Attack of the Seawolf

CHAPTER 10

“Attention on deck!”

The officers and chief petty officers in the wardroom came to attention.

“At ease,” Pacino said, surprised at how confident his voice sounded. He had worried about this moment, wondering how the men would see him, and how he would see them … how he could take men he had never met or trained and take them covertly into enemy territory on a combat mission.

Keebes stopped in front of the first man near the door, a slightly overweight lieutenant commander with an intense expression on his face, dark bags under his eyes, the odor of cigarette smoke strong in the air around him. Pacino had the impression of a man on a collision course with a heart attack.

“This is the engineer, Captain, Lieutenant Commander Ray Linden. With us since we laid down the keel. He knows every valve, cable, pump, pipe and switch of the propulsion plant.”

“Hi, Eng. I hear you’ve got some serious horses under the hood back there.”

“Yes sir,” Linden said, squinting up into Pacino’s eyes, “and they’re ready to gallop.”

“Good. You’ll need to make sure they gallop damned quietly.”

“No problem, sir.”

Keebes led Pacino to the next man, a heavyset lieutenant commander with a tightly trimmed beard covering his fleshy jaw, an open expression set into the lines of his face.

“Lieutenant Commander Bill Feyley, our weapons and combat systems officer.”

“Weps,” Pacino said, shaking Feyley’s hand. “How did the load out go?”

“We did it in record time, given we started in the early hours of the morning with a burned-out weapons-loading crew. But we’ve got what you wanted.”

“Good. Sonar and firecontrol ready?”

“The best, sir.”

Pacino was about to move on, when something struck him as wrong.

“Weps, about the beard … maybe you should wait till we’re underway before you grow that thing.”

Keebes looked at Pacino.

“They changed that regulation two years ago. Captain Pacino,” Keebes said after a moment. “Submarine officers rate beards now.”

Pacino nodded quickly … He’d been away too long, he thought.

Pacino had memorized key portions of each man’s service jacket, along with a confidential briefing prepared by Donchez’s staff, including things that would never find their way into the official service records but items that Pacino would need to know in tight situations. Such as that Greg Keebes’s wife had recently left him for a neighbor down the street; that Bill Feyley, the ship’s gentleman bachelor, tended to drink and carouse, habitually waking up in port in the arms of nameless women; that Tim Turner, the sonar firecontrol officer, an amiable man with a fashionable haircut, had recently fought with his live-in girlfriend over spending too much time with the Seawolf and not enough with her. It seemed that in a white-hot moment Turner had taken the keys to the new Trans Am he had given her for her birthday and smashed the car into a dumpster, then tossed the keys back to her saying “Happy birthday, babe.” And there was Rick Brackovic, the reactor-controls officer, who had missed the birth of his second boy the week before, not having been granted emergency leave for it, after missing the birth of his first child just fifteen months earlier. His wife was nearly fed up and contemplating divorce. Each briefing sheet listed the pain these men had suffered on account of their commitment to the submarine force, leaving home for months at a time to take a steel pipe to the bottom of the ocean for reasons that often made no sense to their families. And many of the stories seemed familiar to Pacino, whose own personal life had suffered in his climb to command, at one point nearly forcing him to choose between his submarine and his family.

After Pacino had met the officers and chiefs, he went to the end of the table and pulled a set of papers from his shirt pocket.

“Gentlemen, I’ll read my orders: “From NAVPERSCOM, Washington, D.C.” to Captain Michael A. Pacino, U.S. Navy (Retired). You are hereby reactivated to active duty at the rank of Captain and ordered to report for temporary duty as commanding officer of USS Seawolf, SSN-21. You will relieve the acting commanding officer and retain command for an undetermined period for execution of a classified operation. Upon completion of said operation you will stand by to be relieved of command, at which point you will return to your previous assignment.””

Pacino looked up from the papers, turned to the navigator, Greg Keebes.

“Lieutenant Commander Keebes, I am ready to relieve you, sir.”

“I am ready to be relieved.”

“I relieve you, sir,” Pacino said, saluting, the staged ceremony signaling that he had just assumed the burden of command, the mantle of total responsibility for the USS Seawolf. Keebes saluted back.

“I stand relieved.”

Pacino looked at the men in the room for a moment.

“Nav,” he said to Keebes, “as of now you are the acting executive officer.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Very well, then, XO. Station the maneuvering watch.”

Pacino found Admiral Donchez waiting for him in his stateroom.

“Well, sir, what have you got for me?”

“SEALs will be here any minute, Mikey. Commander Lennox, the Tampa’s XO, will be coming on with them. As soon as they’re aboard, get underway and make max speed to Point Hotel.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And, Mikey, listen to me. I picked you for this mission because you’re a damned good captain. And because you know Murphy and I know you’ll give this rescue OP everything you can to make it succeed.

Now, I know you want to get Sean Murphy out of there. But remember, this ship and her crew are as important to us as the Tampa. If anything happens that threatens the survivability of this ship, get the hell out. Murphy would understand, so will I. I don’t want to have to pull your broken hull off the bottom of the bay because you got pissed off at the Chinese. Am I clear?”

“Yes sir,” Pacino said, annoyed in spite of himself.

Donchez stared at him for a moment, and reassumed an easy smile.

“Well, I’ve gotta run, Mikey. Good luck. Good hunting. I can find my way out. Get your ass to the bridge and get this sewer pipe out of here.”

Pacino stretched out his hand to the admiral, who took it and gripped it, nearly crushing Pacino’s hand.

“Thanks, sir. For everything.”

Donchez nodded, then vanished out the door and up the ladder, the bridge communication box soon sputtering over the ship’s Circuit One PA. system:

“COMMANDER IN CHIEF, UNITED STATES PACIFIC FLEET … DEPARTING!”

Pacino took up the blue baseball cap on the stateroom’s table, the one Keebes had left for him. The brim had the scrambled eggs for the captain, the gold submariner’s dolphins, and the block letters reading USS SEAWOLF SSN-21. Pacino put on the cap, shut the door of the cabin and headed forward to the bridge-access trunk, ready to drive the submarine, his submarine, to the open ocean.