Phillips had shaved it all off close to the scalp some weeks before, but it seemed to look more natural now that it had grown a sixteenth of an inch. Phillips was in his late thirties and single, the latter unheard of for a submarine captain with all the social obligations of the job.
But then Phillips had never fit the type, Pacino thought. He wasn’t the conventional older, spare-tirecarrying family-man commanding officer. Phillips was independently wealthy, from an old Philadelphia Main Line family. The money, Pacino thought, might have been in part responsible for what made him different.
He had a reputation for lack of caution, not so much uncaring as dismissive of safety regulations, impatient with bureaucracy, inattentive to fleet politics. The previous force commander, Adm. Dick Wells, had put it negatively to Pacino: “Phillips might at first seem like a good commander but he’s unreliable, inconsistent and has an attitude. He’ll screw something up and sink someday.
He ran aground two months ago and the investigation is still ongoing. So far it looks like it was just bad luck, a double equipment malfunction, but bad luck follows sloppy sailors. I was going to recommend to the board of inquiry that we can him. There are too many good submarine officers out there to waste time on a marginal performer. Well, he’s your problem now.”
“How did he get command in the first place if he’s so sloppy?” Pacino had asked.
“Usual story. Inflated fitness reports, he knew somebody on the selection board for commander, kissed up to his squadron commander. He’ll snow you under until you look at the repair reports. His equipment is always breaking. His ship is dirty. When you ask him why, he just chomps on a cigar and squints at you.”
Pacino wasn’t sure whether to buy Wells’s opinion, discard it, or see the same facts in a different light. Ten years before, someone on fleet staff might well have described Pacino himself that way. Except Pacino had never been sloppy; his equipment had been functional if not perfect, his decks tidy if not spotless, the Navy paperwork completed if not enjoyed. There was a distinction between bold and reckless. The question was, which was Phillips?
As if hearing his thoughts, Phillips squinted over at Pacino as he dug out a fat cigar from his khaki shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. He looked away to the sonar display, then reached for a phone. His voice was quiet, but Pacino picked up his conversation.
“Sonar, Captain, I’m about to brief the battlestations crew. Interrupt me if you get a detect.” He put the phone back in its cradle and scanned the room, clearing his throat.
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” he announced, his voice not deep but rock steady, grabbing the ears of every man in the room without having to shout. “Since the declaration of war with Japan on Friday the approach to Tokyo Bay has been clean. However, satellite photographic intelligence from an hour ago showed a Japanese Destiny Type-Two attack submarine getting underway from the Yokosuka piers. We suspect that his mission is to attack the USS Ronald Reagan carrier battle group outbound from Pearl Harbor. Our Op Order came in with the intelligence brief. Our mission is to sink the Destiny II immediately upon detection.”
Phillips looked around the room, put the cigar in his teeth and gave the rest of his speech talking around the cigar.
“Let me remind you all of the Destiny II’s armament.
He is probably carrying the new model of Nagasaki torpedo.
It’s a dozen tons of weapon, goes seventy-five knots compared to our forty, has an endurance of an hour and can sink us if it detonates within a hundred yards of our hull. There will be no outrunning that son of a bitch. So let’s stay alert and put this guy on the bottom before he hears us. Officer of the deck, rig ship for ultraquiet. That’s all, folks. Carry on.”
Pacino put on a spare headset to listen in on the control-room conversation. He couldn’t have said it better, he thought, looking up at the sonar repeater set high in the overhead of the conn above the middle firecontrol console. The trace coming down the screen was new.
“Conn, Sonar,” crackled in Pacino’s ear from the sonar supervisor, who manned the watch in the closetsized sonar room forward of control. “New sonar contact on broadband sonar bearing zero one five, designate Sierra One.”- “Sonar, Captain, aye,” Phillips snapped, squinting.
Pacino looked at the navigation display, realizing that bearing 015 pointed to the outbound traffic separation scheme from Yokosuka. Phillips met his eyes for a moment, nodded.
“Conn, Sonar, new contact Sierra One is operating on the surface, loud wake noises, no turn-count from his screw.” “Captain, aye,” Phillips said, looking at the bearing line of the contact on the sonar screen set into the overhead above the conn. “Why no turn-count?”
