by David Capps
Silverton thought for a moment. “No, Sir,” he replied.
“Torpedo room, con, Lieutenant Grimes, how are you doing in there?”
“Pumps are running, Sir, water level looks stable, but everything has shifted forward, so it’s a little hard to tell exactly. We can’t work on the tube door, Sir, it’s four feet under water.”
“Understood, Lieutenant,” Jacobs replied.
The Massachusetts continued to tip toward the bow. Jacobs looked at the depth gauge. They were slowly rising. That was good news. Less pressure outside meant the water coming into the torpedo room would slow. It might give the pumps a chance to catch up and get more water out of the torpedo room. If that happened, they might be able to level the boat somewhat.
Chairs and other loose objects began sliding across the deck in the control center as the angle of tipping increased. “Downward angle now at 15 degrees, Sir,” the helmsman reported. “Depth is 680 feet.”
“Release the Emergency Buoy,” Jacobs ordered.
“Emergency buoy released and on the surface, Sir; beacon is transmitting.” The beacon sent out a radio distress signal identifying the sub and its location. All they could do now was wait and see what happened.
CHAPTER 51
U.S.S. Massachusetts, Pacific Ocean, Off the Coast of Oregon
Lieutenant Tiffany Grimes surveyed the damage to the torpedo room. Tubes and pipes were split and broken; water sprayed from multiple directions. Her crew had done all they could do to the torpedo tube door, now it was time to work on stopping the other leaks. Tiffany waded into the cold sea water, ducked under the surface and explored the damaged door with her fingers. Thirty seconds later she came back up.
“The whole door is bent,” she said. “Do you think we can get it to open?”
“Right now we have six small holes in the door,” Caleb Johnson replied. “Opening the door would turn that into a twenty-one inch diameter hole. Sea water would pour right in. How is that going to help?”
“I was just thinking, if we can get close enough to the surface, the pressure would lessen. At some point the air in the torpedo room would compress and counter balance the pressure from the sea. We could remove one of the other tube doors. Once the pressure stabilized, no more water would come into the room. We would have to work under the water, but if we could remove the damaged door, we could replace it with a good door. That would stop the leak, and then we could pump the water out of the room.”
Caleb put his fingers to his lower lip, obviously thinking about what she said. “How deep would the water be?”
“That’s a function of how deep we are,” she replied. “At a hundred feet…”
“We need only fifty pounds per square inch pressure to stop the water,” he finished. He looked at the damaged door. “We could pull the hinge pin right now. The locking ring will hold the door in place. All we’d have to do is turn the locking ring, pull the damaged door, put the new door in place and turn the locking ring back into place. Theoretically, it would work.”
“But we can’t do it against the flow of water through the torpedo tube – we won’t be able to hold the door in place,” she said.
“Right,” he replied. “The pressure has to balance first, and then the flow stops.”
“We can stand, what, two hundred pounds per square inch pressure?” she asked.
“Yeah, maybe a little more,” he replied. “Increasing the pressure isn’t the problem.”
“It’s decompression, I know,” she said. “But two hundred pounds per square inch in here means we can replace the damaged door at anything above four hundred feet.” She climbed the incline back to the water-tight door and pressed the intercom button.
“Con, torpedo room,”
“Go ahead Lieutenant,” Captain Jacobs said.
“Captain, we may have a possible solution, but we’ll have to flood the torpedo room in order to replace the damaged door. We’re going to need to be above 400 feet in order to try it.”
“Understood, Lieutenant,” Jacobs replied. “But flooding the room will cost us all of our buoyancy. We wouldn’t be able to maintain our depth.”
“Then could we route air under pressure into the torpedo room? If we can counterbalance the water pressure we can stop the water from flowing. Once that’s stable, we can replace the inner torpedo tube door.”
“Lieutenant Kent? Are you hearing this?” Jacobs asked.
“Already on it, Sir,” Kent answered.
Tiffany examined the tubes that lined the bulkhead in the torpedo room, noting how each tube was painted a color to identify what it carried. She spotted the light blue tube and read the tag attached to it. “I’ve got a P8-127 pneumatic tube here.” She traced it along the wall. “And a connector that I can get to.”
“Perfect,” Lieutenant Kent replied. “I’m closing the line from here. Go ahead and remove the connector.”
Tiffany picked up a crescent wrench and unscrewed the connector, and then yanked the line away from the bulkhead. “Line is open,” she said. Compressed air loudly hissed into the torpedo room.
“How long do you think this is going to take?” Caleb Johnson asked.
She looked at the double-story front section of the torpedo room, quickly running the numbers through her mind. “Depending on our depth, four to eight hours.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” Caleb Johnson said. “Let’s pull that hinge pin on the damaged door and take the door off tube number four. Move it!”
CHAPTER 52
U.S.S. Massachusetts, Pacific Ocean, Off the Coast of Oregon
The Massachusetts continued to tip slowly toward the bow as it drifted closer to the surface. “Down angle is now 35 degrees, Sir,” the helmsman reported. “Still slowly rising, depth is now 440 feet.”
Adams had regained consciousness and was sitting against the forward bulkhead. He had a splitting headache. Probable concussion, the boat medic had told him.
Another two hours passed. “Down angle is now 48 degrees, Sir, depth has stabilized at 320 feet.”
“Why aren’t we still rising?” Jacobs asked.
“Don’t know, Sir, but we aren’t,” the helmsman answered.
Adams struggled to his feet and worked his way around to the now badly tipped control console. He studied the gauges and ran the conditions through his mind. “Sir, I think we have another problem.”
Jacobs turned and looked at him. “Which problem?”
“I think I know why we aren’t rising any more, and if I’m right, we’re in danger of sinking, soon.”
“What?” Jacobs said, the level of anxiety clear in his voice. “What’s happening?”
“The main ballast tanks – they’re all open to the sea at the bottom.”
“Yeah,” Jacobs answered.
“The air is escaping out of the bottom of the ballast tanks, which is now more to the side instead of the bottom. Instead of the air being at the top of the tanks, it has moved to the corners of the tanks. The more the boat tips, the more air we’re going to lose.”
“And if we lose more air from our ballast tanks, we sink and we can’t stop our descent.”
“Exactly, Sir,” Adams replied.
“What if we make the stern heavier?” Jacobs asked.
“We’ll start sinking,” Adams replied. “But if we can stabilize the tilt of the boat, we can put more air back into the main ballast tanks. That might stabilize our depth.”
“Down angle is now 50 degrees,” the Helmsman reported. We’re headed down, Sir, depth now 560 feet and getting deeper.”
“Flood the rear auxiliary tanks,” Jacobs ordered. As the auxiliary tanks took on more water the stern of the sub sank faster than the bow did. “Two-second high pressure blow to main ballast tanks,” Jacobs ordered. The rush of high pressure air echoed through the sub for exactly two seconds.
“Down angle is now 45 degrees, we’re still sinking, Sir, depth is now 840 feet and picking up speed,” the Helmsman said.
�
�One-second high pressure blow of main ballast,” Jacobs ordered. Again the sound of rushing air filled the stricken sub. The boat shuttered as the air displaced the water in the ballast tanks.
“Down angle still at 45 degrees, depth passing 950 feet,” the Helmsman said in an anxious tone.
Jacobs watched the depth gauge as the reading exceed 1,000 feet. The rate of descent was slowing, 1,100, then 1,200 feet. The sub’s depth stabilized at 1,240 feet. Jacobs leaned against the sloping wall and breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re no longer sinking,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” Silverton replied, “but our emergency beacon is now two hundred feet under the water. We haven’t got any more cable. How are they going to find us without that signal?”
“That may be the least of our worries,” Jacobs replied. “With the increased depth Lieutenant Grimes isn’t going to be able to stop the torpedo room from flooding. We’re not going to be able to maintain depth. We’ll slowly sink to our crush depth.”
CHAPTER 53
Office of Covert Operations, the Pentagon
Billingsly was surprised to see Rod Schneider enter his office with a big smile on his face.
“The Chinese Active Auroral Antenna Array is off. It’s been cold for the last four hours.” Billingsly leaned across his desk and snatched the report out of Schneider’s hand. “Hurricane Loretta is breaking up, falling out of Category 2 status as we speak. In 24 hours it’ll be nothing but light to medium rain and 20 MPH winds.”
Billingsly looked the report over. “Why did they stop? This doesn’t make any sense. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, Admiral. All I can tell you is that the potential storm danger to the Pacific Northwest is over.” Rod turned and left.
Billingsly’s secretary buzzed him, “There’s a Senator Bechtel who just called. She wants you to meet her outside, now.”
Ten minutes later Billingsly slid into the back seat of Senator Elizabeth Bechtel’s black limo.
“What the hell happened to our storm, Admiral?” she demanded.
“Our storm? But this is good news,” Billingsly replied.
“The hell it is,” she yelled. “You know what this has cost me?”
“Cost you?” Billingsly replied, obviously confused. “I don’t understand.”
“I arm-twisted every major contractor on the Pacific Northwest coast for huge campaign contributions with the promise of billions of dollars in reconstruction projects after our Cat 5 storm slammed into Oregon and Washington State. Now your damned storm is dead. I’m not going down because of this. This is your damned fault and you are going to pay dearly for this.”
“My fault?” Billingsly yelled. “How is it my fault? All I did was act in the best interest of the nation. You are the one who acted in your own self-interest. You are the one who traded our National Security to fill your pockets with money! If anyone’s at fault here, it’s YOU.”
Her face was crimson and she looked ready to explode. “Get the hell out of my damned car!”
Billingsly quietly slid back out of her limo, which pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. I don’t know which is worse, being chewed out by the Secretary of Defense, or her, he thought as he slowly walked back into the Pentagon. Probably her. Self-righteous ass. I should have known better than to trust a politician.
As he got back to the door of the Pentagon and entered, he was met by four large men from the Pentagon’s Security Service.
“You’re coming with us, Sir,” the senior man said.
“Where are we going?” Billingsly asked. He didn’t get an answer. They led him through the Security Office and into an interrogation room. He sat and fidgeted for the next two hours. Finally the door opened.
CHAPTER 54
U.S.S. Massachusetts, Pacific Ocean, Off the Coast of Oregon
“The BQQ10 bow sonar array is completely dead,” Stephanos reported. “Forward flank hydrophones are also dead. Partial signal from the mid-ship’s flank hydrophones, but they’re clearly damaged and unreliable. Rear flank hydrophones are the only thing functioning. All our sonar transmitters are dead. We can listen, but that’s it.”
“Okay,” Jacobs said. “Then keep listening.”
“So we just slowly sit here and sink?” Silverton asked.
“Not really,” Jacobs replied. “At some point, those mines along the fault line are going to detonate, and we are drifting way too close to them. We may have only a matter of minutes after that happens.”
”I had to ask, right?” Silverton said. Jacobs looked at him and shook his head. “How long before they… you know?”
Jacobs shrugged. “Sooner rather than later would be my guess.”
“Con, sonar, we’re being pinged. It’s one of ours.”
“Who is it?” Jacobs asked.
“The computer’s down, so we can’t identify the screw signature, but it’s a Los Angeles Class sub. They must have gotten a fix on our Emergency Beacon before it went under.”
“Radio room, con, can you bang out an SOS on the hull?”
“Can do, Captain,” the radio room answered. The radioman used two wrenches: a single clang for a dot and twin clangs for a dash, and tapped out the familiar distress call from the sub’s hull.
“Con, sonar, the sub is moving in. We’re being hailed by voice modulated sonar, Sir, it’s the U.S.S. Boise, they want to know our status.”
“Radio, con, tap out the following message: Chinese heavy mines on Cascadia fault. Massive earthquake imminent. Warn COMSUBPAC and mainland. Got that?”
“Aye-aye, Sir. Tapping out now.”
“Con, sonar, they’re repeating your message back verbatim on voice modulated sonar. They want one clang to confirm, two clangs if not correct.”
“Radio room, con, one clang, and one clang only.”
One clang echoed from the hull of the Massachusetts.
“Con sonar, they’re moving off Sir – going to the surface to send your message. After that they’ll be right back.”
“They can’t stay here – we’re sitting too close to those damned mines. We can’t lose two subs over this.” Jacobs said.
“I’m sure they know that, Sir. If they were where we are and you were the one up there, what would you do?” Silverton asked. Jacobs didn’t answer.
Twenty-eight minutes later the Boise returned. “Con, sonar, they report message sent, FEMA notified. Rescue ship en route.”
“Yeah,” Jacobs said quietly. “It’s just never going to get here in time.”
CHAPTER 55
The Pentagon
Billingsly had never before seen the man who now sat across the table from him. The man was dressed in and old dull gray sport coat over a white shirt with a small blue pinstripe. He was older, late fifties, almost bald with a ring of short-cropped hair that ran around the back of his head just over his ears, and which stuck out to the point of almost facing forward. He looked at Billingsly suspiciously.
“I want to talk to the Secretary of Defense,” Billingsly said confidently.
“Go ahead,” the man said. “He’s listening.” The man pointed to the small camera mounted near the ceiling.
“Privately,” Billingsly demanded. The man sat still and stared at him. Several minutes passed before Billingsly broke eye contact.
“So, what’s your name?” Billingsly asked. The man continued to stare back at him.
“Are you military or civilian?” Billingsly asked. The man’s blank stare was the only answer he received.
“Okay, why are you holding me?” Billingsly asked.
“You know why,” the man replied. Several more minutes of the stare continued.
“Look,” Billingsly said, “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t,” the man replied. “Unless you want to get out of this room.”
“And what?” Billingsly said. “You’re just going to keep me here?” The man continued to stare at him. “Am I under arrest?” The man didn’t
answer. Billingsly got up and went to the door. He grabbed the door handle only to find it was locked. Billingsly took a step toward the man.
The man shook his head. “Not advisable,” he said as he pointed the thumb on his right hand back toward the window. “Besides, I might enjoy hurting you too much before they got in here to rescue you.” Billingsly’s hand shook slightly. He looked at the man’s body. It was trim and slightly muscular. Billingsly had seen enough men on the SEAL teams who looked just like him, only this man was older. At this point, it probably didn’t make much difference. This guy was probably well trained and more than experienced. He looked at what had to be one-way glass and slowly sat back down.
“How long am I going to be in this room?” Billingsly asked.
“Until I am satisfied you have told me the truth. All of the truth,” the man replied.
“And if I don’t?”
The man shrugged. “You will, if not now, then tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. It really doesn’t matter to me. I get to go home every night, and spend weekends with my grandchildren. You, on the other hand, will get out of this room only to use the restroom, and then only in shackles. You will eat here, in shackles. You will sleep here on the tile floor, in shackles. No one will ever know where you are.”
“You can’t do that,” Billingsly said. “I have rights.”
The man shook his head and returned to staring at him.
Billingsly tapped his fingers on the table and carefully considered his options. He realized the longer he held out, the less leverage he had to make a deal. He knew his career was over and he was on his way to federal prison, probably Leavenworth. His deepest regret was what this would do to his wife. Several more minutes passed. The man continued to stare at him.
“I have a substantial pension built up,” Billingsly said. “If I cooperate fully can that go to my wife? She doesn’t know anything about this. It isn’t right that she should suffer for something she wasn’t involved in.”