Ghost Sub полностью

“Lieutenant Danny Jabo requests permission to come aboard.”

“Come aboard, sir,” he said, saluting back. “You must be our new navigator.”

Danny lowered his hand and stepped forward. “That’s what my orders say. Is the captain aboard?”

“Yes sir, I believe he is. Would you like an escort to help you find him?”

Danny detected a slight smirk in that, wondered if it was the attack boat sailor’s scorn for the new officer whose previous tour had been aboard a missile submarine: Boomer fag.

“No I’ll find him myself,” said Danny. “Just tell me where the elevator is.”

Warner hesitated at that, then realized he was being screwed with. He nodded his head and smiled. “Good one, sir.”

“Glad you liked it…”

He dropped his seabag down the hatch, then climbed down after it.

It was the smell that brought it all back more than anything else: a combination of diesel exhaust, amine, a lot of hardworking men in close proximity, and the smell of somebody cooking a large amount of calorically dense food; Danny guessed sloppy joes or beef stew. Despite what his new fast boat shipmates might think, Danny could find his way around the boat just fine. In fact, it was considerably easier since the boat was smaller than Alabama along any dimension: length, width, or, the measure with which maritime people preferred to compare total size, displacement. His old boat, the Alabama, had displaced 18,000 tons, more than some World War II aircraft carriers. His new boat displaced less than half of that: 7,000 tons. Despite the vast difference in size, however, the crew wasn’t all that much smaller: 154 men on the Alabama, 129 on Louisville. He was squeezing by a large number of those men as he made his way aft, and they mutually sized each other up as they rubbed by. They were in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and Danny liked them already, because they were his shipmates now. At the end of the passageway near the engine room watertight door, he found the man he was looking for.

He glared at a stack of orange kapok life preservers that Danny knew automatically had not been stowed to his satisfaction. He still had the same combative expression, the same gleaming bald head, and the muscular arms that he denied being vain about. This was his new commanding officer and his old friend: Commander Joe Michaels.

On Danny’s final patrol aboard the Alabama, they’d been on a high-speed run to Taiwan when their navigator went crazy and decided to sink the ship. Danny had been the communicator, Michaels the XO. It had ended with four dead bodies, including the navigator, and a collision that had nearly killed them all. In the aftermath, the Navy’s institutional wisdom had ended the career of their Captain. But they promoted Danny and Michaels, and made them heroes. When Danny first learned that he would be serving with him again on Louisville, he knew that it would be a tour filled with exhausting hard work, unreasonable demands, and profane insults. He wouldn’t have been happier if he’d been awarded another Navy Cross.

“Captain?”

Michaels turned. “Oh Christ… not you again? I told them to send you back to another boomer where you’d be more comfortable. Told them you liked those big toilet seats.”

“Danny Jabo, reporting for duty sir.” He dropped his seabag to the deck and saluted, and smiled despite himself.

“What are you so happy about?”

“Glad to be back on a boat.”

“Yeah bullshit. I’ll call Angi and tell her you said that.”

“She’s still in Indiana for now…”

“Then I’ll wait ‘til she gets to a place with telephones.” He extended his hand and Danny shook it. “I hope you’ve got your affairs in order, Jabo, because we’re going to sea in a hurry.”

“You know sir, that’s exactly what you said when I reported to the Alabama.”

“Don’t mean it ain’t true,” he said. “Follow me.”

They walked forward to his stateroom, and in what was too quick to be called an introduction, the CO shouted the name, or more often the nickname, of every man as they passed. Some were named, obviously, for how they looked: Bear, Red, and Stump. Some he called with the time-honored name for their positions on the boat: the corpsman was Doc, the supply officer was Chop, and the radioman was Sparks. Other nicknames were more mysterious, like Easy Money, Heavy Weather, and a Lieutenant jg he called “V-12.”

“Shut the door,” said Michaels as they entered his stateroom.

Danny did, and sat down.

“You meet the XO yet?”

“Not yet,” said Danny. “Where’s he from?”

“Did his JO tour on the east coast: I forget which boat. Was engineer on the Bremerton out here, was on the ORSE board before he came here.”

“Heavy nuke,” said Danny, carefully stripping all judgment from his voice.

“Heavy nuke,” said Michaels, nodding. “He’s been here about six months longer than me. Got along famously with the previous Captain.”

“Another heavy nuke?”