He walked into the aft end of The Room — the crew’s name for the space that was cavernous and open when empty of torpedoes and cramped and tight when the ship was loaded out. On this run, Augusta was carrying a full load.
Daminski walked down the narrow aisle between the weapon racks, running his crooked fingers along the flanks of a Mark 50 torpedo. The weapon was cool and shining in the bright lights of the room, her Astroturf green paint gleaming. Stencilled black letters near the tip read mk 50 mod alpha warshot ser 1178. Back over his shoulder Daminski could hear the sound of a man grunting with exertion as he lifted weights. The torpedo room was one of few spaces available for exercise, though the crew spent much of their spare time in their coffin-sized racks sleeping away the patrol. The more they slept, the shorter the run would seem.
Senior Chief Terry Betts sat on a cushioned bench at the forward bulkhead of the room at the torpedo local-control console. A two-liter bottle of Classic Coke was set in a special holder on the console; Betts sipped the soda from an Augusta coffee mug. He was a huge bear of a man, his gut protruding almost half the way to his knees. His thick fore arms stuck out of the rolled-up sleeves of his poopysuit, a custom-tailored one made to hold his tremendous frame.
Daminski smiled as he approached the grizzled chief.
“Terry. You’re awake. Something wrong?” Daminski’s face was suddenly alive with humor.
“Me? I heard you’d been down ever since the launch, there, Rocket.” Betts took a long pull on his Coke.
“That’s Captain Rocket to you. Senior Chief.” Daminski and Betts went back decades to the USS Dace, an old dinosaur Permit-class submarine when Daminski had been a green ensign torpedo officer and Betts had been the division’s first class petty officer. The two had always played squadron softball in the spring and football in the autumn as long as they were both stationed in Norfolk. Whenever Daminski was bored he liked to relive old games with Betts, bringing back the glory of that one perfect touchdown, or the time the softball had flown what seemed a quarter-mile away.
Daminski sat down next to Belts and let out a whoosh of breath, the feeling of heaviness sneaking into him in spite of Betts’s presence.
“We still looking at going home in three weeks, Cap’n?” Betts asked.
“I guess. Not that there’s much to come home to.”
Betts studied a Mark 50 torpedo on the central rack.
“Myra got another bug up her ass?”
“Worse than usual. This time she—”
A phone at Betts’s side whooped. Betts scooped up the handset, the black telephone dwarfed in his massive fist.
“Torpedo room. Betts … yeah, he’s here. Hold on.” Betts handed Daminski the phone. “Conn for you. Skipper.”
“Captain.”
“Off’sa’deck, sir. Request permission to come to periscope depth, sir.”
“Whatya got?”
The officer of the deck gave the ship’s course, speed, and depth and the distance to the surface-ship contacts being tracked. Satisfied that the ship wouldn’t collide with some rustbucket tanker bound for Naples, Daminski ordered the ship to periscope depth. The submarine would remain submerged, hiding under the cover of the waves, interacting with the world above only, extending the radio mast to listen to the satellite transmission of their radio messages, extending the periscope to avoid a collision. Daminski handed the phone back to Betts. Even as the big torpedoman chief reached over to replace the handset in its cradle, the deck inclined upward to a fifteen-degree angle as the O.O.D drove Augusta up toward the surface 500 feet overhead.
Betts asked again about Myra. Daminski thought about finishing the story, then thought better of it, dismissing the impending breakup of his marriage with a wave of his football-damaged hand.
“Hell with it, Terry. The real reason I came down is that you’re looking kind of wimpy these days. I think the fat’s gotten into your arms there. What do you say? Loser buys the keg.”
Betts stared down his nose at Daminski. Daminski was fond of frequenting the bars on the piers and arm-wrestling anyone who was foolish enough to take him on, but he had always had the intelligence never to challenge Betts.
“Captain, I will break your arm, and then you’ll bust me to third class.”
“Come on.”
Betts picked up the bench and carried it to the starboard weapon rack, to the free space where no weapons were stowed. He bent and brought a tool chest to the opposite side of the corner of the rack, kneeled on his box, brought his huge arm down on the rack and stared at Daminski.
The deck had leveled off and was now rocking gently in the waves near the surface. Two decks above, the O.O.D would be on the periscope while the bigmouth radio antenna reached for the sky, picking up the radio traffic from the orbiting communications satellite. The GPS navigation system would be swallowing a data dump from the navigation satellite, pinpointing their location in the wide ocean to within a few yards.
Daminski kneeled down on the toolbox, his knee protesting from three operations to repair damaged cartilage. He put his elbow on the rack, his ham hand only two-thirds the size of Betts’s. The two men grasped hands, Daminski’s fingers so crooked that his middle finger had to be straight to allow him to clasp his other fingers around Betts’s hand.
“Giving me the finger, huh?” Betts asked, sounding serious.
“That’ll just piss me off and you’ll have a compound fracture.”
Daminski was grinning, his lips pulled back so far every tooth in his mouth showed, a war face he had cultivated since his days on the Dace. It did nothing for Betts, who two decades before had watched Rocket Ron practicing the face in the mirror.
“On three,” Betts said, his face already looking slightly red, his wrist tense, ready to cock when the contest began.
“One, two, three!”
The two arms jumped, the tendons and muscles straining.
Sweat broke out on Betts’s forehead. Daminski’s face muscles trembled. Two, then three men in the compartment silently gathered around.
Betts’s fist had cocked slightly inward, pulling Daminski’s hand in an unnatural twist. Daminski’s arm, however, had not given an inch, still ramrod straight, if anything allowing his hand to twist while still pushing for an angle. But the senior chief had over a hundred pounds on the captain. Both arms began to shake, slightly at first, then more pronounced.
Daminski’s hand began to travel backward toward the rack surface as Betts bore down on him. In one grunt Daminski recovered, almost all the way to the vertical. A shrill rip sounded in the room as Daminski’s poopysuit shoulder seam let go. Daminski grunted as his arm began to force the massive chief’s hand backward, perhaps an inch.
The phone from the control room whooped, making Betts jump slightly. Daminski sensed an opportunity but Betts took a breath, tensed his arm, pushing the smaller Damin ski’s back to the vertical, then farther. Daminski’s hand was slowly sliding down toward the rack.
One of the men in the room picked up the phone. “Captain, it’s for you, sir. Officer of the deck.”
“Tell him to wait.” Betts took advantage of the interruption and pushed Daminski’s hand farther down, now almost at a forty-five-degree angle, halfway down to the rack.
Daminski kept fighting, his breaths wheezing.
“Captain says to wait, sir,” the phone talker said. “Yes sir, wait one.” Then to Daminski, “Captain, O.O.D says there’s a flash radio message for you, personal for the captain. He says he needs you in control. Now, sir.”
Daminski looked up at Betts, who was smiling.
“I’d better go. Chief.”
Betts’s hand kept pushing on Daminski’s, but the effort to get the captain down had cost him. Daminski’s hand was fighting its way back up.