The sun was just rising over the Squadron Seven piers as Pacino pulled his duffel bag out of his car and began walking toward Devilfish. The dim orange light gave little warmth. The air was crisp and cool. Pacino walked up to the end of the pier and returned the salutes of the guards, then reached for his identification. Pier 7 had changed quite a bit in the last two decades, he thought. At the head of the pier concrete crash barriers had been set up, along with a barbed wire double-chain-link fence. The guardhouse was manned by a contingent of U.S. Marines, all armed with M-16s. Every submarine tied up at the pier had a sniper with a high-powered rifle in the sail. The quarterdeck watch sailors no longer carried Colt .45s with the ammo in their belts. They had loaded machine pistols.
Such anti-terrorist measures hadn’t existed in the fall of 1973 when his father’s Stingray had sailed for deployment. That day the families and children and girlfriends had all been on the pier. The squadron staff made a bon-voyage party of it — brass band playing, crepe banners in red, white and blue, a banner reading GOOD LUCK, STINGRAY, tables covered with cookies, pies, sandwiches. The crews of the other boats waving. Michael Pacino in his fourth-class midshipman’s uniform, his brass anchor pins on the lapels, saluting the officers who passed by. This underway would be different. Devilfish would leave without fanfare. A crowd on the pier was considered a security problem. It was as if the boat was already gone.
Pacino walked down the pier, the eyes of the bridge snipers on him. The other boats were quiet. By his request, Devilfish was always parked at the very end of the pier so he could drive out without tugs. To Pacino it seemed somehow inappropriate for a warship to pull out with two tugs.
The sleek destroyers and frigates two piers down would pull out with a Back Emergency-Ahead Flank under way, their wakes boiling up astern, their radars rotating in quick circles, flags fluttering smartly from the masts, smoke pouring out their stacks. Envious submariners would watch the cocky surface officers while two tugs pulled their delicate submarines gently away from the piers, being careful of the fiberglass nosecones covering the sonar spherical arrays. No, no tugs for Pacino.
When he reached the berth of the Devilfish, he received a salute from the Duty Officer, Lieutenant Stokes.
“Good morning. Captain. I thought you’d want a report before getting onboard, sir.”
“Go ahead. Stokes.”
“Sir, reactor’s critical. We got a normal full power lineup, reactor main coolant pumps in two slow/two slow, divorced from shorepower, main engines warm, clutch disengaged, section three watches manned aft. I’ve had the shorepower cables removed from the ship. The XO has gone over the pre-underway checklist with department heads and reports the ship is ready in all respects to get under way. XO briefed the officers, and the Chief of the Boat briefed the men. XO recommends stationing the maneuvering watch in preparation to get under way. Sir, request permission to station the maneuvering watch.”
Pacino looked at the river, measuring the wind and current. He turned back to Stokes. “Station the maneuvering watch. Rig out the outboard, raise and lower masts as necessary and when you’re ready, rotate and radiate on the radar.” Pacino had just saved the Duty Officer three phonecalls for permission. “And send the XO to my stateroom.”
Stokes repeated back the captain’s orders and walked to the boat. Pacino lingered on the pier for a moment, looking at Devilfish’s sleek hull, then crossing the gangway.
“DEVILFISH… ARRIVING,” boomed throughout the ship, announcing the captain’s arrival. Pacino saluted the topside watch and crouched over the operations compartment hatch, the same hatch used to load weapons.
“Down ladder,” he said, tossing his bag down the hatch, then lowering himself through the small opening. The smell of submarine hit Pacino. A mix of lubrication and diesel oil, stale cigarette smoke, cooking grease, ozone, old sweat and raw sewage. The smell wasn’t particularly bad, just strong and characteristic. It lingered on the clothes, in the hair. Hillary hated it, and who could blame her? He heard the sounds of the boat — the high whine of the ship’s inertial navigation system, the low roar of the ventilation ducts. He climbed down the ladder, and his feet hit the deck of the operations upper-level passageway across from the XO’s stateroom. The narrow passageway forward opened into the control room. One door to starboard was the sonar room. The door to port was the captain’s stateroom. Between the captain’s stateroom and the control room was a steep staircase to operations middle level, home of officers’ country and the crews’ mess.
Pacino opened the door to his stateroom, noting the room clean and tidied, a steaming cup of coffee on the table. The Duty Officer must have had it sent to the stateroom when he was walking down the pier. Pacino tossed his bag onto one of the seats of the table, opened his fold-down desktop and sat down to drink the coffee from the mug with the Devilfish’s emblem painted on it. The Devilfish name and emblem had been controversial from the beginning. A circular field framed a leering ram’s head. The ram’s horns curled up and back in a curving spiral. Between the horns was the shape of a modern nuclear attack submarine seen from the side. Above the ram’s head were the words USS DEVILFISH, below the letters SSN666. The hull number had inspired someone in NAVSHIPS to name the boat Devilfish. Protests were lodged with Congress but controversy had never reached the front page. Nixon had resigned that same week. With no media outrage to fan the flames the Devilfish name-flap had died out. Pacino liked it. It sounded vicious and fierce.
On his second sip of coffee he heard Stokes’ Kentucky twang boom out over the P.A. Circuit One announcing system: “STATION … THE MANEUVERING WATCH.”
A knock came on the door from the head. Commander Rapier coming to brief him on the ship’s readiness.
“Come in,” he said. The door opened and Rapier walked in from the head, wearing a canvas green parka over khakis, hands full of papers and the radio message-board. He handed the clipboard to Pacino. The XO tour was considered by many the hump of a Navy career, defined as making another man, the captain, happy, taking the paperwork burden off him and allowing him to concentrate on tactics instead of plans, weapons employment instead of weapons inventories. The idea was to suffer through the XO tour, doing the hard work while the captain got the credit, so that when it was your turn another officer would do it for you.
Rapier looked down now at Captain Michael Pacino and for a moment he could forget all his gripes. With Pacino on the boat, with the hatches shut and dogged, the boat rigged for dive, life changed. Suddenly the submarine created its own universe, and he and Pacino alone took it on, fought the elements, the cold depths of a sea intent on killing them at their first inattention. Submerged with Michael Pacino, life had purpose. Sometimes he wondered whether the captain had the power to brainwash him, so powerful were the feelings of his own dedication when he was at sea. But just when an OP would be clicking, with the submarine and himself and Pacino operating together like a machine, they would pull into port and the paperwork mountains would be brought in by forktruck… messages demanding reports, sailors demanding evaluations, medical reviewers wanting radiation records of the personnel, fiscal auditors wanting to see the ship’s operating funds, supply auditors wanting to review the ship’s food service, admirals coming and going, hours of cleaning the ship, the gear breaking, the parts missing, the men stressed by demands on their time to fix the boat in port while annoyed wives and children wanted them home. And now the cycle was to start again. A fresh OP. A fresh attitude. Just them and the boat and the sea. Rapier inhaled slowly.