"How'd you know I was here?" Sorensen wasn't angry, merely curious.
"I'm chief of the boat, Sorensen. It's my job to know where every one of you cabrones is every minute. Besides" — Lopez lowered his voice and winked—"me and Suzy are old pals. She called the ship and told me you were here. Let's go."
Sorensen looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and he needed a shave. His uniform was rumpled. He drew himself to attention, placed his hat two fingers above his eyebrows and saluted.
"Listen, Lorraine, did I pay you?"
"You paid Suzy."
Sorensen picked up his kit bag, checked to make sure he had his recorder and tapes, and pulled out a fifty dollar bill.
"Here's a little extra. For truth, justice and the American way. See ya later, baby."
2
Sorensen sat in the back of the jeep, peering with underwater eyes at the shabby streets and rotting Victorians of Norfolk. He felt as though a sheet of water was between him and Barracuda's home port. To him, Norfolk was a target, a blip on a Soviet attack console, and when he was there, he felt naked and exposed, like a sub on the surface.
The jeep turned a corner and he caught a glimpse of lights on the river and the darkness of the Atlantic beyond.
"What's the word, Chief? We got us a Russkie out there?"
Lopez shook his head. "Nah. There was one sub that tried to get in yesterday, but Ivan hasn't figured out yet that we can track him anywhere in the Atlantic. We let this November class get in as far as fifty miles offshore, but Mako flushed her last night. She won't be back. She's heading for the ice pack."
"Why didn't they leave it for us?"
"You're nuts, Sorensen, you know that? All you ever want to do is chase the Russians around the ocean. Me, I like a nice quiet patrol with no excitement."
"That's because you're a torpedoman, Lopez. It makes you nervous to think that someday you may even have to blow off one of your fish."
"This is my last patrol, Sorensen. I been down below for twenty years and I've never fired a war shot yet. I want to go out the same way."
"I'm gonna miss you, Chief."
"You won't miss me. Ace. You'll be too busy playing Cowboys and Cossacks to think about me. You'll be a thousand feet down, worrying about a saltwater pipe bursting and a jet of water cutting you in half. You'll be eating radiation and turning in your film badge. While you're trying to get into the Gulf of Finland, waiting for the Russians to drop sonic depth bombs all over the place, I'll be in L.A. lyin' around the pool sippin' a cold beer."
"Sure, Lopez. And what about your seven kids? You gonna buy them a beer, too?"
Lopez laughed, his heavy jaw hanging open and his gold teeth glinting in the street light. "My kids don't drink beer. They smoke reefer and drink mescal."
Traffic picked up as they neared the navy base. The day shift was going to work in the dark. The shore patrol driver stopped at the gate, and the Marine guard waved them through.
Sorensen said, "I heard a nasty rumor, Chief. I heard they assigned thirteen apprentice seamen to the ship yesterday."
Lopez turned around to face the back seat. "You heard wrong. They're not all apprentices. Yours is a third class."
"Mine? What do you mean, mine?" Sorensen groaned.
"That's the way it is. You get Sonarman Third Class Michael Fogarty."
"I don't suppose he's qualified in subs."
"You suppose right. But he's supposed to be another hotshot, just like you, Ace. He's your baby, you keep him in line."
The first red splashes of dawn appeared over Hampton Roads, turning the Elizabeth River to blood. The jeep wound its way through the base, past shops guarded by Marines, past the quonset hut that served as headquarters for Submarine Squadron Six.
Two hundred people lined the Submarine pier. Families clustered around their sailors, touching them in little ways. Mothers patted flat their sons' collars, fingering the white piping. Little boys saluted their fathers. One by one the sailors kissed their wives and children and disappeared down the hatch.
There was a commotion as the crowd parted before the jeep. Lopez and the driver sat in front, faces impassive, eyes straight ahead. From the back seat Sorensen waved his hat to the crowd like an astronaut on parade. "I love ya, I love ya," he shouted to the kids.
Out of the side of his mouth Lopez growled, "Shut up, Sorensen. You ain't no movie star."
Sorensen smiled at the crowd and continued to wave. The kids waved back.
The jeep stopped at the gangway. Straining at her lines, Barracuda rode low in the water with littft more than her sail and rudder above the surface. She had the look of a great black shark, a predator of the deep come momentarily into the light. Bunting hung from the gangway, and for a moment the white stars in the fabric shimmered red.
Sorensen smartly squared his hat and climbed out of the jeep. Reaching inside his jumper pocket, he extracted a five dollar bill and dropped it in the shore patrolman's lap.
"Thanks for the lift, pal. This is my stop."
From his perch on the bridge Captain John Springfield watched the proceedings on the pier. He enjoyed the pomp, if only because it meant a brief respite from the tension of preparing his ship for patrol.
The tall, slender Texan had been in command of Barracuda for eighteen months, long enough, he thought, to have become intimately acquainted with the ship and her crew. He scrutinized the sailors as they went aboard. Torpedomen, yeomen, reactor technicians, the quartermaster. The eldest was the steward, forty-three-year-old Jimmy "Cakes" Colby. The youngest was an eighteen-year-old Seaman apprentice, Duane Hicks. Springfield was thirty-five.
He watched Sorensen come aboard. At sea Sorensen was perfectly disciplined. Ashore, well, at least this time they didn't have to salvage him from the drunk tank at Newport News.
The ship tugged gently at her lines. The tide had peaked, stopped for an instant and now was ebbing back to the sea. A flurry of butterflies churned up his stomach. A navy band struck up "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
In the control room the executive officer, Lt. Commander Leo Pisaro, was going through the departure checklist when Sorensen came through the hatch. Pisaro held up his hand for Sorensen to wait and went on with his list. He spoke into a headset with division heads throughout the ship.
"Reactor control, report."
"Steam, thirty-one percent."
"Very well. Engine room, report."
"Engine room standing by on number one turbine."
"Very well. Helm, report."
"Helm standing by."
"Very well. Stern planes, report."
"Stern planes standing by."
"Good afternoon, Sorensen, good of you to join us."
Sorensen snapped to attention. "Petty Officer First Class Sorensen reporting for duty, sir."
Starkly bald, swarthy, tenacious, Pisaro was the only officer aboard who was not an Annapolis graduate. His jumpsuit was covered with patches and insignia, a quilt of blazing lightning bolts, missiles, guns, swords and antique engines of destruction. The newest and most prominent patch was a sub whose bow tapered into the snout of a great barracuda. "SSN 593," it read. "Shipkiller."
He snapped open a heavy Zippo and lit a Pall Mall.
"You're four hours late, Sorensen."
"Yes, sir."
"It's a good thing Chief Lopez knew where to find you."
"Yes, sir."
"You drunk?"
"No, sir. Hung over." Sorensen tugged at his crotch.
Pisaro shook his head, smiling to himself. Every cruise was the same. Either the shore patrol or the civilian police would drag Sorensen back to the ship, and he would stand in the control room with a shit-eating grin on his face and scratch his balls. His uniform was a mess. His hat was dirty. He smelled.