Voyage of the Devilfish

By the TDU room was a steel ladder to the lower level that Rapier slid down. Rapier’s inspection now took him through the gyro room below the crew’s mess, to the Auxiliary Machinery room, then the torpedo room. In each space he made sure there was no unsecured equipment that could get damaged if the ship took on a severe angle or suddenly went into a roll. He lingered in the torpedo room, a long wide space built for weapon storage. A central aisle threaded between the waist-high storage table for the upper tubes. The port and starboard tables were packed with Mark 49 torpedoes, each painted green and stencilled with white block letters— MOD B HULLBUSTER. At the centerline were the experimental Mark 50’s, painted glossy red and stencilled HULLCRUSHER and looking long and graceful and fast. Forward of the weapon-storage area was the central-torpedo local-control panel, where the torpedo chief flooded and drained tubes and where the weapons could be moved from the panel with powerful hydraulic rams. On either side of the local control panel were the tubes themselves, canted outward from the centerline because the torpedo room was amidships. Since the torpedoes were socalled smart weapons, it no longer mattered in which direction they were launched… they would turn toward the target impact point by themselves. The tubes were embedded in water tanks, which were piped to the ship’s high-pressure air-system. Air pressurized the water tank, which was open to the aft end of the torpedo tube. The pressurized water pushed the weapon out of the tube, flushing it out. No air bubbles would escape to allow them to be detected. On each tube’s inner door hung a sign, WARSHOT LOADED.

Rapier checked the tubes, found them dry, their interlocks functional. He nodded to Chief Robertson, who sat at the local control panel. He then called control to tell them he was going to look into the battery compartment below the torpedo room. He lifted the hatch and peered down. The space was three feet high, thirty feet long, twenty feet wide. Once inside, a person would be lying on top of the batteries. Entry required removal of all metal objects on the body to avoid shorting the cells, each of which was the size of a household’s water heater and full of sulfuric acid. Satisfied, Rapier stood, lowered the hatch and left the torpedo room. Rapier knew the nuclear spaces aft would be ready. Chief Engineer Matt Delaney’s troops, the nukes, always were more squared away than the operations and weapons sailors, at least they thought they were. He crossed the centerline passageway to the captain’s stateroom and knocked. No reply. He opened the door and saw Pacino sitting at the table, staring into space.

“Sir?” Pacino focused and looked at Rapier.

“I’ve completed my tour. The ship is rigged for sea, sir. No major discrepancies.”

“Very well, XO,” Pacino said, his voice a monotone.

“Anything else, sir?” Pacino shook his head, and Rapier got out of there. Clearly the captain had a lot on his mind. As the door shut gently and Rapier’s footsteps faded down the ladder to operations middle level, Pacino shook off memories of his father and the Russian admiral somewhere out there… He got up from the table and made his way forward into the control room to the navigation alcove. Even at flank speed they would not be able to dive until mid-afternoon because the continental shelf was some 150 miles east of the Virginia coastline. The Devilfish, after all, was designed for submerged speed… on the surface she could only do 20 knots because of the need to fight the bow wave. Pacino checked his watch impatiently, and began to calculate the time it would take to get to the marginal ice zone north of Iceland. Twenty minutes later the wardroom table was crowded with officers around the table, some clasping their hands together on the blue leather cover, some doodling on spiral notebook pages. Executive Officer Rapier took his seat to the right of the chair near the end reserved for the captain. Navigator lan Christman stood at the corner of the room at a curtain. Christman had two modes of operation: frantic or sleepy. Pacino walked into the room, accepted a cup of coffee, sat at the head of the table and waved at Christman.

“Go ahead, Nav.” Christman stepped into the pantry, the small closet between the wardroom and galley, shut its outer door and threw the bolt. He shut both wardroom doors and locked them, sealing the room. Back in the corner of the room by the captain’s chair he drew the curtain aside, revealing an Arctic Ocean chart and a blueprint of the Russian OMEGA submarine, both stamped TOP SECRET. He turned to the men in the room and pointed to the chart.