Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  Pacino kept walking. His headache was pounding harder. “Admiral, I think she’d feel real bad if you just jumped into a helicopter without thanking her.”

  “You’re right,” Pacino said finally. As they walked by sick bay Pacino stopped. “I have a migraine. I’m going to grab some aspirin or something before we get in the chopper. You wait here.”

  Pacino walked into the door to sickbay. Lt. Eileen Constance was doing computerwork in her office. She wore her regulation whites, her face tanned with no makeup, her hair long and blonde. She had been a nurse for eight years, most of it on the hospital ships, but she had wanted to be a flight surgeon and had put in for medical school. Her application to the University of Florida had been accepted and she was only waiting here on the Mount Whitney as a nurse until med school commenced in the fall. Pacino had learned about her career ambitions while flat on his back in sickbay after recovering from the eye surgery. When they had removed his bandages he had seen her for the first time and felt his heart sink. She was too beautiful, out of his league. It hurt just to look at her.

  “Hi, Eileen, thought I’d stop by and say thanks. I appreciated…”

  She looked up, apparently surprised. “Admiral.” She stood up. “How is the eye? You look like you’re in pain.” She put her hand on his forehead.

  “Headache.”

  She gave him two pills and a bottle of spring water.

  He swallowed, his eyes on her. He moved closer to her, knowing he shouldn’t. She smiled up at him.

  “Well, since you just came to say goodbye, I’ll say good luck. Be careful on the personnel transfer… and give them hell.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And come back in one piece, okay?” She paused.

  “Do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”

  Paully’s knock came at the door. “Time to go, Admiral.”

  “Tell them to start the engines,” Pacino shouted through the door.

  “I’ve got to go,” Pacino said.

  “Please be careful, Michael.” His first name from her lips, when no one called him anything but “sir” or “admiral” or “Patch” or Donchez’s “Mikey” sounded strange but wonderful.

  The sound of the helicopter’s jet engines spooling up could be heard dimly through the bulkheads, the noise swelling as the turbines whined, moaned, screamed. The sounds of the rotors came next, the chopper starting the main rotor.

  Paully knocked again. “Chopper’s ready, sir.”

  Pacino turned back to Eileen, grabbed her shoulders, pulled her close and kissed her. In a way it seemed absurd, a cliche, the warrior off to war, kissing his woman goodbye. Well, hell, so be it.

  He pulled away. “Bet on it, I’ll see you again.”

  He stepped out the door to the passageway, shutting it behind him. Paully followed him to the aft helodeck, and as they opened the watertight door to the helodeck Pacino noticed his headache was gone.

  He stepped into the Sea King helicopter and sat by the hatch, looking at the ship. Paully waved orders at the pilots and the rotor outside roared, the chopper shaking with the power of the rotating blades. The helicopter lifted off the deck, climbed to the southeast and then turned and sped away, the Mount Whitney vanishing far below.

  wm

  northwest pacific Pacino pulled his mask off his neck, spat into it and rubbed the spit across the lens until it squeaked. Satisfied with the antifogging technique, he pulled the mask back down over his face and let it dangle at his throat.

  He clamped the regulator into his mouth and tasted the coppery air from the tanks on his back. The regulator worked. He spat it out, the rubber taste lingering.

  “Okay,” he said to Paully White, “you got your waterproof bag?” Pacino checked his as Paully confirmed his own items on the checklist.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tanks?”

  “Check.”

  “Regulator functional?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gage?

  “Full.”

  “Weights?”

  “Tight.”

  “Mask?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Flippers?”

  “Tough to put on with all the other equipment.”

  “Let’s get this thing on the hump.”

  “Sirs! Drop zone in two minutes,” the chopper copilot shouted back. The Barracuda was four miles ahead, only its periscope mast protruding from the water. Pacino checked the Rolex, knowing the ship had been submerged at periscope depth, hovering motionless, for the last fifteen minutes, since he and White had been late getting off the deck of the Mount Whitney.

  USS Barracuda Capt. David Kane sat at his stateroom’s large conference room table. The captain’s cabin on the Seawolf class was done perfectly, he thought. A large rack, a conference table that could comfortably seat a half-dozen men, a large leather swivel chair that could roll between the conference table and his desk, the wheels of the chair locked unless he pushed the travel button. Set into a soffit in the centerline bulkhead were four widescreen video monitors, the first monitoring the navigation display of the ship’s position, the islands of Japan in the upper right corner, the boundary of the Oparea flashing yellow, now only a hundred nautical miles to the northeast.

  The second display showed a view of the control room in one window, the maneuvering room aft in the other. The third was also a split-screen view, the left half selected to the view out of the type-20 periscope, the sea quiet, nothing to see but the dividing line between the waves of the deep blue ocean and the light blue sky, the right half of the screen displaying the broadband sonar waterfall screen that showed the ocean empty of other ships within the audible range of the BSY-2 combat system. The screen could also display the combatcontrol system’s dot-stacker computer display, useful when they were trailing an enemy submarine—the captain could look up and see the solution to the target with a glance, eliminating a hundred phone calls a day when in trail.

  Kane was showered, shaved and dressed, the arrival of the Pacific Force Commander announced on a flash message he had gotten from the Mount Whitney the night before. He was particularly bothered by this, the arrival of a meddling admiral onboard his submarine, turning his command of one of the newest Seawolfclass submarines from independent action to little more than a flagship. The arrival of an admiral at sea was always bad news, he thought. His authority as commanding officer would be under constant scrutiny and evaluation in front of his observant crew. In his own memory every time one of his commanders had taken aboard an admiral, that admiral had become a sort of proxy captain.

  The captain of a ship was one of the world’s last dictators, but in the world of instantaneous communications the surface-ship captains were no longer fully in charge.

  They took their orders by the ream from the carrier captains, from the battle-group commanders, from Pentagon bureaucrats, even from the president. But submarine commanders were different. They were submerged below the sea where radio signals couldn’t penetrate—except for slow, uncertain and rarely used extremely low frequency signals—in a tactical employment in which they were prohibited from talking and listening. Sub skippers were chosen for their abilities to operate independently, they were where there was no boss, no appeal, no help. The ultimate authority aboard was with the skipper. The ship was his ship.

  But if a captain of a sub were a god, an admiral was some kind of celestial being that pulled the god’s strings. Crew members stared at his stars, awed by a force considered more powerful than the ship’s captain. And when an admiral was seated next to the captain, and the captain spoke, he was as often as not met with a “huh?” as the subordinate stopped looking at the admiral. A flag officer could only be considered bad news. And in this case, Adm. Michael Pacino was doubly bad news. Kane had rescued Pacino in the Labrador Sea from the wreckage of the Seawolf, but by that time he was unconscious, never recovering until months later in the hospital, long after Kane had ceremoniously scuttled the Phoenix. But Kane had h
eard rumors and stories about Pacino, the folklore that Pacino had lost his first ship, the Devilfish, in the Arctic Ocean under the cover of an airtight top-secret classification. There was something about that that bothered Kane, particularly since it had been Donchez who had always protected Pacino, and Kane had never approved of Donchez. Pacino was not only an unknown, he was a commander of unprecedented power in the reorganized submarine force. Before the reorganization, the force had been split between Atlantic and Pacific fleets, each running a very different navy, the cultural gap as wide as the one between New York and Honolulu. Pacino had been named by Admiral Donchez, then the chief of naval operations, as head of the newly formed Unified Submarine Command, which sacked Comsublant and Comsubpac, the admirals in command of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, uniting the organizations under his single command. And the fleet seemed to align itself to Pacino like iron filings to a magnet. Pacino had a stranglehold on the skippers of the fleet. No one came to command without being put through a test with him watching in the submarine control-room simulator in Norfolk. The simulator tests were renowned for their realistic, harsh battle scenarios. One captain, who had passed the attack-simulator test, had walked from the room and collapsed in exhaustion, waking up in a hospital. Pacino’s setup was absolute—flunk that test and either lose command or say goodbye to the possibility of ever having it in the first place. Up to then Kane was the only commander grandfathered, excused from Pacino’s combat test, having served honorably aboard Phoenix and then appointed to command the Barracuda, but since he had taken over, several incumbent captains at neighboring piers had been fired by Pacino for lack of aggressiveness in the attack simulators. Kane felt Pacino was building a force of submarines commanded by men who were loyal to him, who had his stamp of approval, men he had made. Well, he had been one of the few holdouts from the fleets before the reorganization. Finally, three weeks ago, Pacino had sent him the message to report with his officers for an evaluation in the control-room simulator, the trial that would determine whether he would keep his job commanding the Barracuda, but before he could show up for the trial, the emergency orders had come in to put to sea for Operation Enlightened Curtain. And the fact that Pacino had decided to give him the trial in the attack simulator meant that his position was not as secure as he’d thought. All his effort in the Muslim war had been for nothing, because Pacino had called him to the evaluation and would replace him if he didn’t perform against whatever computer game Pacino programmed into the simulator. It was almost as if he would have to go to another Admiral Rickover interview. He tried to remember Rickover’s words to him—I expect you’ll prove yourself to be one of the best nuclear officers who’s ever been in the program. But where Rickover was near-neurotic about reactor safety, Pacino was off the deep end for blood-and-guts aggressiveness. Rickover wanted brains, Pacino wanted balls. Kane had passed Rickover’s test but a doubt had developed whether he would pass Pacino’s. And Pacino’s test was, he felt, one that he shouldn’t have to take—he’d been in command for almost five years now, on the verge of selection to flag rank himself, and now a man his own age who had lost two submarines, would pass judgment on whether he was good enough to keep his command. At least that’s the way he saw it, and he’d built resentment against Pacino ever since that message ordering him to the test. Well, now the admiral would get a chance to see him perform for real, that is, if the admiral allowed him to enter the Oparea in an offensive capacity. He worried that Pacino would want to remain outside the Oparea and watch the sea battle, turning the Barracuda into a flagship no more offensive than the Mount Whitney. Well, Pacino was here now. The waiting was over. The periscope view had stopped turning circles viewing the horizon and was centered on a section of the sky, the crosshairs of the reticle framed on the clouds above the horizon. Nothing was visible until the officer of the deck changed the optical power from low to medium. A small dot could be made out floating above the horizon. The screen jumped a second time as the power was switched to high, the dot growing into a small image of a helicopter, the image bouncing in the view. Again the image jumped as the O.O.D clicked in the power doubler, and the chopper could be seen approaching, the block letters above the cockpit barely readable as us navy. Kane walked out to the control room, where Lt. David Voorheese was hugging the periscope monitor. “Status, O.O.D?”

  “Hovering at periscope depth at the rendezvous point, Captain. I finally have visual on the helicopter.”

  “Flood the forward escape trunk.”

  “Aye, sir, flood the forward escape trunk,” Voorheese repeated back. “Chief of the Watch.

  Flood the forward escape trunk.” Kane looked up at the control room’s periscope-view monitor, the screen set up in the overhead of the room above the attack center. The helicopter now filled the high-power view.

  “Do a horizon scan, Officer of the Deck,” Kane ordered Voorheese.

  Fixating on the helicopter could make him miss an oncoming merchant ship appearing on the horizon. “Aye, sir.”

  “Offsa’deck, sir, forward escape trunk flooded,” the chief of the watch reported from the forward port wraparound ballastcontrol panel. “Open the upper hatch,” Kane commanded. “And find the helicopter again.” Voorheese gave the order to open the escape-trunk upper hatch, then turned his attention back to the periscope, the view in low power showing the approaching helicopter, the image shift to high power revealing the markings on the chopper’s sides, the door open, the feet of two men sticking out. The admiral and his aide, done up in scuba gear. Typical, Kane thought. It seemed overly flashy, intended to wow the crew. An admiral swimming aboard in scuba gear was as radical as the queen of England wearing a thong bikini.

  Pacino moved up to the chopper’s open door, dangling his flippers over the sea, some fifteen feet down. White moved up next to him.

  “The periscope is in sight. Admiral. We’re setting up now.”

  Pacino checked Paully, who looked pale behind his mask. White had told Pacino it had been years since he had been diving. Pacino had been away from it for ten years, but how hard could it be?

  The chopper slowed and hovered, the sea below deep blue with whitecaps from the stiff breeze. Pacino looked out at the sea and the sky, his habit to enjoy his last air before going into a sub still compelling. He took a breath, aware that he’d be breathing canned air for the next weeks. He exhaled, clamped the regulator into his mouth, tested the air and nodded at Paully. He pulled the mask onto his face, careful not to disturb the black eyepatch over his left eye. Going into the water with full scuba gear could be tricky, he remembered. The idea was to make water entry without losing equipment.

  “Ready when you are. Admiral,” the copilot shouted.

  Pacino waved at the pilots, put his left hand on his mask and regulator, his right on the strap for his canister, looked down at the water, bent low at the waist and leaned out over the water until he fell out of the chopper.

  The freefall into the sea was busy with sensations, the violent wind from the rotors of the gray-and-black Sea King machine floating above him, the sea careening toward him, his flippers breaking the surface, the sea coming up to splash into his face, threatening to knock off his mask. Pacino’s instinct took over as he went underwater, the brainstem telling him not to breathe. He had to force himself to take the first breath from the tanks. He looked for Paully, swimming back to the surface to find him. When his mask broke the surface he could see the helicopter flying away, its noise gone ever since he’d hit the water.

  Paully was on the surface. Pacino looked for the periscope, finding it silhouetted against the sun. He nodded to Paully and they swam on the surface until they got to the periscope. Pacino then jackknifed his body so that his head went down, the mast of the periscope extending into the darker depths. He kicked his fins, swimming downward, the air flowing naturally now. The feeling of incredible freedom flooded him, the sea around him now welcoming instead of nightmarish. The water was pleasantly warm against his skin inside the
wet suit.

  Pacino’s ears were now compressing in the pressure, the pain coming slowly, then urgently. He grabbed his nose through the rubber of the mask, clamped his nostrils shut and blew against his sinuses until his eardrums blew back out, equalizing through his Eustachian tubes, the pain gone.

  Pacino’s fingers traced the cold metal of the sail trailing edge and he swam deeper into the sea until the sail ended on the surface of the deck. Again he checked for Paully, who was behind him, then put his hands on the surface of the deck. The ship felt mushy, foamy, the rubbery tiles of the acoustic absorption material making the surface less able to reflect the sound waves of an active sonar pulse from a surface ship. He made his way aft, beginning to wonder if he had missed the hatch opening in the hull. He could see some ten feet in any direction but the surface above was not visible. There was plenty of light, but he couldn’t see distant objects, the world ending ten feet away in a blue haze. The odd visual effect combined with the floating feeling of neutral buoyancy sometimes made divers experience the same sensations of vertigo that pilots suffered. Pacino remembered the disastrous flight to the Reagan. He watched the stream of his exhaled breath, the bubbles floating upward in the same direction he had assumed it to be.