large television monitor. He took a VCR tape out of the safe and inserted it in the VCR deck below the monitor. Pacino shivered from the cold of the office, which only a moment before had felt comfortable. He watched as the TV picture went from fuzz to focus on a minisubmarine hanging from several cables. A submersible. The cables lowered the submersible into the sea. Donchez began a commentary, his voice noticeably hoarse.

“This is a submersible that was used by Doctor Robert Powell of Woods Hole. The guy who went down to the Titanic and the Bismarck. Well, he also took this baby down to the Thresher, our sub that sank in ‘63. The submersible was designed to dive to Russian submarine wrecks and recover data. It has three spherical pressure hulls, its own manipulator arms and thrusters, and a remotely piloted vehicle, an eyeball. It can carry a video camera into tight spots.

“Last year we decided to try to find the Stingray’s wreck under the polar icepack. Instead of using a sidescan sonar from a survey ship we had to cut holes in the ice, drop a sonar probe down and listen. For a year we came up with nothing. We drilled, dropped and listened at hundreds of sites. Finally we found it, made an icecamp and sent the submersible down.” The TV picture showed an encampment in the arctic, tents and Quonset huts gathered around lifting-derricks. It also showed the submersible being dropped through a deep hole in the ice. “We found the Stingray’s remains under 11,500 feet of very cold water. The initial shots on this tape were taken from the remote swimmer camera that was sent to the interior of the hull’s wreckage. This shot is of the bow compartment.” The inside of the Stingray was all wreckage, mangled pipes and pieces of steel. Pacino tried to speak but his voice was gone, his throat thick.

“This is the operations compartment,” Donchez continued as the view shifted. It was like staring into an open coffin, Pacino thought, wondering why Donchez would subject him to it.