Terminal Run

The lone unqualified junior officer, who did not yet have his dolphins, was an ensign named Duke Phelps. He sat at the end of the wardroom table near Pacino. Phelps stood six-four and towered over the other officers, perpetually slouching and bent over to clear the overhead obstructions. He was studying a piping manual. As Pacino looked over at it, Phelps reached into a drawer and handed Pacino a copy of a similar manual.

“First few pages are a map of the ship. Might help you out.”

Pacino turned to the first plate and tried to memorize the ship map, finding the wardroom on the upper-level port side beneath the sail. Then his stateroom, the crew’s mess, and the middle level with the control room and the captain’s and XO’s staterooms, the lower-level torpedo room. The forward compartment, aft compartment, and reactor compartment were all shown on the map with their levels and equipment identified. But the special ops compartment, the added ninety feet between the forward and reactor compartments, was labeled simply classified. The only detail that showed was the access tunnel leading aft in line with the reactor compartment tunnel.

“Hey, Duke,” Pacino muttered, feeling odd calling an officer anything but “sir” as he had been required since he arrived at Annapolis. “What’s in the special ops compartment?”

Phelps, who had seemed an easygoing youth with a sense of humor, frowned at Pacino. “This run it’s a Deep Submergence Vehicle, a DSV. Three spherical pressure hulls connected by two hatches. Goes to the bottom with SEAL commando divers and NSA spooks.”

“NSA?”

“National Security Agency. The electronic warfare thugs, the guys who eavesdrop on communications and fight off computer hackers. With the network-centric military, an electronic hijacker could disrupt the whole works, or worse, use our own guns against us. So the NSA guys have their own DSV to find ocean-bottom data highway cables and deep-sea server nodes on the sea floor. Since satellites can be subject to eavesdropping, a lot of the intel and sensitive com ms are passing through these undersea cables. So our guys go deep, find them, and tap into them. We’ve got half the world wired for sound. When the spooks are onboard, we’re just a bus for them. This run we get to forget them for once and do an actual submarine op. And by the way, since I opened my mouth, all that’s classified top secret, so not a word to anyone. That includes family, roommates, girlfriends, anyone, even other submarine officers. If you blab, you will find your door forced open by NSA guys in black suits and you’ll have a two-man room at Fort Leavenworth Military Prison. The Black Pig is a project boat, Patch, which means it’s top secret from the sonar dome to the propulsor shroud. Got it?”

“Got it,” Pacino said, swallowing, starting to see why his father had never talked about what he did.

Toasty O’Neal came into the room, and the XO glared up at him. “Nice of you to come, Toasty,” she grumbled. “We all cleared for this briefing?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said to her as he took the remaining open seat at the table.

“Nav, you ready?” she asked Crossfield. The black navigator stood up and lowered the display screen against the long inboard bulkhead.

“Yes, XO,” he said quietly.

“Eng, call the captain,” Schultz ordered. Alameda nodded and grabbed a phone and buzzed Captain Catardi.

“Sir, we’re ready for the op brief.” Alameda looked over at Pacino. “Yes, Cap’n, he’s here. Aye, sir.” She hung up and looked at Schultz. “He’s coming.”

The XO passed around the coffeepot and everyone filled up. Captain Catardi came in the forward door. The room was silent as a church. Pacino expected the officers to stand as the senior officer entered, but they remained seated.

“Good morning, Captain,” XO Schultz said formally.

“Morning, XO, Eng, Nav, officers.” His coveralls were pressed and creased and he looked as fresh as if he’d been on vacation. His silver oak leaf collar emblems, dolphins and skull-and-crossbones capital ship command pin shimmered under the bright lights of the wardroom. He slipped into the captain’s chair at the end of the table. “Well, Navigator, let’s hear it.” Schultz poured Catardi a cup of coffee, and the captain took a long pull and sat back expectantly.

“Good morning, Captain, XO, officers,” Crossfield began. Pacino wondered at the contrast between the chummy fraternal closeness of the crew with the formality of expression on and off watch. And not only the formality, but the unique language of the ship. At every turn Pacino found himself corrected when he said something wrong. Alameda had corrected him harshly when he had asked if he should close the door. “Never say ‘close’ on a submarine, nonqual. It sounds like the word ‘blow’ on an internal communication circuit, and ‘blow’ means we’re flooding and the OOD should emergency blow to the surface. You don’t ‘close’ the fucking door, you ‘shut’ it. Got it?”