Pacino could stare for hours at the Devilfish. Aboard the transfer boat he imagined the salt breeze of the wind on his face on its bridge, the snapping of the flags behind him, the hum of the rotating radar mast aft of the flags… He felt his grip on the rails tighten, hoping he wasn’t being relieved of command. It wasn’t his career he worried about but the thought of never driving the submarine again, never feeling her deck vibrate beneath him as she plowed through the sea at flank speed.
As he watched, the Devilfish shrank into the distance so that all that remained was the vertical fin of the sail and the horizontal fins of the fairwater planes, forming a cruciform shape against the backdrop of the land beyond.
When the small boat landed at a jetty it was almost like being awakened from a dream. Pacino took one last look into the distance and stepped onto the dock. As he did a lieutenant came to attention and saluted, her hair pulled up into a tight bun under her oddly shaped female officer’s cap. Pacino saluted back and followed her to a black staff car. He didn’t ask what was going on. He would know soon enough.
CHAPTER 4
The staff car pulled through the gate of the COMSUBLANT compound and parked at the main entrance to the thirty-year-old main core of the building, a squat brick gymnasium. Beyond and above it the new glass-walled wing minimized the eyesore of the old core.
Pacino got out of the back seat of the car, feeling the chill of the December evening. The sky was black, no stars visible because of the glare of the floodlights. He and the lieutenant walked through the entrance, presenting their identification for entry. While he waited Pacino looked at a row of oil paintings on a far wall, each showing a different submarine class driving on the surface, going back to World War II ships. He lingered for a moment on the painting of the Piranha class. To its right was a painting of the newer Los Angeles class, a submarine the fleet considered a giant step backward in technology from the venerated Piranha’s. The Los Angeles boats had suffered from the budget crunches of the 1970s and early eighties, considered too expensive to build right.
The lieutenant led Pacino down a cinderblock corridor into an atrium of steel and glass that arched to the top of the new wing. After an elevator ride to the top floor Pacino found himself in the plushly carpeted outer office of COMSUBLANT, the admiral in command of the Atlantic Fleet’s submarines. Immediately he was led in by the receptionist, and both the receptionist and lieutenant quickly left, leaving Pacino alone with the admiral.
Pacino walked up to the massive oak desk made from timbers of a Navy frigate that had fought in 1812, removed his cap, came to attention. “Commander Pacino, USS Devilfish, reporting as ordered, SIR.”
The bald man at the desk looked up, a slow smile spreading over his thin face, the white-capped teeth near-perfect beneath his graying mustache. He stood up, looking slim in his dress blues with rows of ribbons splashing color over gleaming gold dolphins and endless gold braid on the sleeves. He gripped Pacino’s hand in a firm handshake.
“Mikey!” He stepped around the desk and put an arm around Pacino’s shoulders, guiding him back to the door.
“I’d offer you a drink but we need to get down to the Top Secret Conference Room.”
“Hello, Admiral,” Pacino said, “Sir. Uncle Dick.”
Donchez looked Pacino over, opened the door and led the way back down the corridor to the elevator. “Mikey, you look great. How’s Squadron Seven treating you?”
“Fine, sir,” Pacino said, somewhat uncomfortable. Donchez had stayed in touch over the years but Pacino had kept a certain distance. Partly to avoid giving the impression of having connections with the brass but also because Donchez reminded him too much of good days gone by, and of the awful day Donchez had broken the news of Anthony Pacino’s loss at sea with the Stingray. As Donchez had climbed the bureaucratic ladder of the Navy he had become more distant. Finally, as a three-star admiral in command of the fleet, they almost never saw each other.
“I heard about how you kicked ass today,” Donchez said in the elevator, pulling out one of his cigars. “Good job. It’s good to see a Piranha beat a Los Angeles like that. I liked the balls you showed getting away from that torpedo. Not many left in the force think like that.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pacino said, relieved.
“How’s Hillary and your son?” Probably sore as hell, Pacino thought, both on the pier waiting for him to disembark from the boat. “Both fine, sir. Tony wants to be a race driver, zooms around the house yelling vroom. Drives his mother crazy, I think she wanted a girl…”
Donchez said, “Maybe he’ll drive a sub when he grows up.”
As the elevator doors opened to a sub-basement Donchez led the way down a hall to another security scanner and sentry, through the door and another hall with a blast door at the end. He hit a large panel and the solid steel door slowly swung open with the hum of a powerful motor. Another hall had four doors set off of it, with one double door under a sign reading FLAG PLOT. They went in one of the doors labelled TS CONF RM 1. The room had a large wood table in the center, big enough to seat over a dozen people with another dozens seats against the wall. Pacino sat at the briefing table, remembering he’d been briefed in this conference room when Devilfish deployed to the Mediterranean earlier in the year. Admiral Donchez sat across from him, and finally spoke.
“You want to know what you’re doing here,” he said, shrugging out of his dress-blue jacket. His white shirt had cloth shoulder epaulettes with three stars and anchors, and Pacino realized he was still in his khakis, the oily smell of the submarine still in the fabric.
“We have an emergency, Mikey. We need the best Piranha-class submarine we’ve got to go on an urgent OP. Up north, under the polar icecap.”
Pacino felt excitement at an emergency operation, mixed with some disappointment at the timing. Devilfish had spent the last six months on a deployment and had been scheduled for a month of “stand-down” — R and R for the crew. He glanced at his watch — the date on the Rolex’s dial showed the number 13, and abruptly he realized that it was the anniversary of his father’s death on the Stingray. In the rush of battle with Allentown and the flush of victory afterward he hadn’t realized. With the realization now came grief, an old friend, and guilt.
“Admiral, Devilfish has been submerged over 230 days this year. My men have barely had a chance to say hello to their families. Over 120 days without surfacing. Admiral—”
“Sorry, Mikey. You and yours are it.” His tone turned chillier. Donchez dimmed the room lights and pulled a computer keyboard off a shelf on the wall and set it on the briefing table. He hit a key, starting a computerized slide show on the far wall, a television projection driven by a computer display. The COMSUBLANT emblem dissolved into a projection map of the north pole.
“A chart of the Arctic Ocean,” Donchez said. “You’ve been there a few times. The boundary of the ice zone is shown in green.”
The chart slowly zoomed in to the Russian northern coast. A city named Severomorsk was highlighted in red.
“As you know the Severomorsk Naval Complex is a major shipbuilding facility, ammunition depot and command center for the Russian Northern Fleet, including the biggest and most capable arm of the Navy, the Submarine Force.”