The Submarine Job

by Clifford, Riley

  “Well, hey there, young Cahill,” said Pete. “Thought I wouldn’t be seeing you until the end of term.”

  “F-family emergency,” said Fiske. “I need to go to Washington, DC. Right — right away.”

  “Right away, eh? Glad you made it here now; a few minutes more and I’d be having myself some dinner.”

  “I’m sorry to keep you from your dinner, Pete, but it really can’t wait. Not another minute.”

  “Well, then. Good thing we’ve got peanuts on board. Go ahead and get yourself all settled there. I’ll get the garage door up here and we’ll be off like a flash.”

  “Thank you, Pete,” said Fiske, pulling the plane’s door open and climbing in.

  It was a small airplane — a two-seater cockpit with four seats in the cabin — not something that Fiske would really trust to take him across the ocean, or really any farther than the Great Lakes. But from Connecticut to Washington, or Connecticut to home, it was okay. And quick. Fiske put his bag in the cabin, but climbed into the cockpit beside Pete’s captain’s chair. He didn’t want to sit alone — it seemed rude.

  Pete had the hangar door up and the engines on in record time, and soon they were taxiing out to the small runway.

  “How’s landing at Hyde for you, young Cahill?” asked Pete.

  “That’s fine, thanks,” said Fiske. He was staring out the window. A pair of headlights was on the runway. “Pete, are cars allowed on the runway?”

  “Nope,” said Pete, checking his gauges and dials from the cockpit. “Not usually, at least. ’Less it’s a maintenance crew or something like that.” Pete and Fiske squinted at the headlights. They looked like they were coming straight toward the plane.

  “Pete, let’s go!” Fiske said. An uncomfortable thought had lodged itself in his imagination, and it wasn’t going to let go. “We’ve got to go before they get here.”

  “If someone’s on the runway — and good golly, they are — we can’t take off. We’ll run into them. And that won’t end well for anyone,” said Pete, lifting his eyebrows.

  That’s when there was a flash and a pop.

  “They’re shooting at us,” Fiske said, his panic growing like a balloon about to burst. “Oh, holy pancakes, they’re shooting at us. Pete, we have to go!”

  “They’re shooting at us!” Pete yelled, his gaze darting nervously between the view through the windshield and the gauges in the cockpit.

  “They’re shooting at us, Pete, they’re shooting at us! Go, go faster!” Fiske yelled. He felt as if he were climbing and clawing the cockpit. There was another flash and another pop, and Fiske covered his eyes, as if that would keep him from dying.

  The airplane’s engines roared to full power. Pete pulled back on the throttle, and the plane began to move.

  “Go, Pete, go faster!”

  “I’m going fast! I’m going as fast as physics lets me!” Pete yelled.

  Fiske glanced over at his pilot — Pete’s teeth were clenched together and a bead of sweat was making his way down his face. They were going faster and faster, and the car was nearer and nearer.

  “Hope your seat belt is on, young Cahill!” said Pete. He pulled on the steering wheel and they pointed upward. Fiske looked out the side of the cockpit, and he saw men in the car — he saw their faces, their guns. The plane lifted, but too slowly. The fuselage shuddered and jerked as the back landing gear scraped the top of the car. Fiske was thrown around like a doll; his seat belt locked and so his head flew forward, his elbow jammed into the windshield. The plane wobbled like it was balanced on the head of a pin, and the popping continued below.

  They weren’t even going to make it off the runway. Fiske’s emergency trip would be over before it even started. Pete was yelling something in French — probably something he’d picked up in the war — and all Fiske could do was hold on to whatever was at hand.

  And then, the jerking stopped. The air around them was smooth. The plane wasn’t falling out of the sky.

  “That was a close one there, wasn’t it?” said Pete, grinning. “We should do that more often. That’s a good kind of flying! Makes me feel like a younger man, you know. Back in the war again. Ah, that’s some good kind of flying!”

  Fiske collapsed back into his chair and let out the breath he had been holding. Hopefully the rest of his adventure would go smoothly.

  The Willard Hotel was an unofficial Cahill institution. Practically across the street from the White House, it could be argued to be the real seat of power in the country. It was a rare day when there wasn’t at least one Cahill checked in.

  Grace Cahill had spent many a day and night there. She didn’t think she had ever been so frightened, though.

  She was pacing, checking the peephole of her hotel room every few minutes. Her nerves were standing on end, and a black swirl of dread circled around in her chest. She shouldn’t have sent that telegram. She should have found a way out on her own. But, as unwilling as Grace was to admit it, she was terrified, in over her head. She hated to drag her little brother into this mess, this pit of vipers and fire. But she didn’t have a choice.

  Grace checked the peephole again and then the window. He should be here by now. Fears and what-ifs breathed down her neck like unhappy ghosts. Suppose they’d caught up with him. Suppose they’d captured him, delayed him, were planning on using him as bait to lure her out. Perhaps they’d done worse —

  She stopped her pacing and pressed her palms against her closed eyes. It doesn’t do any good to think like that. It doesn’t do any good to do anything but hope.

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Grace tried to remind herself that not everything happened on a smooth timetable. There could have been any number of small obstacles that came up. Still, it was getting late.

  There was a knock, and Grace flew to the door, peering out the peephole. Fiske stood on the other side. But was it really Fiske? Had he been followed? She hated, sometimes, that her life made her doubt even the plainest of facts.

  “Who’s there?” Grace demanded.

  “It’s me,” he said. “It’s Fiske.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “February 9, 1941,” said Fiske. “Let me in, Grace.”

  “No,” said Grace. “That was too easy. What’s your favorite animal? What’s my favorite animal?”

  “Mine is a giraffe,” said Fiske. “Yours is a dragon. Which, you know, isn’t even a real thing. Let me in!”

  “What color is the carpet in the second-floor music room at home?”

  “Grace!” he half shouted, half hissed. “Well, it used to be white. And then I spilled that green paint on it, so now it’s kind of . . . spotted. And I said I was sorry about that, by the way. There’s no need to keep bringing it up. Grace, come on and let me in.”

  Satisfied, Grace slid the chain lock open, turned the deadbolt, opened the door, and grabbed her brother by the collar. She dragged him in and immediately shut the door after him, sliding and turning all of the locks back into place.

  “Grace, why is it so dark in here?” asked Fiske. The curtains were pulled against the night, and the only lamp on was a small reading light that Grace had put on the floor.

  “They know I’m here,” she said, peeking out of the peephole again. “How did you know what room I was in?”

  “I asked for Miss Edith at the front desk,” said Fiske. It was their mother’s name, and a good pseudonym. Fiske watched Grace with nervous eyes. He’d never seen her so scared before.

  “Right,” said Grace. She took a towel from the bathroom and stuffed it along the crack at the bottom of the door.

  “Grace? Grace,” Fiske said, but she didn’t look up. “Grace!” Fiske grabbed her arm and only then did she stop, turning to him with the most anxious expression he’d ever seen. “What’s going on?” asked Fiske. “You’re scaring me. You need to just . . . to just sit there, okay? Just sit down.” He helped to ease her down onto the corner of one of the beds and then perched on the corner acro
ss from her. “We’ll be okay for five minutes, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They’ve never been this close before, Fiske. Not to me. I can feel them — I can feel them breathing down my neck, and it’s as if no matter where I go they’re already there. I’d say it was ridiculous to think that they were reading my thoughts, but who knows what kinds of tricks they’ve come up with lately?”

  Goose bumps prickled over Fiske, up and around his scalp. “How — how close?” he asked.

  Grace shook her head. “I don’t want to worry you.”

  “Grace,” said Fiske. “We are hiding out in a hotel in the middle of Washington, DC, after you sent an urgent telegram to my school saying that you were surrounded by Vespers. I think I’m already pretty worried.”

  “Fiske,” said Grace. Her voice was quiet and she didn’t look up at him. “I need your help.”

  “What . . . what can I do?” Fiske asked. He wasn’t brave, like Grace. He wasn’t daring. He wasn’t whip smart or cool under pressure. He couldn’t even get the kids at school to stop picking on him; there was no way he was capable of saving Grace. Especially if she was this scared.

  Grace shook her head, her breath coming in shallow sips. She took Fiske’s hand and pushed something cool and hard into it. He looked down at the slim gold ring in his palm.

  “Grace? What? No!”

  “You have to take it,” she said, folding his fingers around it. “They know I’m here, and if they find me, then at least they won’t find that. It’s the most important thing, Fiske, to keep the ring safe.”

  “Not more important than you!” said Fiske, shoving the ring back at her. “I don’t want it.”

  “It is,” said Grace. “It’s more important than me. It’s more important than any of us. It’s the future of the world there in your hand, Fiske. You have to keep it safe. No one will expect you to have it. And that’s how we’ll protect it. At least, just for a few days. Until I can shake them. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “You . . . you want me to take the most important artifact in the world back to school with me?” asked Fiske. His face turned red. “The other day, someone stole all of my socks and threw them into the duck pond, Grace. I honestly don’t think it will be safe at school.”

  “You’re not going back to school,” said Grace.

  “I’m not?”

  “I’ve made other arrangements.” She stood up and turned away from him. “I just need a few days. I’ll distract them. I’ll take them far away from you.”

  “But if they catch you — ”

  “Then I won’t have the ring. They won’t win. Fiske,” said Grace, “I need you to trust me, the way that I’m trusting you. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think that you could — if I didn’t think that you had it in you.”

  Fiske didn’t think that was entirely true. He thought she was trusting him because there was no one else she could turn to. Everything in him was pooling in his feet, like he was a bathtub being drained.

  “We have to keep it safe,” said Grace. “So I’m sending you somewhere safe.”

  “Where?”

  Grace paused. It made Fiske’s stomach drop.

  “You’ll be posing as the grandson of Admiral King. You’ve met him before — you liked him, remember? You’ll have a place aboard the USS Nautilus,” said Grace.

  “What’s that?” asked Fiske.

  “Oh, well, it’s very interesting that you should ask,” said Grace. She fiddled with her necklace. “It’s a nuclear submarine. The first one, actually. Another Cahill, right on the cusp of history. We’re all very proud.”

  Fiske went pale; he could feel the blood leave his face and a deathly chill rush up to replace it. A submarine? A submarine with a nuclear reactor on board?

  “Everything will be fine,” said Grace. “Now, what did you pack? Do you have enough clean underwear?”

  “A nuclear submarine!” Fiske yelled. “Grace? Really?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Grace hissed, rushing to him and clamping a hand over Fiske’s mouth. “I’m not kidding, Fiske. This isn’t a drill, and it’s not some sort of prank. This is my life, and your life, and the future of the world. This is what I need you to do. If you don’t . . . then I’m out of options, Fiske. Then they win.”

  Fiske shuddered involuntarily, and his stomach went cold and turned over. He wished that she could come with him, that she could hide out in a safe place, too.

  “Just a few days?” Fiske said.

  “Just a few days. You’ll be fine. I’ve taken care of everything. After you leave here I’ll let the Vespers know that I’m on the move again. They won’t know that I don’t have the ring. I have a fake one to wear in the meantime.”

  Grace squeezed his hand tighter around the ring. “You’ll go to New London, Connecticut. From there, the Nautilus is sailing to Puerto Rico. Wherever I am, I’ll be monitoring that boat, Fiske. I’ll always be watching out for you. And once you’re in San Juan, I’ll send you word on where to meet me and I’ll take the ring back.” She paused again. “If you don’t hear from me . . .”

  “Don’t say anything else. Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

  “If you don’t hear from me, then the ring will be yours. To do with what you want. You’re the only one I trust with it, Fiske.”

  Fiske didn’t want to cry. He was fourteen years old, for goodness’ sake, and far too old to be doing something like that. And he wanted to be strong for Grace. He wanted her to know that she didn’t have to worry about him. That the only thing she should do is worry about herself, to keep herself safe.

  “Fiske King will be your name on the boat,” Grace said. They stood up and Grace grabbed his shoulders and pulled him in for a hug. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be so fine you won’t be able to stand how fine you are. You understand?”

  “Please don’t die,” said Fiske. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to say it; he didn’t want to give voice to the idea. “Please don’t. If it comes down to anything at all, if you have to make a choice, you make the choice that means you don’t die. You understand me, Grace Cahill? You are not leaving me here alone.”

  “I would never,” she said. “Not for anything.”

  She hugged him hard, then gave him his bag and ushered him out into the hallway, locking the door again behind him. Fiske took a cap out of his bag and pulled it low over his eyes as he made his way down to the lobby and out the doors into a rainy night.

  Fiske stood outside of the hotel with his bag over his shoulder and the most valuable thing in the world in his pocket. If he had felt vulnerable before, now he felt as if he was walking around with a giant red and white bull’s-eye painted on his back. The street was nearly empty, but he could feel dozens of eyes peering at him, poking at him like razor-sharp sticks.

  Grace would flee the hotel via the freight elevator, and he wouldn’t see her until next week. Until he resurfaced from his aquatic adventure.

  That is, if he resurfaced at all.

  The next morning, the morning of May 10, 1955, the world was sparkling. The sun glinted off of the harbor, making the water look like a rolling pool of diamonds. The air was crisp and salty, and even though he was still officially on land, Fiske felt certain that he was about to be seasick.

  There she was. The Nautilus. As long as one of the football fields at school and made of smooth steel, she was the most incredible and terrible thing that Fiske had ever seen. The hull was dark and matte and half-wet from the lapping water, half-dry from the warm spring sun. Seagulls perched on the antennae and the periscope, all of them admirals in their own minds. Men in bright white uniforms bustled around, hauling coils of rope over their shoulders or heaving bags of potatoes in a long line from a truck to a hatch at the top of the submarine. Boatloads of American-themed bunting hung around and from everything — the submarine itself, the supply trucks, the dock’s office doors; Fiske was at least in no danger of forgetting what country he was in. He
stood beneath a great patriotic swath above the office door, waiting for a lieutenant and hoping he wouldn’t get lost.

  All of the activity swirled around in front of Fiske like the whorls in wood around a central knot. The crowd there to see the submarine off was enormous. There were women in new hats and stiff gloves, children with balloons on strings tied to their wrists. Old men yelled at one another to be heard over the sound of other men yelling. The air smelled of salt and fish and people and damp.

  Fiske was frozen in place, with no idea of where to go or who to look at or if he was supposed to talk to anyone. He hoped he wasn’t. Because all he wanted to do was get back into the car and drive it straight down to the bottom of the sea.

  A pamphlet on the Nautilus was twisted in his hands, the paper damp from his sweaty palms. He had been in to the office, had introduced himself as Fiske King, and had had to shake so many hands he thought his own might fall off. Now he was waiting for a man named Herman Oppowitz to show up and help him out.

  “Ahoy there!” A short, stocky man in blue coveralls came jogging out of the dock’s office. He had buzzed hair, a huge smile, and shoulders so wide he looked like he might be half Texas longhorn. Fiske would have liked him, if he wasn’t so scared.

  The man grinned and saluted. “You must be Admiral King’s grandson. It’s an honor to meet you.” He stuck his hand out. “Lieutenant Herman Oppowitz. I’ll be your chaperone and answer man for your time on the Nautilus. Your sea dad, as we call it.”

  Fiske took his hand; it was so large that it covered Fiske’s up to his wrist. “Uh, hello, sir,” said Fiske, in a voice so small that it made him blush. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “I hear you’re awful interested in submarines,” said Lieutenant Oppowitz. “That’s just great. You know your grandfather served on one back in the twenties? Of course you do. Boy-o, I bet you’ve got stories. Well, let’s get you aboard. Want me to take your bag?”

  “No!” Fiske blurted, clutching his bag tighter to his chest. “No. No thank you, I mean.”