Panic Switch полностью

“I suppose,” Pacino said. He leaned over the gaping maw of the plug trunk hatch. “Down ladder!” he called, then stepped down the ladder into the cavernous plug trunk. The smell of the submarine invaded his nostrils then, identical to his father’s old boats, as well as his own — the Piranha and the Vermont—a blend of atmo-control amines, ozone from the electrical equipment, cooking grease, lubrication oil, diesel fuel, diesel exhaust, seasoned with a slight tang of sewage. But there was something else — something cooking in the galley, something greasy.

He stepped through the side hatch and then to the steep stairway — called a ladder — to the middle level central passageway, ducking left into the wardroom, the conference room for officers, also used for their meal service, and in an emergency, a surgical suite. On the outboard bulkhead, a gigantic framed aerial photograph of the old battleship New Jersey was bolted, the massive warship firing her guns, huge plumes of flames emerging from the guns. The room was crowded with a pile of luggage at the forward end. At the aft end, the XO was muttering something to the supply chief, who vanished aft into the galley. Quinnivan looked up and saw the three junior officers. They were the first aboard.

“Hey! You scurvy lieutenants! Pick up your trash and stow it in your fookin’ staterooms! This is the wardroom, not a luggage carousel.”

“But XO,” Dankleff said, “you haven’t assigned us staterooms yet.”

Quinnivan paused. “Okay, then, stateroom one, farthest forward, goes to the navigator, Elvis Lewinsky, with the communicator and supply officer bunking in with him. Stateroom two is for the engineer, Madam Moose Kelly. So you, Vevera, and you, Dankleff, will bunk in with her. Draw straws for bottom or top bunks, I don’t care. Middle rack is the engineer’s.”

“Aye, sir,” Dankleff said, finding a seabag he thought was his, but tossing it back on the mountainous pile.

“And as for you, Mr. Lipstick, you’ll find yourself in stateroom three with the weapons officer, Ms. River Styxx, with electrical officer Varney bunked in. Even though Short Hull Cooper is in Ms. Styxx’s department, he’s a fookin’ nub, so he’s going in the upper level forward half-sixpack along with Long Hull.” The upper level forward half-sixpack room had belonged to Pacino on Vermont. It would feel odd to be in one of the three numbered staterooms, odder still to bunk in with River Styxx, who he had slept with before, although he had no memory of it other than waking up with her. At least she’d seemed happy and satisfied when the sun had risen. God help him now, he thought, if he’d disappointed her that night.

The three J.O.s found their bags and lugged them to their staterooms. Pacino was almost fully unpacked when Quinnivan poked his head in.

“No officers’ call today, Mr. Lipstick. But find your opposite number from PCU New Jersey and get turned over. Change of command ceremony is at fifteen hundred. You got your choker whites?”

“Yes, XO.” Pacino had packed them, but the ultra-starched service dress whites were probably as wrinkled as an unmade bed from being tossed into his seabag.

“Good. Pass that word on to your scurvy buddies, yeah?”

“Aye, sir.”

“As soon as the command change is over, you’re driving us out. Or I should say, Short Hull Cooper is driving as your under-instruction. See to it he doesn’t fuck up, or it’s your head.”

“Understood, sir.”

“And laddy, you’ll be using tugs and a harbor pilot for this run. Think you can handle it?”

“It won’t be a problem, XO.”

“Good, lad. I’ll see you topside at fourteen-forty-five, yeah?” With that, the Irishman vanished.

Pacino had stowed his things into one of the cubbyholes and the rest into the bed pan under the upper rack, then taken the ladder steps to the upper level to the sonar equipment space, or SES. Inside, he found two chief petty officers deep in conversation. They turned to look at him, and to Pacino’s delight, one of them was Senior Chief Tom “Whale” Albanese, who had been his leading chief of sonar on Vermont and had gone with Pacino on the Panther run.

“Whale!” Pacino said, grinning and pulling the senior chief into a bear hug, the wiry redhead smiling back, his uniform smelling of the cigarettes that he chain-smoked when he could get away with it in the non-smoking universe of the submarine force.

“Mr. Patch!” Albanese exclaimed.

“I wasn’t sure if the goat locker would embark on New Jersey,” Pacino said.

“We were given a choice, but XO put pressure on me and a few others, but he needn’t have bothered. I’m happy to be here.”

“Aren’t you married, Whale?”

Albanese made a sour face. “Newly separated. Yet another reason to get out of there.”

“Kids?”

“Fortunately, no. Diane had a miscarriage, and we fought so much after that… well, it just didn’t make sense to stay together.”

“I’m sorry to hear, Senior Chief. Really. I haven’t been through anything like that, but I feel for you.”