Attack Of The Seawolf

by Michael Dimercurio

  At the aft end of the conn was a display console housing repeater panels for the sonar set and the firecontrol computer as well as the

  red handset of a NESTOR satellite secure-voice radio system. Beside the radio gear was the underwater telephone console.

  In the port forward corner of the room were the ballast-control panel wrapping around from port to forward, and next to it the ship-control panel, a set of three control seats situated around airplane-style controls. The panels performed similar functions to their ancestors on previous ship classes, but the level of computerization had progressed enormously—the panels had almost no hardware instruments, only computer video screens where the ship’s combat computer displayed the faces of the instruments the crew would configure.

  “Looks like something out of a sci-fi flick,” Pacino said, staring at the ship-control console.

  “We still haven’t gone all the way to computer ship control—the planes and rudder and ballast systems are still controlled manually by the four-man ship-control team instead of by the computer,” Keebes said.

  NAV SEA still isn’t comfortable with computers driving the boat. Their mentality is still in the 1940s. Why pay for all these computers if it still takes four men to take the ship from periscope depth to test depth?

  But one step at a time, I suppose.”

  Keebes moved to the starboard side of the room, where a long row of firecontrol computer consoles were set up. Instead of three displays, there were five.

  “The combat control system is the BSY-2/Mark II.

  A lot like the old CCS Mark I of the 688 and 637 classes, just more capabilities. Ties into the nav computers, so it automatically writes records of any combat encounters. The input from the hull, spherical, and towed arrays is integrated pretty well into this beast.

  Target acquisition and tracking are simplified. Weapons can be programmed from any of the panels.

  Works well.”

  “Let’s get to the lower level,” Pacino said.

  They went down the aft-stairs to the lower level.

  “Aux Machinery,” Keebes said.

  “Emergency diesel lives here.”

  Pacino tried not to look too impressed by the sheer size of the diesel engine. It dwarfed the engine he’d had on Devilfish.

  “Torpedo room has space for fifty weapons. We’ve got eight torpedo tubes. Like earlier classes the tubes are amidships. These are canted outward ten degrees.”

  Pacino followed Keebes through the torpedo room, walking the narrow aisle beside the tall racks of the weapons. He looked back at the room from the forward end, impressed by the huge size of the ship. The Mark 50 torpedoes and the Javelin cruise missiles were twenty-one inches in diameter and twenty-one feet long, graceful, sleek weapons.

  “Want to see the engineering spaces, sir?”

  Pacino looked at his watch, conscious that every moment that passed was another chance for Sean Murphy and his crew to die. Still, as commander of the rescue mission, he’d better have a mental picture of every aspect of the Seawolf, no matter how abbreviated.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Better put on your TLD, sir,” Keebes said, reaching into a pocket and producing a black plastic cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. The thermoluminescent dosimeter would measure Pacino’s radiation dose from the reactor. As Pacino took the dosimeter he recalled the radiation sickness he had battled two years before, his strongest memory of that time being the hours he had spent vomiting and dry heaving. Pacino fastened it on his belt and gestured to Keebes to continue on.

  Keebes led the way up the ladder to the middle level and aft, to a large watertight hatch that led through a long tunnel.

  “Shielded tunnel, sir. This door here leads to the reactor compartment. Take a look through the lead window. We’re in the power range and steaming, natural circulation mode, normal full power lineup, divorced from shore power with the main engines warm.”

  Pacino put his face next to the thick leaded glass of the reactor compartment viewing port while rotating the viewing mirror. That gave him a view into the compartment, to which entry was prohibited while the reactor was critical. The equipment was huge. No wonder the ship could produce such horsepower.

  Keebes waited until Pacino was ready, then continued aft through the tunnel to another massive hatch and into the engine room

  “Aft compartment. This ship is built with the mechanics in mind—we can rig out virtually any piece of equipment without cutting open the hull, with the exception of the turbines and reduction gear. The motor control room is forward with the reactor control electronics. Those forward turbines are the SSTGs and the aft ones are the main engines.”

  The turbines were also big, but Pacino was getting used to the ship’s scale. Still, the main engines, their counterparts only five feet in diameter on Devilfish, were fully a deck-and-a half tall, and the reduction gear casing was even larger. The room was hot and humid from the steam plant but not nearly as humid as on Pacino’s previous boats.

  Aft of the reduction gear was the enclosed maneuvering room. Pacino was interrogating Keebes on the procedure to shift from natural circulation to forced flow when the maneuvering phone rang. Keebes answered, listened, hung up.

  “Admiral Donchez wants us in the wardroom, sir.

  Time for the change-of-command.”

  Pacino nodded and followed Keebes forward, wondering how long it would take to get used to this new giant. And then, just for a moment, he felt dwarfed by her. Better get over that, he told himself.

  CHAPTER 10

  FRIDAY. 10 MAY

  0125 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  yokosuka naval station, pier 4 USS seawolf 1025 local time

  “Attention on deck!”

  The officers and chief petty officers in the wardroom came to attention.

  “At ease,” Pacino said, surprised at how confident his voice sounded. He had worried about this moment, wondering how the men would see him, and how he would see them … how he could take men he had never met or trained and take them covertly into enemy territory on a combat mission.

  Keebes stopped in front of the first man near the door, a slightly overweight lieutenant commander with an intense expression on his face, dark bags under his eyes, the odor of cigarette smoke strong in the air around him. Pacino had the impression of a man on a collision course with a heart attack.

  “This is the engineer, Captain, Lieutenant Commander Ray Linden. With us since we laid down the keel. He knows every valve, cable, pump, pipe and switch of the propulsion plant.”

  “Hi, Eng. I hear you’ve got some serious horses under the hood back there.”

  “Yes sir,” Linden said, squinting up into Pacino’s eyes, “and they’re ready to gallop.”

  “Good. You’ll need to make sure they gallop damned quietly.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  Keebes led Pacino to the next man, a heavyset lieutenant commander with a tightly trimmed beard covering his fleshy jaw, an open expression set into the lines of his face.

  “Lieutenant Commander Bill Feyley, our weapons and combat systems officer.”

  “Weps,” Pacino said, shaking Feyley’s hand.

  “How did the load out go?”

  “We did it in record time, given we started in the early hours of the morning with a burned-out weapons-loading crew. But we’ve got what you wanted.”

  “Good. Sonar and firecontrol ready?”

  “The best, sir.”

  Pacino was about to move on, when something struck him as wrong.

  “Weps, about the beard … maybe you should wait till we’re underway before you grow that thing.”

  Keebes looked at Pacino.

  “They changed that regulation two years ago. Captain Pacino,” Keebes said after a moment.

  “Submarine officers rate beards now.”

  Pacino nodded quickly … He’d been away too long, he thought.

  Pacino had memorized key portions of each man’s service j
acket, along with a confidential briefing prepared by Donchez’s staff, including things that would never find their way into the official service records but items that Pacino would need to know in tight situations. Such as that Greg Keebes’s wife had recently left him for a neighbor down the street; that Bill Feyley, the ship’s gentleman bachelor, tended to drink and carouse, habitually waking up in port in the arms of nameless women; that Tim Turner, the sonar firecontrol officer, an amiable man with a fashionable haircut, had recently fought with his live-in girlfriend over spending too much time with the Seawolf and not enough with her. It seemed that in a white-hot moment Turner had taken

  the keys to the new Trans Am he had given her for her birthday and smashed the car into a dumpster, then tossed the keys back to her saying “Happy birthday, babe.” And there was Rick Brackovic, the reactor-controls officer, who had missed the birth of his second boy the week before, not having been granted emergency leave for it, after missing the birth of his first child just fifteen months earlier. His wife was nearly fed up and contemplating divorce. Each briefing sheet listed the pain these men had suffered on account of their commitment to the submarine force, leaving home for months at a time to take a steel pipe to the bottom of the ocean for reasons that often made no sense to their families. And many of the stories seemed familiar to Pacino, whose own personal life had suffered in his climb to command, at one point nearly forcing him to choose between his submarine and his family.

  After Pacino had met the officers and chiefs, he went to the end of the table and pulled a set of papers from his shirt pocket.

  “Gentlemen, I’ll read my orders: “From NAVPERSCOM, Washington, D.C.” to Captain Michael A. Pacino, U.S. Navy (Retired). You are hereby reactivated to active duty at the rank of Captain and ordered to report for temporary duty as commanding officer of USS Seawolf, SSN-21. You will relieve the acting commanding officer and retain command for an undetermined period for execution of a classified operation.

  Upon completion of said operation you will stand by to be relieved of command, at which point you will return to your previous assignment.”

  ” Pacino looked up from the papers, turned to the navigator, Greg Keebes.

  “Lieutenant Commander Keebes, I am ready to relieve you, sir.”

  “I am ready to be relieved.”

  “I relieve you, sir,” Pacino said, saluting, the staged ceremony signaling that he had just assumed the burden of command, the mantle of total responsibility for the USS Seawolf. Keebes saluted back.

  “I stand relieved.”

  Pacino looked at the men in the room for a moment.

  “Nav,” he said to Keebes, “as of now you are the acting executive officer.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Very well, then, XO. Station the maneuvering watch.”

  Pacino found Admiral Donchez waiting for him in his stateroom.

  “Well, sir, what have you got for me?”

  “SEALs will be here any minute, Mikey. Commander Lennox, the Tampa’s XO, will be coming on with them. As soon as they’re aboard, get underway and make max speed to Point Hotel.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And, Mikey, listen to me. I picked you for this mission because you’re a damned good captain. And because you know Murphy and I know you’ll give this rescue OP everything you can to make it succeed.

  Now, I know you want to get Sean Murphy out of there. But remember, this ship and her crew are as important to us as the Tampa. If anything happens that threatens the survivability of this ship, get the hell out. Murphy would understand, so will I. I don’t want to have to pull your broken hull off the bottom of the bay because you got pissed off at the Chinese. Am I clear?”

  “Yes sir,” Pacino said, annoyed in spite of himself.

  Donchez stared at him for a moment, and reassumed an easy smile.

  “Well, I’ve gotta run, Mikey.

  Good luck. Good hunting. I can find my way out. Get your ass to the bridge and get this sewer pipe out of here.”

  Pacino stretched out his hand to the admiral, who took it and gripped it, nearly crushing Pacino’s hand.

  “Thanks, sir. For everything.”

  Donchez nodded, then vanished out the door and up the ladder, the bridge communication box soon sputtering over the ship’s Circuit One PA. system:

  “COMMANDER IN CHIEF, UNITED STATES

  PACIFIC FLEET … DEPARTING!”

  Pacino took up the blue baseball cap on the stateroom’s table, the one Keebes had left for him. The brim had the scrambled eggs for the captain, the gold submariner’s dolphins, and the block letters reading USS SEAWOLF SSN-21. Pacino put on the cap, shut the door of the cabin and headed forward to the bridge-access trunk, ready to drive the submarine, his submarine, to the open ocean.

  CHAPTER 11

  FRIDAY, 10 MAY

  0145 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  yokosuka naval station, pier 4 USS seawolf 1045 local time

  Captain Michael Pacino climbed the rungs of the bridge-access tunnel ladder, the light from the bridge above shining down from a distance. The tunnel was almost twenty feet tall, going from the upper level passageway outside the crew’s mess to the cockpit at the top of the sail. At the top of the ladder Pacino’s passage was obstructed by the metal grating that formed the deck of the bridge cockpit. The officer of the deck swung the grating open. Pacino grabbed a handhold and lifted himself up to the cockpit. Once he was on his feet, the grating was dropped down.

  “Good morning. Captain,” Bill Feyley said. Like Pacino, Feyley wore cotton working khakis and a khaki jacket, binoculars around his neck, a Seawolf blue ball cap and aviator’s wire rimmed sunglasses.

  “You’ll be conning us out, Weps?”

  “I’m the OOD,” Feyley said.

  “But Mr. Joseph will take the conn as Junior Officer of the Deck.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Topside talking to the line handlers

  Pacino looked up and saw the tall, skinny youth walking topside. Jeff Joseph, the communications officer, was an oddball, Pacino thought. Smart, personable, funny, also maybe the ugliest officer he’d ever

  seen, bug eyes and buck teeth. Still, according to the reports Pacino had read, the kid was showing himself to be a champion ship driver even though he had been aboard only a few months.

  Pacino looked at the cockpit. It was just a cubbyhole in the metal of the sail, formed by lowering clamshell doors down to expose an unused volume at the top of the bridge trunk. A small communication box was fastened to the forward lip of the sail. Beside it was a gyrocompass repeater. Above the lip of the sail was a Plexiglas windshield. Pacino leaned out over the starboard side of the bridge and looked at the pier below. The view from the top of the sail gave him the kind of perspective an old time square-rigger sailor would have from a masthead’s crow’s nest. Pacino looked forward down the length of the concrete pier, the water in the slip empty except for Seawolf. At the end of the pier a lone figure walked, a heavyset man in a khaki officer’s uniform. Pacino picked up his binoculars.

  The man was carrying a duffel bag, was nondescript except for a thick mustache. He was bald, his khaki garrison cap barely covering the skin of his head. He was built like a cylinder.

  “Captain,” Feyley said, putting down a phone handset, “Commander Lennox is on the way. Pier guard said he has orders to come aboard.”

  “I’ll meet him on the pier,” Pacino said, lifting his leg over the bridge coaming and finding the ladder rungs set into the flank of the sail. He lowered himself down the two stories to the topside deck and saluted the aft flag and the topside sentry, then walked over the gangway to the pier.

  “SEAWOLF … DEPARTING!” rang out the Circuit One deck loudspeaker. It took a moment for Pacino to realize the sentry’s announcement was talking about him.

  Pacino walked down the pier to the commander, who stopped and saluted.

  “Kurt Lennox, reporting as ordered, Captain.”

  Pacino waved
a salute and shook Lennox’s hand.

  “I’m Captain Pacino. Come on down. Commander.”

  Pacino pointed to the ship and the two men began walking toward the gangway.

  “Were you briefed on the Tampa situation?”

  “Situation? I was just pulled off leave and told to report aboard. I figured something happened to your XO and you needed an emergency replacement. What happened to my ship. Captain?”

  “Typical Navy not to tell you. Security too tight, I guess. Kurt, I can’t tell you specifics until we shove off, but I can say now that your boat is in big trouble. Seawolf is going to help out, and you’ll be part of that.

  That is, if you want to be.”

  Lennox’s face hardened.

  “So am I your XO sir?”

  “I’ve got something else in mind. Let’s get you below and settled in. Once we’ve cleared restricted waters I’ll brief you and the officers.”

  As the men neared the gangway, Lennox pointed down the pier.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Pacino turned. A half-ton truck was bouncing down the pier, two dozen rough-looking men hanging out the open sides of the bed, stuffed in with piles of equipment—diver’s tanks, packaged weapons, pallets of explosives, and crates of ammunition. The truck drew up to the gangway and the truck’s cab door opened. A man emerged and stepped down to the pier, walked up to Pacino and stopped. He had long black hair peppered with gray and drawn back into a ponytail. A handlebar mustache was over a beard that extended halfway down his huge chest. His biceps bulged out of a leather jacket cut off at the shoulders, numerous tattoos on each arm. At his wrists he wore leather spiked-dog collars. He sported dirty faded jeans and cracked and dusty cowboy boots. Behind him in the truck several men hooted and shouted at each other, all dressed like bikers. The character in front of Pacino took out a wrinkled pack of brown cigarettes, flipped one out and lit it with a