Ghost Sub полностью

Cote stopped reading there, suddenly feeling guilty for violating the dead sailor’s privacy. He hesitated for a minute. He sealed up the large manila envelope of Dunham’s things and put it on his stack, things to be dealt with by his successor. But he sealed the love letter and stuck it in his shirt pocket.

A few hours later, Cote left Tripler for the last time. The Hawaiian sunshine was blinding, and he paused for a few moments of the steps. No one was waiting for him, thank God, no one was there with a bundle of Mylar balloons to mark his retirement.

He looked both ways, and jogged across the street to a blue mailbox. He took the letter from his pocket, and in his last act in uniform, he dropped Dunham’s love letter in the mail.

Danny was on the bridge when land came in sight, the tiny speck that was Oahu. Soon, he knew, as they got closer, it would grow and take shape, Diamond Head looming on the right. He’d read once that by some definitions the Hawaiian Islands were the most remote islands on earth, and it certainly always looked that way by sea.

It had been a flurry of activity since they sunk the Boise. They reported the success of their approach and kill, and within hours they’d received orders to return back home. The mood of the crew had been good, if not ebullient, every man there aware that while successful, they’d sunk a submarine of the United States, a billion dollars and over a hundred men. They’d learned that the official report would state that the boat was lost at sea, and that the Louisville had been part of a search and rescue team — the unnamed “US submarine” in the official media reports. Like the XO’s stories, it was just close enough to the truth to be a convincing lie. Everything else was left very vague — the Navy didn’t want any ambitious foreign power to try to locate and raise the Boise, as the US had in fact done with the sunken Soviet boat the K-129 during the Cold War. Captain Michaels had done what captains have always done to keep men from thinking too much, running drills and making them clean, keeping every hand busy so as to not grow too contemplative.

Certainly there would be rumors. And since their entire crew knew the truth, and even though they were sworn to secrecy, some of those rumors would be the exact truth. No matter. The Navy had lost two nuclear submarines before in its history, the Thresher in 1963 and the Scorpion in 1968. The rumors, legends, official reports, and scholarly studies still competed with each other to describe exactly what happened: was it a malfunctioning torpedo or a Cold War intrigue? A bad weld, a frozen valve, or a curse? The Boise would become like the Thresher and the Scorpion before her, like all submarines, really, even those still steaming: a mystery.

They were on the surface, V-12 paired with Jabo once again. They were running man overboard drills, executing graceful Williamson turns to the left and the right, coming right back up their track while the wake was still visible. They weren’t even sounding the alarm or involving the rest of the crew, just making the maneuver, using the theoretical challenge of doing a U-Turn and coming back to the same spot in the ocean as a time-honored way to master the motion of the ship on the surface.

“How was that one?” said V-12, looking for praise.

“It was alright,” said Danny.

“Just alright?”

“Well you’ve done about twenty of them. It should be perfect.”

“You know if you fall in the water you’ll want me up here.”

“If you’re up here I’ll probably jump in the water.”

The lookout behind them acknowledged a report from control. “Captain to the bridge,” he said. Danny and V-12 both stood a little straighter as the captain’s feet rang on the ladder steps.

“How are we this morning?” said the captain. “Both of you learning how to drive my ship?”

“Yes sir,” they both said.

“Turns a little tighter than the Alabama, doesn’t it?” he said to Danny.

“Yes sir,” he said. “I like my chances as a man overboard on this boat a lot better.”

He nodded. “And we don’t have that big flat missile deck to stand on, so that’s a good thing. Probably a lot more likely to have a man overboard here.”

Danny looked at his watch. “Sir, I recommend we start heading toward Pearl.”

The captain looked at his watch too. “Make it happen,” he said.

V-12 began giving orders and getting the ship on track to bring them home. “Here,” said the captain, handing Danny his cell phone. “Give Angi a call. Looks like we’re close enough.”

“You sure?” said Danny.

“Yeah, go ahead. I’m sure she’s dying to talk to you.”

Danny took the phone and dialed Angi’s phone from memory. She answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

She paused for a minute, exhaled nervously. “Wow! I thought you might call.”

“God it’s good to hear your voice,” he said. He forgot that the captain and V-12 were both standing there, just disappeared into hearing the voice of the woman he loved.