Virginia Class

3

"Comp'ny, atten… hut!"

Seaman Calvin R. Wallace came to attention, one of 140 sailors standing in tightly formed ranks. His crisply starched whites scratched at his shoulders and hips; submariners were sometimes referred to as the "dungaree navy," since they rarely appeared in any other uniform. Even though it was late spring, the stiff breeze hissing in off Long Island Sound chilled. How long, he wondered, was this shindig going to last?

He was in the second rank. Looking past the broad shoulders of the man in front of him, Wallace could see his new home for the next few months, the brand-new attack submarine Virginia, moored to the dock, huge, death-black, the numbers 774 high on her sail the only identifying features visible at all.

Even those numbers, he knew, were held in place by magnets, and would be removed once the vessel left port. Virginia held for him an aura of barely restrained power, of menace somehow given form by her very anonymity.

Her commissioning crew stood in ranks on her aft deck, behind the sail and the gangway, their white uniforms in stark contrast to the black hull beneath their feet. The two masses of white-clad sailors faced each other impassively across the narrow gap between submarine and dock, with the dark water lapping at the curve of the hull below. To Wallace's right, the gangway stretched across that gap, a slightly rising bridge festooned with flag bunting and a large logo shield representing the Virginia, SSN 774.

Farther to the right, near the rounded bow of the submarine, was ground zero for the main party. There, an enormous video screen rose three stories above the dockside, displaying, at the moment, the same Virginia logo that decorated either side of the gangway. Temporary bleachers and a forest of folding chairs had been arranged on the shore, facing Virginia's prow. A covered dignitaries' stand held seats for the dozen or so scheduled speakers; nearby, a smaller, open stand was reserved for members of the press, a small army of men and women crowded together in the breeze, armed with everything from digital cameras to shoulder-held and tripod-mounted TV cameras.

I guess we're news, Wallace thought, bemused… and a little awed. He still felt as though he didn't quite belong at the eye of this incredible hurricane of media attention and full-dress pomp and circumstance.

Damn. His black Corfam dress shoes were just a shade too tight, and he wasn't used to the pinch of the things. His feet were threatening to go to sleep.

"Stop fidgeting, Wall-eye," the man to his left said, his voice a fierce whisper too low for any but Wallace to hear. EM1 Jack Kirkpatrick had for some reason elected himself Wallace's keeper… and nemesis. "Make this division look bad and you'll find yourself guest of honor at a blanket party tonight."

He tried to grow roots, unmoving, in the hard pavement of the pier and ignore the pins and needles pricking at his feet.

Wallace — the nickname "Wall-eye," for the black-framed glasses that looked so huge on his thin face, was a hated handle he'd acquired in submarine school — had been in the Navy for just eight months, with twelve weeks of boot camp at Great Lakes, north of Chicago, five weeks of basic submarine school here at New London, and sixteen weeks more in submarine ET school — classes to train him to be an electronics technician. He'd already changed — grown — more than he'd ever believed possible when he'd left home for the first time, right out of high school. But he was painfully aware of just how much more he needed to learn. All the books, all the lectures, all those hours in submarine simulators of various types… none of that had even come close, he thought, to preparing him for the adventure on which he was about to embark.

Adventure… yeah. That was the word for it. Adventure.

Why did it feel like a death sentence? Damn it, did the fear ever stop?

Wallace was nineteen. A thin, gangly kid born and raised in Monroeville, Pennsylvania — a near-suburb of Pittsburgh — he'd seemed an unlikely candidate for the Navy's submariner program, an unlikely candidate, in fact, for the U.S. Navy. His father had been an Army draftee, serving in Vietnam; his mother's dad had been an Army private killed in the hellfire of Omaha Beach. An uncle was a career Army sergeant major who'd just returned from a tour in Iraq. Any tradition of military service in his family seemed to point him toward the infantry. Wallace still wasn't entirely sure why he'd joined the Navy, much less why he'd volunteered for the submarine service.

In part, of course, there was his love of computers to blame. He'd wanted to go to a computer training school after high school, but his family hadn't had the money. Both the Army and the Navy had computer training programs for promising recruits. He'd told a buddy once that he'd chosen the Navy because it was cleaner than the Army — no muddy foxholes, no crawling through swamps.

In fact, the Navy had promised him a chance to get out of Monroeville and see something of the world. Not that the Army couldn't do the same for a penniless young man fresh out of high school… but Wallace wanted as complete a break with the past as he could manage. Army recruiting slogans like "Be all that you can be" and "An army of one" left him cold; the old "Join the Navy and see the world" still had a powerful hold on his mind.

So here he was, six hundred and some miles from Monroeville — which was, he thought, a good thing— but about to allow himself to be sealed inside a steel cylinder where he would live and sleep and work for months at a time, possibly, and never see anything of the world of light and sun and fresh air. All of the training, all of the psychological screening he'd endured over the past year…

Was it possible he was a secret claustrophobe? Damn it, he was scared.

And he didn't dare admit that fact to any of the other men standing in the white-clad ranks around him.

Someone was talking over the sound system. A guy who'd introduced himself a few moments ago as the president of Electric Boat was now, in turn, introducing one of the senators from the state of Virginia.

Politics….

Politics….

Commander Thomas Frederick Garrett sat uncomfortably ensconced on a folding chair in the VIP stand set up at the head of Pier One, facing the colorful crowd of mostly civilian spectators in the bleachers and seats below. The wind off the sea to the south was freshening, carrying a sharp chill and the promise of rain.

Maybe it would cool some of the hot air being released by the politicking.

The senator from Virginia leaned against the podium a few feet in front of Garrett and to his right, as though trying to weave a magic spell of words over the audience. "We set sail today," he said, "to the future! This proud submarine vessel, SSN 774, is about to take her crew… and the armed services of her proud nation… into the wonderland of tomorrow, a future where technology rules the ocean depths, where technology seems like nothing so much as sheer, wondrous magic!"

The senator's craggy features and his lovingly coiffed, silver mane were displayed in close-up on the giant video screen towering to one side of the VIP box, his image weirdly distorted by the screen's angle, easily visible to the audience, but not to the occupants of the stand. The man had a lot to say, it seemed, about the future and about the glories of technology, about "young, intelligent, and dedicated young men standing in harm's way," and about "young people who stand ready to answer the Minuteman's call."

Well, the guy was right about the young men. Garrett let his gaze pass the ranks of family members, dignitaries, shipyard workers, and executives to rest on the neatly ordered block of white uniforms standing farther out on the dock. My new crew.

There was a very great deal in the speech about America setting sail into the future. In fact, Virginia had already been to sea. Today was her commissioning date, as opposed to the actual date of her launching, which had taken place more than five months ago. Submarines, especially, generally were launched and crewed for a precommissioning shakedown cruise, a short voyage during which bugs in the vessel's design or systems, if any, were found and corrected. In a short while, those ranks of white-clad sailors across the water on Virginia's aft deck would come ashore, replaced by the sailors standing now on the dock. Part of the ceremony today would include the formal change of command, as Virginia's new captain took over from the old.

So far in his career, Garrett had commanded two attack submarines — the USS Pittsburgh, a Los Angeles boat, and the USS Seawolf, though that last assignment had been a temporary command only, with Garrett stepping into the shoes of the sub's original skipper when that man had been killed. Both counted in his personnel record, though, and both had contributed to his knowledge and his appreciation of the men under his command. The crews of both boats had been exceptional — good men, well trained, sharp, professional. Navy training standards being what they were, he had no doubt whatsoever that this crew would be just as good.

Still, there was always a bit of anticipation, even a bit of worry in the promise of a new crew. Those 140 sailors and 13 officers standing out there might be exceptional in training and character, every one of them, as individuals, but how would they shake out as a crew? A submarine crew was as much an individual in its own right as any one of those young men standing in ranks, and, like any organism made up of many smaller cells or living parts, was only as strong as the weakest one within it. How those young men worked together as a team under next-to-impossible conditions would spell the difference between a successful deployment and a failure — and failure in this business could all too easily mean death.

Garrett let his gaze drift from Virginia's new crew to her old. Most of the members of her shakedown crew would be going on to other duty, but a select few would be staying on. Senior Chief Bollinger was slated to be Virginia's COB, her Chief of the Boat, the most important enlisted man on board. He would be the all-important link between captain and crew, more so even than Lieutenant Commander Peter Jorgensen, Virginia's exec. Garrett had already worked long hours with both men, getting to know them and how they thought, getting to know them, in fact, as well as he already knew the Virginia herself. Good men, both of them. Bollinger had been in the Navy for twenty-three years and could be depended on as a sturdy, steadying influence on the younger men. Jorgensen had served as navigation officer on board an L.A. boat before this — the Miami—and had racked up ten years of experience so far in the submariner service.

Another asset Garrett was happy to have on board was Sonar Technician First Class Ken Queensly, "Queenie" to his shipmates. Queensly had been a third class and the junior sonar tech on board Seawolf but had proven himself to be a superb set of ears, one of those proverbial wunderkinder of sonar who, purportedly, could hear someone drop a pocketful of change on another submarine somewhere out in the cold, dark depths, and report the total at sixty cents— a quarter, three dimes, and a nickel, and the nickel had come up "heads."

Exaggeration, of course. Still, a good sonar man could perform acts of apparent wizardry, pulling vital information out of the hiss and roar and throb of the deep. Queenie was one of the best. Garrett was glad to get him.

The senator from Virginia, at long last, droned on to the end of his speech. The president of Electric Boat took his place at the podium once more, this time introducing a senator from Connecticut.

More droning, this time about the jobs that Electric Boat continued to bring to the sovereign state of Connecticut. There was some playful sparring with the Virginian senator over how much better the New London-built boats were than those built in Norfolk. My

God, Garrett thought wearily. How can you joke about that sort of thing?

American submarines—all American submarines, no matter where they were built — were technological marvels, superior in every way to the submarines of other navies in the world.

There was a joking intimation in the Connecticut senator's speech that New London-built boats were just a bit more likely to resurface after a dive than those built at the Norfolk Navy Yard. The laughter from the audience was polite, and just a bit strained. Many of those visitors were family to those who would serve aboard the Virginia, and, Garrett guessed, they didn't like to be reminded of the chance, however remote, of a casualty … the lovely bit of naval doublespeak referring to an emergency on board a submarine.

Garrett wondered if, come next year when the second Virginia-class boat was launched, the Virginian senator would joke about the inferiority of New London boats?

Funny, that that boat would be the Connecticut, launched in Virginia, while this one was the Virginia, launched in Connecticut. That seemed a doggedly bass-ackward way to go about things. Why not build the Virginia in Virginia? It sounded like bad planning all the way around; he hoped the actual design work on this so-called miracle of modern technology was a bit more straightforward, and less tainted by politics.

He remembered again the time a year ago when he'd taken that congressman — what was his name? Blakeslee, that was it — when he'd taken Congressman Blakeslee on a tour of the assembly building where they'd still been putting the Virginia together. He wondered if that afternoon of shared viewpoints had done any good. At least the Virginia program hadn't been canceled altogether. But just because they hadn't chopped off support yet didn't mean it wouldn't happen.

Garrett was little less than fanatical in his support for a military that by law could not take sides politically. It was a real blessing that the military couldn't set national policy. But sometimes it seemed just as bad that civilians were tasked with setting military policy, especially in areas like appropriations and budgets. They didn't have to trust their lives and their sanity to the structural integrity of a narrow steel cigar manufactured by a shipyard chosen by pork-barrel politics, using machine parts supplied by the lowest bidder.

Virginia was a good boat. He'd watched them assemble her, almost plate by plate, and he knew what sheer, sweating labor had gone into her construction. But the pressure to produce a cheaper submarine, using as much off-the-shelf engineering as possible, had been as crushing at times as the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, 35,000 feet down.

He hoped they wouldn't pay for it later, especially when the payees would be the officers and men who crewed her.

The senator from Connecticut was still talking about the New London shipyard and jobs. God, wasn't this guy ever going to shut up?…

Wallace had tried to listen at first, but it was all too easy to simply stand there, zoning out as the senator's words washed over him and around him like the flag-snapping breeze off the sound. Keeping his head facing rigidly forward, Wallace tried to eyeball the VIP stand. There were several officers sitting there in the chairs behind the senator at the speaker's podium, along with several civilians. Which one, he wondered, was his skipper? What would he be like? Sub school had stressed the godlike authority and power of a submarine's commanding officer, and Wallace couldn't think about the man, whoever he was, without just a touch of trepidation.

His musings made him miss the rest of the Connecticut senator's speech and part of the next one as well. He wished he could glance at his wristwatch to see how long they'd been standing here, but he didn't dare. His division officer would be certain to note any infraction while in ranks, and take it out of his hide in extra duty later — if he didn't slap the offending sailor on report.

Another representative from EB — Electric Boat — made a speech, as did a congressman from Connecticut on the Armed Services Committee. They were followed by a few comments by a sleek and silver-haired woman introduced as the wife of a congressman from Virginia who couldn't make it that day. By this time, Wallace's feet had gone, in turn, soundly asleep, awake in an agony of pins and needles, and finally into a semisomnambulant state somewhere between numb and aching. Was it his imagination, or was the temperature steadily getting colder? The bright, partly cloudy sky they'd begun with was gradually giving way to gray overcast, and with the masking of the sun the wind felt colder. He tried not to shiver openly.

Submariners were volunteers, every one of them. He was a volunteer. The training program he'd signed on for had been a good one, but he could have ended up safely working the system at some shoreside billet… or served, perhaps, on board an Aegis cruiser — a computerized miracle of electronics that would have at least given him access to daylight on off-duty hours. Why had he picked submarines, for God's sake?

Jack Heil had a lot to do with it, damn him. Jack had been the closest friend he had in the Navy. They'd met in boot camp at Great Lakes, then gone across the road to Mainside and A-school together. Jack had volunteered for submarine duty, and Wallace had volunteered, too, so they could stay together. Jack had been full of stories about how luxurious life could be serving aboard one of the big boomers, a member of a gold or blue crew alternating with each other in six-month tours ashore and at sea, America's first line of nuclear defense and deterrent. The best food in the Navy, and some of the best perks. Jack made it sound like a freaking country club.

And then they'd shipped out to sub school at New London, and three weeks later Jack had washed out, almost literally. He'd lost it in their first flooding casualty in the simulator tank, punching out a fellow trainee in a shrieking attempt to reach the hatch as ice-cold water came flooding in.

And so Jack was gone, shipped back to the "target fleet," while Wallace continued with the program.

For a time, he'd thought about backing out of the program, but his dad's admonitions to "stick with whatever you start" stayed with him, and quitting at that point would have been an admission that he couldn't cut it, couldn't make the team. He'd done well, graduating fifth in his class. His scores in the various computer classes had been high enough that he'd been offered a very select billet indeed — as a computer technician on board the Navy's newest and most advanced submarine… the USS Virginia.

But now he was out of school, about to set foot on the vessel that would be his home for the next couple of years or so, and all the doubts he'd ever had were crowding back. He'd been through the schools and classes, yeah, but did he have what it took to be a real submariner?

They'd been constantly in-your-face about that during sub school. He might have graduated from the course, but he still had a full year of what amounted to probationary service ahead of him. The schooling would continue as he worked his way through every one of the departments aboard the Virginia, studying and taking tests, "making his quals" in order to prove that he could stand watch anywhere from main engineering to the torpedo room. Only then — and only with an OK from each of the department chiefs and officers — would he win the right to pin on a set of the coveted gold dolphins that were the badge of honor for a real submariner.

Something in the senator's speechmaking just then caught Wallace's attention. "The young men who serve aboard these vessels are the sharpest, the smartest, the very best trained sailors of any navy in the world," the senator was saying. "They are patriots, every one of them, and they deserve our undying thanks…."

Fuck….

Sharpest? Smartest? Best-trained? In theory, yeah, maybe, but right now he felt as though he didn't know a damned thing, that all of that training had been for nothing.

How long, he wondered, before his shipmates found him out?

"They are patriots, every one of them, and they deserve our undying thanks. … "

Well, the congressman had gotten that part right, at least. Garrett glanced at his watch. Couldn't a grateful nation thank its smart young patriots by letting them get on with their work?

The guy was wrapping up, now, and turning the podium back over to the VIP from General Dynamics. He, in turn, introduced Commander Daryl Fitch, Virginia's skipper for her sea trials.

Fitch bounded up to the podium, grabbed the microphone off the stand, and bellowed, " What a beautiful, incredible, and amazing submarine!"

The crowd erupted in wild cheers and applause, and even Garrett and the others on the stand clapped long and hard. After so much pomposity, Fitch's exuberance was fresher than the breeze coming in off the sea, and considerably more welcome. He was a young man, short, with a thick but neatly trimmed black mustache. He and Garrett were friends; Garrett had been aboard during one of the early sea trials — strictly as a passenger — and the two had worked together for long hours just last week, running through the lists and manifests required for the changeover in command.

Fitch's speech was mercifully short and to the point, a litany of praise for the Virginia and her builders. No politics there. The New London shipyard workers were good — the very best — and it was only right to acknowledge their skill.

"In the Virginia," Fitch said, in conclusion, "we have a submarine that can go anywhere in the oceans of the world, go there undetected, go there and carry out her mission, whatever that may be and return safely home. And that is all anyone could ask of such a vessel, and more. I salute her builders. Well done!" Again, the audience exploded into cheers. The majority were probably shipbuilders or Electric Boat execs. "And to her new skipper, I say — with heartfelt jealousy — you are one hell of a lucky SOB!"

Lucky? Yeah, Garrett had to admit that he was that. For a while there, it had looked as though his career was going to be thoroughly stalled, thanks to a letter of reprimand when he was skipper of the Pittsburgh, six years ago. And, since his command of the Seawolf was strictly temporary, a stand-in for Captain Justin, he might well have found himself spending the rest of his Navy career on the beach.

Virginia had been a reward for his handling of the Seawolf during the Taiwan crisis in '03. He was lucky, all right, but determination had a lot to do with it, too. He'd passed on a chance to go before the promotion board — a shot at his fourth stripe — so that he could have her.

And now it was Garrett's turn. The president of Electric Boat was introducing "the exceptional young officer" who'd been selected to take the Virginia out on her first operational deployment, her "voyage into the crystalline waters of the twenty-first century, and beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Commander Thomas Frederick Garrett, the new captain of the USS Virginia!"

Bemused, he stood and walked to the podium. Exceptional young officer? He was old for a commander — thanks to his passing up the rank of captain. And right now he was feeling pretty old. His first wife had divorced him when he couldn't give her a normal kind of life, with a husband who came home from work at night and wasn't gone six or eight months at a time. And then there's been Kazuko….

Being a submarine skipper, it seemed, precluded anything like actually having a life.

"Like Commander Fitch," he said, placing the single sheet of paper with his speaker's notes before him on the podium, "I won't speak for long. I'm a sub driver, not a speech-maker. This is, after all, the silent service. Submariners put a high premium on being quiet."

The audience laughed, and a few people applauded. They were as tired of this ritual as he was, he decided. He glanced again at his notes and decided to ignore them. Garrett was better at speechmaking when the words came from the heart rather than from notes, and he knew it.

"We've already heard all about what a fine boat the Virginia is, about the tradition of superb shipbuilding at this yard, about what marvelous technology we put into our submarines, about what fine young men Virginia has as her crew. All true.

"But one thing more we haven't mentioned yet… and that is the dedication of the men who serve aboard this nation's submarines.

"You know, there are certain perks about submarine service. The food is the best in the Navy. The pay scales are good — at least so far as the Navy is concerned. And submariners know that they're the best. We are an elite, and we know it. That translates as self-confidence, as competence, and as an esprit de corps that just won't quit. We have a saying in the submariner service, you know. There are only two kinds of ships in the Navy: submarines… and targets. We are the hunters, the stalkers, the killers.

"But all of that comes with a price, and all of us wonder, sometimes, if the cost is worth it. Service on board a submarine is tough, and it is demanding. We stand watch and watch, usually, which means our internal clocks are always out of sync with the rest of the world, and that half the time we're trying to sleep when everybody else is awake and making more noise than you'd think was possible on board a submarine.

"Unlike the rest of the Navy, we don't have women aboard as part of the crew, and, submarines being what they are, we're not going to. We go for so long without even seeing the fair sex that we forget what they look like." He paused as the audience laughed.

"And it's crowded. Things are a little better, I hear, on the boomers — the big ballistic missile subs — and the Seawolf had a bit of room to spare, at least when we didn't have a team of Navy SEALs on board — but the Los Angeles-class attack boats, and now, the Virginia, just have too many men living in too small a space. You have to 'hot bunk'—racking out on a mattress just vacated by someone else going on watch. There is no such thing as privacy. I've seen closets bigger than the quarters used by a boat's officers, and if you're an enlisted man, the only nod toward privacy is your rack — a space seventy inches long and just eighteen inches high, walled off from the corridor by a curtain.

"And yet, every man on board an American submarine is a volunteer. He asked to be there, and had to jump through some pretty demanding hoops to be accepted. Submariners are among the smartest kids in the Navy. I think they're also the craziest, giving up a sane, normal, spacious life ashore or on board one of those floating cities we call targets in order to live like a sardine, wedged into a claustrophobe's nightmare with over a hundred other sardines, sometimes not even able to see the sun or taste fresh air for months at a time.

"They are volunteers. And by volunteering — and by sticking it out — they show a level of sheer, raw dedication, to their country, to the service, to their shipmates, to themselves, that is, to my mind, astonishing.

"And that, people, is what makes the Virginia an amazing submarine. Not her technology… but the dedication of her crew.

"I only hope I can live up to the standards they will set."

The speechmaking was over at last. Wallace had been transfixed by the last speaker — Commander Garrett, his new CO. He sounded like an okay kind of guy, an understanding guy, not at all like the tyrants he'd heard so many stories about in boot camp and school.

He was also older than Wallace had expected. During the inspection following the speeches — when Commander Fitch and Commander Garrett walked up and down the ranks of sailors on the dock — Garrett passed right in front of him, two feet away. Garrett seemed to possess an energy that felt… restless, barely contained, but it was an energy reined in by a formidable self-control. Wallace's own father had never possessed that aura of maturity.

Wallace found he was less worried now about being "found out" by his shipmates than he was about living up to this new commanding officer's expectations.