Ghost Sub полностью

“You heard me,” he said. “And since you’re so concerned about the integrity of this exercise, why don’t you recite the standing order for us?”

V-12 sat back, and looked the XO right in the eye.

“The OOD shall maintain an 8 knot SOA while searching along the recommended axis spelled out in Appendix A of the standing order. Standard collision avoidance maneuvers shall be taken upon broadband detection, in parallel with the manning of battle stations. Trash will be gathered and compacted on the evening watch and shot on the morning watch while the ship is at Periscope Depth, acquiring the broadcast. The tracking party will be supervised by the JOOD while the OOD ensures the ship is turned over at the end of watch in the overlap between the old and the new operating zones, as outlined in red upon the main navigational chart.”

He sat back.

“Is that right?” said the captain to Jabo, who’d been following along on a laminated sheet.

“Word for word.”

“Anybody want to hear Appendix A?” said V-12.

Later that afternoon, Jabo saw the XO had posted a new watchbill to account for the tracking party. It was handwritten on a sheet of lined paper due to the death of their copier. It still had Jabo in the engine room, still under the instruction of V-12. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, he noticed he’d been given the midwatch that night: midnight to 0600.

Jabo grabbed a few hours of sleep late that evening. He thought of his wife, Angi, running in front of him on a rainy Seattle road as he drifted off. He missed her so bad it pained him, but something about the memory made him fall into a deep dreamless sleep. About two hours was all he needed, and it was all he got.

When he woke up, he thought for a disorienting second that he was back on the Alabama, and that his friend Hayes Fountain would be awake in the stateroom, putting on his Nikes, ready to go on one of his mythic treadmill runs that he logged meticulously in a binder, on graph paper, each patrol. Jabo wondered if that would be how it was for him now, all the memories of all his boats jumbling together until he was an old man and he wouldn’t be able to tell one boat from another when he reminisced. He missed Angi constantly, it was part of the background noise of his life at sea. But he realized with some surprise how much he missed the Alabama, too, and the shipmates he’d had, on this boat where he was in many ways still a stranger.

He showered, and met V-12 at the watertight door to the engine room at 2300 for their prewatch tour.

“You can skip this…” said V-12.

“Not my style,” said Danny.

They walked through the engine room and verified everything was in order. It was, as expected, quiet. The men on the 1800–2400 watch had had the midwatch the night before, and were ready for the luxury of at least six uninterrupted hours of sleep, something that only came along every three days. They checked the logs, talked to the men, and then went forward to grab a quick bite to eat.

The wardroom was darkened, as Burkhardt and Perez finished up a movie before the midnight meal, or “midrats,” were served. Submarines, with the day broken into four six hour watches, served four meals a day.

“What’s the flick?” said Jabo.

“Point Break,” said Burkhardt and Perez together.

“Good one,” said Danny. There were two kinds of scenery you grew to miss at sea, he’d learned, and there were cinematic remedies for both. Some underway favorites contained lots of beautiful women, and others contained lots of beautiful landscapes. Point Break was the latter, and had been a favorite on the Alabama too. “Peace through superior firepower,” he said, quoting the film.

“Fear causes hesitation,” said Burkhardt. “And hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.”

Perez joined in. “If you want the ultimate, you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price.”

“I can see you guys have watched this a few times.”

“About five so far,” said Perez.

“Maybe we shouldn’t get too much of our personal philosophy from a bad Patrick Swayze movie,” said V-12.

“Fuck you, it’s a classic.”

“Better this than Dirty Dancing,” said Jabo.

There was easy laughter around the table, and Jabo could feel the bond between the junior officers. It was a direct byproduct of the huge responsibility that the submarine forced placed on the shoulders of twenty-five year old young men. It was slightly tighter with Perez and Burkhardt, who’d been on the boat longer — the reason why they were on the conn. But V-12 was there too, well-liked and well on his way to becoming a solid watch officer.

Petty Officer Spencer, the cook, came in and turned on the lights as Patrick Swayze took on that last giant wave, and Johnny Utah threw his badge into the surf. The credits rolled as he placed platters of cold cuts and bread on the table. Jabo took a single piece of wheat bread, cut it in half, and started building himself a sandwich. The half-sandwich looked tiny in his big hands.