Panic Switch полностью

Lieutenant Dieter “U-Boat” Dankleff, the damage control assistant, slouched into the room, his eyes still half shut, a coffee cup in one hand and his backpack in the other. He looked up and grunted at Vevera, Eisenhart and Pacino. The DCA was half a head shorter than Pacino, stocky, going bald, with a pockmarked face from adolescent acne, his thick black glasses his trademark. Despite his ordinary looks, Dankleff had always been almost irresistible to women, a fact he had always been cocky about. But today he seemed deflated, his usual laughing and joking replaced by a dour depression.

“Morning, U-Boat,” Vevera said loudly, suspecting that Dankleff might be hungover.

“Quiet, please,” Dankleff said, his voice a croak.

“Good weekend?”

Dankleff waved off the grinning mechanical officer and made his way to his desk and plugged in. He wandered off to get a coffee refill, then came back in again, quiet at his desk. Pacino could almost tell the moment the DCA’s coffee kicked in. Dankleff’s eyes opened wider and he swiveled in his chair and seemed only then to recognize that Vevera and Pacino were there.

“Well, fuck, Lipstick,” he said to Pacino. “I heard you burned the boat down all the way to the drydock blocks and we’re fucked for two years.”

“I didn’t start the—“

“Two years?” Vevera said in shock.

“Yeah,” Pacino said. “They’re going to Frankenstein the ship’s ass end with the 798 Massachusetts’ forward end and take our burned-up bow and stitch it up to the aft end of 798. Eng says at least two years. Or more.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Vevera said. “Two years in this goddamned shipyard?”

“Another good deal from Big Navy,” Dankleff said, sipping his coffee.

U-Boat Dankleff got his callsign from his great grandfather, who’d commanded the Nazi U-boat U-767 that went down in the English Channel in World War II, but not before taking down thousands of tons of allied shipping. Dankleff had been the OIC, officer-in-charge, of the Operation Panther hijacking mission, with Pacino as his second-in-command. The two of them had privately admitted that they were certain they were going to die on that mission, but had put on a brave face for their small crew. Somehow fortune had favored them, and they’d survived against astronomical odds. But now this, Pacino thought. Two years of his life would go down the drain, this drydock disaster putting them all in the miserable boring routine of shipyard life.

While the four junior officers sat there in silence, a procession of enlisted men walked down the corridor outside the room, each one ceremoniously sticking his hand through the door and lighting a disposable lighter, then moving on, the next hand coming in and lighting a lighter, then the next. Vevera and Eisenhart started laughing and Dankleff clapped, both glancing at Pacino’s red face.

“For fuck’s sake, dammit,” Pacino said quietly, “I didn’t start the—“

After the last enlisted man walked on, the executive officer stuck his head in the doorway. Commander Jeremiah Seamus “Bullfrog” Quinnivan was on loan from the Royal Navy as part of a U.S. Navy / Royal Navy exchange program, and had been second-in-command to Captain Seagraves during the Panther run. Quinnivan was an Irishman with the thick-as-Irish-stew brogue to go with it. A medium-height, slightly built officer, Quinnivan sported a tightly trimmed beard streaked with gray, his ultra-short haircut attempting to hide the fact that he was half bald. In contrast to the American officers’ shapeless working uniforms, Quinnivan wore a tailored dark blue shirt tucked into dark blue pants, his rank worn in the center of his chest, the dark emblem showing three horizontal gold stripes, the top one making a loop in the middle. He grinned at the junior officers with unnaturally white teeth, who some said had been capped after he’d been in a bar brawl that he insisted he’d won.

“Pacino! You arsehole! You fookin’ burned my boat!” Quinnivan’s voice rattled the windows.

“Sir, I—“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all watched the fookin’ video, yeah? And we all know you only had seconds before the EAB system shit the bed, so I’m not really blamin’ ye, lad, but you coulda given us better luck, don’t ya know? Like some of that fookin’ Operation Panther luck, yeah?”

“Sir, um…” Pacino’s voice trailed off.

Quinnivan addressed the room. “Now listen, all you half-witted scurvy junior officers, I want you all early to officers’ call. Your United States Navy has new plans of all of ye.”

The four lieutenants glanced at each other, then back at Quinnivan.

“Sir, may I ask,” Pacino started, but Quinnivan had just waved and disappeared down the corridor.

“New plans?” Dankleff asked.

“Sounds like TDY to some other boat,” Vevera said. TDY meant temporary duty. Maybe sea duty, Pacino thought, thinking maybe they’d augment another attack submarine’s crew.