Piranha: Firing Point

“You’re right, I do have feelings for you,” he admitted waiting for the pang of guilt to set in, but it was late.

Colleen smiled. “I want three kids.”

Pacino laughed, his mouth open to reply, when the door lock clicked, then the latch, and the door opened against the jamb. It was Patton, one eyebrow raised.

“Loss of battle control!” a speaker in the overhead boomed.

“Back to work,” O’Shaughnessy sighed, turning back to her panel. Pacino waved at her and left the room, pulling Patton after him.

“Shove off the personnel-transfer tanker,” Pacino said. “She’s staying with us.”

“Is she nuts? We’re going to be—”

“We’re going to be without a battlecontrol system unless she’s onboard to fix it.”

Patton sighed, walking back to control. When Pacino arrived there, Patton had already ordered the ship to return deep at emergency flank. He looked at Pacino strangely.

“You got a second. Admiral?”

Patton waved him into his captain’s cabin. On the table was a package wrapped in brown paper, with an envelope taped to it. The envelope said, PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER.

“I’ve already read the note,” Patton said. “It said to give the package to you when we were close to the operation area.” He looked at Pacino, curious.

Pacino opened the package. The brown paper was wrapped around a folded black cloth, the material coarse and heavy. As he unfolded it all the way, Patton whistled.

It was a Jolly Roger pirate flag, the skull and crossbones white on the black field. The flag was large, the size of a bedsheet. Above the grinning skull was the legend in uneven white letters, USS DEVILFISH, and below the crossbones the legend read, you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t tryin. Pacino looked at it, startled.

The flag had flown on the bridge of the first Devilfish, and it was one of two things Pacino had pulled out of the captain’s stateroom before he had abandoned ship.

The second had been a photograph of his father standing in front of his submarine, the doomed Stingray. Back in Norfolk, Pacino had taken the flag and the photo to the Stingray monument, a black marble obelisk dedicated to the men who had died in the sinking of the submarine, Pacino’s father’s name engraved first on the list. Reverently Pacino had bent to leave the flag and photograph, and had limped on his crutches away, never expecting to see the flag again.

He had heard reports about it, though. Someone reported that on a visit to see Admiral Donchez at his Commander Submarines Atlantic Headquarters, the Jolly Roger flew over the building next to the American flag. Pacino had shrugged it off as a false rumor. But here the flag was, yet another reminder of Donchez.

“Let me see the note,” Pacino said. The note simply said. Give this to Admiral Pacino when the ship is close to the operation area. It was in Dick Donchez’s handwriting.

Pacino swallowed hard.

“Hang it in the control room,” he said to Patton.

POINT ECHO HOLD POSITION 40 MILES EAST OF THE NAZE-YAKUSHIMA GAP

USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1

Pacino checked his Rolex. Thirty minutes to zero hour.

He had been pacing the ship for the last few hours, circling between the computer room, control, sonar, and Patton’s stateroom.

Now Paully White, Patton, and Pacino were sitting at Patton’s conference table, looking at the chart display of the East China Sea. Pacino felt his stomach tense, his pulse racing, the pre-game jitters thrumming through him. He struggled to find something useful he could do.

He had already brought the Piranha up to periscope depth and briefed Bruce Phillips on the final details of the war plan. There was nothing to do now but wait.

What if he was wrong? he thought. What if the subs were hundreds of miles south, or dispersed throughout the sea? What would he do then? He could do nothing until the aircraft dropped their Yo-Yo remote sensors into the Naze-Yakushima Gap, and then the battle would begin or he would be forced to switch to Plan B. For a moment he thought about Colleen, but that was like poking his hand into a hornet’s nest, feelings overwhelmingly strong on the other side of that mental wall.

All he would allow himself to feel was concern for Colleen and hope that nothing happened to her. Or him, he thought.

When the clock reached 2255 local time, Pacino stood.

“Let’s man up,” he said, walking forward into the control room. He ducked out through the forward door to the passageway to its end and into the computer room.

“Man… battle stations!” the overhead speaker boomed, repeating the message.

“Well, this is it,” he said.

As Colleen looked up at him, her face was a mask of worry. Her eyes rotated between him and her computer screen. “Good luck, Michael,” she said, and Pacino thought it sounded so strange to hear that from her lips, yet so good.

“You too, honey,” he said, hating himself for the weird way it sounded and made him feel.