Voyage of the Devilfish

CHAPTER 6

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.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, XO.” Pacino smiled slightly. “How pissed off is the crew?”

“Very, sir. I think the Devilfish Wives’ Club is hanging us in effigy.”

“Me, you mean. Can’t be helped. I’ll brief the officers once we’re submerged.”

“How long’ll we be out, sir?”

“Could be as few as three weeks.”

“Must be important.”

Pacino looked at Rapier over his coffee mug. “It is. What’s the status of the underway?”

“Engineering is ready. Propulsion is on both main engines. Lines are being singled up topside. Forward spaces are rigged and ready. All checklists completed last night. All personnel onboard and ready. We’re go, with the exception of getting permission from Squadron to get under way.”

Pacino drained his cup. His communication console speaker blasted out a call from the bridge.

“CAPTAIN, OFF’SA’DECK, SIR,” Stokes’ Kentucky accent boomed. Pacino clicked on the speaker toggle switch.

“Captain.”

“OFF’SA’DECK, SIR. COMMODORE IS ON THE PIER WAITING FOR YOU, CAP’N.”

“Very well. You ready to get under way up there, Stokes?”

“YESSIR. SOON AS YOU GET BACK ABOARD WE’LL PULL THE GANGWAY OFF WITH THE LAST CRANE AND WE’RE ALL SET. AND THE JOLLY ROGER FLAG IS UP HERE, READY TO RAISE WHEN WE SHIFT COLORS.”

“Captain, aye,” Pacino said. “I’ll be up after I see the Commodore, XO. See you later.”

Rapier walked out toward the control room, and Pacino climbed back out the operations upper-level hatch to the curving deck topside, blinking in the cold early morning sun.

In the bridge cockpit, a small space atop the sail, Lieutenant Nathanial Stokes accepted the cup of coffee handed up to him from the bridge-access tunnel by the messenger of the watch. He had been up all night getting the ship ready to go, with last minute pre-underway checks, last minute repairs, the arctic gear and the emergency supplies. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that the ship was to go under ice.

Stokes and the Duty Chief had gotten out the Standard Operating Procedure for underice operations, which required them to put duct tape on every crack or hole in the top surface of the hull to further quiet the ship. The most minute cracks or holes on the hull could cause a flow-induced resonance, with a noise like a hillbilly blowing over a bottle neck, noises that could give them away.

Stokes, of medium height, dark-haired, a tight beard on his chin and thick neck, was built like a bull, huge shoulders, thighs to match. A southerner and damn proud of it, the first thing Stokes’ molasses-thick Kentucky accent would say to someone he met was that he was from Mayfield, Kentucky, and anywhere else on God’s green earth was a sorry disappointment by comparison. A star offensive tackle on the varsity football squad at Navy, his twin claims to fame were his interception of a short over-the-line pass at his senior year’s Army-Navy game, which he had run in for the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, and his seduction of the Naval Academy Superintendent’s daughter, having been caught in her bed by the admiral himself. The only thing that had saved Stokes from dismissal from the Academy was the daughter’s temper tantrum over his pending Conduct Hearing. Stokes had reported to Devilfish with his reputation as a ballplayer and ladies’ man preceding him.

Stokes drained the last of the coffee and stowed the cup, then heard the communication box boom out, “BRIDGE MANEUVERING, REQUEST TO SPIN THE SHAFT TO KEEP THE MAIN ENGINES WARM.”

“Maneuvering, Bridge,” Stokes replied laconically into his microphone. “Spin the shaft as necessary.”

“SPIN THE SHAFT AS NECESSARY, BRIDGE, MANEUVERING AYE.”

What was the holdup for getting under way. Stokes wondered in his fatigued impatience. The sun was starting to climb in the cold December sky. It was time to get this damned bucket of bolts to sea. The enlisted phone talker nudged him. The captain was emerging from the operations compartment hatch, climbing out on deck into the sun. As Pacino crossed the gangway to the pier below. Stokes clicked the P.A. Circuit One ship wide announcing system microphone and gave the crew a dose of his accent. “DEVILFISH, DEPARTING!”

Commodore Benjamin Adams was waiting on the pier. Actually he was a Navy captain but was addressed by his station in life as commanding officer of the submarine squadron, just as Pacino was called captain when he was only a commander. Adams was a paunchy balding man in his fifties, with a gravelly voice, a brisk manner and a dry sense of humor. Pacino walked up and saluted. Adams smiled and returned the salute.

“Well, Patch, you all set for this mysterious mission of yours?”

“Yes sir,” Pacino said, pleased to hear his father’s nickname applied to him.

“You want to let me in on what you’re doing on this run?” It was not unusual for squadron commodores not to know the mission of one of his squadron’s ships. When in port the ships came under Adams’ administrative control. Once at sea the submarine commander answered only to COMSUBLANT. Since submarines were under orders to maintain radio silence at sea a submarine captain was essentially on his own when submerged.

Pacino made a zipping motion over his lips. Adams nodded.

“Okay, Patch. Wherever the hell you’re going, good luck.”

“Thanks, Commodore. Request permission to get under way, sir.”

Adams looked over at Devilfish. “Your tugboats late?”

“No sir.”

“No tugs?” Adams asked, knowing the answer.

“No tugs, sir.”

“No pilot?”

“No pilot, sir.”

“Get under way. Captain. And I guess this is it till January. Oh, Patch, no pirate flag this time. Right?”

“Right, sir.” There was an awkward silence between the two men, friends separated by the gulf shaped by their respective jobs.

Adams shook Pacino’s hand. “Well, good luck again, Patch. And good hunting.

Pacino walked across the gangway, again struck by how different this day’s underway was from his father’s.

“DEVILFISH, ARRIVING.”

Pacino walked forward to the leading edge of the sail, climbed up the steel ladder rungs set into the flank of the sail 25 feet up to the bridge. Stokes and the phone talker were crammed into the small cockpit of the bridge. Aft, poking his head from a trapdoor, a clamshell, was the enlisted lookout. In the crawlspace between the bridge and the lookout cockpit was another enlisted-man phone talker, shoehorned into a tight black hole with no view and no breeze. His job was to act as back-up in case the bridge communication box failed. Whenever the OOD gave a speed or rudder order, the phone talkers simultaneously relayed it to phone talkers in the control room below.

Pacino climbed to the flying bridge at the top of the sail behind the bridge cockpit. Steel handrails, temporarily screwed into the top of the sail, were set up above and behind the bridge cockpit. Standing there, Pacino could see for miles. He checked his watch.

“Offsa’deck, let’s lose the gangway.”

A crane on the pier pulled the gangway off Devilfish’s hull. Pacino nodded to Stokes. “Let’s go.”

Stokes took the bullhorn and shouted down to the lifejacketed men on the deck and on the pier, “Take in line one. Take in line two.” The linehandlers on the pier pulled the heavy lines from the bollards and tossed them to the linehandlers on the boat. The ship’s bow started moving away from the pier, the current pushing her away.

“Take in three. Take in four.” Stokes leaned over the starboard side of the sail, looking aft at the linehandlers. As the pier sailors tossed the thick lines to the boat’s linehandlers, he picked up his microphone.

“Shift colors!” An air horn at the base of the cockpit blasted an earsplitting shriek for eight seconds, announcing that the warship was no longer pierbound. Simultaneously the American flag was struck on deck, a bigger American flag raised on the temporary flagpole behind Pacino, and on the other lanyard next to the American flag, the Jolly Roger was raised to flap proudly in the breeze. On the pier. Commodore Adams smiled in spite of himself.

Pacino climbed down into the bridge cockpit with the Officer of the Deck and the Junior Officer of the Deck.

“Flying bridge clear. Off’sa’deck,” he said to Stokes.

“Raise the radar mast, rotate and radiate.” Stokes passed orders to the control room, and above and behind them the radar hummed and squeaked as it rotated, helping the control room crew below navigate out of Norfolk. Both periscopes rotated furiously, taking visual fixes as the navigator, an Irishman named Christman with red hair and temperament to match, directed them out.

“BRIDGE, NAVIGATOR,” the bridge communicationbox rattled, “100 YARDS TO TURNING POINT. NEW COURSE, ZERO EIGHT ONE.”

“Navigator, Bridge aye,” Stokes drawled into the microphone.

Pacino looked at the sky and the sea. The wind was stiff and cold, numbing his windward left cheek. The sky was a deep blue with white clouds in layer-thin wisps. The sun was bright but cold and low on the horizon. The southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay was choppy in the wind. The water looked a dirty green, small whitecaps on every wave. Pacino looked through his binoculars down the channel after the next turn and saw a merchant tanker lumbering down toward them, inbound to Norfolk’s” international terminal.

“BRIDGE, NAVIGATOR, MARK THE TURN TO COURSE ZERO EIGHT ONE.”

“Helm, Bridge, right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course zero eight one,” Stokes ordered. Pacino nodded.

“Helm, all ahead standard,” Stokes called into his microphone.

“Off sa’deck, shift pumps,” Pacino said, “we’re about to haul ass.” The ship began to react to the speed increase of 10 knots, the bow wave rising over the bow until the hull forward of the sail started to get wet and the wake aft to boil white.

Stokes spoke into his microphone: “Maneuvering, Bridge, shift reactor main coolant pumps to fast speed.”

“SHIFT REACTOR MAIN COOLANT PUMPS TO FAST SPEED, BRIDGE, MANEUVERING AYE … BRIDGE, MANEUVERING, REACTOR MAIN COOLANT PUMPS ARE RUNNING IN FAST SPEED.” Stokes acknowledged. He looked at Pacino, standing beside him on the crowded bridge.

“Flank it, OOD,” Pacino said, training his binoculars again on the inbound merchant ship and the Thimble Shoals Channel beyond.

“Helm, all ahead flank,” Stokes ordered.

“ALL AHEAD FLANK, HELM AYE … BRIDGE, HELM, MANEUVERING ANSWERS ALL AHEAD FLANK.”

The bridge box sputtered with Rapier’s voice: “BRIDGE, XO. CAPTAIN TO THE IJV PHONE,” requesting that Pacino pick up the UV phone circuit, a more private line than the P.A. speakers.

“Captain,” Pacino said into the handset.

“XO, sir,” Rapier said. “Recommend we keep the speed down in the channel, sir. Last time we flanked it we got a speeding ticket from the Coasties. Max speed in the channel is 15 knots.”

“The Coast Guard has their priorities, we’ve got ours, XO.”

“Your hide, sir.”

The bow wave climbed up the hull until it was breaking aft of the sail. The water stream climbed the sail itself, spraying the bridge officers. The hull vibrated beneath them with the power of the ship’s main engines, two steam turbines driving a huge reduction gear and the single spiral-bladed screw. The wake boiled up astern. The wind blew in the officers’ faces, making communication possible only through screaming. Devilfish rocked in the waves, five degrees to port, then back to starboard. The periscopes rotated, the radar mast whistled as it spun in circles, the flags crackled in the wind and the bow wave roared. Usually the sounds of getting under way filled Pacino’s soul with a near-pure contentment. Today, all he could think about was his father, and a Russian admiral that had put him on the bottom.