Voyage of the Devilfish

“Down ladder,” he said, tossing his bag down the hatch, then lowering himself through the small opening. The smell of submarine hit Pacino. A mix of lubrication and diesel oil, stale cigarette smoke, cooking grease, ozone, old sweat and raw sewage. The smell wasn’t particularly bad, just strong and characteristic. It lingered on the clothes, in the hair. Hillary hated it, and who could blame her? He heard the sounds of the boat — the high whine of the ship’s inertial navigation system, the low roar of the ventilation ducts. He climbed down the ladder, and his feet hit the deck of the operations upper-level passageway across from the XO’s stateroom. The narrow passageway forward opened into the control room. One door to starboard was the sonar room. The door to port was the captain’s stateroom. Between the captain’s stateroom and the control room was a steep staircase to operations middle level, home of officers’ country and the crews’ mess. Pacino opened the door to his stateroom, noting the room clean and tidied, a steaming cup of coffee on the table. The Duty Officer must have had it sent to the stateroom when he was walking down the pier. Pacino tossed his bag onto one of the seats of the table, opened his fold-down desktop and sat down to drink the coffee from the mug with the Devilfish’s emblem painted on it. The Devilfish name and emblem had been controversial from the beginning. A circular field framed a leering ram’s head. The ram’s horns curled up and back in a curving spiral. Between the horns was the shape of a modern nuclear attack submarine seen from the side. Above the ram’s head were the words USS DEVILFISH, below the letters SSN666. The hull number had inspired someone in NAVSHIPS to name the boat Devilfish. Protests were lodged with Congress but controversy had never reached the front page. Nixon had resigned that same week. With no media outrage to fan the flames the Devilfish name-flap had died out. Pacino liked it. It sounded vicious and fierce. On his second sip of coffee he heard Stokes’ Kentucky twang boom out over the P.A. Circuit One announcing system: “STATION … THE MANEUVERING WATCH.”

A knock came on the door from the head. Commander Rapier coming to brief him on the ship’s readiness.

“Come in,” he said. The door opened and Rapier walked in from the head, wearing a canvas green parka over khakis, hands full of papers and the radio message-board. He handed the clipboard to Pacino. The XO tour was considered by many the hump of a Navy career, defined as making another man, the captain, happy, taking the paperwork burden off him and allowing him to concentrate on tactics instead of plans, weapons employment instead of weapons inventories. The idea was to suffer through the XO tour, doing the hard work while the captain got the credit, so that when it was your turn another officer would do it for you. Rapier looked down now at Captain Michael Pacino and for a moment he could forget all his gripes. With Pacino on the boat, with the hatches shut and dogged, the boat rigged for dive, life changed. Suddenly the submarine created its own universe, and he and Pacino alone took it on, fought the elements, the cold depths of a sea intent on killing them at their first inattention. Submerged with Michael Pacino, life had purpose. Sometimes he wondered whether the captain had the power to brainwash him, so powerful were the feelings of his own dedication when he was at sea. But just when an OP would be clicking, with the submarine and himself and Pacino operating together like a machine, they would pull into port and the paperwork mountains would be brought in by forktruck… messages demanding reports, sailors demanding evaluations, medical reviewers wanting radiation records of the personnel, fiscal auditors wanting to see the ship’s operating funds, supply auditors wanting to review the ship’s food service, admirals coming and going, hours of cleaning the ship, the gear breaking, the parts missing, the men stressed by demands on their time to fix the boat in port while annoyed wives and children wanted them home. And now the cycle was to start again. A fresh OP. A fresh attitude. Just them and the boat and the sea. Rapier inhaled slowly.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, XO.” Pacino smiled slightly. “How pissed off is the crew?”

“Very, sir. I think the Devilfish Wives’ Club is hanging us in effigy.”

“Me, you mean. Can’t be helped. I’ll brief the officers once we’re submerged.”

“How long’ll we be out, sir?”

“Could be as few as three weeks.”

“Must be important.” Pacino looked at Rapier over his coffee mug. “It is. What’s the status of the underway?”