Voyage of the Devilfish mp-1

by Michael Dimercurio

  “No,” Pacino said, “not polymer injection…”

  “Yes, polymer injection. Enough for ten minutes. She’ll squirt a layer of polymer out the nosecone, make the skin slippery and she’ll just glide through the water like a ghost. She’ll accelerate fast enough to leave her paint behind.”

  “Polymers won’t work in arctic-temperature water—”

  “I hate to tell you this, Mikey, but it works down to 28 degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “Why don’t we ask Congress to buy us a few of those?”

  “Not funny, kid,” Donchez said, checking his watch.

  “Let’s finish. This guy can dive to 7500 feet, and with the way titanium flows before it ruptures he can probably go down to 10,000 feet for a few minutes. That’s over six times deeper than you can go, Mikey. And yes, our Hullbuster torpedoes would implode from sea pressure at that depth. He’s armed with conventional 53-centimeter torpedoes, the new 100-centimeter Magnums and SSN-X-27 nuclear warhead land-attack cruise missiles — that is, if they’re cheating on the treaty and still loading cruise missiles…”

  You ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’, Pacino thought.

  “And the 100-centimeter Magnum torpedoes can pursue at sixty knots for sixty nautical miles with a nuclear warhead. And even if you can evade one, it just drives back to the point where it thinks you should be and detonates. It doesn’t have to get close to kill your delicate little hull with a nuclear explosion. Meanwhile the OMEGA submarine is running like hell using his polymer system and avoids damage.

  “And finally, the OMEGA has a thicker anechoic coating than previous classes. The coating does to sonar pulses what a stealth bomber does to radar pulses — absorbs them without reflecting them. In addition to quieting the submarine, any torpedo going active would not hear a return sonar ping from her hull.”

  “This boat is fucking invincible—”

  “Damn near. Mikey, we need to get a recording of this boat’s sound-signature. And I want you to get it.”

  An SPL, Pacino thought. Sound Pressure Level. Obtained by putting an American attack submarine about ten feet away from a Russian submarine and using sophisticated recording equipment to record the different sounds and tonals from each bearing. In effect, a map of the target ship’s radiated noise. Each Russian submarine class made different noises. Machinery rotated at a particular speed, created a distinctive note like a tuning fork’s pure tonal frequency. Each class had a few tonals that American sonars could detect and classify from miles away. The only way to get an SPL recording was to drive right up to less than a tenth of a shiplength away and maneuver around the target without him finding out that he was being recorded — literally driving circles around the target submarine. There was always, both Pacino and the admiral knew, the risk of collision. Pacino looked up at Donchez, who had been studying him.

  “Sir, the Russians are laying down their cruise missile nukes before the U.N. Someone must have forgotten to tell the shipyard that the Cold War is over. Or maybe they’re finishing this thing to provide jobs.” He was just testing.

  “We know what we see. Commander.” Donchez stood up, his face stony. “Come on back to my office. I’ve got something to show you.”

  Back in the admiral’s office Pacino sat in a deep easy chair and accepted a cigar from Donchez’s humidor. The sky outside the plate glass windows was dark. Pacino’s watch said it was almost eight in the evening. His stomach growled. Donchez’s head was stuck in a safe, looking for something. Finally he found it. Pacino picked up Donchez’s lighter, a worn Zippo with the emblem of the USS Piranha, SSN-637, lead ship of the class. Donchez had commanded her years before. Pacino lit the cigar and tasted the smooth smoke on his tongue. When the admiral sat back in his chair, his expression was dark. He flipped Pacino a bound report marked “SECRET” in black letters on the binding.

  “What’s this?” Pacino asked.

  “It’s been more than twenty years, Mikey,” he said. “It isn’t declassified yet. The report on the loss of the Stingray.” Donchez’s tongue was thick.

  “Admiral, why are you showing me this?” Pacino felt like he did the day he was a plebe and Donchez had come to the Officer of the Watch’s office and told him his father was gone.

  “It’s exactly what I told you that day. I wrote that.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “And it’s all bullshit, pure bullshit.” Donchez’s voice wavered.

  “What do you mean?” His old, faint suspicions at the time reviving.

  “Mikey, that report as written would suggest that your dad screwed up. Didn’t turn the ship in time to inactivate the hot-run torpedo. Didn’t set material condition in time.” Donchez looked down at his desk and continued softly.

  “Commander Anthony Pacino was the best damned combat submarine officer I ever knew. Except for one.” He looked back up at Pacino, who said nothing. “Patch Pacino did not die in the Atlantic Ocean. And he didn’t die from his own damned torpedo. Patch Pacino was a hero, which are in short supply, especially these days. The USS Stingray was on a top-secret operation under the polar icecap. She was getting an SPL of a VICTOR III.”

  Donchez walked over to a wood cabinet and opened twin doors, revealing a large television monitor. He took a VCR tape out of the safe and inserted it in the VCR deck below the monitor. Pacino shivered from the cold of the office, which only a moment before had felt comfortable. He watched as the TV picture went from fuzz to focus on a minisubmarine hanging from several cables. A submersible. The cables lowered the submersible into the sea. Donchez began a commentary, his voice noticeably hoarse.

  “This is a submersible that was used by Doctor Robert Powell of Woods Hole. The guy who went down to the Titanic and the Bismarck. Well, he also took this baby down to the Thresher, our sub that sank in ‘63. The submersible was designed to dive to Russian submarine wrecks and recover data. It has three spherical pressure hulls, its own manipulator arms and thrusters, and a remotely piloted vehicle, an eyeball. It can carry a video camera into tight spots.”

  “Last year we decided to try to find the Stingray’s wreck under the polar icepack. Instead of using a sidescan sonar from a survey ship we had to cut holes in the ice, drop a sonar probe down and listen. For a year we came up with nothing. We drilled, dropped and listened at hundreds of sites. Finally we found it, made an icecamp and sent the submersible down.”

  The TV picture showed an encampment in the arctic, tents and Quonset huts gathered around lifting-derricks. It also showed the submersible being dropped through a deep hole in the ice.

  “We found the Stingray’s remains under 11,500 feet of very cold water. The initial shots on this tape were taken from the remote swimmer camera that was sent to the interior of the hull’s wreckage. This shot is of the bow compartment.”

  The inside of the Stingray was all wreckage, mangled pipes and pieces of steel. Pacino tried to speak but his voice was gone, his throat thick.

  “This is the operations compartment,” Donchez continued as the view shifted. It was like staring into an open coffin, Pacino thought, wondering why Donchez would subject him to it.

  “We did find something recognizable here.” The light from the remote eyeball’s floodlight wavered as it swam by a grotesquely bent frame. An object came into view slowly, then focused. It was a baseball cap, the thread embroidery still plainly legible above and below the submarine dolphins: USS STINGRAY SSN-589.

  Pacino felt a sudden exhaustion, like a shock wave.

  The TV view shifted to an outside shot. “This was taken with the video on the main cameras of the submersible,” Donchez said. The disembodied sail came into view with sand in the background, one fairwater plane buried in the sand. “The sail was ripped away from the main hull by hydrodynamic forces. Part of the hull was flattened like a wing. The hull hit the bottom at nearly a hundred miles an hour. Back aft you can see that the hull, instead of flattening like the forward parts, was accordioned. The conical hull was forced inward, compressi
ng the smaller part of the cone into the larger part. The force required to do this was immense. Here’s the bow compartment, which didn’t crush like the rest of the hull. It was equalized with sea pressure.”

  The video shot showed the rounded bow compartment, the torpedo doors rusted at the far point of the hull’s nosecone. The shot showed the hull coming around. Soon the flank of the bow was in the picture, a gaping hole in it. Donchez stopped the tape at the shot of the hole in the hull. “Mikey, you’ve got a Phd in mechanical engineering. You tell me, was this an explosion inside or outside the hull?”

  Pacino slowly rose from his seat and walked to the TV. His back was wet with cold sweat, his khaki shirt stuck to his back. He pointed to the star-shaped fingers of the jagged edge of the ten-foot-diameter hole.

  “These points of the hole go in, not out. It was an external explosion. Stingray was gunned down, wasn’t she. Admiral,” Pacino said, a statement, not a question. No more guessing or wondering now.

  Donchez barely nodded.

  “Why was this kept secret? Why was it covered up—”

  “Mikey, you’ve been up north. You know about the game. At the time it seemed the thing to do. Should we have whined to the U.N.? What would we say to Congress when they demanded to know how in hell a Soviet could sneak up on one of our best and put it on the bottom? What would become of our northern surveillance? How could we tell the world that we knew what they’d done when the SOSUS network that discovered it was highly secret?”

  Pacino said nothing at first, then: “So why have you decided to show this to me? After all these years?”

  Donchez turned off the TV and pulled out the VCR tape. In the heavy silence that followed he opened his safe, returning the sinking report and the VCR tape, at the same time removing a purple file folder. He slammed the heavy door of the safe and spun the tumbler, finally turning to face Pacino, whose face was tight with anger at the scene of the Stingray’s control room. He slapped the purple folder on the desk in front of Pacino.

  “Open it.”

  Pacino did. Inside, staring back at him, was the face of a man in a Russian Navy uniform, four stars on his epaulettes. Thick graying hair hung over a dark face, lined by the years yet still commanding. The eyes seemed to stare off into the distance, slightly narrowed.

  “This is Admiral Alexi Viktoryvich Novskoyy, Supreme Commander, Russian Northern Fleet. A reactionary hawk who still wants to bring back the old discredited Soviet Union, when he and his ilk were riding high.”

  Pacino waited.

  “He is also the man who murdered Patch Pacino.”

  Pacino looked at the photograph, stunned, his eyes finally rising to look into Donchez’s face.

  “You know this for a fact?”

  “Alexi Novskoyy, commanding officer, fleet submarine Leningrad, a VICTOR III attack submarine, the only VICTOR III, I might add, from 1973 to 1976. He was the new construction commanding officer. Awarded Hero of the Soviet Union medal in 1973 for classified action. In the Arctic Ocean. That’s him, there’s no doubt.”

  “And now? That was a long time ago—”

  “The new Omega submarine got under way three hours ago, Mikey,” Donchez pointed to the folder. Pacino put the photo of Novskoyy aside and looked at the satellite photo beneath, a God’s-eye-view looking directly downward that showed the huge Omega submarine angled away from her pier and pulling out.

  “What do you see?”

  “Sub getting under way. One last line on the pier. Topside crew getting ready to pull the line in. Two cranes on the pier. Probably one for shorepower cables and one for the gangway.”

  “What else?”

  “Car on the pier. Limousine. Flags on the fenders. Stars on the flags.” Pacino looked up. “Admiral’s limo.” Donchez nodded. “And how many stars?” he said, offering a magnifying glass. Pacino studied the photo with the glass. “Four stars.”

  “Correct. And do you see flags flying on the OMEGA?”

  “Yes. Northern Fleet Banner. Russian flag. Commissioning pennant.”

  “And?”

  “And a flag with stars on it. Four stars.” Pacino looked into Donchez’s eyes. “Admiral Novskoyy’s on board?”

  “Bingo. Novskoyy’s on board the OMEGA. The mission, as we understand it, is a one-week trip under the icepack. Sea trials. And the admiral is along to see how his baby performs. He designed the OMEGA himself.”

  Pacino sat back in his chair. Suddenly he understood the urgency of the OP. And for him in particular. The son-of-a-bitch who’d killed his father was aboard—

  Pacino jumped as the phone rang. Donchez nodded at it.

  “It’s for you, Mikey.”

  Pacino shook his head. How would Donchez know who the phone was for?

  “Pacino here.”

  “Captain, XO here.” It was Rapier. “They said you were in a briefing but they put me through anyway.”

  “Go ahead,” Pacino said, looking at Donchez.

  “Sir, we’re moored at berth 7.1 took the liberty of bringing on shorepower and ordering the reactor shutdown… Something very strange is going on here. The squadron sent over some guys from the tender with about ten forktrucks full of food. They’re loading it aboard right now.”

  Pacino stared at Donchez, who returned his look. “Yes, XO. What else?”

  “Arctic gear, sir, four pallets. Squadron wants to load that on, too, in the ship’s office and the fan room. I told them to hold off until we talked. There’s also a truck here with five torpedoes. They’re painted red instead of green. Tender says they’re a new weapon system. Mark 50 torpedoes. They call them Hullcrushers. Squadron Weapons Officer is here and wants permission to load them aboard. I said hell no. Sir… you got any orders for me?”

  Pacino didn’t hesitate. “XO, you have permission to load weapons and Arctic supplies. And notify the crew that all liberty and leaves are cancelled. We sail at dawn tomorrow. While you’re at it, request a clearance message from COMSUBLANT for transit—”

  “Sir, I’m holding the clearance in my hands right now. I suppose you’ll be letting me know what’s up?”

  “It’s a secure phone,” Donchez broke in.

  “XO, Devilfish will be getting under way for a classified OP tomorrow morning. You can let the crew know they won’t be home for Christmas.”

  He broke off the connection before Rapier could protest. Donchez pulled his long cold cigar out of the ashtray and lit it, looking out the plate glass window to a plaza across the street where construction vehicles had been parked for the night.

  “You know, Mikey,” Donchez said, “the polar icecap is a lonely place. Things can happen there that no one on earth will ever know about. Look at Stingray. Only a few men know what really happened to her.” Donchez swivelled around in his chair and looked directly at Pacino. “Those Mark 50 torpedoes, the Hullcrushers, they’re new, experimental. They have shaped charges designed to penetrate and blast through doublehulled submarines with one hundred times the killing power of the old Mark 49’s. And as far as your tubes and fire-control systems are concerned, they’ll look exactly like Mark 49’s. No system modifications necessary. They’ll go fifty-five knots. Their sonars have improved doppler filters. And their crush-depth is deeper than 10,000 feet. We figure they’re the antidote to the OMEGA.”

  Pacino’s mind raced, wondering whether Donchez really meant what Pacino thought he did.

  “In fact, Mikey,” Donchez went on, “those torpedoes are so new and so experimental that we’ve never had a chance to take inventory of the five on the squadron truck. Why, if you came back from up north and those torpedoes were missing, well, no one would ever notice. As far as squadron and SUBLANT are concerned, those torpedoes don’t exist.”

  Pacino stood up, hands balling into fists. Donchez stood up and held out his hand. Pacino saluted, turned and walked to the door, putting on his blue baseball cap.

  “Merry Christmas, Uncle Dick,” he said and closed the door behind him.

  Admi
ral Richard Donchez sat back down and said! “Merry Christmas, Mikey… and good hunting.” He looked out again over the grass to the plaza across the street. The construction going on was for a contract he had written personally: to build a marble monument in honor of the officers and men of the USS Stingray. Donchez took a long puff on his Havana cigar. “And Merry Christmas to you. Patch,” he said softly, “and rest in peace, old friend.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MONDAY, 13 DECEMBER, 2350 EST

  SANDBRIDGE BEACH, VIRGINIA

  Sandbridge Beach, a small village of beach houses, fish restaurants, convenience stores and bait shops, was bathed in the moonlight of a cloudless night sky. The large beach houses were quiet in the off-season. A few were decorated with Christmas lights. As midnight approached, the lights of all but a few houses were off.

  Michael Pacino’s old Corvette rumbled to a halt in the carport under a large three-story redwood house on stilts overlooking the water. He turned off the engine, brought back to the present by the silence, surprised that he had driven the forty miles from the base to the house without conscious thought or motion. Slowly, feeling like an old man, Pacino emerged from the cramped car, pulling a duffel bag from a cubbyhole behind the seat. He stood, watching the waves break on the beach on the other side of the property, then climbed to the second-floor entrance to the house.

  Hillary had bought the beach house with her own money. Commander’s pay might afford a modest colonial in the suburbs but never a house on the water, not on Sandbridge. It had bothered him some, living here.

  As he searched his pocket for his key the door opened. Hillary’s face was always a welcome sight after a long run on the boat. She had beautiful tanned skin, dark blue eyes over high cheekbones and perfectly full red lips. With long blonde hair, she was tall and thin. Her own complaint about herself was that her breasts were too small. He had no complaints. She was also a high-strung, thoughtful, at times brooding woman. On many nights after Tony was in bed she’d spend hours on the deck overlooking the beach, smoking cigarettes and staring out to sea, sometimes writing poetry in a notebook she never could bring herself to let Pacino read. When he was assigned ashore she would tend to come out of herself, laughing and talking more.