Pacino acknowledged and the captain hung up on him. Pacino was already seeing some of what he’d seen on Piranha, the casual first-name-basis joking around among the officers off duty, the iron-hard formality on duty.
“Mr. No,” Pacino said, “We have permission to start the reactor.”
No nodded. “Call the Feng back and tell him the skipper okayed the reactor startup.”
Pacino got up to grab the land line, called Lewinsky and made the report to him.
“Call aft,” Li No ordered.
Pacino buzzed maneuvering again and relayed the order to Dankleff. He sat down at the table. Li No looked up.
“Paratrooper pin?” No pointed to Pacino’s chest, where his silver airborne wings were pinned above his pocket, the eagle’s wings surrounding a parachute canopy.
Pacino nodded. “I went to jump school at Fort Benning before third class year, spent a month training with the Army, some SEALs and a bunch of zoomie cadets.” Zoomies were Air Force Academy cadets, in the dismissive lexicon of Annapolis midshipmen. “Did PT in full combat gear. Thirteen-mile group runs. Twenty-mile forced marches. Jumped out of half a dozen jets. Managed to avoid breaking my legs.” That was the year before the Princess Dragon terrorist attack that almost killed his father and took him out of his chief of naval operations position, Pacino thought glumly. How easy and simple life had been before the Princess Dragon and Piranha disasters.
Li No nodded. “Nice. Oh, where is it?” He moved the piles on the table, finding a slender box with a pad computer inside. “Eisenhart said to give you this,” No said. He motioned Pacino to sign for it on No’s tablet. “It’s got the secret, top secret and codeword-classified data file apps, plus information on all ship’s systems. It has everything in there you need to know to qualify in submarines. Put in your military identification number and answer the security questions. The software will guide you in from there. If you lose it, you may as well kiss your career good-bye, so my recommendation to you is, don’t lose it. It’s got a sensor in it that knows if it’s leaving the ship’s hull. If you were to bring it topside, it would self-destruct. Lomax was standing duty a year or so ago and liked to tuck his computer inside his belt in back. Fucker forgot it was there, climbed out the plug hatch, computer destructed and literally set his pants on fire and burned his ass. You can imagine the jokes he faced after that.”
“Got it,” Pacino said. He opened up the tablet and started entering security information, and finally it opened up to a page full of app icons. He found the classified news files and opened them up, scanning through the headlines, none of which in any way resembled the open-source news articles. He decided to enter a search for Elias Sotheby.
A warning notification flashed up, stating he wasn’t approved to read the information at his clearance level. He’d have to petition to Eisenhart to get the right clearance, he thought. He canceled the search and looked up at No.
“Can I ask you a serious question?”
Li No answered absently, his concentration remaining on his work. “Ask away.”
“Before I do, can you rig the ship for an airgap?”
No looked up and stared at Pacino for a moment. He picked up his VHF radio. “Duty Chief, Duty Officer,” he called.
The wardroom door opened and Nygard stepped in. “You rang?” he said.
“Rig ship for a class alpha air gap,” No ordered, putting his radio down.
“Sir, we’re all in the middle of pre-underway checks and a thousand other things, not the least of which is emails to and from squadron.”
“We’ll rig communications back to in-port in five minutes.”
Nygard sighed wearily. “Aye aye, sir, rig ship for class alpha air gap.” He set down his radio and pulled the battery out of it. Li No did the same. Nygard left and No grabbed a microphone with a black coiled wire out of a cubbyhole by the captain’s seat. His accent rang throughout the ship, “Rig ship for class alpha air gap.” He waited a few minutes, and then Nygard came back in.
“Ship’s rigged for class alpha air gap by me, checked by Petty Officer Miller.”
“Very well,” No said. Nygard stepped out. No got up and locked both doors of the wardroom.
“What do you want to know?”
“XO said that Vermont sank the yacht belonging to Elias Sotheby. That our SEALs killed Sotheby. Is all that true?”
Li No blinked, then frowned. “Yeah. So what?”
Pacino blinked. “So during peacetime, you just sank a yacht and killed its owner?”
No acted as if he didn’t care. “Yeah. What of it?”
Pacino stared at No. “You just killed him in cold blood?”
No slapped shut his tablet cover, tossed it roughly aside and looked up at Pacino, frowning. “That’s what we do. We’re a project boat. Didn’t XO clue you in to that?”
“He did,” Pacino said. “It’s just kind of hard to believe.”
No shrugged. “There had to be a good reason for it. We don’t do things randomly, we just follow our very specific orders. We just aren’t privy to the entire context of the op. The story of why we did that is compartmented six ways at least. There are all of maybe five people on earth who know the complete story.”
“That’s amazing,” Pacino said.
“Hell,” Li No said. “That’s nothing. Wait till you see what we do next.”
“What is next?” Pacino asked.
“Nothing. Forget I said that. Any other questions?” When Pacino shook his head, No reached for the phone and dialed three numbers. “Yeah, send the Duty Chief to the wardroom.”
Nygard reappeared. Li No looked up at him. “Secure the rig for class alpha air gap and rig ship for in-port communications.”
Nygard repeated back the order. No announced on the 1MC, “Secure the rig for class alpha air gap, rig ship for in-port comms.” He and Nygard resuscitated their VHF radios and Nygard left.
The 1MC clicked again. Dankleff’s voice. “The reactor,” he announced dramatically, “is critical.”
“About time,” No said. “Oh, by the way, Pacino, you’re on the maneuvering watch’s watch bill as junior officer of the deck. If and when we get ordered out, you’re driving us out of port.”
“Okay,” Pacino said. He’d done that on Piranha without incident. If he could drive a submarine as a midshipman, he thought, he sure as hell could as an officer.
No pointed to Pacino’s computer. “Get in there and study the charts and the tides. Memorize it so you know this port inside and out.”
Nygard put his head in. “Duty Officer and Duty Officer U-I, the ship’s communications are rigged for in-port by me and checked by Petty Officer Miller, and the SEALs have arrived topside. They want one of you up there.”
“Get topside and get the SEALs signed in.” No ordered. “I’ll meet you in lower level aft of the torpedo room. Starboard side, there’s commando berthing. And just some advice from me to you. Don’t try to mess around with them. Those guys are scary.”
Pacino climbed the ladder of the plug trunk to the topside doghouse and emerged through the tent flap to the outside world, noticing that the morning’s clouds had cleared and bright sunshine illuminated the pier. He took a deep breath, the air smelling odd after being inside the submarine. He saluted the ensign flag aft and Petty Officer Miller, the topside watch, and stepped over the gangway to the pier.
On the pier was a flat black two-ton truck with staked sides loaded with equipment containers. In front of it stood a tough-looking black man, maybe forty years old, wearing scuffed black boots with skulls on them, ragged black jeans, a Harley T-shirt showing a burning skull and a leather vest with biker outlaw patches on it. Under his biker vest was the butt of a large caliber handgun peeking out from a shoulder holster. On his other side, a fourteen-inch K-Bar combat knife was secured in a black leather sheath. He had a thin face, prominent cheekbones, hollow cheeks, a few days of beard growth over pockmarked skin and a scar on his forehead disappearing into his hairline. He was about Pacino’s height but outweighed him by forty pounds at least, most of it muscle. He looked at Pacino, his hard face easing into an intent, kind look. Pacino’s eyes narrowed, thinking a facial expression of kindness was out of character to the SEAL’s costume, or uniform, or whatever they called this grubby outlaw look.