Inside the ship now, there was still blackness surrounding him. He felt for the blackout curtain entrance, pushed through it into the dim red wash from the upper deck passageway red lights. The red light that made the ship look ghostly. He went down through the center of the ship past the opening to the crew’s mess, past the chiefs quarters — the “goat locker” it was called, in reference to the age of the ship’s senior enlisted men — down a steep set of stairs to the middle level. There in the stairwell was a large hatch leading aft. The lights in the tunnel were bright white, the red no longer applying, the difference between the ship’s operating habits starkly different for the forward tactical sailors and the aft nuclear-trained men.
Phillips stepped through the hatch and into the bright reactor compartment tunnel, a narrow corridor through the shielded reactor compartment. This was the only access through the space, since the nuclear reactor was so radioactive and gave off such powerful neutron radiation. The tunnel had a central hatch that went into the reactor compartment. The hatch dogs were locked and chained with a second lock, since anyone making their way into the compartment would not survive more than ten minutes when the reactor was critical. At the end of the tunnel Phillips stepped through a hatch into the middle level of the engine room then up a ladder to what was properly known as the aft compartment upper level or ACUL for short. The upper level held the steam piping on its way to the electrical turbines and the main engines, as well as the upper few feet of the electrical generators and the main engine turbine casing. Further aft, the top of the reduction gear’s casing poked through the deckplates, requiring Phillips to walk around it until he came to the door to maneuvering, a large and soundproofed, heavily air-conditioned space, the maneuvering room, where the reactor and steam plants were controlled. He pressed the intercom button and announced himself, then opened the heavy door and walked in.
The room was freezing. Walt Hornick stood in the center of the space, staring at the reactor plant control panel over the shoulder of the reactor operator. Next to Hornick was his main propulsion assistant, the MPA, a senior lieutenant named Katoris, a bone-thin blond officer who looked like he should be walking the hallways of a high school rather than the passageways of a nuclear submarine.
Phillips walked next to Hornick and scanned the reactor-control panel. Phillips looked at the position of the control rods; they weren’t moving. On the surface of the console a Plexiglas cover was lifted off a black rotary switch marked manual scram. The reactor operator’s hand was on the switch while his eyes were on the panel. Nothing seemed to be happening.
“Well, Eng, pretty slow day here?” Phillips said.
Hornick didn’t budge, not even to look at Phillips. When he spoke it was in a quiet mutter. “It’s an emergency approach to core critically, and the startup rate meter might jump at any second. We’re standing by to try to scram the plant manually if that happens, but more than likely a failure of the protection circuitry would find us blown to pieces back here before Bronson there could hit the scram switch.”
“How did you do this?”
“We calculated the estimated critical position of the control rods for the core based on the core life — it’s new and highly reactive — and the fission product poisons from the last operation — minimal since we’ve been at low power on our two previous startups — and the length of time we’ve been shut down. All those factors have tolerances and errors, so we backed off about 5 percent on the reactivity of the core. Once that was done it was checked and triple-checked. I did my own calculation and confirmed the reactor chiefs calcs. The book is not all that specific about this, but I took the liberty of taking the reactor-protection circuits to maximum sensitivity — the voting circuits are out, so any one channel of the protection can scram us out — but that’s all I can do.”
“Eng, can we talk privately?”
Hornick looked half-panicked at the idea of leaving the reactor plant control panel, but Phillips waved him to the door. Hornick glanced nervously at Katoris, then followed Phillips to the door and out of the space into the wider expanse of the engine room.
“Sir, I think I should be back in—”
Phillips interrupted with a finger over his lips.
He put his arm around Hornick’s shoulders and started walking him slowly forward.
“Walt, I could give you a long lecture about cost versus risk, about the risk thresholds of wartime operation, about the prerogatives of command, but I’m not gonna do any of that bullshit. We don’t have time for that crap.” Phillips took two Cuban cigars from inside his wet parka, unwrapped both and clipped the ends off them, handing one to Hornick.
“No, no, sir, I—”
“Come on, it’ll put hair on your chest,” Phillips said, squinting. He plugged one of the cigars into Hornick’s mouth, lit his own, then put his lighter to Hornick’s cigar. Hornick mechanically puffed the cigar to life, cringing at the smoke in his eyes. “Now, where was I? Oh yeah, risk. Now Eng, you’re more senior than Court, right?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“So that makes you third in command, right, after me and Whatney?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good, good.” Phillips took a puff of the Cuban and looked at Hornick, dipping his head in encouragement. Hornick took a puff, frowning, blowing the smoke out.
“Now, you being third in command, I can tell you things that I couldn’t really tell kids like Katoris, right? I mean, you’re not gonna go blab them to your stateroom mates after watch, right? Okay, then here’s the deal. How’s that stogie?”
“Not too bad, sir,” He took a puff.
“Okay, picture this, Walt. This ship is doing a Coast Guard kind of mission. You know what the motto of the Coast Guard is?”
“No, sir.”
Phillips still had his arm around Hornick’s shoulders, walking him to the forward end of the space. “The Coast Guard motto, if I remember it right, is this — ‘You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.’ That sound familiar?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, here’s why I thought of that, Walty-boy. Pretty good cigar, I think.”
Phillips puffed a smoke ring at the overhead. Hornick had the cigar clutched between the knuckles of his fist, looking like an old pro. He took a puff and blew it into the overhead, squinting slightly at the smoke, but the expression of pleasure winning out over a frown. Suddenly Phillips dropped his arm from Hornick’s shoulder, clenched the cigar between his teeth, and with both hands grabbed Hornick’s shirt and brought him in close, his eyes wide open.
“Walt, this ship ain’t likely coming back. Those Vortex missiles might open up the hull. Or the Japs may be able to run from them. Our own torpedoes may not work so hot against those Destiny-class boats. But I don’t have any plans for next month, Walt. If we come back with a ship under us, that’ll be like winning a sweepstakes. If we come back, or half of us do, and the boat’s on the bottom of the Pacific, I’d call that a good day. If this ship becomes our coffin, you and me and the crew in Davy Jones’s locker, that’s going to be shooting par. If it’s a bad day, we don’t even make it into the Pacific and we get stuck under the icecap and stay there. And if it’s a totally bad week, we blow up the core on initial startup. So do you see what the game is looking like, Walt?”
“I see your point. Captain.”
Phillips dropped the maniac act and straightened out Hornick’s shirt, then stood off to the side and puffed the cigar, looking down at the deckplates for a moment as he collected himself. “So, Walt, what do you say? You only have 95 percent estimated reactivity inserted into the core. I think you should crank it up to 100 percent. I need power and I need it an hour ago. Once that god damned needle comes out of the startup range, you can heat this bitch up and we can be in a full-power lineup in five minutes. Yeah, it may blow up, but you know what? I won’t even put that in your fitness report, I promise. You’ve got total amnesty today, Walt. So I’m not going to order you to do this, it’s y
our call, it’s your plant. But I would sincerely like to get reactor power this century. Can you do it for me?”
Phillips looked up at Hornick, a sad expression on his face.
“Skipper, it would be my pleasure,” Hornick said, clamping his own cigar between his teeth. “You give me a half-hour and I’ll give you main engine shaft horsepower, all fifty-seven thousand of them.”
Phillips clapped Hornick on the back. “Good man, you let me know.”
He winked at Hornick and ducked through the tunnel hatch and vanished. Hornick smiled, shaking his head, then walked quickly aft to the maneuvering room.
* * *
The reactor tunnel’s forward hatch opened out into the forward compartment middle level. After the bright lights of the engineering spaces, the forward compartment’s red lights seemed strange. Phillips followed a dogleg in the passageway to a central passage that went past his and Whatney’s staterooms to port, the electronics rooms — radio and countermeasures — to starboard, the passageway stopping at a door labeled CONTROL ROOM — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Phillips went in, the space crowded with watchstanders, and hot. The room was larger than the Greeneville’s control room, but even though Piranha’ control space was the full width of the ship, over forty feet wide, it still seemed cramped.
“Navigator, sounding please!” Phillips shouted, the cigar still clamped in his teeth.
“Forty-nine fathoms, sir.”
“Close enough. Offsa’deck, where’s the officer of the deck?”
“Here, sir.” Meritson’s voice was muffled as he was hugging the thick periscope module of the type-twenty periscope, the scope extending from the overhead all the way to the well in the deck of the periscope stand. The module would be hot, at least 105 degrees from the electronics it bristled with. An hour at the periscope would leave the front of a man’s shirt wet with sweat — the reason periscope time was known as “dancing with the fat lady.”
“Status, please.”
“Yes sir, the bridge is rigged for dive, control is in the control room, I have the watch, ship is rigged for dive with the exception of the forward escape trunk hatch. I have two men topside ready to cast off the tug line on your orders.”
“Very well, coordinate with the tug, come to all stop and cast off the tugline.”
“Aye, sir.”
Phillips was beginning to smell progress now. It took five minutes, but finally Piranha was officially on her own, on her diesel engine, her reactor still in a coma, but without tugs.
“Offsa’deck, submerge the ship to snorkel depth,” Phillips called. The order began a flurry of activity. A phone talker called for Phillips.
“Captain, Engineer on the one-jay-vee phone.”
Phillips reached for the phone. “Captain.”
“Engineer, sir. Reactor’s critical, performing an emergency heatup now.”
“Excellent, Eng. How did it go? Any overpowering?”
“No, Sir, it came right up to one decade per minute, just like you said.”
“I didn’t say anything, Eng, that’s your startup. Remember that, Walt. Now, how long till you’re answering bells on the mains?”
“We’re at thirty degrees per minute, that’s about twelve minutes to the green band, then we’ll warm the steam plant. I’d say another twenty minutes.”
“Battery?”
“Holding up, but don’t give it more than four knots.”
“Aye. Hurry up, Eng.”
“Yes sir.”
Phillips found a seat in the captain’s chair aft of the periscope stand, the “conn,” from which the ship was controlled. It would be a long night, he thought.
Submerging without the reactor! The last thing he thought he’d be doing with the newest ship in the fleet, but then, if it kept him from being peeked at by the Galaxy satellites so much the better. He settled back into the chair and watched Meritson submerge the ship, the vessel sinking slowly into the Atlantic as the main ballast tanks gave up the air. Soon, he thought, he’d be driving on nuclear power. He waited, puffing the cigar.
CHAPTER 19
NORTHWEST PACIFIC
USS BARRACUDA
The deck trembled with the power of the main engines at flank speed. Capt. David Kane walked into the wardroom, crowded with officers waiting for his briefing.
Kane was taller than average, slim, with a full head of dark hair and a tan. When the ship was in port, he would be on the beach, running, walking his dogs or hanging out with his wife Becky and his daughters. He was famous for being the Pacific Fleet captain who worked smarter, not harder. His face was chiseled, the high cheekbones set above thin cheeks and a strong square chin. When he had been at Annapolis he had been the six-striper, the brigade commander. He had met his wife while a first-class midshipman, when he and his friends had written to a Playboy centerfold model, the letter written as a prank, but after two months she had written him back. After they corresponded for a few weeks they decided to meet, choosing a Georgetown bar. After that it had been all over for Kane. He had proposed to her on that first date, and she had just laughed. During their spring break they had flown to Bermuda, and on the beach one twilight he had popped the biggest ring he could finance into her hands, and this time she didn’t laugh. In fact, she had cried. They had been engaged for two months when Kane had been interviewed for the nuclear-power program by Admiral Rickover, the famed father of the nuclear navy. Rickover had managed to shoehorn a nuclear reactor into a submarine, an engineering task that should have taken fifteen years, but Rickover had done it in three at a fraction of the cost of the estimates, and with an impeccable safety record.
When his USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, went under the polar icecap, his nuclear navy had been the envy of the world. He had pledged to Congress that not a single naval officer would be admitted to his program unless he personally approved of him. Every single candidate would be interviewed personally. Once Rickover flunked someone, there was no appeal.
Rickover had called a very nervous Kane into the office.
Submarine duty was all he wanted to do in the Navy. Airplanes held no fascination, and surface ships made him seasick, many of them stinking of diesel fuel, the amphibious fleet a flotilla of rustbucket ships that carried unwashed Marine troops into combat. Aircraft carriers particularly irritated him, since it was the worst of two worlds, a surface ship that acted as a bus for a bunch of arrogant pilots. He had gone into Annapolis for the free education and the status, but as graduation approached he could only see himself being a sub driver.
Now that he was finally in Rickover’s office, it sank in that Rickover could easily say no to him, as he had done with 40 percent of the applicants. The man who had the interview two before Kane had left the office with glazed eyes.
“What happened?” Kane had asked him.
“Rickover told me I’m too shy,” the midshipman had said. “He told me I had thirty seconds to piss him off.”
“What did you do?”
“I stood on a chair. I was going to piss on his desk but he looked at me like I was an idiot, and I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t get the piss to come out. Rickover said that even my cock was too shy, and he told me to get the hell out.”
“That was it?”
“No. He has this four-foot-long shiny model of the Nautilus on his desk.
I picked it up and smashed it into a thousand pieces. One of the fragments broke and nicked his hand. He was bleeding onto his shirt.”
“Holy shit! You broke the admiral’s ship model? What did he do?”
“He said, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ but then he stopped me. I turned around and he looked at me like he was going to kill me, and he says, ‘Goddamnit, you’re hired!’ I guess I pissed him off enough.”
Kane had wondered what test Rickover would have for him. He was ushered into the office and told to sit in a wooden chair in front of the admiral’s desk. He found it was true — the front legs were truly shorter than the back legs. Kane
had felt the bile of nerves rise in his stomach.
Rickover was short, slight, wrinkled and old. He mumbled over at Kane something Kane didn’t understand. “Excuse me, sir?”
“Why, did you fart?” the admiral said. “I said, your class standing sucks. Your grades suck. You’ve been showing a flat or declining trend since your youngster year. Yet they appoint you brigade commander second set. And I notice that you’re ever so pretty. That must be why. It certainly isn’t your wits, is it, Mr. Kane?”
“I think I—”
“Oh, you don’t fucking think at all, that’s your problem. Look at this. Look at it! Would you accept you into my program?”
“Sir, yes, I have a 3.78 grade point average in ocean engineering—”
“Ocean engineering. What do you study, fishies? Good Lord, what’s the academy coming to? Okay, Kane, I’ll just make this easy on both of us. I don’t like jocks and I don’t like stripers. You sit in your admin offices and drink coffee and put midshipmen on report and carry a sword and get the girls, yessir. You have a girlfriend, Kane?”
“Yes sir.”
“Are you engaged to her?”
“Yes sir, we’re supposed to get married the week after graduation.”
“Show me her picture.” Rickover looked at Becky’s photo. He showed no enthusiasm. “Well, you call your little girlie friend — I’m sorry, your fiance — and tell her you’re going to put off your wedding until after you pass all the way through my program.” Kane looked at Rickover. The training pipeline was over a year long, and Becky and he had made their plans. “Here’s the phone. Go ahead. Call her. Tell her you’re putting off the wedding to make sure you won’t be distracted in my program.”
Barracuda: Final Bearing mp-4 Page 21
