Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Abby, what is it?” he asked her, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.

  “I came to tell you in person, Bruce. It’s over.” She pulled her diamond ring off and handed it to him. “I’ll start with the part you know and work my way to what you don’t. I love you, I’ve loved you since I first saw you. But, honey, I can’t take the separation, and it’s even more than that. You love that ship and your Navy life more than me. I asked you what your plans were, and I’d hoped you’d leave the Piranha when your rotation came up, but you made a special trip to talk to the admiral and begged for a back-to-back command tour, and he gave it to you. Another three years on the damned Piranha. Well, Bruce, you want her, you can have her. That fucking ship is all yours. And I’m giving you my orders now. This is your honorable discharge, Captain. I’m leaving on the next flight back, and I don’t want to talk anymore. Goodbye, Bruce.”

  He’d stood stupidly dumbstruck, his tongue useless in his mouth, watching her walk away, disappearing into a ladies’ room. For a full five minutes he stood there with his mouth open, trying to understand, and starting to understand all too well. He found himself walking into the ladies’ room. He ignored the annoyed shouts, banging on the stall door he thought was Abby’s, only to find it was someone else. Finally a security guard had come and dragged him out.

  He’d found a bar on Ward Avenue and had lined up shot glasses of Wild Turkey for the rest of the night.

  Finally he was ejected as being too drunk to stay. Somehow he had told a cab driver to take him to his ship rather than his quarters, and he had fallen flat on his face at the pier where the gangway went over to the hull topside. The sentries had carried him aboard and put him into his rack.

  The time since then had passed in a blur. He had alternately slept, vomited, was put in the corner as the stewards changed his sheets and mattress, then slept again, vomited again. He had been shaken awake by the duty officer, the executive officer behind him. They’d told him that the ship had emergency orders to get under way. Phillips had waved them off, not caring, angry at the ship that had lost him the only person that had really mattered to him, Abigail Patricia O’Neal. He had rolled over in disgust and gone back to sleep.

  Had it been up to him, he would have slept for weeks, but his mouth got so dry and he was so empty that he struggled to his feet, his head spinning, and walked to the sink in the corner of the stateroom. He pulled down the stainless steel sink and clicked on the lights on either side of the mirror. The fluorescents nickered, then caught, revealing a gray-skinned face that he didn’t want to see this morning.

  He would have resigned his commission after he’d sobered up, but now the ship was at sea. Even if he had a mind to do that, his second-in-command was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, who was there on an American-British exchange program, and who, by U.S. Navy regulations, could take command of the Piranha only if Phillips became physically or mentally incapacitated, and getting dumped by a girlfriend didn’t qualify, no matter how debilitating it was in reality.

  Bruce Phillips had a narrow face, strong chin, a flattened boxer’s nose, with several days’ growth of beard.

  His hairline was so far in retreat that he wore a tight crewcut. As a quirky consolation prize, he had a nicely shaped head, or so Abby had always maintained, back in the past that seemed like another life. Phillips was short, barely breaking five feet, but muscular, his deep chest and narrow waist somehow compensating for his lack of vertical stature.

  Phillips splashed water on his face, wondering if it made any sense to shave, then decided not to. He went into the head between his stateroom and Roger Whatney’s, his executive officer, where he stepped into the shower, letting the heat of it on his shoulders bring him back to life. To an empty life, he thought.

  Through the rush of the water he could hear Whatney’s south-of-London accent: “Skippah, we’ve got an urgent call to periscope depth. Seems the admiral wants a little chat with us.” He paused. “Captain, are you okay? Sir?” “I’m okay, Roger,” Phillips said, shutting his eyes, feeling a headache starting behind his eyes. “I’ll shave and dress and meet you in my stateroom in three minutes.”

  “Aye, sir, I’ll set up the video.”

  ford island pearl harbor naval station pier 5

  “I don’t think I believe this,” Captain Paul White said as he looked at the thousand-foot-long garbage barge.

  Trash was piled up forty feet high the full length of the barge, tied to an oceangoing tug by several thick lines. “It looks like garbage. It smells like garbage. It has seagulls all over it, like garbage.”

  “It is garbage,” Pacino said. I told you I could sneak the SSNX out of here right under the cameras of the news-hounds.”

  “You’re telling me that—thing—is a security cloak for the sub?”

  “Grab your bag and follow me,” Pacino said, stepping on the gunwale of the huge barge. A few feet into the garbage pile Pacino reached for a sheet of waste plywood—which came open on a hidden hinge like a door.

  He disappeared inside, his voice calling for Paully to follow him. A tunnel fabricated of plywood and sheet plastic extended deep under the garbage pile, lit by light bulbs hung from the overhead. The tunnel ended in a tall doghouse over the circle of a hatch. A sentry came to rigid attention and saluted Pacino. Turning to the control panel against the plywood wall of the doghouse, the sentry punched a mushroom button. The hatch, propelled by hydraulics, opened, the circle of it shining in a warm yellow light. Pacino yelled, “Down ladder!” and tossed his bag down, then lowered himself out of sight into the submarine.

  “I don’t believe it,” White said.

  pacific ocean 578 miles east of tokyo, japan altitude: 47,000 feet

  “Didn’t anyone say what this was all about?” Captain John Patton asked, his voice distorted by the oxygen mask and the acoustics of the intercom.

  “Sorry, sir,” the pilot said from the forward seat of the swept-wing F-22 supersonic Navy fighter. “They just told me to get you to Pearl Harbor ASAP.”

  “So who gave you those orders?”

  “Air Boss.”

  “Did he say where he got them?”

  “Supercinc-Pac, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Supreme Commander-in-Chief Pacific, the admiral in charge of the entire U.S. military in the Pacific and the invasion force on the way to White China. The second force, anyway.”

  “Sorry to sound stupid, but I’ve been out of it for a while. I was socked away in a bare room with no TV, and goddamn it, I have no idea what’s going on. Who is this admiral?”

  “You ought to know, sir. He’s one of you bubble-head submarine guys, Pacino.”

  “Pacino’s the supreme commander?”

  “Yessir.”

  And he wanted to see Patton badly enough to fly him out on a supersonic fighter, Patton thought with a sinking feeling. How would he explain the loss of the Annapolis’!

  Pacino and White had set themselves up in the VIP stateroom aft of the executive officer’s stateroom.

  The room was multipurpose. The aft wall was taken up with two large bunks that went into the bulkhead like Pullman compartment sleepers, with a pulldown door that covered up the clutter of them. On the opposite end was a double desk. The center of the room was taken up with a table surrounded by six leather seats, and on the wall opposite the door was a full-width videoconference console. The widescreen television was on, the sound muted, the channel selected to Satellite News Network, which showed a reporter in a studio reading news.

  Pacino had commandeered the large leather seat directly opposite the videoconference console, his papers, chart displays, and Writepad computer laid out on the table surface. He was studying the charts, dictating quietly into the Writepad, writing messages to the fleet, occasionally glancing up at the video widescreen. Paully White moved about the room, barking into a phone, bringing in fruit and Cokes, talking to people in the passageway outside the room while Pacino worked
. The tactical problems revolved through his mind, over and over again. From this a plan was starting to evolve.

  Paully White’s voice intruded finally, the captain having to yell to get through Pacino’s deep concentration.

  “What is it, Paully?”

  “Emmitt Stephens, sir.”

  “Bring him in.”

  Pacino checked his watch. It was 0600 local time, and he had wanted to set sail by now, but gathering the crew on such short notice had been a problem. It was one of Pacino’s tactical problems: how late the SSNX could leave and still manage to arrive in the op area of the East China Sea at the same time as the Piranha, the second half of the pincers he intended to clamp around the Red Force.

  Pacino stood to greet Stephens. With his gray hair hanging over his ears, he looked sweaty and exhausted.

  “I wanted to give you the news in person. Admiral,” he puffed. “The reactor’s critical, and we’re heating up now, emergency rates. We should be bringing steam into the engine room in an hour.”

  “Excellent, Emmitt.” Pacino clapped the older man on the shoulder, and Stephens smiled slightly. “How was it?”

  “Goddamned hairy, sir.”

  “Well, let’s start the engines of the tug, order them revved up. I want them loud, because once their engines are on, I want you to start the emergency diesel. Warm it up slow, but get it on-line using the DC electrical end.

  When it’s warm, put it on the DC bus and divorce the SSNX from shore power. We’ll finish the reactor startup on the diesel in the Pacific.”

  Pacino expected the usual protest at the gross violation of fleet procedures, but Stephens just nodded and repeated back the instructions.

  “And, Emitt, did I mention that you’ll be going with us as chief engineer?”

  “Gee, Admiral, that must have slipped your mind.”

  “Hope you have a spare set of underwear.”

  “Admiral, you’re getting predictable in your old age.

  I packed a bag.”

  Pacino smiled. “Start the diesel, Eng.”

  As the stateroom door shut behind Stephens, Pacino found Paully staring at him. “What?”

  “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you? You’re in your element.” It almost sounded like an accusation. Or maybe that was just Pacino’s take, because it was true, he felt alive again. The flurry of orders was coming naturally into his mind and out of his mouth, his men and machines moving to the beat of his conductor’s baton.

  Paully was dead right, he did love it. He’d had a brief taste of this during the Japanese blockade, and it had seemed to define him. For the first time in years he realized that he no longer missed commanding a submarine, that he no longer felt the emptiness inside him since Seawolf had gone down. The void of submarine command had been filled by fleet command, and he couldn’t—didn’t even want to—go back. But if he was wrapped up in the intricacy of commanding a fleet, he also couldn’t escape feeling guilt. Guilt at feeling good, when he had no right, no right at all, Eileen still quiet in her grave on the other side of the world, leaving a jagged and bloody hole in his life that would never be filled.

  Yet a half million American lives and a billion Chinese lives depended on his next decisions, and it occurred to him that he owed it to those people to release the grief, to get on with his life, even if that meant saying good-bye to Eileen’s memory. He felt her for just a fleeting moment, and what he sensed was not anger at him but a sort of encouragement.

  Pacino narrowed his eyes at White. “I love it, Paully, every second of it. Now, where’s Tanaka? I still need to talk to him.”

  “Joanna?” White called into the passageway. “Hold on, sir.” He vanished for a moment, then came back with an odd look on his face. He was holding a bulky envelope in his hands. “Joanna said he’s gone. He left this.” “Get her in here,” Pacino said slowly, a pang of anxiety running through his gut. He opened the envelope and found a note and a pile of data disks.

  “Sir?” Joanna said.

  “Tanaka?” “He gave me that envelope on the pier and said he had to go.”

  “Did you explain this isn’t really a garbage barge?” “Yessir,” Joanna said in annoyance. “He just said it wasn’t right. He was really upset—he made it all the way to the hatch and got all teary. I think he was embarrassed that a woman saw him that way.”

  Pacino read the note. Paully waited, an eyebrow cocked.

  “Says he can’t go,” Pacino said, reading. Tanaka had written that he couldn’t go to sea and put his own submarine fleet on the bottom, even if it had fallen into the hands of an enemy. The last lines said it all: he had dedicated the Rising Sun class to the memory of his dead son, who had gone down under fire from one of the USS Piranha’s Vortex missiles. Shooting down a Rising Sun would be like having his son die all over again.

  Suddenly Pacino had a new window into death and grieving, and he felt for the older admiral with the dead son. Pacino folded the letter, putting it slowly into his breast pocket. As he glanced at the disks, he noticed a second note taped to them. That note was more official:

  Admiral Pacino-san, here you will find all the data I have been able to accumulate on the class of the Rising Sun. Regrettably the noise signature is a mystery even to me, as the sea trials tests were designed to find out exactly how detectable the Rising Suns are, but with this data you will at least know what you are up against. Best luck to you. Admiral, and with full wishes of your quick prevailing, I remain your servant, Akagi Tanaka.

  “Paully, put the data disks of the Rising Sun into the computer. I want to assign one of our officers to analyze it. But it would be nice if we had that decided by now.

  We need to go over the crew manifest.” Pacino checked his watch. “What’s taking the diesel so long?”

  “Emmit will get it going. Besides, aren’t you waiting for Captain Patton?”

  “Hell, no. I’ll put him on a speed cruiser to catch up to us.” “Wouldn’t a helicopter be better?” Paully asked. “He could grab a Sea King chopper right from Hickam Air Force Base and be here in a half hour.”

  “No. Don’t forget we’re a garbage scow. Someone lowered to a trash barge from a chopper would raise news reporter eyebrows.”

  “I keep forgetting.”

  Just then the ship’s emergency diesel roared to life, loud even though it was located a hundred feet aft, two compartments away.

  “I’d rather breath diesel fumes than this garbage stink,” Pacino said. “Let’s see what’s going on with Bruce Phillips.”

  “I’ll call the Piranha to periscope depth.”

  From the files that Admiral Livingston had downloaded to his Writepad computer, Pacino went over the list of officers for the prospective crew. There was Lieutenant Commander Christopher Porter, academy grad, top of his nuke school and sub school classes. Navy diver, sport sky diver, single, ex-sonar officer of the Barracuda when Pacino had been aboard during the blockade, now at shore duty in San Diego, in Honolulu on vacation, put under arrest a half hour before, the young girl in the hotel room left to wonder what was going on, but security too tight to tell her what was up. Porter would make a good officer, and he knew sonar. Pacino made his decision—Porter would be the ship’s navigator and operations officer. He’d also be charged with studying the Rising Sun and determining how to attack it.

  Next on the list. Commander Walt Hornick, ex-chief engineer of Bruce Phillips’ USS Piranha, assigned in the normal course of duty rotation to teach at the nuclear-power school in Groton when the Reds had begun mobilizing, he’d been given temporary orders to attend an urgent training class. The school at the Pearl Harbor Training Facility was a sham, of course, and he’d been awakened at four in the morning on Saturday and taken to the SSNX. He’d gotten the hull lowered into the water and placed under the garbage-carrying barge. Hornick now waited in the wardroom with the others, mystified that he’d been shanghaied for the purpose of getting out of its dock a new construction sub that had never been to sea. Pa
cino dictated the words “executive officer” to the computer, and the words appeared below Hornick’s photograph.

  The chief engineer slot was occupied by Emmitt Stephens, even though he wasn’t an officer of the line. That left the junior officers. The file opened up to a dozen photos, all of the officers waiting down below. It occurred to him that this was a Job for the ship’s executive officer, and he buzzed the wardroom. A tentative voice answered.

  “Send Commander Hornick to the VIP stateroom,” Pacino said.

  Paully came in just then. “Piranha’s up on the videoconference, Admiral. Are you ready?”

  No, Pacino thought, but I’ll fake it. After all, that’s what fleet command is all about—faking it and making it look planned.

  USS piranha, SSN-23

  He felt better with fresh coveralls on, a steaming cup of coffee in front of him on the conference table, the stateroom tidied up by his steward while he was in the shower.

  Captain Bruce Phillips sipped from a mug with the emblem of the Piranha, a scaly, snarling sharp-toothed fish staring out, the hull of the Seawolf-class submarine behind it. The legend above read uss piranha ssn-23, and the* ship’s motto below, deep—silent—fast—deadly.

  On his starched collars were two silver eagle pins, the emblems of his rank. Above his left breast pocket his gold dolphin pin gleamed in the spotlights rigged for the videoconference.

  Seated next to Phillips was Roger Whatney. His British executive officer was wearing an olive drab sweater with soft shoulder boards on his epaulets, the boards showing two broad gold stripes with a narrow stripe between them, one of the stripes making a loop-the-loop.

  The XO had short hair and a fuzzy mustache, not to mention a dry sense of humor and a mind like a razor blade.

  “Good morning. Admiral,” Phillips said crisply.

  “Bruce, it’s good to talk to you,” Pacino said. “You too. Commander Whatney. I know you’re both in a hurry to get to the operation area, so I’ll get right to it.

  Geography lesson first. On the left half of your screen you should be seeing a chart display of the East China Sea. To the east you’ll see the eastern border of the East China Sea, the Ryukyu Island chain. To the north in the chain is the island of Yakushima, just off Kagoshima, Japan. There’s a substantial gap in the islands from there south to the island of Naze. To the east of the Nazeyakushima Gap is the Point Delta Hold Position, which is on the great circle route to Shanghai from Honolulu.