The Mark 48 torpedoes were nineteen feet long, taking up almost all the room available in the torpedo room. They weighed 3,500 pounds each, 650 pounds of which were the high explosives in the warhead. They could be steered via miles of thin copper wire that connected the weapon to the ship, and each weapon contained both active and passive sonar of its own. Danny had once been at a security seminar while on shore duty, and someone had asked the admiral on the podium if we would ever have drone submarines, the way the Air Force had embraced drone aircraft. He responded that the Navy had had drone submarines for a century: they were called torpedoes.
The torpedoemen moved the weapons up and down in their racks almost silently as they eased them toward the tube. At the breech door, they verified again that everything was lined up, and then the weapon was smoothly, almost silently inserted inside, the twenty-one inch diameter of the weapon filling the tube exactly. It occurred to Danny that there was a kind of close precision that was distinctive to loading weapons, whether it was a Trident missile being lowered into its tube, a Mark 48 torpedo being loaded, or a shotgun shell being pushed into his Remington 870 at home.
Timmons, the leading torpedoman, shut the breech door when the weapon was fully inside, and wrote on its status board in grease pencil: WARSHOT LOADED. All the tubes said the same thing now.
“You think we’ll shoot all four?” asked Timmons.
“If we do, it means I’ve screwed something up,” said Jabo. “If all goes according to plan, we’ll only need one, but we’ll shoot two just to be sure.”
“Normal approach?”
Jabo nodded. “As deliberate as possible. We’ll get a gnat’s ass solution, take time to validate it, and shoot two weapons.”
“We’re ready down here.” He pointed at the tube in front of them. “Tube One is your snapshot tube.” Snapshot was a quick reaction shot, usually a defensive move, the submarine equivalent of shooting from the hip. Tube One was their bullet in the chamber.
“We’re not expecting evasion, obviously. Or counterfire. But good to know.”
“You ever shoot a warshot?” asked V-12, to both of them.
“Never,” said Jabo.
“I did, once,” said Timmons. “At the range.” He patted the side of one of the dark green Mark 48 torpedoes that was still on the rails, patting it like you would a horse in the stable. “But nothing like this. Obviously.”
Jabo had always liked the torpedo room, and torpedomen. They vied with the A-gangers for the title for the most “real” of submariners. In their ongoing rivalry, they often said that “A-gangers pump shit, we do shit.” It was damp down there, in the lowest part of the ship, and loaded to the gills with deadly weaponry. It seemed a vestige of an earlier age, when submarines were the most feared, and hated, weapons in the fleet. When submarines were invented there were old fashioned officers who, in their dress whites and gold braid, thought that submarines were ungentlemanly, attacking their victims from the unseen depths: a dirty business. Danny could see how a visit to the torpedo room might confirm that belief.
“Were you ever on a Trident?” Jabo asked Timmons. “You seem familiar.”
“Yeah, I was.” said Timmons. “I was on the
“That’s it,” said Jabo. “That’s where I did my observed watch to get my dolphins. Captain Sullivan.”
Timmons laughed. “I actually think I remember that. Did you fire a water slug?”
“That’s one of the things Captain Sullivan made me do. I was lost. Your LPO was whispering in my ear the whole time, telling me exactly what to do.”
“Spence. Yeah, you got lucky there, he took mercy on you.”
“For sure. I stand here before you today only because of the collective mercy of about a hundred petty officers who have kept me off the shoals. What’s Spence doing now?”
“Retired, I heard. Made chief and got out.”
“Good for him,” said Jabo.
“He was famous for an incident on the
“Well,” said Jabo. “Keep focused this morning. Because you’re about to be a lot more famous than that.”
They reached control at the same time as the captain. He grabbed Danny’s elbow as they were about to step inside.
“You okay with this?” He looked Danny right in the eye.
“Sir?”
“You’re about to sink an American submarine. Filled with the bodies of men like you and me. I want to make sure your head is on straight.”
“We’ve got our orders,” said Danny. “And I’m the man to carry them out.”
“No qualms?”
Danny shook his head, a little mystified. “No sir. I’m sure this has been looked over by every admiral in the navy. And that’s good enough for me. Isn’t it for you?”
The captain looked him over for a long second. “I guess I’ve just known more admirals than you have.”
