“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she and my father were having problems.”
Carrie nodded. “So it goes,” she said. “If I hadn’t died, eventually we’d have gotten married, and we’d have fought over money, and years later, there would have been a bitter divorce. I would have hated you. You would have hated me.”
He nodded, sensing she told the truth. “But we’ll always have the Grafton,” he said, as if he were Humphrey Bogart saying, we’ll always have Paris.
She smiled sweetly and held both his hands in hers. “Yes, Anthony. We’ll always have the Grafton.”
He downed the rest of the scotch, then looked at her. “The Shkval in tube five?” he asked.
Carolyn Alameda nodded seriously. “The Shkval in tube five. But go active first. Nail his position down, solid. Do it for me, Anthony.”
He nodded at her. “I will, Carrie. And Carrie?”
“Yes, Anthony?”
“I miss you. I miss you so much. You left my life so suddenly.”
“I had to go, Anthony. Just like you do now.”
She waved her hand at him and the Grafton Street Pub and Grill evaporated and the central command post of the Russian-built Iranian submarine Panther appeared to take its place.
36
AOIC Anthony Pacino pulled his face off the deck, the bloody puddle sticking to his cheek. He felt his face, his hand coming back bloody. He wiped his hand on his coveralls and looked up at OIC Dieter Dankleff.
“What the hell happened?”
“Oh, Lipstick, nice of you to show up to the party,” Dankleff said sarcastically. “While you were out, the Shkval we jettisoned exploded and the shock caused another reactor scram. We did a fast recovery startup, and for your information, there’s a Russian torpedo out there chasing us. While it’s true, our good friends on the Vermont launched Mark 48s in countermeasure mode against the Russian fish, there’s no guarantee they’ll work. So, you know, the odds say it’s a long shot for us to last long enough to see another sunrise.”
“Tube five,” Pacino said, rubbing his head.
“What about it? All our tube doors are stuck shut after we ejected tube six’s Shkval after the motherfucker decided to explode about a foot away from the bow.”
“What’s our depth?”
“A hundred meters,” Aquatong said from the ship control station.
“U-Boat, take her to four hundred meters, then back to twenty, then back down to four hundred, back to twenty. Cycle it five times, maybe six. It’ll unstick the torpedo tube door to tube five.”
“What makes you so sure? And why tube five?”
“The Dominatrix Navigatrix at the Grafton Pub told me,” Pacino said, holding up his palm. “Don’t ask. Just do it.” He left control and hurried to the sonar room, where Albanese stared glumly at his display. The deck inclined steeply downward and the hull steel groaned as it adjusted to the pressure of the deep.
“We need to ping active,” Pacino said. “Wait for my word from central command.”
The deck inclined steeply upward as central command pulled the boat back shallow, and an eerie stomach-sinking feeling came to Pacino as the deck once again tilted downward, the submarine plunging back deep.
“These angles and dangles — we’re trying to unstick the torpedo tube doors.”
Pacino hurried to the ladderway and slid down to the middle level, then forward in the steeply inclined passageway to the hatch to the torpedo room. The deck was level again as Pacino opened the hatch, then inclined steeply upward, the angle helping the heavy steel of the hatch clang into the latch. Pacino stepped through the hatchway into the compartment, half jogging up the steep slope of the central catwalk to the port console, where Lieutenant Varney stood, frowning at the array of lights and controls, Captain Ahmadi beside him.
“Tube five,” Pacino breathed, winded from the run from central command.
“What about it?”
“I want it ready in all respects. Power up the Shkval, pressurize the tube and prepare to open the outer door.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you,” Varney said. “All our tube doors are stuck.”
The deck tilted steeply downward again, the hull screaming and shrieking above them, five fast pops coming from forward to aft.
“Trust me,” Pacino said. “Flood and pressurize five.”
Varney opened the flood valve to tube five with the vent open. When the tube vent could be heard spilling seawater, he shut the vent valve. The deck flattened out at what must be test depth.
Pacino reached for a phone. “Central command, torpedo room. Steady on depth twenty meters.”
The deck tilted upward and Pacino fell into the port tube rack, having to steady himself with a rack-mounted hand-hold. After a few minutes, the deck leveled off again.
“Try tube five’s outer door now,” he ordered Varney. Varney punched a fixed function key. A green bar-shaped light went out and a red light shaped like a doughnut lit up.
“Goddamn, Lipstick, you’re a genius,” Varney said. “Tube door’s open!”
“Power it up, Boozy,” Pacino said. “We’re going to send it as a nice present to that Yasen-M that’s shooting at us.”
“You got it, AOIC. Good luck to us.”
Pacino turned and looked at Varney. The next words out of his mouth surprised him. “May God look kindly on us all today.” He spun and ran out the hatch to the second compartment passageway.
Lieutenant Commander Al Spichovich spoke up from the weapons control console. “Captain, Coordinator, OOD, that’s it.” He took off his headset and stood up from his console. “That’s the last torpedo. If Master One shoots again, we’re helpless.”
Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov looked at him and nodded, then turned back to her command console display. If the last active sonar pulse’s display were to be believed, all of the offensive torpedoes launched at Vermont and Panther had been neutralized by Vermont’s Mark 48s. She looked up at Seagraves and Quinnivan. “Master One’s quiet,” she said. “Maybe he’s out of weapons as well.”
Petty Officer Mercer turned from his BQQ-10 stack. “OOD, I’ve got strange transients from Panther.”
“Describe them, Sonar,” Romanov said to him, leaning over his seatback.
“For one thing, he’s on reactor power and running north at flank, but his hull is popping like crazy. Bang, bang, bang, Nav.”
Romanov looked at Quinnivan and shrugged. “I’ve got nothing,” she said.
It was then they all heard the sound, audible with the naked ear.
AOIC Anthony Pacino arrived in the central command post, Captain Ahmadi immediately behind him.
“Do you know how to program this thing?” Pacino asked. Ahmadi nodded. “U-Boat, order all stop, turn to the southwest and hover at this depth.”
Dankleff made the orders to Grip Aquatong at the ship control station, and the vibrations of the deck stopped, the ride becoming quiet again. Pacino stepped aft past The Million Valve Manifold to the sonar room.