To Kill the Potemkin

5

Jaded, polluted Naples spilled down the mountains to the bay, home port of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Over the millenia Neapolitans had seen many fleets come and go. When the giant Kitty Hawk and her escorts got up steam and sailed away, only a few young boys paid attention.

Barracuda was moored to the seaward side of Tallahatchie County. A canopy stretched from the tender over the top of the sail, veiling her profile from "the eye in the sky," the Soviet satellites that frequently passed over Naples.

Springfield left the ship to carry the recordings of the Viktor to fleet headquarters, leaving Pisaro to pass the word. The crew waited expectantly for liberty call.

Pisaro called Chief Lopez into his cabin. The XO kept a box of Havanas exclusively for Lopez, one of his perks as chief of the boat. Flipping open his Zippo, Pisaro said, "We're going to unload all your torpedos, Chief, and replace them with dummies."

Lopez puffed his cigar into life. "All of them. Commander? I hate dummies. That pulls all the teeth out of 'Cuda."

"Nobody likes them. Chief. Anyway, that's the good news. The bad news is that there'll be no liberty call."

Lopez looked forlorn but said nothing. Naples was his favorite liberty port. Pisaro knew how he felt. It was his favorite as well. He went on, "We're going to be here less than twenty-four hours, and we'll be gone a week at the most. When we get back everyone gets three days ashore."

"The crew won't like it, sir."

"Your job is to listen to them bitch. Chief. Anyone who wants can go onto Tallahatchie for thirty minutes."

Lopez puffed hard on his cigar. "Thirty whole minutes? I'll pass the word, sir. I'm sure it will make the men feel better about having no liberty and all—"

"Don't choke on the stogie, Lopez. Get outta here. And send Sorensen in with his beacon."

In the sonar room Sorensen was assembling a waterproof, pressure-tight sonic beacon into the stainless steel box made by Barnes. As the other sonarmen crowded around, Sorensen tinkered with a soldering gun, a tiny screwdriver and a pile of highly classified miniature parts. He carefully torqued down the pressure seals and threw the switch. The box began to beep, and the sonarmen cheered.

Davic said, "The Russians would kill for what's in that box."

Sorensen turned it off. "What makes you think so, Davic? Do you really think anyone would slaughter your fat ass for a bunch of transistors? In five years you'll probably be able to buy one of these things in a dimestore. A battery, a speaker, big fucking deal."

Lopez looked in from the control room. "Sorensen, the XO wants to see you and your gizmo."

Sorensen turned off the box. On the way out he handed the circuit diagram to Davic. "Here, Davic, I want you to make one of these. You don't need a watertight case. I'm gonna hang it around your neck."

Sorensen knocked on Pisaro’s door.

"C'mon in, Ace."

Spread out on the table was a chart of the Bay of Naples and the adjacent Gulf of Pozzuoli, a large inlet to the north, separated from the bay by the point of La Gaiola.

"At ease, Sorensen. Sit down. Light up if you like."

"Thank you, sir."

"You been topside yet?"

"No, sir. Too busy."

"I wonder if it's a nice day. Naples can be a nice place. My grandfather came from Naples."

Sorensen sniffed the air. "I smell cigar smoke, sir. Does that mean there's no liberty?"

Pisaro laughed and ran his hands over his scalp. "There's just no bullshitting you, is there? Well, you're right. No liberty. Next time."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, let's see your handiwork." He reached for the beacon and switched it on, listened to it for a moment and turned it off. "Is it going to work?"

"I can't say, sir. I haven't had it in the water."

"What about a magnet?"

"I got one."

"Well, then." Pisaro looked over his chart and jabbed his finger at a spot in the middle of the Gulf of Pozzuoli. "It's one hundred twenty feet down. Can you handle it?"

Sorensen peered at the chart and nodded. "No problem."

"Okay, you need to take someone with you. Who's it going to be?"

"Fogarty."

"The kid? Is he qualified for scuba?" Pisaro opened his personnel files and pulled Fogarty's records. "So he is. Is he any good at sonar?"

"He's a sharp cookie, Commander. He's got good ears."

Pisaro studied the file. "There's something about him I can't put my finger on. He's kind of sullen. I don't think he really likes the military—"

"For cryin' out loud. Commander, I don't like the military. I don't think you like it very much. If you'll pardon my saying so."

Pisaro pretended not to hear this. He was reading Fogarty's file. "He went to the University of Minnesota for a year. Hmm. Electronic engineering. Another wizard, I suppose. Why can't I get more guys like Willie Joe? Just a good old boy who loves his submarine. Instead, I get the likes of you and this Fogarty. Get outta here. Go swimming."

In wetsuits Sorensen and Fogarty popped out of the after hatch and carefully made their way along the deck. From the portside forward diving plane Hoek was supervising the loading of the dummy torpedoes. All of the torpedoes for the exercise, six Mark 37s and two Mark 45s were wire-guided. Each torpedo was equipped with a reel of fine wire, miles long, that remained attached to the submarine when the weapon was fired. By means of an electronic pulse transmitted along the wire, the weapons officer could guide the torpedo to its target. The gleaming weapons were painted brilliant orange to indicate they were unarmed.

The two sailors dropped into a waiting rubber boat. Sorensen cranked up the outboard motor and a moment later they were skimming across the bay, heading for the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

Sheltered from the swell of the Mediterranean by the shoals of La Gaiola, the bay was calm. Shadows crept down the slopes of Vesuvius. The air was heavy with diesel oil and thyme.

Fogarty was awestruck by the crumbling magnificence of Naples. After ten days underwater he seemed to have surfaced in paradise. Waving his arms, he shouted into the wind, "It's like a dream, it's beautiful."

"You know what they say, kid. See Naples and die."

Sorensen had visited Naples many times but had never looked at it as anything more than a backdrop for a debauch. He wasn't looking now. His face was turned into the sun.

As they rounded the point and entered the gulf, Sorensen slowed to get his bearings. Fogarty chattered excitedly about the villas along the beach, the icecream town of Pozzuoli visible four miles away, the range of mountains that loomed over the gulf.

"C'mon, Sorensen. Which one is Vesuvius?"

"How do I know? The one blowing smoke rings."

"Where's Pompeii? It's supposed to be around here."

Sorensen became annoyed. "Look, Fogarty, I know this is all new to you, but try to restrain yourself. I'm not a tour guide and we've got a little job to do." He started putting on his scuba gear. "You check your tanks, kid?"

"Yeah."

"Look, I don't mean to be hard on you. You'll have plenty of chances to play tourist. Hey, you know what you get when you nuke Naples?"

"What?"

"Plutonium pizza."

"Jesus, Sorensen, you're a sick man."

"You think it's a joke?"

"I hope it is."

"Well, it's not. Listen, I live in a submarine. I'm a bubblehead, and that gives me a certain point of view." He paused to gesture widely, taking in the entire region around Naples. "This is a target. As long as Naples is the home port of the Sixth Fleet it will be destroyed in the first salvo. A million people are going to die here, blasted by the Russians. As far as I'm concerned they're already dead. They don't exist. I don't want to know who they are or how they live."

"Do you really think we're going to have a war?"

Sorensen looked around. "We're already at war. It's just that we don't shoot each other, but we do everything else. We're fighting for control of the sea. Whoever controls the oceans rules the roost. When the Russians put that sub in the Med, the one we stumbled across yesterday, they took a big step in that direction. They're not supposed to get through Gibraltar undetected, you know. That's bad news. If they can go on with this shit, sooner or later they'll be able to track our missile subs in the Med. That threatens our strategic deterrence — you know, the one they make all those speeches about — and that's not allowed."

"But we track theirs too. We know the location of every one of their subs in the Atlantic and the Caribbean—"

"Except we're not them. We've had superior forces all along. We can waste them any time we want, only we don't. We aren't so sure that that would happen if the situation were reversed."

"And we don't want to find out…"

"Maybe I don't give a shit. I don't know… we're all bugs crawling over a ball of dirt on the edge of some nowhere galaxy. You think we're all there is? If we go down like the dinosaurs maybe the whales will get their chance. They'd probably do a better job… Hey, ain't I profound… you'd think I knew something." He looked at his compass and checked his bearings, then with a flourish zipped up his wetsuit. "C'mon, sailor, drop anchor. We're here."

Murky green light filtered down into the gulf. Sorensen and Fogarty followed the anchor rope to the bottom, where Sorensen consulted his compass. He carried the beacon and Fogarty the magnet.

Fogarty expected to find a bouillabaisse in the gulf, rascasse and eels, scampi and sole. Instead he found a garbage dump, long since fished out. The debris of centuries littered the bottom. Mixed with the silt were layers of slime, condoms, volcanic ash, broken statuary and Pepsi bottles.

It didn't take long to find their objective — a dark shape looming up from the deep, the mangled hulk of a World War Two German submarine. The stern was half-buried in the silt, and the rest of the wreck was covered with algae and rust. On the conning tower they read: U-62.

Sorensen took the magnet from Fogarty, swam to the sub and attached the beacon to the hull. He switched it on, and they listened to the beep.

They swam slowly around the wreck. Half the bow was torn away, and around the edges of the gaping hole the metal was twisted outward. In one awful moment a torpedo had exploded inside the boat, sinking it instantly. Since the hatches were closed and the radars and periscopes retracted, it was clear that the accident had occurred while the boat was submerged.

Sorensen lingered, looking for a souvenir, but the old sub had been stripped by divers long ago, and besides, it was too dangerous to go inside without lights. Sorensen jerked his thumbs toward the surface, and together they began the slow ascent.

On the surface the wind died, the light faded and the bay turned smooth as a sheet of Formica. As they approached the breakwater the sub was a black silhouette looming against the gray washes of the tender.

Sorensen imagined he could see radiation seeping from the hull aft of the sail. To him. Barracuda glowed in the dark, her atomic fire burning with an intensity that could not be contained.

Back in the crew quarters Sorensen whistled cheerfully as he rummaged around in his tiny locker for a cigarette. He found books, tapes, electronics manuals and uniforms, but no smokes.

"Say, Fogarty, can I bum a cigarette?"

They were alone. Fogarty lay on his bunk in jockey shorts and glowered at the bulkhead. He had not said a word during the ride back to the ship.

"What's the matter with you? You quit smokin' or what?"

Fogarty tossed a pack of Luckys across the passageway. Sorensen took one. "Some folks would pay a fortune to go scuba diving in the Med."

"Christ almighty, Sorensen. There were dead men on that boat—"

"Maybe, maybe not. The ocean is full of dead men and sunken ships. Their wars are over. Those guys on that U-boat died a long time ago. Fish ate them before you were born. It's ancient history."

"They were sailors just like you and me—"

"They were not like you and me. They were Nazis. They were the enemy. It was lucky for our side that they blew themselves up."

"Ah, come on, Sorensen, that's just it. A fish blew up inside their boat. I can't even imagine what it was like in there when that torpedo exploded. They never had a chance."

Sorensen nodded. "I wouldn't think too much on it. When we come back here next week we can borrow some tanks and dive down to old U-62 again. We'll go in there with lights, and you can find out what it was like. It'll be an object lesson in what can happen if somebody makes a mistake underwater."

"U-62 didn't have nuclear torpedoes. If we blew up in the Bay of Naples, plutonium pizza."

"C'mon, Fogarty, lighten up." He punched the young sailor playfully on the shoulder. "Listen, kid, you've got a bad habit. You think too much. It isn't going to make your life any easier, I guarantee you. Sooner or later everybody on this ship has to come to terms with the fact that we're a fucking bomb waiting to go off. You've got a head start. You're green, but you think about these things. You have to grow up fast, we need guys like you down here." Sorensen grinned. "At least on this ship we might get a chance to waste a Russian missile sub before she blows up New York City."

"And until then?"

"Hey, man, we all live in our little yellow submarine. Relax, try thinking of yourself as a pioneer exploring life underwater. The price for the privilege is that you have to work for the navy. So you put up with a lot of chickenshit. But at least you get a nice clean comfortable air-conditioned submarine to drive you around, all meals provided. You get the best toys and the best talent to operate them. And for excitement you get to play Cowboys and Cossacks with the Russians. Some deal, right?"

"Except a forty-million-dollar submarine designed to kill people isn't a toy."

"Well, we haven't killed anybody yet, and as far as I know we aren't planning on doing it today. Listen, Fogarty," Sorensen said, his voice slowing down and lowering in tone, "as long as you are on this ship I'm your supervisor. For some stupid reason I like you. I think you will turn into a fine sonar operator, so I'm giving you a choice. Just keep your mouth shut, do your job, or get the fuck off this ship today. You hear me, sailor?"

Fogarty kept his mouth shut. Sorensen looked at him, then broke into a smile and slapped him on the back.

"Hey, okay, lighten up now and get your ass in gear. We have to report to the XO."