To Kill the Potemkin (4 page)

He
listened to the familiar sounds of
Barracuda'
s
machinery, the pulse of
pumps and the throttling steam. He heard the underwater beacons, fixed
to the
bottom of Chesapeake Bay, that would guide the ship through the channel
and
into the Atlantic. Satisfied that all was in order, he took off his
earphones
and looked at Fogarty.

To
his
surprise, Fogarty's eyes were closed. He was literally all ears. "What
do
you hear?" Sorensen asked.

"Barracuda."

"And
what does she sound like?"

Fogarty
opened his eyes and smiled. His eyes were dark brown, almost black. At
first
glance they were relaxed, but on closer inspection there was a hint of
controlled tension.

"She
sounds like World War Three."

Sorensen
blinked, then laughed. "Okay, wiseguy, switch on the fathometer."

"Switching
on fathometer." Fogarty's hands played over his keyboard.

"What's
our depth?"

"Thirty
feet under the keel."

"Test
BQR-2, passive array."

"Testing
BQR-2, passive array." Fogarty checked the circuits which connected the
hydrophones to his console. "Test positive. All circuits
functioning."

"Test
active
array."

Fogarty
punched
more buttons, activating in
turn the transducers mounted in the center of each hydrophone. The
transducers
created the familiar sonar "pings" that radiated through the water
and, if they struck an object, returned as an echo heard by the
hydrophones.
The "echo ranger" was rarely used, only in special circumstances,
since each time it was activated it revealed the sub's location.

"Testing
active
array, test
positive."

"Test
weapons
guidance."

"Testing
weapons
guidance. Weapons
guidance locked on. Test positive."

"Test
target-seeking frequency." In
combat the target-seeking frequency was created by a special transducer
to
locate and pinpoint a target. To the target it was the sound of doom,
followed
immediately by a torpedo.

"Testing
target-seeking frequency. Test
positive."

Sorensen
lit a
Lucky Strike. "How'd you
do in sonar school, kid?"

Fogarty
flushed.
It seemed he did that
easily. "I was first in the class."

"No
foolin'? Good
for you. You look like
a smart kid. Why didn't you go to nuclear power school? How come you're
not a
nuc?"

"I'm
not that
fond of radiation."

Sorensen
blew
smoke at the air-conditioning
vent. "Can't say I blame you for that. Where you from?"

"Minnesota."

"Oh
yeah? A child
of the frozen north.
You don't look like an Eskimo."

Fogarty
grinned.
"I'm from Minneapolis,
and I hate snow."

"Well,
at least
you've got some sense,
you left."

"At
the first
chance."

Sorensen
said,
"Okay, read the notice on
the door. Read it out loud."

Fogarty
twisted
around in his seat and read.
" 'WARNING! This Is A Secure Area. Any Unauthorized Use Of Classified
Material Will Result In Imprisonment And Forfeiture Of Pay. Removal Of
Classified Material Is A Violation Of The National Security Act.' "

"That's
not all,"
Sorensen said.

At
the bottom,
scribbled in large block
letters, Fogarty read, " 'LEAVE YOUR MIND BEHIND.' "

"That's
what you
do when you come in
here," Sorensen said.

On
the bridge the
captain told the lookouts to
be sharp. Two tugs stood off the bow, but Springfield intended to take
his ship
into the channel without assistance. The wind was in his favor, blowing
from
the south.

"Deck
party,
stand by to cast off
lines," he shouted to the sailors fore and aft. He watched the shore as
the ship drifted with the wind and current, then spoke quietly into his
microphone, "Bridge to navigation, how's our tide?"

"Navigation
to
bridge, the tide is
running with us."

"Very
well. Cast
off the stern
line."

"Stern
line away."

Some
people on
the pier began to cheer and
wave. The band played "The Star Spangled Banner."

"Cast
off the bow
line."

"Bow
line away."

"Steer
right ten
degrees."

"Right
ten
degrees."

When
Barracuda
cleared the dock and
there was no danger of fouling her huge propeller, he ordered, "All
ahead
slow."

Sorensen
and
Fogarty listened intently to the
sounds coming through their earphones. With infinite smoothness,
sixteen
thousand horsepower surged out of number one turbine, passed through
the
reduction gears, and the five blades of the massive propeller began to
turn.
They heard the whoosh of water as it began to wash over the hull, and
the
cavitation of the prop, the chunk chunk chunk of every revolution that
would be
audible until they submerged to four hundred feet. Sorensen punched
several
buttons on his console and the computer began to filter out the sounds
of
Barracuda
's
machinery.
Ungainly on the surface, the ship rolled and pitched slightly as they
headed
for the channel.

"Sonar
to
control. Do you have the
beacon on the repeater?"

The
repeater was
the sonar console in the
control room that duplicated what the sonarmen saw and heard. Hoek sat
at the
repeater, but it was Pisaro who replied, "Control to sonar, we have
it."

Twenty
minutes
after leaving the pier the
captain and the lookouts came down from the sail. Springfield closed
the hatch.

"Prepare
to
dive," said the
captain. "Take her down, Leo."

Pisaro
gave
orders to retract the radars and
systematically went through his diving panel.

"Mark
two degrees
down bubble."

"Mark
two degrees
down bubble,
aye."

"Flood
forward
ballast tanks."

"Flood
forward
ballast tanks, aye."

"Half
speed."

"All
ahead half,
aye."

"Stern
planes
down three degrees."

"Three
degrees
down, aye."
Barracuda
angled over and slid silently beneath the sea.

Barracuda
steamed through the Atlantic at twenty-four knots, four hundred feet
beneath
the surface. There was no wind, no waves, no turbulence. At four
hundred feet
the water pressure was so great there was no cavitation behind the
prop. No
bubbles, no energy lost to drag. As the screw turned, the ship moved
ahead with
maximum efficiency. Three precise inertial navigation gyroscopes
recorded every
movement of the ship in three dimensions. Without contacting the
surface, the
navigation computer determined
Barracuda
's exact
position.

The
crew settled
into the patrol routine of
repetitious drills—damage control drill, collision drill, atmosphere
systems
failure drill, weapons drill. When not practicing for calamity or
battle, they
were kept busy continuously maintaining machinery and studying
technical
journals for rating exams and promotions.

Muzak
wafted
through the ship. Two days out
of Norfolk
Cool Hand Luke
was rolling in the mess.
Air conditioners
maintained a comfortable seventy-two degrees.

From
the conning
station the captain looked
around the brilliantly illuminated control room. The green hue of
fluorescent
lighting, accented by the CRTs, gave the compartment an unearthly glow.

Springfield
was not a religious man, but he often thought the control room had the
solemn
atmosphere of a church—an inner sanctum of high technology. Men watched
their
instruments with the faith of true-believers. Every act was a ritual
prescribed
by regulations, perfected by repetition.
Barracuda
represented the
highest order of human artifice, and Springfield thought it ironic that
such
engineering genius was devoted to a man-o'-war. If
Barracuda
resembled a
church, it was the church militant.

"Lieutenant
Hoek," the captain was now saying to the weapons officer, "you have
the conn."

Fred
Hoek
felt as if he had just stuck his finger into
an electric socket. As he moved his heavy frame up a step
to the
conning station, his heart was palpitating and his face was white. He
put on a
headset.

"Aye
aye, sir. I relieve you of the conn."

Lt.
Hoek
scanned the displays in the conning station. Sweat began to collect on
his
upper lip. He was in heaven. He was radioactive. He had the conn.

Springfield
strolled over to the reactor displays that monitored the chain reaction
taking
place at six hundred degrees fifteen feet away. Instinctively, he
fondled his
film badge, a strip of sensitive celluloid that measured the amount of
radiation he was receiving. Like everyone else, the captain turned in
his badge
once a month to a hospital corpsman, who processed the film in the
darkroom and
determined how much radiation each crew member was receiving.

In
the stern of the ship, in the steering machinery
room. Machinist's Mate Barnes was
standing his watch amid the jungle of pipes and compressors that moved
the
rudder and stern planes. Barnes worked at an exquisitely compact lathe,
turning
parts for the constant
maintenance and repair of the ship's intricate
machinery. From the engine room came the high whine of turbines and the
throttling noises of high pressure steam.

"Howdy,
Barnes."

It
was Sorensen,
standing in the hatch in a
pair of red Bermuda shorts, thongs and wraparound sunglasses. He held
out a set
of schematic diagrams. "I'll need this in Naples."

Barnes
shifted
his goggles to his forehead
and looked at the diagrams. "No sweat. Ace. Throw it on the bench."
He turned back to his lathe.

"Barnes."

"Yeah."

"Don't
fuck it
up."

Portside
was a
small door with a brass plaque
that shone brilliantly amid the flat navy gray of the compartment:
"WELCOME TO SORENSEN'S BEACH. NO VOLLEYBALL ALLOWED. PLEASE KNOCK."
Sorensen went in without knocking.

Designated
in the
ship's plans as storage
space for electronic parts, Sorensen's Beach was barely six and a half
feet
long by four feet wide. Stooping under the low tapered ceiling, he
switched on
a pair of bright sunlamps and pulled a plastic mat and wooden beach
chair from
a cabinet. Taped to the door was a travel poster. Santa Cruz,
California. Sun,
surf, sand, pier, golden bodies.

"Surf's
up."

He
turned on the
tape recorder and out flowed
the mellow tones of Dave Brubeck's "Home at Last."

From
a pile of
magazines he grabbed the one
on top, a dogeared
Playboy.
Tapping his feet, he
flipped through the
pages to the centerfold.

After
a while the
same old tits and ass
became monotonous. He dropped
Playboy
and picked up
Newsweek.
Bad
news. Riot, revolution, war, assassination. A general strike in France.
He
liked the naked women better.

The
chaos of life
ashore made him crazy.
Millions of half-wits running around in confusion, like an ant colony
gone
amok. Greed, selfishness, corruption, lives without passion, without
purpose.

Underwater,
the
madness disappeared. Inside
Barracuda
's pressure hull Sorensen had found a purpose and an
identity. On
the ship life was orderly, pure, simple, and defined only by the
implacable
laws of physics. The sub demanded total discipline and absolute
dedication.
Every man had a job to do and did it with his whole being or not at all.

Few
could give
that much, but certain men
blossomed and thrived in the artificial environment of a submarine. For
Sorensen it was liberation. He had joined the navy on his eighteenth
birthday
and never looked back, never wondered what his life might have been
like under
open skies. Now, after ten years, he realized that he couldn't stay
below
forever. For one thing, navy regulations were against it and eventually
he
would be promoted to chief and stuck in a sonar school where he'd
probably
drink himself to death...

He
dropped the
magazine and put on a whale
tape. He liked whales and recorded them frequently. On this tape the
whales
were hooting up a storm. What could interest a bunch of whales so much,
he
wondered. Lunch? Whale sex?

In
the torpedo
room Chief Lopez was feeding a
fly to his pet, a brown Mexican scorpion named Zapata. The scorpion
lived in a
glass cage mounted over the firing console and was the subject of many
whispered rumors and legends.

Lopez
dimmed the lights in the compartment and switched on an ultraviolet
bulb in the
cage. The scorpion glowed an iridescent blue. Lopez leaned his full
face closer
to the cage, sweat running into his heavy beard, eyes flaring like an
aficionado de toros
awaiting the kill. The fly buzzed around,
banged into
the glass and finally dropped to the sand. The scorpion moved. Lopez
imagined
he could see a drop of venom leaking from its tail.

The
rest
of the watch stood around quietly while Lopez acted out the ceremonial
feeding.
The torpedo-men knew better than to make smart remarks about Lopez and
his bug.

In
the
galley the Filipino cook, Stanley Real, had worked for hours on a
sauce
demi-glace.
Stanley fancied himself a
chef de cuisine
rather than a
navy cook. He was trying to explain the difference to Cakes Colby, the
steward.

"This
sauce it is cook for three days."