To Kill the Potemkin (8 page)

For
three hours
they searched in a spiral
pattern, totally mystified. Finally, Springfield gave up.

"Unload
torpedo."

"Unload
torpedo,
aye."

"Send
up a buoy,
Leo. Report the
contact, then resume course for Naples."

"Aye
aye.
Skipper."

Sorensen
was
intrigued. In the grand game of
Cowboys and Cossacks the Viktor was a new challenge. He put his hands
behind
his head and leaned back. "Score one for Ivan," he said. "We
lost this round."

Fogarty
was still
poking at his ears.
"That was a slap in the face. I didn't like it."

"Well,
Fogarty,
nobody likes it, so you
can brood about it for a while. In the control room of that sub there's
a guy
sitting right now at his Feniks console, watching an obsolete
oscilloscope, and
he's probably feeling right pleased with himself, but don't take it
personally.
Sooner or later you'll get to do it to him, or to one of his pals. The
only
thing that bothers me is that he got away. That son of a bitch went
pretty
deep. And fast. A regular Maserati."

"You
really like
this, don't you?"
Fogarty said.

"Sure
I do.
There's nothing else like it
in the world. This is what it's all about. We chase the Russians around
the ocean,
then they chase us, then we chase them some more.
Shit, one hot sub doesn't mean anything. They get one, then we get one,
the
guys at Electric Boat keep busy and all the admirals are happy. After
all, kid,
it's just a game, isn't it?"

"It
may be just a
game, Sorensen, but
the stakes seem pretty high."

"So
who wants to
play penny-ante? That's
no fun." Sorensen's voice remained lighthearted, but his eyes were dead
serious. "Listen, Fogarty, down here we jam it to the max. We take it
right to the edge. There's no other way."

"It
seems
dangerous to me, Sorensen. If
it gets out of hand we could have a war."

"You
afraid of a
war, Fogarty?"

"Shit,
yes."

"Well,
try to
remember the other guys
have just as much to lose as we do. If we get nuked we'll never know
what hit
us. What's with you, Fogarty? Are you some kind of peacenik? Ban the
bomb, is
that it? Or are you just chickenshit?"

Fogarty
shrugged
and looked away.

"Lighten
up,
kid," Sorensen said.
"I'm not going to bug you about what you believe or don't. You do your
job, you keep your ears sharp, you
play the fucking game
and you're
going to be all right. I think maybe you've got a conscience, and
that's okay."

Fogarty
looked
into Sorensen's eyes and could
almost feel a psychic probe rooting around in his mind. "We can have a
lot
of fun in here," Sorensen was saying, "or it can be a real drag.
You're a straight midwestern kid with smarts. All you really need is a
sense of
humor. We're the cowboys. They're the cossacks. So goddammit, start
acting like
a cowboy. Let me ask you something, Fogarty"—Sorensen's mouth twisted
into
a devilish smile—"how did you feel when you first heard that Russian
sub?
Were you afraid?"

"No,"
Fogarty
admitted.

"Damned
right. I
was watching you. You
were too excited to be scared. You got a big charge out of it. That's
nothing
to be ashamed of. When you see that Russian on the screen and listen to
him
growling like a goddamn nuclear shark, nothing else matters. It's you
and him.
That's where the action is. It's a big rush. Adrenaline maybe, or
something
even deeper. It's the ultimate drug. Underwater, what you believe
doesn't
count, only what you do, how you react. The rest of the world doesn't
exist.
Not your girlfriend, not your mother, not your god if you got one. Just
you and
Ivan."

"Leave
your mind
behind."

"You
got it."

A
shy smile
crossed Fogarty's face. "I
admit it was pretty exciting," he said, "Until my ears got
blasted."

"Think
of what it
did to the fish."
He jumped out of his seat and waved his arms around. "Imagine a school
of
deaf tuna swimming upside down. Along comes a Great Barracuda. Zap,
zap, he
cuts 'em to ribbons, eats about twenty, and swims away upside down."

Fogarty
shook his
head. "Christ,
Sorensen. That was terrible."

They
were both
laughing when Lt. Hoek opened
the door. He was disappointed at having missed the original contact
with the
Russian sub and wanted to listen to the recording of the Viktor's
signature.
Sorensen surrendered the supervisor's console and started the tape.

They
changed the
watch. Sorensen and Fogarty
were in the control room when they heard Lt. Hoek howling in pain.

Springfield
looked around and locked eyes
with his senior sonarman. They both smiled. Hoek had a lot to learn.

The
next morning
Springfield prepared to take
his ship into the Bay of Naples. Surfacing near a crowded harbor was
always
undertaken with great caution.

Fogarty
was at
the operator's console as the
ship made a slow 360-degree turn, echo-ranging 360 degrees to make
certain the
surface was clear of shipping before raising the periscope. He picked
up two
freighters, a small tanker and a car ferry, all at a safe distance, but
missed
a flotilla of yachts in a restricted area.

"Up
periscope."

When
Springfield
put his eyes to the
binocular lenses of the periscope he found himself staring into the
startled
face of a man in evening dress at the wheel of his boat fifty feet
away. A
naked woman lay on the deck. Several more people, drinks in hand,
gawked at the
periscope. Springfield could read the registration number painted on
the hull.
He swung the scope around and saw three more wooden and fiberglass
sailboats
within a hundred yards, impossible to detect on sonar.

"Control
to
sonar, you blew it. We've
got sailboats."

Sorensen
clucked.
"Fogarty, you still
can't navigate."

"Leo,"
Springfield said to the XO,
"take a look."

Pisaro
peered
into the eyepiece and whistled.

When
Springfield
gave the order to surface.
Barracuda
surged out of the sea, a silent monster of the
deep. The people
on the sailboats lined the railings and watched the sub slip past. Her
surface
was a mottled black, like the skin of a whale. The only sound was the
hiss of
water breaking over her bow.

Barracuda
steamed into the Bay of Naples and tied up outside the breakwater next
to the
sub tender
Tallahatchie County.
Nearby,
Kitty Hawk,
flagship of
the Sixth Fleet, was preparing for departure later that afternoon.

From
high up on
the superstructure of the
massive aircraft
carrier,
a sailor looked down at the tiny submarine. Compared to the manifest
might of
Kitty Hawk,
the sub appeared
insignificant. With a dorsal fin and a tail protruding from the water,
Barracuda
looked like a fish to
him, at worst a harmless little shark.

Jaded,
polluted Naples spilled down the mountains to the bay, home port of the
U.S.
Sixth Fleet. Over the millenia Neapolitans had seen many fleets come
and go.
When the giant
Kitty Hawk
and her escorts got up
steam and sailed away,
only a few young boys paid attention.

Barracuda
was moored to the seaward side of
Tallahatchie County.
A canopy stretched from the tender over the top of the sail, veiling
her
profile from "the eye in the sky," the Soviet satellites that
frequently passed over Naples.

Springfield
left the ship to carry the recordings of the Viktor to fleet
headquarters,
leaving Pisaro to pass the word. The crew waited expectantly for
liberty call.

Pisaro
called Chief Lopez into his cabin. The XO kept a box of Havanas
exclusively for
Lopez, one of his perks as chief of the boat. Flipping open his Zippo,
Pisaro
said, "We're going to unload all your torpedos, Chief, and replace them
with dummies."

Lopez
puffed his cigar into life. "All of them. Commander? I hate dummies.
That
pulls all the teeth out of
'Cuda
."

"Nobody
likes them. Chief. Anyway, that's the good news. The bad news is that
there'll
be no liberty call."

Lopez
looked forlorn but said nothing. Naples was his
favorite liberty port. Pisaro knew how he felt. It was his favorite as
well. He
went on, "We're going to be here less than twenty-four hours, and we'll
be
gone a week at the most. When we get back everyone gets three days
ashore."

"The
crew won't
like it, sir."

"Your
job is to
listen to them bitch.
Chief. Anyone who wants can go onto
Tallahatchie
for
thirty
minutes."

Lopez
puffed hard
on his cigar. "Thirty
whole minutes? I'll pass the word, sir. I'm sure it will make the men
feel
better about having no liberty and all—"

"Don't
choke on
the stogie, Lopez. Get
outta here. And send Sorensen in with his beacon."

In
the sonar room
Sorensen was assembling a
waterproof, pressure-tight sonic beacon into the stainless steel box
made by
Barnes. As the other sonarmen crowded around, Sorensen tinkered with a
soldering gun, a tiny screwdriver and a pile of highly classified
miniature
parts. He carefully torqued down the pressure seals and threw the
switch. The
box began to beep, and the sonarmen cheered.

Davic said,
"The
Russians would kill for
what's in that box."

Sorensen
turned
it off. "What makes you
think so, Davic? Do you really think anyone would slaughter your fat
ass for a
bunch of transistors? In five years you'll probably be able to buy one
of these
things in a dimestore. A battery, a speaker, big fucking deal."

Lopez
looked in
from the control room.
"Sorensen, the XO wants to see you and your gizmo."

Sorensen
turned
off the box. On the way out
he handed the circuit diagram to Davic. "Here, Davic, I want you to
make
one of these. You don't need a watertight case. I'm gonna hang it
around your
neck."

Sorensen
knocked on Pisaro’s door.

"C'mon
in, Ace."

Spread
out on the
table was a chart of the
Bay of Naples and the adjacent Gulf of Pozzuoli, a large inlet to the
north,
separated from the bay by the point of La Gaiola.

"At
ease,
Sorensen. Sit down. Light up
if you like."

"Thank
you, sir."

"You
been topside
yet?"

"No,
sir. Too
busy."

"I
wonder if it's
a nice day. Naples can
be a nice place. My grandfather came from Naples."

Sorensen
sniffed
the air. "I smell cigar
smoke, sir. Does that mean there's no liberty?"

Pisaro
laughed
and ran his hands over his scalp.
"There's just no bullshitting you, is there? Well, you're right. No
liberty. Next time."

"Yes,
sir."

"All
right, let's
see your
handiwork." He reached for the beacon and switched it on, listened to
it
for a moment and turned it
off.
"Is it going to work?"

"I
can't say,
sir. I haven't had it in
the water."

"What
about a
magnet?"

"I
got one."

"Well,
then."
Pisaro looked over
his chart and jabbed his finger at a spot in the middle of the Gulf of
Pozzuoli. "It's one hundred twenty feet down. Can you handle it?"

Sorensen
peered
at the chart and nodded.
"No problem."

"Okay,
you need
to take someone with
you. Who's it going to be?"

"Fogarty."

"The
kid? Is he
qualified for
scuba?" Pisaro opened his personnel files and pulled Fogarty's records.
"So he is. Is he any good at sonar?"

"He's
a sharp
cookie, Commander. He's
got good ears."

Pisaro
studied
the file. "There's
something about him I can't put my finger on. He's kind of sullen. I
don't
think he really likes the military—"

"For
cryin' out
loud. Commander, I don't
like the military. I don't think you like it very much. If you'll
pardon my
saying so."

Pisaro
pretended
not to hear this. He was
reading Fogarty's file. "He went to the University of Minnesota for a
year. Hmm. Electronic engineering. Another wizard, I suppose. Why can't
I get
more guys like Willie Joe? Just a good old boy who loves his submarine.
Instead, I get the likes of you and this Fogarty. Get outta here. Go
swimming."

In
wetsuits
Sorensen and Fogarty popped out
of the after hatch and carefully made their way along the deck. From
the
portside forward diving plane Hoek was supervising the loading of the
dummy
torpedoes. All of the torpedoes for the exercise, six Mark 37s and two
Mark 45s
were wire-guided. Each torpedo was equipped with a reel of fine wire,
miles
long, that remained attached to the submarine when the weapon was
fired. By
means of an electronic pulse transmitted along the wire, the weapons
officer
could guide the torpedo to its target. The gleaming weapons were
painted
brilliant orange to indicate they were unarmed.

The
two sailors
dropped into a waiting rubber
boat. Sorensen cranked up the outboard motor and a moment later they
were
skimming across the bay, heading for the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

Sheltered
from
the swell of the Mediterranean
by the shoals of La Gaiola, the bay was calm. Shadows crept down the
slopes of
Vesuvius. The air was heavy with diesel oil and thyme.

Fogarty
was
awestruck by the crumbling
magnificence of Naples. After ten days underwater he seemed to have
surfaced in
paradise. Waving his arms, he shouted into the wind, "It's like a
dream,
it's beautiful."