As they rounded the point and entered the gulf, Sorensen slowed to get his bearings. Fogarty chattered excitedly about the villas along the beach, the icecream town of Pozzuoli visible four miles away, the range of mountains that loomed over the gulf.
"C'mon, Sorensen. Which one is Vesuvius?"
"How do I know? The one blowing smoke rings."
"Where's Pompeii? It's supposed to be around here."
Sorensen became annoyed. "Look, Fogarty, I know this is all new to you, but try to restrain yourself. I'm not a tour guide and we've got a little job to do." He started putting on his scuba gear. "You check your tanks, kid?"
"Yeah."
"Look, I don't mean to be hard on you. You'll have plenty of chances to play tourist. Hey, you know what you get when you nuke Naples?"
"What?"
"Plutonium pizza."
"Jesus, Sorensen, you're a sick man."
"You think it's a joke?"
"I hope it is."
"Well, it's not. Listen, I live in a submarine. I'm a bubblehead, and that gives me a certain point of view." He paused to gesture widely, taking in the entire region around Naples. "This is a target. As long as Naples is the home port of the Sixth Fleet it will be destroyed in the first salvo. A million people are going to die here, blasted by the Russians. As far as I'm concerned they're already dead. They don't exist. I don't want to know who they are or how they live."
"Do you really think we're going to have a war?"
Sorensen looked around. "We're already at war. It's just that we don't shoot each other, but we do everything else. We're fighting for control of the sea. Whoever controls the oceans rules the roost. When the Russians put that sub in the Med, the one we stumbled across yesterday, they took a big step in that direction. They're not supposed to get through Gibraltar undetected, you know. That's bad news. If they can go on with this shit, sooner or later they'll be able to track our missile subs in the Med. That threatens our strategic deterrence — you know, the one they make all those speeches about — and that's not allowed."
"But we track theirs too. We know the location of every one of their subs in the Atlantic and the Caribbean—"
"Except we're not them. We've had superior forces all along. We can waste them any time we want, only we don't. We aren't so sure that that would happen if the situation were reversed."
"And we don't want to find out…"
"Maybe I don't give a shit. I don't know… we're all bugs crawling over a ball of dirt on the edge of some nowhere galaxy. You think we're all there is? If we go down like the dinosaurs maybe the whales will get their chance. They'd probably do a better job… Hey, ain't I profound… you'd think I knew something." He looked at his compass and checked his bearings, then with a flourish zipped up his wetsuit. "C'mon, sailor, drop anchor. We're here."
Murky green light filtered down into the gulf. Sorensen and Fogarty followed the anchor rope to the bottom, where Sorensen consulted his compass. He carried the beacon and Fogarty the magnet.
Fogarty expected to find a bouillabaisse in the gulf, rascasse and eels, scampi and sole. Instead he found a garbage dump, long since fished out. The debris of centuries littered the bottom. Mixed with the silt were layers of slime, condoms, volcanic ash, broken statuary and Pepsi bottles.
It didn't take long to find their objective — a dark shape looming up from the deep, the mangled hulk of a World War Two German submarine. The stern was half-buried in the silt, and the rest of the wreck was covered with algae and rust. On the conning tower they read: U-62.
Sorensen took the magnet from Fogarty, swam to the sub and attached the beacon to the hull. He switched it on, and they listened to the beep.
They swam slowly around the wreck. Half the bow was torn away, and around the edges of the gaping hole the metal was twisted outward. In one awful moment a torpedo had exploded inside the boat, sinking it instantly. Since the hatches were closed and the radars and periscopes retracted, it was clear that the accident had occurred while the boat was submerged.
Sorensen lingered, looking for a souvenir, but the old sub had been stripped by divers long ago, and besides, it was too dangerous to go inside without lights. Sorensen jerked his thumbs toward the surface, and together they began the slow ascent.
On the surface the wind died, the light faded and the bay turned smooth as a sheet of Formica. As they approached the breakwater the sub was a black silhouette looming against the gray washes of the tender.
Sorensen imagined he could see radiation seeping from the hull aft of the sail. To him. Barracuda glowed in the dark, her atomic fire burning with an intensity that could not be contained.
Back in the crew quarters Sorensen whistled cheerfully as he rummaged around in his tiny locker for a cigarette. He found books, tapes, electronics manuals and uniforms, but no smokes.
"Say, Fogarty, can I bum a cigarette?"
They were alone. Fogarty lay on his bunk in jockey shorts and glowered at the bulkhead. He had not said a word during the ride back to the ship.
"What's the matter with you? You quit smokin' or what?"
Fogarty tossed a pack of Luckys across the passageway. Sorensen took one. "Some folks would pay a fortune to go scuba diving in the Med."
"Christ almighty, Sorensen. There were dead men on that boat—"
"Maybe, maybe not. The ocean is full of dead men and sunken ships. Their wars are over. Those guys on that U-boat died a long time ago. Fish ate them before you were born. It's ancient history."
"They were sailors just like you and me—"
"They were not like you and me. They were Nazis. They were the enemy. It was lucky for our side that they blew themselves up."
"Ah, come on, Sorensen, that's just it. A fish blew up inside their boat. I can't even imagine what it was like in there when that torpedo exploded. They never had a chance."
Sorensen nodded. "I wouldn't think too much on it. When we come back here next week we can borrow some tanks and dive down to old U-62 again. We'll go in there with lights, and you can find out what it was like. It'll be an object lesson in what can happen if somebody makes a mistake underwater."
"U-62 didn't have nuclear torpedoes. If we blew up in the Bay of Naples, plutonium pizza."
"C'mon, Fogarty, lighten up." He punched the young sailor playfully on the shoulder. "Listen, kid, you've got a bad habit. You think too much. It isn't going to make your life any easier, I guarantee you. Sooner or later everybody on this ship has to come to terms with the fact that we're a fucking bomb waiting to go off. You've got a head start. You're green, but you think about these things. You have to grow up fast, we need guys like you down here." Sorensen grinned. "At least on this ship we might get a chance to waste a Russian missile sub before she blows up New York City."
"And until then?"
"Hey, man, we all live in our little yellow submarine. Relax, try thinking of yourself as a pioneer exploring life underwater. The price for the privilege is that you have to work for the navy. So you put up with a lot of chickenshit. But at least you get a nice clean comfortable air-conditioned submarine to drive you around, all meals provided. You get the best toys and the best talent to operate them. And for excitement you get to play Cowboys and Cossacks with the Russians. Some deal, right?"
"Except a forty-million-dollar submarine designed to kill people isn't a toy."
"Well, we haven't killed anybody yet, and as far as I know we aren't planning on doing it today. Listen, Fogarty," Sorensen said, his voice slowing down and lowering in tone, "as long as you are on this ship I'm your supervisor. For some stupid reason I like you. I think you will turn into a fine sonar operator, so I'm giving you a choice. Just keep your mouth shut, do your job, or get the fuck off this ship today. You hear me, sailor?"