"Yes, sir."
"Questions?"
"No, sir."
"Okay. And have that formal written apology on my desk before 1600 hours, or I'll have Commander Fitch extend his tour of duty as Virginia's skipper. Understand me?"
"Aye aye, sir."
"Then get out of here. And for God's sake, don't talk to the reporters!"
Garrett turned and hurried from the office, feeling lucky to be alive.
Outside, he stopped and took a deep breath before walking around to the HQ parking lot and getting into the car requisitioned for his use. Fifteen minutes later he was walking up the dock, a critical eye scanning the activity on Virginia's forward deck, where a working party was gently, gently lowering a Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo at an angle down through the weapons-loading hatch forward of the sail. A number of enlisted men in dungarees and poopie suits — the navy blue coveralls used by submarine crews — were gathered around the descending torp as it rested on the cradlelike loading tray, guiding its nineteen-foot length down the narrow hatch. A loading crane on the dock was preparing to sling the next ADCAP into position. He watched as the first bright blue Mark 48 vanished tailfirst down the hatch, where a second working party hidden below deck was manhandling the pencil-thin giant into a storage rack in the torpedo room. The empty loading tray, meanwhile, was lowered back to its horizontal position on the forward deck, ready to receive the next torpedo.
Virginia could carry only thirty-eight weapons — a variable mix of Mark 48 ADCAPs, tube-launched mines, Harpoon antiship missiles, and Tomahawk TLAM missiles — as opposed to the weapons load of fifty carried by the Seawolf. It was part of the trade-off Virginia's designers had been forced to accept to create the smaller and less-expensive attack boat. Smaller, cheaper, better. The Virginia was certainly smaller and cheaper than the mammoth Seawolf. Would she be better as well? That remained to be seen.
Lieutenant Bill Carpenter, "Weps," Virginia's weapons officer, was supervising the loading of the torpedoes. He saw Garrett standing on the dock alongside and saluted; Navy tradition held members of a working party exempt from saluting while carrying out their duties, but the senior man could salute if he himself was not otherwise engaged. Garrett returned the salute, then walked the rest of the way aft to Virginia's gangway, empty now of the banners that had festooned it during the ceremony yesterday. A first-class machinist's mate in whites, standing the officer-of-the-deck watch in a temporary shelter erected on board close by the gangway, made the announcement of Garrett's coming on board into his communications headset—"Virginia, arriving" — then came to attention and saluted. Garrett, by tradition, saluted the boat's ensign, fluttering on her aft deck, then saluted the OOD. "Permission to come aboard."
"Permission granted, sir. Welcome aboard."
"Thank you… Pettigrew," Garrett said, glancing at the name tag on the sailor's whites. He tried to memorize the man's face. It would take him a while to get to know all 140 men and 13 officers of the crew by face alone… but in the inevitable crowding on board, that would happen, and sooner rather than later. For Garrett, it was vitally important that he know his men as individuals.
Walking toward Virginia's forward personnel hatch, located just abaft her far-forward sail, he felt the slight give in the deck beneath his feet, a sensation almost like walking on rubber or thick carpet padding. Like the Seawolf and both the improved and retrofitted L.A.-class boats, Virginia came with brick-sized anechoic/decoupling tiles covering every square inch of her hull except for hatchways, control surfaces, and sonar dome and windows. The tiles helped defeat enemy active sonar and served to further insulate onboard noise, part of the engineering that made her as silent as the Seawolf.
He descended the ladder inside the hatch, then turned and walked forward to the command center. Lieutenant Commander Peter Jorgensen, Virginia's exec, stood in the control room, already holding out a coffee mug — complete with Virginia's logo — for Garrett to take. "Welcome aboard, sir."
"Thank you, Number One," Garrett said, accepting the coffee. "How are things going?"
"We're an hour and a half behind sched, Captain," Jorgensen replied. "We had a man injured during the torpedo load."
"Bad?"
"A broken wrist. The guy got his hand in the way of an ADCAP coming down onto the cradle. He's been taken Mainside to the hospital."
"Shit. Who was it?"
"TM3 Connors, sir. The incident has been logged and reported."
"What went wrong?"
Jorgensen stiffened. He was directly responsible for everything that happened on board the Virginia, both as the boat's executive officer and as the captain's representative when the captain was ashore. He hadn't worked with Garrett long enough yet to know how he would respond to news of the accident. "It's all in the accident report, sir."
"I want to hear it from you, Number One. Was Connors an experienced hand?"
"Yes, sir. Well, pretty much. Virginia uses a different style loading tray. The new sail placement, you know."
Garrett nodded. Virginia's sail, the above-deck structure once known as a conning tower that housed the boat's sensor array masts, was located much farther forward than on other submarines. It gave her an odd, snub-nosed appearance, with just barely enough deck space forward of the sail for twelve vertical-launch TLAM tubes, the rounded half-globe of her nose, and the weapons-loading hatch itself. The change in architecture had necessitated a number of changes in the equipment used to service the boat.
"Well, Connors hadn't worked with the new rig, sir. Nobody had. Fact is, he had his hand resting where he shouldn't have. He got it caught between the fish and a support bar."
"Damn. He could have lost his hand."
"He almost pulled it out in time, sir. He just wasn't quite quick enough."
"It shouldn't be a matter of being quick enough. The men have to know their equipment."
"Yes, sir."
"Very well." He frowned. That was not an auspicious beginning to things. He made a mental note to stop by the hospital on his way to the BOQ — his quarters on shore — tonight. "Any other problems?"
"Not so far, sir." Jorgensen sounded wary, as though he was waiting for the drop of another shoe. "Lieutenant Carpenter says they can make up the lost time tonight and still have time to complete provisioning."
"Sounds good, Number One." He checked his watch. "I'm going to my office. You have the watch."
"Aye aye, sir."
Garrett's stateroom and office was located on the first deck forward of the control room. He stopped at the door to watch another Mark 48 ADCAP slide down from the loading hatch. Forward of his stateroom, the deck itself had been pulled up and the grating converted to rails that received the incoming torpedo from the loading tray topside, guiding it down past this deck, through the second deck, and into the torpedo room, which was located amidships on the third deck. Senior Chief Bollinger was standing in the passageway just short of the drop-off, hands on hips, staring down into the chasm created by pulling up sections of Virginia's first and second decks. A working party was noisily engaged in the opening, maneuvering their ton-and-a-half charges down to their on-board storage racks.