Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

  “This problem’s too big to solve in a day,” Pacino said finally. “I’ll work on it tomorrow.”

  “You can’t,” Colleen said, a slight smile coming to her lips. “You’re busy tomorrow.”

  “Oh? What am I doing tomorrow?”

  “Let’s just say you won’t be getting out of bed and leave it at that,” Colleen said, and took his hand and led him out of the

  office. Pacino smiled, trying to forget the technical troubles and enjoy his newfound lightness of heart.

  But that night in his dreams the skeleton on the motorcycle overtook the bus and smashed it to pieces with his mace.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Pacino,” Executive Officer Astrid Schultz said, pointing to a chair on the inboard side of the wardroom table. It was the hour after the evening meal, the normal time for the wardroom to be set up for a movie, but tonight Pacino would face the qualification board for diving officer of the watch. Facing him on the outboard side next to Schultz was Chief Engineer Alameda and Damage Control Assistant Duke Phelps. At the end of the table Captain Catardi sat silent, watching the diving officer qualification board for Pacino. Duke had said Catardi would ask the last question based on Pacino’s answers to the other board members’ interrogation. If Pacino passed the verbal test, they would observe him take the ship to periscope depth, and if that went well, he would be qualified to stand the diving officer by himself. And being on the watch bill meant he was no longer a parasite, a rider. The term “rider” was one of the worst insults used on the submarine, referring to someone who did not pull his weight.

  Pacino’s stomach churned and bile rose to his mouth as he sat. It came down to this qual board, he thought. If he blew this, he would be considered unworthy of being his father’s son. Since he’d been aboard, the officers and chief petty officers had at first acted strangely around him, the references to his father’s former position sometimes subtle, other times blatant. A chief petty officer mechanic showing him the trim pump motor starter in the auxiliary machinery room would crack that he should know its location, because after all, he was a Pacino. A sluggish approach to periscope depth was condemned by another chief, mocking him that a Pacino should be able to put the submarine on the exact depth in an instant. But the crew had seemed to be testing him for any signs of arrogance or hubris, and finding none, they seemed to adopt him. Some had never warmed up, insisting that until the

  day he wore gold dolphins he remained an air-breathing rack occupying nonqual rider. The chief of the auxiliary mechanics, “A-gang,” Chief Keating, the man most responsible for training Pacino, stated in a Texas drawl at the start of every watch, “Mr. Patch, you breathin’ my air, you eatin’ my food, and you got a rack all to yourself while some of my boys is still hot rackin’. Far as I’m concerned, you a nonqual rider, and an officer besides”—the term officer used pejoratively—” settin’ in your wardroom, drinkin’ your coffee with your pinky in the air, pushin’ your papers while we do the real work of runnin’ this ship. You best be livin’ right when you stand watch as dive on my ship, mister.”

  “So, Mr. Pacino,” Schultz said, beginning the inquisition, “go to the white board and draw the trim and drain system, and explain how to get a one-third trim on an initial dive after a shipyard availability.”

  Twenty minutes later, Pacino took his seat, his armpits soaked. Phelps continued with the next question, about how to line up to snorkel. Alameda asked him a dozen questions about how to rig the ship for dive, the locations of the valves and switches. Schultz asked about ship stability and why a submarine didn’t behave like a surface ship during a roll, Pacino’s answer and the follow-up questions taking another hour. It came time for Catardi’s question. He simply leaned forward and said, “Bowplanes jam dive.”

  Pacino shot back, “All back full, switch to emergency hydraulics, try to pull out, sound the general alarm, prepare for the OOD’s order to emergency blow forward.” The immediate action for a jam dive. The diving officer and officer of the deck would take instinctive action, without orders, to try to keep the ship from descending below the depth where the pressure would cause the hull to implode.

  “Why not back emergency instead of just back full?”

  “A back full order reverses the direction of the main motor and speeds it up in reverse until reactor power reaches fifty percent, the highest power level for running natural circulation. If we order back emergency, maneuvering has to energize

  the reactor circulation pumps and bring reactor power up to a hundred percent, and the pumps in fast speed come off the non vital bus and are less reliable. There is a possibility that a hurried crew lining up for reactor forced circulation could power-to-flow scram the reactor, and then you’d be in a jam dive with a propulsion casualty. Better to use a reliable safe backing bell at fifty percent and use a forward group emergency main ballast tank blow if back full isn’t enough to pull us out of the dive, sir.”

  Catardi nodded. Finally the verbal test portion of the qual board was complete, and normally that would be enough, but Captain Catardi had ordered that Pacino stand a casualty drill watch before he earned his diving officer qualification.

  Although it was 2030 hours Zulu time, the military term for Greenwich Mean Time, the local time at that point in the sea was only 1730, and the sun had not yet set. The control room was rigged for white—the overhead lights were on bright-but would probably be rigged for red at the next periscope depth excursion. During an approach to periscope depth at night, the OOD would rig the control room for black, which was the submarine term for turning the lights completely out to keep from ruining his night vision for collision avoidance.

  “Mr. Pacino, take the diving officer watch, please,” Schultz ordered him.

  “Officer of the Deck,” Pacino called to the navigator, Wcs Crossfield, who stood behind the command console, wearing a wireless one-eared headset with a boom microphone and red goggles. “Request permission to relieve Chief Keating as diving officer of the watch to stand as dive under instruction.”

  “Very well, Pacino, take the dive.”

  “Take the dive, aye, sir. Chief Keating, request permission to take the port seat at the ship control panel.” Keating sat inside a cocoon of consoles resembling an aircraft cockpit, a cramped semi sphere of wraparound displays and instruments and toggle switches. A central console divided the ship-control console area in half, an empty seat on the port side. Keating wore a headset and visor arrangement, which piped the displays in front of him in virtual reality, the consoles and displays in physical space around him all backups.

  “Take the port seat, Mr. Pacino.” Keating was on his best behavior, Pacino noticed, the older experienced man usually calling him “nonqual.”

  Pacino climbed into the cramped cockpit and settled in the port seat, strapping himself in. He put his hands on the aircraft-style control yoke, which controlled the rudder and stern planes and put his feet into the straps of the pedals that controlled the bow planes

  “I’m ready to relieve you, sir,” Pacino said to Keating as he strapped on a visor. The virtual display surrounded him, the ship animated from a side view, the surface high overhead, the bow planes and stern planes undulating slightly to keep her on depth. The display was a busy one, the animated ship transparent and complete with different-colored tanks and pipes and pumps, the animation able to show valves opening or shutting and water flowing from tank to tank. Other graphics addressed the status of the rig for dive and the ventilation lineup, the ship’s speed and course and depth order, the status of the engineering plant and a few manual entries, called PDL, or pass down-log. Pacino studied the display for a moment before Keating began to speak.

  “As you can see, nonqual—I mean, sir—the ship is at seven hundred feet at all ahead standard, course two seven zero, making bells on both main engines, evaporator making water to the makeup feed tank. We’ve got decent one-third trim, or at least we did two hours ago. We could be heavy aft, but I and Cyclops have entered a compensat
ion. We’re supposed to come to PD in two minutes. You’re just in time. Got it?”

  “Got it, Chief. I relieve you, sir.”

  “I stand relieved. Off’sa’deck, I’ve been relieved of the dive by Mr. Pacino.”

  “Very well, Chief.” Crossfield spoke into his boom microphone. “Sonar, Conn, coming shallow to one five zero feet in preparation for coming to periscope depth.”

  The phrase made Pacino’s stomach tense. Now came the

  trial, with the captain and the XO and Lieutenant Alameda all watching him. Crossfield was about to come shallow, above the thermal layer from the near-freezing waters of the deep Atlantic. Above the layer, the water was heated by the sun and stirred by the waves. Above the layer, things would be completely different, Pacino thought, his mind on the ship’s weight. She might be balanced—trimmed with neutral buoyancy —at seven hundred feet, but in the warmer water above the layer, the buoyancy would change. The hull, with less pressure on it, would expand, taking up more volume, with the same weight of water ballast aboard, making it more buoyant. Above the thermal layer the effect of the shallower water would make them light, and the ship could float up like a balloon. But then, the shallower water above the layer was warmer, and going from cold water to warm water made the ship heavy, countering the lightness of the lowered pressure. Pacino’s mind rushed, thinking. He called up the screens of the Cyclops control system and blinked his way through a complex buoyancy calculation. Catardi and Schultz must have seen what he was doing in the auxiliary display, because just then Schultz murmured something to Crossfield and Pacino’s virtual screen winked out. They were running a casualty drill on him, trying to see how he’d handle it.

  “Loss of Cyclops ship control,” Pacino reported, his voice a little too loud. He pulled off his visor and focused his eyes on the wraparound panels. Now the computer would be useless in helping him stay on depth when they went shallow. He’d have to do a mental buoyancy calculation and hope for the best. Even with Cyclops operating he had been taught to do the mental calculation and check it against Cyclops, but he and the computer had yet to agree, and worse, the computer had always been right. Pacino pulled on a wireless headset like the one Crossfield was wearing.

  “Loss of Cyclops, aye. Messenger of the Watch, get the firecontrol technician of the watch to control.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” a young enlisted sailor called out.

  “Dive, all ahead standard.”

  “All ahead standard, aye, sir, throttle advancing to turns for all ahead standard.” Pacino put his right hand on the central console’s throttle lever and pushed it gently toward the forward bulkhead. Pacino found the old-fashioned tachometer meter, showing the speed of the propulsor winding up from thirty RPM to ninety.

  “Making turns for all ahead standard, sir,” Pacino reported.

  “Very well, Dive, make your depth one five zero feet,” Crossfield ordered.

  “Make my depth one five zero feet, aye, sir.”

  Pacino pulled back on the control yoke, watching the stern planes respond by tipping downward like the horizontal stabilizers of an airplane during ascent. The ship’s depth indicator changed, the depth display of 700 feet changing to 690, then further upward as the ship’s angle—the “bubble”—increased from level to five degrees upward and beyond, until the deck was at an uphill angle of ten degrees. It seemed steep when even a half degree could be sensed by the body. The Piranha rose from the murky depths of the central Atlantic toward the warmer water of the shallow thermal layer.

  “Passing depth four hundred feet.”

  “Rig control for red,” Crossfield ordered. Pacino reached over by feel and clicked the white lights of the overhead to red.

  “Rig for red, aye, passing three hundred feet, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  Pacino watched the temperature plot as the ship ascended through the layer, the temperature changing from twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit to sixty almost instantly. The warmer water would be making them heavy, while the shallower depth was making them light. Pacino lined up the trim system to flood seawater to depth control two, the tank closest to the ship’s center of gravity. Six thousand pounds, he decided. Better too heavy than too light. He opened the trim system’s hull and backup valves with a double toggle switch and pulled the joystick of the trim system down to the flood position, and sea water came roaring into the ship through the eight-inch ball valves.

  “Flooding depth control, sir,” Pacino reported. “Two hundred feet, sir.”

  Pacino eased the yoke back toward the panel, taking the angle off the ship as he pulled out of the ascent. The depth control two tank level had risen five percent. Pacino secured the flooding operation, putting the joystick back to the neutral position and using the manual valve switches to shut the hull and backup valves, an operation that Cyclops would normally have done on its own.

  Suddenly an alarm rang out in the cockpit.

  “Loss of main hydraulics, sir,” Pacino called out, squelching the alarm. He reached for a hydraulic valve control knob to reposition the valve to the right, but it had shifted itself, as it was designed to do. “Hydraulics shifted to auxiliary.” If the auxiliary hydraulic system failed, there was always the emergency hydraulics. Schultz and the captain standing behind the cockpit were obviously making life difficult for him.

  Pacino pushed the yoke further down as the ship approached the depth of 150 feet, the angle coming off the ship, while he pushed down on the pedals, the bow planes angling downward to help him level off. He steadied on 150 feet, testing to see what happened when he put the bow planes and stern planes on zero degrees. The ship was steady on the depth, neither rising nor sinking, Pacino’s guess at the amount of water to bring in correct, although they were still flying through the water at all ahead standard, almost fifteen knots.

  “Sir, one five zero feet,” Pacino called.

  “Very well, Dive, all ahead one-third. Sonar, Conn, prepare to clear baffles to the right in preparation to coming to periscope depth.”

  Pacino tensed. At a one-third bell they might rise like a cork or sink like an anvil, depending on his buoyancy calculation. “All ahead one-third, aye, sir, easing throttle to turns for all ahead one-third.” Pacino found the tachometer gauge and pulled the throttle back, watching the needle wind down, his

  other eye on the depth. When the vessel slowed he might be out of control with all these people watching. The sub was no longer an airplane, it was now a slow zeppelin.

  “Conn, Sonar aye,” Sonar Chief Reardon’s voice sounded in Pacino’s headset.

  The tachometer needle reached thirty RPM and the ship’s depth immediately clicked upward to 145 feet, then to 141. Pacino pushed his bow plane pedals down, the first line of defense. If he could maintain depth with the bow planes he would only be a few thousand pounds light, but if he needed the stern planes and the bubble, the situation would be much worse. At zero bubble, the ship was back at 150 feet with a four-degree dive angle on the bow planes At seven-tenths of a ton per degree, Pacino calculated he was light by almost three tons, or six thousand pounds. His buoyancy calculation had been off by tons, dammit. There was a good chance Catardi and Schultz would send him back for another week of under instruction watch for a blunder that severe. He lined up the trim system, flipping the manual toggle switches to open the hull and backup valves to depth control two, and pushed down on the joystick to the flood position, watching the manual tank level indicator until it rose another five percent, then released the joystick and secured the hull and backup valves. He zeroed the bow planes The ship was steady on depth at 150 feet. He exhaled in relief. At least he hadn’t “lost the bubble,” the submariner’s term for a drastic loss of depth control, but which also meant losing one’s cool under pressure.

  “How’s your trim, Dive?” Crossfield asked from the command console, his voice amused.

  “Ship has a satisfactory one-third trim, sir.”

  “Very well, Dive,” Crossfield said. “Y
ou might want to thank Chief Keating for the inadequate compensation he entered before you took the watch.”

  So, Pacino thought, he’d been set up with a light submarine by Keating.

  “Conn, Sonar, no sonar contacts this leg,” Sonarman Reardon’s voice crackled in Pacino’s headset.

  “Sonar, Conn, aye, clearing baffles to the right.”

  “Conn, Sonar, aye.”

  “Dive, right five degrees rudder, steady course east.”

  “Right five degrees rudder, aye, sir, my rudder is right five.”

  “Very well, Dive.”

  Eventually the gyrocompass rose wheeled its way past 080 degrees true. “Passing course zero eight zero to the right, ten degrees from ordered course,” Pacino called.

  “V’r’well, Dive.”

  “Steady course east, sir,” Pacino reported. There was silence in the room. Pacino took a tense breath, knowing the next few minutes would be the worst. If he came up to periscope depth too steeply, he could broach the sail, but if he came up too sluggishly, the OOD wouldn’t be able to see the surface, and they could be run over by a deep draft merchant without even hearing him.

  “Conn, Sonar, no sonar contacts in the previously baffled area,” the sonar chief, Chief Reardon, reported over Pacino’s headset.

  “Dive,” Crossfield called with a flourish, “make your depth six seven feet!”

  “Make my depth six seven feet, aye, sir,” Pacino acknowledged. As he pulled back on the bow plane pedals another alarm shrieked in the cockpit. “Loss of auxiliary hydraulics, sir,” he said, checking the hydraulic lineup. Perhaps main hydraulics were back on-line, but when he shifted the hydraulic spindle valve handle, he still had no power. “Emergency hydraulics engaged, sir.” Pacino reached back to the center console for a vertical lever behind and to the right of the throttle, the bow planes now only controllable by the emergency lever. But it didn’t position the bow planes like the pedals, it was a lethargic “rate controller.” He would have to hunt for the position that would put the planes on the right angle. Sweat broke out on Pacino’s forehead as he pulled the emergency lever back, pulling the bow planes to an up angle of ten degrees, and as the ship’s angle rose, pushed them back to up five degrees. He took a moment to grab another emergency hydraulic lever