U.S.S. Seawolf (4 page)

But the key to
Thresher
, according to the studies of Judd Crocker, was that she was going too slowly, creeping along 1,000 feet below the surface at only around four knots. When the valve casing burst and the reactor shut down, she had power for just a very few minutes, but she had no momentum, and she used her power revving her turbines, building speed to drive her upward virtually from a standing start. That power, Judd believed, failed when she was only 150 feet below the surface. There just was not sufficient thrust to carry her upward all the way, and she simply slid back down, gathering speed before crashing into the bottom at some 80 knots.

When he arrived at the scene of the flood he was taken
aback by the noise, the apparent amount of seawater entering the ship, and the stupefying roar of the leak. Lt. Commander Schulz appeared to have the situation in hand, and he had two burly engineers, wielding wrenches, shutting the valve, soaked through, working in the dark mist in a maze of pipes and valves, fighting their way to get at the bronze fitting.

And even as he stood there, already soaked by the freezing spray, unable to speak because of the noise, he felt Mike Schulz tap him on the shoulder and, grinning, offer a silent thumbs-up.

As the valve was finally shut and the noise stopped, Judd squelched his way back to the control room and announced that the torpedo tube trials would be delayed only as long as it took to pump out the water, repair the electronics and clean the place up. He didn’t want to get too far behind the eight ball. This section of the tests was supposed to be completed by noon the following day.

And once more he ordered a speed change, back to 20 knots, running silent, steady, without further hysterics. The way he liked it.

“Carry on, XO,” he said. “Go back down to eight hundred feet at twenty knots. I’m just going back to change my shoes. I’ll be back in five. Get someone to bring me a cup of coffee, willya? I’ll drink it while you’re changing your underpants.”

Linus Clarke had the sense to laugh.

Thursday evening. June 15, 2006
.
The Pineapple Bar. Pearl City, Hawaii
.

“Well, guys, we got our celebrity XO back, right?”

Chief Brad Stockton was referring to the one fact that had occurred on this day that
everyone
knew. Lt. Commander Linus Clarke, fresh from another six-month stint at CIA headquarters, had arrived by air from San Diego to resume his duties on
Seawolf
. The CO had been palpa
bly noncommittal in his assessment of the merit of that appointment. In Chief Stockton’s view, Judd had always known that Linus would be his number two on this particular mission.

They were leaving in a few days,
Seawolf
having finally completed her trials. But their destination remained wrapped in secrecy. In Brad’s opinion they were heading southwest for a long way, bound for the Indian Ocean and then the Arabian Sea, where there was the usual unrest along the oil tanker routes, Iran still making veiled threats about her historical ownership of the Persian Gulf.

Among the rest of this cheerful gathering, on this warm tropical night just north of Pearl Harbor, opinion was divided. Petty Officer Chase Utley, the communications operator, thought they might be headed northwest, way up the Pacific toward the Kamchatka Peninsula, where the Russians were reportedly planning to conduct missile tests off their base at Petropavluvsk.

“Jesus, I hope the hell not,” said veteran Seaman engineer Tony Fontana. “That place is the goddamned end of the world, coast of Siberia for Christ’s sake. We’d be about ten thousand miles from the nearest bar.”

“Well, how the hell could that matter?” said Chase. “We never get out of the ship on these patrols anyway.”

“That’s not the point,” retorted Fontana. “It’s just a feeling of being at least somewhere close to civilization.”

“For civilization read Budweiser,” said Stockton, grinning.

“I’m serious,” added Fontana. “You guys don’t understand. There’s a terrible feeling…kinda desolate when you’re operating at the absolute ass-end of the world off Siberia. You just know there’s nothing there, nothing in the sea, or even on the land, ’cept for rocks and trees and shit. Something happens, you’re a dead sonofabitch, thousands of miles from anywhere.”

“You ever been up to the Kamchatka?”

“Well, no. But I used to know a guy whose cousin had been there!”

They all fell over laughing. Fontana was a funny guy who really should have gone for a career in standup comedy, or at least on television. He’d never quite advanced as he should have in the Navy, owing to a determination to be the last man to leave any party. He’d twice missed his ship, which had been regarded as a character flaw by the powers that be. But the tall, tough, Ohio-born engineer was outstanding at his job, and various COs had found a way to get him forgiven. Just as well, in the opinion of Brad Stockton. Tony Fontana had been the man who had shut the valve in the torpedo room the previous October.

At this point newly promoted Petty Officer Third Class Andy Cannizaro from Mandeville, Louisiana, arrived with an armful of beers, set them down on the table and expounded his own theory on where they might be headed two days hence.

“Shit, it’s obvious to anyone except for a bunch of morons,” he confided. “
Seawolf
is going to China.”

“China? Fuck that,” said Tony. “Crazy bastards will probably try to sink us. Fuck that.”

“You ever been there?” asked Andy.

“Sure. My uncle used to run a laundry in Shanghai…went broke…guy by the name of Kash Mai Chek.”

Seaman Fontana’s endless store of magnificently awful one-liners was so vast that no one could ever quite remember whether they had heard them before or not. But they always got a major laugh, mainly because they were always funny, but also because everyone liked Tony.

“Jesus, this is unbelievable,” said Andy. “Like trying to have a conversation in a nuthouse. Anyway, when we leave here I happen to know that our course is two-seven-zero, due west, and in case any of you guys are having trouble with that, it’s a direct course to Taiwan…and I guess y’all know what that means.”

“I’m not sure you’re right, Andy,” said the group’s second petty officer third class, Jason Colson. “I’m not revealing any secrets, but I can say I’ve never once heard the word ‘Taiwan’ mentioned recently.”

Jason, like Andy, was 24. But whereas Andy was actively involved in the pure movement of the submarine, watching the planes and the pressurized water systems, Jason was the captain’s writer, which essentially made him a clerk. But he was privy to a lot of information, and at a major level of secrecy, as he formally recorded and logged the actions and plans of the commanding officer of
Seawolf
.

If anyone at this table had the remotest idea where this next mission was going, it would most certainly have been Petty Officer Jason Colson, and he most certainly did not know.

“Well,” said Andy, “I did hear we were headed due west, not southwest. And if we hold that course we’ll run straight up one of the eastern beaches of Taiwan.”

“Christ, that’s nearly four thousand miles away.”

“Yeah, but we can knock off seven hundred miles in a day at two-thirds speed,” said Fontana. “Pushed, we can make nearly a thousand miles. Jesus, we could be on the beach a week from now, surrounded by Taiwanese pussy…slit-eyed beauties fighting to get at me. Give me that beer, Andy. I’m trying to hold myself back.”

Everyone laughed again. But then Chase Utley said quite seriously, “Do you guys really think we might be going to China? Because if we are, that really gives me the creeps. That place is damn scary. I mean, what was all that shit about in the papers last week?”

Brad Stockton, the Senior Petty Officer, the absolute focus for all interdepartmental discipline on board
Seawolf
, stepped into the conversation the moment it took an earnest, thoughtful tone.

“It was just the Chinese Fleet moving too close to the shores of Taiwan and firing missiles right across the landmass of the island. Just too close.”

“Yeah, but didn’t the
Ronald Reagan
show up and drive them off?”

“Well, it showed up. But it didn’t actually drive them off. They left of their own accord. They usually do,
steaming away up the Strait, northwest away from Taiwan toward their own coastline.”

“You mean the carrier did not actually warn them off?”

“No. Not precisely. But the sight of that ship would give anyone pause for thought. Apparently the Chinese just backed right off before we got within two miles of them.”

“I thought we used to be good friends with China, back in the late nineties.”

“Well, I guess we were. But they’re hard to be friends with. They just have a totally different mindset from us. Like the Japanese, they will take, take, take. Until you stop ’em.”

“You think we might ever have to fight a war with ’em? I mean, a real shooting war?”

“I doubt it. They are damned self-interested, and they like money better than war. And they always back off if we even look like growling at ’em. But these days, you never know. They’ve been building up their goddamned Navy for a lot of years now. Three hundred thousand personnel, new ships, Russian submarines, a new carrier and Christ knows what else.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Jason. “I was looking at a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
the other day and they had a front-page article on China. Some minister or other—had a name a bit like Kash Mai Chek—said something dead scary. He was talking about the appearance of the big American carrier, and he was quoted as saying, ‘Do you really think the USA would trade Taiwan for Los Angeles?’ I mean, that’s bad shit.”

“It sure would be if they really could throw a ballistic missile right across the Pacific.”

“And can they?”

“Who knows,” said Stockton. “Who the hell knows.”

“I bet our XO knows,” said Andy. “That’s one mysterious guy. But he spends half his life in the CIA, and I’m told he’s officially involved with Navy Intelligence.”

“If you ask me, he ought to stay there,” said Jason
indiscreetly. “I mean, did you guys tune into that shit that broke out last October?”

“You mean when he ordered the ship to the surface against the CO’s wishes when we had the leak in the torpedo room?”

“Yeah. That was one scared dude.”

“Yeah, he was scared,” said Chief Stockton. “But so was I.”

“So was everyone.”

“The CO wasn’t.”

“I bet he was. He just wasn’t letting on.”

“Well, if everyone was just as scared as everyone else, how come the CO pulled everyone together, took command, and refused to panic?”

“Because he’s the goddamned CO, that’s why. That’s what he’s trained for,” said Brad. “In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t make many people commanding officers of nuclear submarines, not out of all the thousands of guys who want to join the Navy.”

“They don’t make many XOs, either. And ours was one scared dude.”

“Right. But it was his first major incident on a deep submergence trial. You know, the guy had no idea what to expect. And he thought he might die in the next five minutes. And that tends to concentrate your head. People react differently. He’ll learn…I think.”

“Yeah, well, he might. But I sure know who I’d rather have in command.”

1625. Friday, June 16
.
Office of the President’s
National Security Adviser
.
The White House
.

Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan was irritated, which was not a totally unusual situation. He sat behind his huge desk, glowering. On the wall opposite were three magnif
icently framed oil paintings, one of General Douglas MacArthur, one of General George Patton, one of Admiral Chester Nimitz.
Guys who had some semblance of an idea of what the hell was going on
.

The admiral, however, remained irritated, despite being gazed down upon, not disapprovingly, he thought, by three of the twentieth-century titans of the U.S. military.

“KATHY!” he yelled, bypassing the excellent state-of-the-art White House communications system. “COFFEE FOR ONE…NONE FOR THAT LATE BASTARD FROM THE PENTAGON…ANYWAY, WHERE THE HELL IS HE?”

The slim-line pastel green telephone on his desk tinkled discreetly like a little silver bell, which also irritated him—“
Goddamned faggot phone
”—and he grabbed it like a wild boar with a truffle.

“MORGAN!” he rasped. “SPEAK.”

“Oh, such a relief to find you in such rare good humor, Admiral,” came the voice of his very private secretary and even more private girlfriend, Kathy O’Brien, the best-looking lady in the White House and possibly the best-looking redhead in Washington. “I do hope you don’t object to my using the phone, rather than standing up in the hall out here and trying to bellow through a five-inch-thick oak door like a rutting moose…LIKE YOU.”

The admiral dissolved into laughter, as he usually did at the sassy turn of phrase of the lady he loved. Recovering his natural poise, he continued, “WELL…where the hell is he?”

“You mean Admiral Mulligan, sir?”

“Who the hell do you think I mean? John the Baptist?”

“I didn’t even know John the Baptist was working in the Pentagon.”

“Jesus Christ, Kathy! Where the hell is he?”

Kathy’s tone changed. “Arnold Morgan,” she gritted, “I have told you five times that I have been in touch with the office of the Chief of Naval Operations and on each
occasion I have been informed that Admiral Joseph Mulligan has left his office and was on his way here. Each time I have told you exactly that. I am not a traffic cop, I am not a chauffeur, I am not Admiral Mulligan’s mistress. I have no idea where he is. When he arrives I will be sure to inform you.”

Before she put down the phone, Kathy O’Brien whispered, “Good-bye, my darling, rude pig.” Slam.

“
KATHY
!!”

Phone rings. “What?”

“WELL, WHERE THE HELL IS HE?”

“As a matter of fact he has just walked through the door…shall I send him in?”