Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Maybe it’s a bluff,” O’Shaughnessy finally said. “Maybe there’s a negotiation going on with the Whites. Maybe they wanted the Whites to see all this maneuvering.”

  “It’s not that visible, Dick. We know about it because we worked like hell to know about it. I guarantee you this, it will be a hell of a surprise to the Whites when the balloon goes up. The Whites haven’t mobilized anybody.

  It might as well be Christmas Day for all the lack of activity in White China. So this is no saber-rattling.

  And there’s another compelling reason they aren’t doing this for show.”

  “Why?”

  “The Reds are taking too many risks. They’ve left their borders unprotected so they can mass on the eastrn border. Deserting Mongolia’s border maybe. But India’s?

  After all the threats by Nipun? The Reds are blowing it off. Dick, Nipun could strike now and take half of goddamned Red China.”

  “Which means they’re in a hurry, Chris. They’ll attack White China and get their land back and execute all the New Kuomintang Chinese, and we’ll have a reunited China to deal with. Not a pretty picture. And the Reds will do it fast. They’ll take the Whites, or try to, in a week or a month, then get back to business as usual at the Indian frontier.”

  “You’re missing something, Dick. The East China Sea.

  No way can the Reds dive across the border without you guys pounding them into the pavement. So why are they doing this?”

  “Maybe they just think that President Warner won’t go to war over this. They’re betting that the U.N., the U.S., and Europe don’t want to get bloodied in this thing. They’ll say, it’s a Chinese problem. Too close to Christmas. Too close to the next election. Too much risk.”

  “After Warner stationed all the ships and troops in Yokosuka? She’s got enough troops and equipment over there to win a war, even without resupply from the mainland or Hawaii. I happen to know she’s more worried about China than anywhere else, as much today as she was when she stationed the Pacific rapid deployment force there. Plus, Warner saw her only good results in the Japan blockade happen when she stopped delaying and got to business with the Navy. She’s convinced now that if there’s a Chinese scrape, there won’t be any extended decision-making sessions, no encounter groups like before Japan. She’s going in shooting with the prewritten contingency plan. She’s going in immediately, and she’ll fucking hammer Red China.”

  “I won’t ask how you know that,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Wouldn’t want your leg to cramp or anything.”

  Though he was smiling, he knew Osgood didn’t curse like that unless he was at the edge.

  “So, Admiral, same question, for the fifth time, to my slowest pupil. Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”

  “Okay, Mr. Director. I’m stumped. You say President Warner will go ballistic when the Reds jump across the line. I’ll believe you. You say she’ll immediately commit the forces to help the Whites. I’ll believe that. You say the Reds aren’t doing a maneuver or a negotiation with the Whites. I’ll believe that. And I’m saying the Reds aren’t dumb, never have been. They have their problems, but they’re goddamned sharp. So here’s my answer—I don’t know. The Chief of Naval Operations has taken your little quiz today and flunked it. The Department of the Navy gives up here, Chris. What’s the damned answer? Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”

  In the following long silence they passed the American History Museum, then the Washington Monument.

  “Well, Dick, the Combined Intelligence Agency gets the same score you got on that test. We have no goddamned idea why the Reds think this is something they can win.”

  Suddenly O’Shaughnessy felt tired. “Let’s skip the Ellipse run and head back,” he puffed.

  “I’m with you, Dick. I may even just walk back on the bridge.”

  As O’Shaughnessy showered in his office suite, all of the details tumbling through his mind, it just didn’t make sense. He and Osgood were missing something. Something important.

  bethesda naval hospital Pacino hurried to the door of the hospital room and pushed the door slowly open to a dim room with a single bed.

  The decor was standard twenty-first-century hospital, a nondescript wallpaper pattern framing a window with shut Venetian blinds, the bed against the wall, the man in the bed resting on top of a white sheet. The patient looked small and frail, his coloring not much different from the white of the sheet. The room had enough machinery to be an intensive-care-unit facility, but was located in one of the nameless floors of the cancer ward.

  A thought came to Pacino that this was where the hopeless, the inoperable, were carted off to die, but he dismissed it from his mind and concentrated on the face of the man in the bed.

  The patient had not stirred. For a long moment Pacino squinted through the gloom at the prone man, trying to confirm his identity, then with disappointment realized that he was indeed Richard Donchez. Pacino advanced to the bed and looked down. This close, Donchez’s breathing could barely be made out in the quiet of the room, the only other sound a faint beep of a heart monitor.

  Pacino put his hand on the old man’s sleeve, then touched Donchez’s hand. The flesh was cold and limp.

  “Uncle Dick,” Pacino said softly, and when he heard the tremble in his voice, his eyes blurred with moisture.

  He bit his lip and swore to himself he would not lose control, not where Donchez could see him. He checked behind him, glad that Captain White had remained in the corridor. “It’s me. Mikey.”

  The breathing continued, slow and peaceful. Pacino sniffed, standing over the admiral, his head bent. Pacino stared down, his eyes open but his mind registering nothing.

  He was lost in the long past he’d had with this man.

  Pacino’s association with Donchez had started even before Pacino was born. Donchez had been Pacino’s father’s roommate at the Naval Academy. The two men had progressed through a parallel submarine career, Donchez commanding the old Piranha and Anthony Pacino the skipper of the Stingray. When the younger Pacino was a plebe at Annapolis, he was called from his room by the main office to see a visiting officer. The visitor was Commander Donchez. Pacino was eighteen years old, his hair shorn, so skinny his ribs protruded, standing at attention in the presence of the commander.

  His father’s friend had a haunted expression, and his voice was gravelly as he croaked out the words: Mikey, the Stingray sank off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic about a week ago. We couldn’t confirm it until she was due in.

  She failed to show up at the pier today. I’m afraid we have to presume your father is dead. Once Pacino recovered enough to absorb the information, Donchez told him that Stingray had gone down as the result of a freak accident. One of her own torpedoes had detonated in the torpedo room and breached the hull. There had been no survivors.

  Two decades later, Donchez was commanding the Atlantic Fleet’s submarine force when young Commander Michael Pacino rose to command the USS Devilfish. It was Donchez who sent Pacino under the polar icecap to find the Russian Republic’s Omega-class attack submarine after showing him that the Stingray had not perished from an accident, as the cover story had maintained, but had been intentionally taken down by a Soviet Victor III attack sub, whose captain was now the admiral-in-command of the Northern Fleet and aboard the Omega.

  The loss of the Devilfish in that mission remained information so highly classified that only a half dozen men in the upper ranks of the Navy were briefed on it.

  After that mission Pacino resigned from the Navy, disappearing to teach engineering at the Naval Academy.

  There he was vaguely ill at ease, a void having formed in his life. Something vital was missing. He denied it to Janice, his first wife, but what was missing was the feeling of the deck of a nuclear submarine under his feet.

  He was at his worst when Admiral Donchez appeared in his lab one afternoon and asked him to take command of the USS Seawolf for a rescue mission. The submarine Tampa ha
d been captured spying in Go Hai Bay outside Beijing, and Donchez wanted Pacino to bring her out.

  When Pacino heard that his own academy roommate, Sean Murphy, was being held at gunpoint by the Red Chinese, he went with Donchez to Yokosuka, Japan, climbed into Seawolf, and took three Seal commando platoons into the bay to liberate the Tampa.

  The Tampa escaped the piers, but the mission had just begun, for the entire Red Chinese Northern Fleet awaited the subs at the bottleneck mouth of Go Hai Bay.

  He’d fired every weapon aboard, and Seawolf was almost lost, but eventually after the sinking of several dozen Red Chinese PLA Navy warships, Tampa sailed out into international waters. Some thirty Americans had died while under Red Chinese hands, but the remainder fully recovered.

  As a reward, Donchez gave Pacino permanent command of the Seawolf. He loved every minute of it, until the ship went down in the Labrador Sea in a confrontation with an Islamic supersub. After Pacino recovered, Donchez recommended he be given command of the newly formed Unified Submarine Command, and ever since Donchez had been Pacino’s mentor and adviser.

  When the blockade around Japan was ordered by President Warner, Donchez counseled Pacino to run the operation from one of his forward-deployed submarines.

  That had given him the independence he needed to make the operation work.

  Without Donchez, Pacino would never have risen to flag rank. But it had been Donchez the man who was important to Pacino. When young Pacino had heard of his father’s death, he had been set adrift in a hostile world. Donchez had stepped in to be Pacino’s surrogate father. Hell, Pacino thought, Donchez had become his father. Pacino had not thought of him that way at the time, because their relationship had not always been smooth, but that was what proved how close they were— the essence of a father-son relationship was the struggle of the old to educate the young and the young to fight for independence. In hindsight, Pacino saw, Richard Donchez was more his father than Anthony Pacino could ever have been.

  Pacino sat there on the bed, remembering, for what seemed like hours. Finally he pulled one of the chairs next to the bed and sat in it, eventually yielding to sleep.

  In his dreams, he sweated and twitched, the memories rolling by. As he dozed, the man in the bed remained motionless.

  Pacino awoke suddenly, in strange surroundings. The only light in the dark room came from a single fluorescent fixture above a hospital bed.

  He sat up, his muscles cramped. Rubbing his eyes, he looked at his old Rolex, but the watch’s luminescent numeral dashes were no longer visible in darkness. He held it to the light, the timepiece showing a few minutes past four in the morning. He yawned, and when he looked down, he found himself still wearing the Nomex jumpsuit he’d flown in on the F-22 fighter, the suit sweat-stained and stale. At his feet was his flight bag, probably left there for him by Paully White. After a quick glance at Donchez, who still lay motionless, Pacino stood and carted the bag to the room’s small bathroom. It took him less than ten minutes to shower and change into his working khaki uniform, then return to Donchez’s bed.

  The only indication that the old man was still alive were barely discernible sounds of his breathing and the faint beeps of the heart monitor. Pacino sat on the bed to wait.

  He must have dozed off, for when he looked again at Donchez, he was startled to find his eyes open, looking up at him. Pacino said, in a rusty, croaking voice, “Dick, you’re awake!”

  Donchez didn’t respond at first. His dim blue eyes were rimmed with bloodshot lines. His eyebrows—barely discernible dashes of light gray hair—were drawn down over his eyes in a frown. Still, Pacino grabbed his hand and smiled.

  “The Reds,” Donchez said. Pacino barely heard him, the voice of an old man, all traces of his former vigor gone.

  “What? Dick, don’t try to talk—”

  “You’re up against the Reds, Mikey. Get in quick— ohhh,” Donchez groaned.

  “Dick, please—”

  “They’re getting subs.”

  “What? Dick, come on, why don’t you—”

  “Why don’t you listen to me. Admiral?” Donchez said, his old voice returning, a deep strength to it, his bald head beading with drops of sweat.

  “Okay, Uncle Dick, I’m listening.” Pacino looked down with concern, both of Donchez’s hands in his. The old man began coughing, a wet, rattling sound. His eyes shut in pain. When the coughing attack was over, his face had turned beet red. He gasped for breath. “Dick, please take it easy. What is it?”

  “Reds… have… will have… nuke subs. Plasma… torpedoes. East—” More coughing. Pacino tried to pull the old man up so the fluid would drain out of his lungs.

  He finally stopped coughing, obviously an effort of great will. The heart monitor in the corner beeped insistently, faster and faster. “Chinasee.”

  “What, what did you say?”

  “East… China… Sea. Reds. Subs. Get in. Fast.”

  “Dick, I don’t—”

  “See… see… enn… oh…”

  Pacino shook his head helplessly.

  “Ohhh… shawn… ess… zee… chief… naval… opera—”

  “Chief of Naval Operations? O’Shaughnessy?”

  “Yes… you… talk… CNO…” Donchez’s eyes were shut in the effort to talk, deep lines inscribed around them, tears leaking, streaming down his face. He started to cough, then caught himself. He took a deep breath. “Red subs. Get in… fast.”

  “Dick, try to rest. Try to cough.”

  Donchez looked up, his eyes no longer even a dull blue but clouded over, milky, so wet Pacino could barely see the irises. “Take care… Mikey… my… son—”

  A wet cough, and his body relaxed. He slumped in Pacino’s grasp, and he laid his head back on the pillow.

  The heart monitor was faintly whistling through the room, the beeps gone.

  “Uncle Dick. Dick! Dick! Goddamn it, nurse—” Pacino lunged for the call button by the bedside, smashing his fingers against it. Three people, he couldn’t tell if they were men or women, rushed into the room. A stethoscope was applied to Donchez’s chest, a hand to his wrist, a quick look at a chart at the foot of the bed.

  After a few moments the doctor stood and backed away from the bed. “What? Aren’t you going to try to revive him?”

  “Can’t, sir. Orders from the patient. No extraordinary means. No CPR, no code blue, no respirator. You can see yourself.”

  Pacino blindly waved them out. He couldn’t tell if they left. He didn’t care. He bent over the bed, holding Donchez by his shoulders, saying his name over and over.

  He was dimly aware that the front of Donchez’s hospital gown was now soaked.

  He never felt Paully White’s strong hands around his arms, pulling him up and away from the corpse.

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 2 annapolis, Maryland

  The early morning sun was just hitting the copper-roofed buildings of the Naval Academy complex. Admiral Michael Pacino stared unblinkingly across the calm water of the Severn River from the deck of his waterfront house. He’d stood there most of the night, looking across the black, glassy water of the river at the lights of the academy, watching as the rooms lit up one by one in Bancroft Hall, the dorm building, the plebes rising for their Saturday classes. Pacino hadn’t seen the inside of this house since he and Janice were married, back when he taught fluid mechanics.

  Balanced precariously on the rail of the deck, was a faded photograph in a carved wood frame. In the background was the tall, streamlined sail of a Piranha-c nuclear submarine. The sailplanes mounted on the sail gave away how old the ship was, but in the photo it looked brand-new, the paint sleek and black. White letters were painted on the sail, reading devilfish ssn-666.

  Red, white, and blue bunting decorated white-painted wood handrails erected on the deck. Two men stood in the foreground, both wearing starched high-collar dress whites, black and gold ceremonial swords, both uniforms decorated with ribbons and gold submariner’s dolphin pins. On the right was a young P
acino, his hair thick and jet black, his smile untouched by cares, his shoulder boards showing a rank far in the past, the three gold stripes perpendicular to the line of his shoulders. Next to him stood a shorter, bald man, his arm tightly around young Pacino, rumpling the younger man’s uniform.

  Donchez’s smile was broad and proud, a Cuban cigar jutting from his mouth. The photo had captured Pacino’s change-of-command ceremony when he had taken command of the old Devilfish over fifteen years ago.

  The dust on the picture had been removed by fingers, the marks still clear on the smudged glass. A half-smoked Cuban cigar, long cold, lay alongside the photo, next to a highball glass, the residue of bourbon stale at the bottom. Pacino wore the blue baseball cap he’d found in his dusty office, the gold scrambled eggs on the brim, a gold dolphin emblem in the center of the cap’s patch. The words uss devilfish were written above the dolphins, and the ship’s old hull number SSN-666 was embroidered below.

  He had buried Dick Donchez the day before. The funeral had been a crowded affair, blurred in his mind.

  Disconnected images were all he’d retained: the unseasonably green grass of Arlington National Cemetery, the colors of the flag on the black casket, the stiffness of the honor guard folding the flag, the crack of the rifles saluting the admiral, the television cameras, the president and cabinet members, staff members everywhere, aides scurrying around. Secret Service agents trying to look nondescript but standing out anyway. Pacino’s friends were all there, flanking him, Paully White, David Kane, C.B.

  McDonne, Sean Murphy, Jackson Vaughn, Bruce Phillips, a dozen others. His ex-wife, Janice, stood on the other side of the casket wearing a simple black dress, her blond hair cropped short and worn straight, the kinkiness ironed out of it. Young Tony, his son, stood next to him, an awkward teenager in an ill-fitting black suit.

  As the bugle wailed taps mournfully, Pacino’s eyes were downcast. Tony held him up on the right, Paully White on the left.

  Afterward, a hand grasped his shoulder. A deep bass voice said in his ear, “We’re terribly sorry about your loss. Patch. We knew he was like a father to you. I knew Dick Donchez for years in the Pentagon. Listen, Deanna and I thought you could come over tomorrow. I’ve got some stories about Dick I thought you might want to hear. You okay? I’ll get with Captain White about it.