Los Angeles Class

9

"Easy there … easy!"

Seaman O'Brien stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the working party, working under the combined direction of Lieutenant Walberg, the boat's Weapons Officer, or "Weps," the Chief of the Boat, and the supervisor of a gang of dockworkers all clustered around the weapons-loading hatch forward of the Pittsburgh's sail. All of them wore life jackets and safety lines, which encumbered them a bit… but which were worth it when you considered the possibility of a false step or a heavy, free-swinging piece of machinery sending you ass over into the sea.

Pittsburgh carried a total of twenty-four of the big Mark 48 torpedoes, each a blunt-tipped pencil nineteen feet long and twenty-one inches thick, and weighing in at just over 3500 pounds. Sheathed in silver, with bright blue plastic protective nose shrouds, they gleamed in the morning sun as they slid slowly, magnificently, from the black depths of the submarine's forward hull.

Los Angeles class boats mounted four torpedo tubes, each of which went to sea warshot-loaded, plus room for an additional twenty-two reloads. Normally, however, one or two of the storage racks in the torpedo room were left empty, to allow the TMs to reach the stored weapons for maintenance, and to allow some extra room in the compartment for moving their long and massive charges about. All of those torpedoes were coming out of the Pittsburgh's bowels for routine shoreside inspection and replacement.

O'Brien had learned how the huge torpedoes were maneuvered on and off the boat. The entire flooring of the second deck had been torn up and reassembled as a loading rack leading down from the weapons hatch through to the torpedo room on the third deck. Part of the third deck had been taken up as well, converted to a transit rack for maneuvering the torpedoes to or from their cradles.

O'Brien's work detail had started out working below deck in the torpedo room. From there, the redecoration had created what looked to O'Brien like a deep, sheer-walled canyon cutting straight through the heart of the boat forward of the sail. The berthing space with his rack and storage space was now part of an open slot three decks high, allowing the torpedoes, once lowered through a hatch just wide enough to receive them, with the crew's racks visible as part of the wall to either side. Each torpedo was manhandled from its cradle in the torpedo room and fed up into the loading rack, then gently maneuvered up the chute until it emerged, nose-first, from the loading hatch.

O'Brien had been reassigned after a time to the topside working party, helping to manhandle the torpedoes out of the hatch. Pulled by the considerable muscle of a cradle winch, but guided by the combined muscle power of the working party, each torpedo was pulled free of Pittsburgh's embrace and locked into a cradlelike loading tray, which had been mounted on the upper deck forward of the loading hatch and elevated to a nearly sixty-degree angle.

Once clear of the hatch, the torpedo, snug now in the loading tray with its high, U-shaped flanges, was lowered until it was horizontal to the deck. Then it was attached to the business end of a towering, bright yellow crane on the pier alongside the submarine, which hauled it up and swayed it clear to a waiting torpedo cradle on the dock.

The evolution was a polished and smooth-running dance of men and machines; O'Brien was surprised at the efficiency of the design, which cleverly hid the loading equipment, racks, and guides as part of the boat's decks. A popular pastime for all enlisted men in the Navy was to gripe at the way things didn't work; this time, though, some careful thought and spectacular engineering had gone into the loading design. The entire process of unloading or loading Pittsburgh's high-explosive toys — including the process of breaking down the decks and setting up the handling gear — took just twelve hours.

O'Brien found it interesting, though, that even in an age of push-button warfare, computers, and automatic machinery, the actual dirty work of manhandling torpedoes on and off a submarine still required considerable old-fashioned sweat and muscle power.

"Okay!" Master Chief Warren called. "Secured!"

"Let 'er go! Haul 'er up! Up! Up!" Weps called, and the torpedo they were currently working on was swayed free of the loading tray. Steadied by a half dozen lines held by men on the deck and on the pier, the torpedo was swayed clear of the deck, out over the dark water, and edged gently toward the waiting cradle ashore.

O'Brien and the others had a few moments, then, to rest. It was hot as the day pushed toward noon. The sun had burned off all of the fog that had lain over Mare Island and the straits between the base and Vallejo earlier that morning. Seabirds shrieked and wheeled; close about the Pittsburgh,^ line of bright orange, pillow-sized floats bobbed with the swell, a containment device designed to prevent any accidental spillage of hazardous chemicals from contaminating the water.

Movement caught his eye ashore. Turning, he watched a trio of men in civilian clothing — dark suits, white shirts, dark glasses — walk down the pier, picking their way past the dockworkers, the yellow crane, and the crates and coiled piles of wire rope that made the pier a cluttered and watch-your-step journey. Reaching the Pittsburgh's brow, they turned and came up the walkway, stopping to talk with the sentry and Officer of the Deck, who waited for them at the guard shack abaft of Pittsburgh's sail.

"What the hell is going on there?" TM3 Gilbert asked, staring aft.

"Yeah," O'Brien said. "What are they made up as? FBI? CIA?"

"Ah, we have inspectors coming aboard all the time," Benson said. "Inspectin' this, inspectin' that. They're probably here to quiz the reactor gang, and maybe pick up a few hundred pages of reports, in quintiplicate."

A few moments later, the trio was led to the hatch by an enlisted rating, and they vanished down into the boat.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Master Chief Warren called. "Who told you people to stop working? Heads up! Another weapon on the way!"

With a sigh, O'Brien returned to the backbreaking work at hand.

He wondered, though, about those somehow sinister visitors now aboard the boat.

The work proceeded at a steady, wearying pace. They broke for dinner — the midday meal was referred to as "dinner," with "supper" served in the evening — and were back at work by 1300 hours. They had just finished swaying another torpedo out of Pittsburgh's depths when a third class O'Brien hadn't met before came forward. "Seaman O'Brien?"

"That's me."

"You're wanted below. Now."

"What for?"

"Beats me. The skipper said to come get you. He didn't say why."

O'Brien looked at Walberg, who nodded. "Go ahead, son. When the Old Man barks, you jump!"

"Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir."

He unclipped his safety line and followed the third class aft, past the sail and down the forward escape trunk ladder. Handing off his life jacket to another rating headed topside, he threaded his way forward, following the man to the Officers' Wardroom.

He hesitated at the threshold. The Wardroom was terra incognito for an enlisted man, especially one as green as he was. From behind the door, he could hear Captain Chase's voice raised in cold anger. "You know what I think? I think you're all crazy!"

The third class rapped on the door.

"Enter, damn it!"

The sailor opened the door. "Seaman O'Brien, Captain." He stepped aside so O'Brien could squeeze inside.

The Wardroom was luxuriously appointed by the standards of other parts of the boat, though it was about as roomy as a corner booth in the local diner. A tidy little pantry area aft included a coffeemaker and fixings. Most of the compartment was taken up by a single table surrounded by chairs. This was where the boat's officers ate their meals, did their paperwork, and relaxed.

Commander Chase sat at one end of the table, his expression one of barely controlled fury. Opposite sat the three civilians O'Brien had seen come aboard a short time before. One had a laptop computer open on the table, a device O'Brien had heard about, but never seen; the others had notebooks open before them, and manila folders stuffed with papers.

"O'Brien," Chase said, "these… gentlemen have some questions for you. They've also asked that they talk to you alone. Is that okay with you?"

"Uh… sir? What have I done?"

"So far as I know, not a damned thing. You're not in any trouble, but they do have some questions for you. Will you talk with them?"

"Sure. I mean, yes, sir. But—"

"Answer to the best of your ability, son. Tell them what they want to know." He stood up, but turned at the door before he left. "And I will talk with you three again when you're done!"

The door closed, and O'Brien was left alone with the civilians. They presented a vaguely comic aspect in their dark suit coats and ties, slightly rumpled by their descent down the boat's ladder. One was even still wearing his dark glasses, though the fluorescent overhead lighting in the compartment was scarcely hard on the eyes.

"Have a seat, please," one of them said, in tones not conducive to peace of mind.

O'Brien was afraid.

During his twelve weeks of boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, there'd been one serious problem for his company. The ARPOC — the Assistant Recruit Petty Officer Chief — had gotten into some serious trouble when he'd lost his bayonet.

Boot companies had an RPOC and an ARPOC, drawn from among the recruits of each unit and given certain limited command responsibilities. The Recruit Petty Officer Chief, besides the miniature chief's crow and knot he wore on his right shoulder, as opposed to the full rate and rank emblems worn on the left after graduation from recruit training, carried an old-fashioned dress cavalry saber as an emblem of his position. At parade formations, he was expected to salute with it… which was about all it was good for.

The ARPOC also carried a badge of office, an M-1 bayonet, its blade so dull it probably would have smashed, rather than cut, cheese.

One night, at about Week 9 of training, the ARPOC for O'Brien's company had gone bowling at the rec center on the base. Somehow, he'd managed to lose his bayonet. He'd accidentally left it behind after the game, and when he realized it was missing and returned to look for it, it was gone.

It seemed a minor enough crime… sheer clumsiness, and nothing more sinister. But so far as the Navy was concerned, a weapon had been lost, and weapons had to be accounted for.

The ARPOC — his name was Jack Hillel — had vanished. The other sailors who'd been with him that night, and O'Brien was one of them, had been taken one after another into the company commander's office in the barracks and grilled by a couple of gray-suited men from the FBI. The crime, as they called it, had been committed on a federal reservation, and, as such, was a federal crime.

Well, O'Brien had understood some of the concern, at least. Boot camp was a close association of over a hundred kids from every walk of life, including gangs and street kids from the inner cities. At that point in their naval careers, many of them didn't have much sense, and some were pretty wild, yet. And now, presumably, one of them had a knife, a potentially serious, even deadly situation.

The investigation had continued for a week. For that entire week, O'Brien and the others in his company had lived in dread of the consequences. It was possible that the entire company would suffer for Hillel's "crime," especially if the powers that were suspected that someone in the company had the bayonet and was hiding it.

In the end, nothing much happened. The word was that Hillel had been set back two weeks, transferred to another company. Nothing else was said about the bayonet… which was never seen again.

That interview with the FBI agents in the CO's office had been one of the worst moments in O'Brien's life up to that point.

The interview with the three men in the Pittsburgh's wardroom, though, was worse, much worse. And far more personal.

"You are Douglas Henry O'Brien," one of the men said, reading from a file full of loose sheets of paper.

"Yes, sir?"

"Aren't you sure?"

"Yes, sir. Who are you people?"

"Never mind that now." One of them pulled out a photograph and showed it to him. "You know this guy?"

It appeared to be a candid shot of a Navy commander and, yes, he did know the man. It was the friendly officer he'd sat next to on the plane flight from DC to San Francisco on Sunday. He thought the man had mentioned his name, but he couldn't remember.

"Yes, sir. He had the seat next to mine on my flight out here from the East Coast the other day."

"You know his name?" the man with the computer asked.

"Uh… I don't think so. I don't remember."

"You don't remember, huh?"

"Why did you take the seat next to him?" The first man demanded. "Sir? That was the seat they assigned me!"

"The airline?"

"Yes, sir!"

"He had seat 14F," the computer man said. "You had 14E. And you claim that was just a coincidence?"

"I didn't ask to sit next to him!" O'Brien was becoming angry, now. "There were other Navy people on that plane!"

"O'Brien, do you have any idea who that man is?"

"No, sir. Should I?"

"Are you stupid or what?"

"No, sir! Damn it, what's this all about? Are you people FBI?"

"No, Seaman O'Brien. What are your duties aboard this vessel?"

"Until you people called me down here, I was helping unload torpedoes."

"Don't get smart, kid. What department are you assigned to?"

"Uh… I think it's going to be the torpedo room. I'm supposed to start my quals there."

"Quals? What are those?"

"My qualifications. Look, this is my first assignment to sea duty. I have to work in all the different departments aboard until I can show proficiency in all of them."

One of the men was shuffling through something that looked like a copy of O'Brien's service record. "Haven't you completed Sub School?"

"Yes, sir, I have. Doesn't mean I'm a submariner yet, though. Hey, listen. What is all this, anyway?"

"We'll ask the questions, Seaman O'Brien."

O'Brien found himself remembering the questioning he'd gone through during boot camp. Later, he'd told a friend about it, Kathy Gilquist, a woman he'd once dated who was in college now and planning on going on to law school.

She'd told him that he should have demanded to have a lawyer present. "They were violating your civil rights, Doug. You have the right to have an attorney present whenever somebody like that questions you. And you have the right to know what the charges are against you. If they haven't charged you, they can't hold you. Simple as that."

As simple as that, huh? Well, Kathy wasn't here, facing these people and their barbed questions.

"Have you ever seen this man?" one of his questioners demanded, holding up another photograph. This one was a somewhat blurry black-and-white shot of a pleasant-looking man in a sports coat and sunglasses, walking down the sidewalk in front of a sporting goods store. The man was a stranger.

"No," O'Brien said. "Look, I want a lawyer present."

His interrogators looked startled. "We were assured that you would be willing to cooperate with this investigation," one said.

"Am I being charged with a crime?"

"Not… at this time," another said.

"What crime are you charging me with?"

"It won't help you to adopt these sea-lawyer tactics, Seaman O'Brien."

"Tactics, hell! I want to know why you're trying to railroad me, here! I have a right to have a lawyer present! I have a right to know what you think I've done!"

"As we told your commanding officer, Seaman O'Brien, we are investigating a case that may have serious implications for our nation's security."

"Are you accusing me of being a spy?"

"We aren't accusing you of anything, Seaman O'Brien. We merely want your cooperation."

"I'm not answering anything else!"

"Why are you afraid to answer our questions?"

"What are you hiding?"

"Nothing, damn it!" O'Brien was scared now, and sweating heavily, but he was also angry. He hadn't thought this sort of thing happened outside of places like the Soviet Union. "Look, I don't want to talk to you guys anymore! I'm outta here!"

Rising from his seat, he marched to the door.

"Seaman O'Brien, I don't think you fully understand your situation."

"You could find yourself transferred to some place considerably less pleasant than San Francisco. Adak, Alaska, for instance, doing the penguin census."

"There are no penguins in Adak. Penguins live in the southern hemisphere."

"Don't get smart with us, kid. Polar bears, then."

"Sit down!"

They questioned him for some minutes more, asking now about his shipmates aboard the Pittsburgh, if he'd seen anything suspicious, and the like. O'Brien folded his arms and stubbornly refused to speak. Anything he said might be the wrong thing, something to allow the three to twist his words.

At last they stopped and quickly consulted with one another. "I don't think he knows a thing," he heard one mutter to the others.

"… playing stupid… "

"… don't think he's playing."

"Seaman O'Brien," the man with the laptop said finally, "are you aware of the provisions of the Official Secrets

Act?"

"Huh? No… "

"You may in the near future find yourself deployed on a sensitive and highly secret mission aboard this vessel," another said.

"Failure to observe the letter of the law regarding the Secrets Act can result in a heavy fine and a long jail sentence."

"That is, assuming you survive."

"If we chose to take you for a helicopter trip out over the Pacific, for instance… "

"They would never find your body."

"Are… are you threatening me?"

"Simply making sure we understand one another, Seaman O'Brien."

"Please do not discuss this interview with other members of the crew."

"You may go now."

"Hey! Wait! I want to know—"

"Dismissed, Seaman O'Brien!"

Moments later, he was back on the boat's forward deck topside, rejoining the working party.

"Man, O'Brien," one said. "You look white as a ghost! What happened?'

"I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"Yeah, well, they don't call us 'the Silent Service' for nothing, do they?"

"C'mon, people," the COB said. "Who said you could stop working?… "

"So what did those guys want?" Benson asked. "They had you guys in there for hours, it seemed like."

"I'll tell you," Scobey said, shaking his head. "Those dark suits? The glasses? Them not sayin' who they were from? They were perfect MIBs."

"MIBs?" Douglas asked. "What the hell are you talking about, Big C?"

"Men in Black. Mysterious guys in black suits who always seem to show up when there's been an important UFO sighting. They question the witnesses, confiscate the film and any evidence, and tell everyone to forget what they've seen, and never tell anyone. They may be from some ultra-secret government organization. Or they could be ETs themselves, disguised as humans."

"Whoa, wait. Hold up a sec, Big C," Jablonski said. "Are you saying those guys were investigating a UFO sighting? Like … like little green men?"

"Nah," Benson said, "he's saying they were little green men!"

"Actually, they're gray," Scobey said. "And some of 'em look so much like you and me we'd never blink if we saw them in the corner 7-Eleven. But yeah!"

"Well, I dunno," Douglas said. "I've seen some pretty damned strange things in my 7-Eleven."

"Uh-uh," Mark Doershner said, leaning back on the bench and folding his arms. "I'm not buying that one. They kept asking me about our last mission. They especially wanted to know if any of you guys were acting suspicious. Nothing about flying saucers!"

"Huh. What'd you tell them?" Douglas asked.

"That I thought you all were Russian spies, but that I had you under close surveillance."

"Geeze! Russian spies! If they come after us, we're taking you down, too!"

Doug O'Brien entered the mess hall. Doershner nudged Scobey in the ribs. "So! Nub! How'd your little chat with our visitors go?"

"Uh, okay, I guess." He looked scared.

"What'd they ask you?"

"I–I'm not supposed to talk about it, okay?"

"No, it's not okay, nub! We gotta stick together on this! What happened?"

"Well, nothing, really. They wanted to know why I was sitting next to some Navy commander on my flight out last weekend. And they showed me pictures of people I didn't know and asked about them."

"Yeah? And what'd you say?" Doershner asked, pressing.

"Well, after a while I got tired of them threatening me, see? So I said I wanted a lawyer, that it was my right, and I told them I wanted to know what they were charging me with, if they thought I'd committed a crime."

"Whoa!" Douglas exclaimed. "Way to go, nub!"

"Yeah, the little shit's got real promise!" Doershner said, grinning.

"I still think we got a genuine case of MIBs here, gentlemen," Scobey said. "So, the way I figure it, now we have to work out which of us has seen a UFO!"

"A what?" O'Brien asked.

"A UFO. Flying saucer. You know, like Roswell? Those were government agents, son. Somebody on board has seen something, and they're trying to cover it up, see?"

"Must be a conspiracy!" Douglas and Jablonski chorused.

"Nah, I think you twerps've got it all wrong," Doershner said. "They was government agents, all right, but I think they were looking for something else."

"Like what?" Jablonski demanded.

"Well, what do you expect to find on board a nuclear submarine, huh?"

"Nukes?"

"A nuclear reactor, is what. I think those guys were from the AEC, checking up on the old Pittsburgh, here."

"What," Douglas said, looking alarmed. "You think there's been a leak? Contamination, maybe?"

"It's possible. I heard of this sort of thing happening before. The guys in black show up, start checking out the crew. One of them's a doctor, kind of sneaky-like looking each guy over for signs of radiation poisoning."

"Radiation poisoning!" O'Brien exclaimed. "What … what signs?"

"Oh, c'mon. You know. You heard it all at school. Nausea. The shakes. Vomiting blood. Oh, the first thing is, usually your hair starts falling out. Usually that happens before you start feeling bad, before you even know you've been contaminated."

"Wouldn't they evacuate the boat if they thought that?" O'Brien asked.

"Sometimes," Scobey said. "But, you know, if they don't want to cause a panic, they might not say a word."

"It's a conspiracy," Douglas said, and he winked.

Mike Chase held the telephone to his ear. "Damn it, Admiral, these people are turning my command upside down! What the hell gives, anyway?"

"I'm sorry, Mike," the voice on the other end of the line said. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you."

Chase almost growled. The man he was talking to was Admiral Hartwell, commander of SUBRON 5 and just a few rungs above Chase in the chain of command. "It's a secure line, Admiral."

"And the information is compartmentalized. Strictly need-to-know."

"And maybe I need to know! They are using nothing short of Gestapo tactics on my people," Chase said, "and I won't have it!"

"Mike, simmer down. It's strictly temporary and completely pro forma. Pittsburgh is going out on another op soon, and there are people up the ladder who want to make sure your crew's loyalty is… unassailable."

"My crew's loyalty! Good God, Admiral! Has anyone told these Nazis that we're Americans? That we're on the same side?"

"Possibly, Mike, there are some… concerns in that quarter. Since the Walker case…. "

The Walkers. So that was it. Someone in Military Intelligence, or maybe the CI fucking A, was staying awake nights because of the Walker family spy ring, wondering what they may or may not have compromised.

"It's not right that my boys pay for that, Admiral. If they have a case under way, if they suspect one of my people, okay. But these terror-squad tactics are destroying morale and interfering with the efficiency of my boat. I will not sit by and watch my people attacked by these bastards!"

He heard Hartwell sigh. "Mike, there's not much I can do. We have some bigwigs coming up there to talk to your successor in a few days. These clowns are probably part of the show. All I can tell you is to button up and keep your head down."

"One of my men told them he wanted a lawyer if they were going to question him any more."

"Son of a gun! Sea-lawyer type?"

"Not hardly. Fresh out of school. A good kid, from what I've seen. Not a troublemaker. And he doesn't have an attitude. He just got pushed too far. I don't want him to get in trouble with these characters. And I don't want my command disrupted!"

"Okay, okay. I'll see what I can do. But I'm telling you,

this goes all the way up to Washington. It's not something SUBRON 5 has a thing to do with."

"If enough of us get up on our hind legs and fight back, Admiral, we'll make them back down. We don't have to tolerate this kind of treatment. And I will not see my men treated this way. They're professionals, every goddamned one of them, and they should be treated as such!"

"I hear you, Mike. And I'll see what I can do. But no promises. I'll see you Friday, and we can talk more then. Good-bye."

The line went dead, and Chase hung up the phone.

Government agents grilling the crew on security questions. If it wasn't so grimly serious, it would be hilarious.

He hoped they would all be laughing by the time the change of command ceremony took place… and the Pittsburgh was made ready for sea once more.