by J. S. Law
This time it was her leaning in close to him, her hand resting on his shoulder as she stood on tiptoes and spoke into his ear.
‘Yeah, I did. I gave my statement to Master at Arms Granger and I’ll be happy to chat to you when Jago books me in. Not much to say, really. I was doing rounds, came down here and found him.’ He pursed his lips again, frowning, and took a deep breath. ‘It was horrible. You know, in the films people always get there in time, they grab the guy’s legs and hold him up, screaming until help arrives. I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t even reach him because he was hanging out so far. I raised the alarm and tried to pull him towards me with a broom handle, but I couldn’t get him. I kept on trying until the duty watch arrived, but he was gone.’
They looked at each other for a short time before Aaron shook his head, as though waking from a daydream, and pulled back the sleeve of his overalls to check his watch.
Dan watched as he moved his friendship bracelet out of the way and pressed a button to illuminate his watch face. ‘We need to get going,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to tell you anything else you need to know when we interview. I can bring you down here again too, if you want?’
Dan nodded her agreement.
‘That’s where we’re going to have the casualty exercise today,’ Aaron shouted this time, pointing down the long ladder into the darkness below. ‘It’s a tough evolution for them,’ he continued. ‘We’ll say that the guy is paralysed and put him in a Neil Robertson stretcher – so he won’t be able to help them; he’ll be completely immobilised. They’ll have to pull him up here manually and get him up to the aft escape platform.’
Dan nodded her head and looked all the way down the sheer ladder again. ‘Shit,’ she whispered under her breath. Looking down there gave her the same feeling of being off balance as looking down from a tall building.
‘The Old Man suggested to the Coxswain that we use you as the casualty.’
Dan stepped back and snorted. ‘Not ever.’
‘Don’t worry. I said you’d say that. He’ll pick someone else.’
Dan took another tentative look down the long drop. Below, she saw a man emerge from a tiny entrance off to the side of the submarine.
He crawled out of the space on his hands and knees and then stood up.
Dan stepped back. ‘Why’s the Chief Stoker down there?’ she said quietly to herself.
‘I don’t know,’ said Aaron, making Dan jump; she hadn’t thought he would have heard her.
She looked up at him, his face pensive as he leaned out and watched the chief disappear from sight.
Dan slid her toe tentatively to the very edge and, leaning her weight back away from the drop, also looked down to the machinery space below.
‘Can I watch when it happens?’ she asked. ‘I can’t imagine how they’ll get a grown man up there in any kind of reasonable time. Is there a pulley system or something?’
Aaron laughed. ‘Nope.’
He pointed back up the way they had come. ‘I can set you up back there somewhere. There won’t be space to watch right here as we’ll need all our hands to recover the casualty, as well as the observers who assess the exercise.’ He seemed to think about it. ‘They’ll be doing all of it in EBS too, so you might struggle to see anything interesting from here anyway and you’ll likely end up getting in the way.’
‘I could watch from down there?’ Dan pointed.
Aaron looked at her for a moment and then shook his head.
‘You aren’t allowed down there, Dan. If you’re escorted, maybe, but I won’t be able to spare anyone to be with you, so that won’t work.’
‘Who does go in the stretcher then? If you are all doing the lifting?’
‘Jago will pick someone from forward. We try to get all our engineers involved in the drill itself; it’s good practice.’
They walked back through the engine rooms and headed back towards the Tunnel.
Dan relished the moment as she passed out of the engine room and into the air-conditioned manoeuvring room flat.
‘I’ll put you somewhere on the aft escape platform, OK? You should be able to see plenty from there and get a flavour of what we do.’
Dan looked through the watertight door and back into the hot compartment. Then she nodded.
‘We’ve got a few minutes,’ said Aaron. ‘Come and say hello to the lads. It’s a fact of submarine life that the afties are a bit friendlier than those who work forward of the Tunnel,’ he said with a proud smile.
‘Is that what they call you, then? Afties?’ She watched him carefully in case he was having her on a bit, or winding her up.
‘It is, ask anyone.’
‘What do you call them?’
He laughed. ‘Well, we’re Afties, because we work back aft. They work in the front, so it’s something that rhymes with front, but that I couldn’t say to a lady.’
‘Really?’ said Dan, mouth dropping open in mock shock. ‘How rude and yet startlingly accurate.’
‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘We submariners are known for our vulgarity; we’ve been putting the naughty in nautical since 1901. Come on, I’ll introduce you.’
Dan couldn’t help but let the smile that had formed during her time with Aaron slip quickly away from her face as he stepped into the manoeuvring room, where the nuclear operators sat to control the nuclear plant. She took a step closer to the entrance and paused.
‘Fuck that,’ she heard, seeing a large, balding chief throw his hands in the air in a show of utter despair. ‘Ours are miles better.’
Aaron stepped in, making room for Dan, but not introducing her yet. ‘Fuck what?’ he asked.
The bald chief turned to Aaron, as if relieved he was here. ‘Ah, Boss,’ he began, rubbing a chubby hand over his slightly sweaty forehead. ‘Tell this non-qual imbecile’ – he pointed to a young officer who was perched on a narrow bench at the back of the room, his youth and lack of experience as blinding as his perfectly clean, new white overalls – ‘this moron, this oxygen thief, where the best baked potatoes on a submarine are made.’ He held his hands out towards Aaron, as if the answer given would be unquestionably correct.
Aaron laughed and turned to look at Dan, including her in the conversation. ‘Everyone knows that the best baked potatoes on a submarine, nay the planet Earth, are baked on the main engines of HMS Tenacity,’ he began.
The chief raised his palms to the deck-head and declared, ‘Thank you.’
‘But,’ continued Aaron, ‘there are some traditions to be observed. You always bake the potatoes themselves on the ahead throttles, whilst the Bombays, prepared by the donk-shop horse during the dogs, are baked on the cooler, astern throttles.’
Dan looked around the room at the other operators, who were nodding their agreement, and then at Aaron.
‘What?’ he asked.
Dan laughed. ‘I don’t really understand anything about what you just said, and I’m not sure if you really do bake potatoes back here, either,’ she said.
She smiled nervously, waiting for someone to say or do something that would chase the smile away again.
‘Ma’am,’ boomed the chief. ‘You come back here during the middle watch and I will show you a culinary delight like you have never seen before.’
Dan nodded her head. ‘Sure, I’d like that.’
‘Boss.’
They all turned as one to look towards the voice; it was the Chief Stoker.
‘Casualty’s in place,’ said the chief.
Aaron nodded without needing another word and walked past Dan, tagging her arm as he went. ‘Listen, we’re going to start any second,’ he warned her, as he led her out of the manoeuvring room and back through the watertight door into the baking hot engine room. ‘Stay here.’ He positioned her in an alcove between a metallic sink, with a hot water urn mounted above it, and some red cabinets with signs declaring that they contained breathing apparatus in numbered sets. ‘You should be able to see a fair bit of what’s going on from here, but you won’t get in th
e way. I act as a safety number so, if I can, I’ll come and get you before they start bringing the casualty up the lower level ladder, but it depends how it’s going. I can’t promise, OK?’
Dan nodded, catching the EBS mask that he tossed towards her.
‘You’ll need to don EBS with everyone else,’ he said with a wink. ‘You’ve been practising, right?’
Dan nodded again, surprised at how nervous she felt, despite knowing that it was an exercise and one that she wasn’t even involved in. She looked around the spaces, dark, hot, as welcoming as the barren surface of a forbidden planet would be.
She stirred from her thoughts as the Chief Stoker’s voice penetrated the noise.
‘Enjoy the show,’ he said, looking at her, as though making sure she’d heard him before he disappeared down into the engine rooms.
Her mind was racing as she watched him go.
Aaron had said that the No.2 AMS was out of bounds due to the storage of chemicals. If so, what would Ben want to show her down there and why was he so frightened and secretive? There were lots of nooks and crannies on board where people stored stuff, so why there in particular?
Dan knew that she had to meet Ben and see what it was he wanted to tell her, but she also needed to get down into the engine room lower levels and spend some time where Whisky had committed suicide, but that seemed like an impossible task. She looked slowly around the engine room, thinking about Ben’s note, and how she might sneak down to No.2 AMS without being seen. She hardly blended in on board Tenacity.
The thought of bumping into the Chief Stoker or McCrae helped her to make the decision. She’d contact the Coxswain as soon as the heave was over. She’d grab Jago, tell him what had happened and show him Ben’s note; that was the right thing to do. Then she’d have some help to stop whatever was happening in its tracks.
Ben would be angry when he found out she’d told someone else, and Dan knew she would need to break her word, but standing here in the oppressive heat, she was certain it would be for his own good.
This whole thought process was only just fully formed in her mind, when all hell broke loose around her.
Chapter 21
Monday Morning – 29th September 2014
‘SHUT BULKHEAD DOORS!’
The words seemed to shake Dan’s bones as the voice bellowed out of the main broadcast and, despite herself, despite knowing it was an exercise, Dan felt her body tense up and her breathing quicken as her eyes darted around the engine room.
The general alarm followed the words; three loud bursts on the emergency klaxon.
The person making the broadcast was all but shouting, the urgency palpable.
‘EMERGENCY STATIONS – EMERGENCY STATIONS. STAND-BY COLLISION PORT SIDE. SHUT BULKHEAD DOORS. BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!’
It had only been a few seconds since the first pipe had occurred, but already there were several people in the engine rooms with her. The watertight door had been shut, making the room darker than normal, and the ventilation had stopped. Dan hadn’t realised how accustomed she had become to the continuous noise it emitted and now, as the Ship Controller finished his pipe, for a split second the submarine sounded eerily silent.
The men in the compartment around her grabbed onto various parts of the submarine structure with both hands. They bent their legs and raised their heels off the floor, adopting the ‘brace’ position.
Dan did the same.
She heard a loud thump from somewhere below her and in that moment the silence was shattered.
‘EMERGENCY STATIONS – EMERGENCY STATIONS. LOUD BANG HEARD EXTERNAL TO THE SUBMARINE. ALL COMPARTMENTS CARRY OUT PHASE ONE DAMAGE CONTROL CHECKS AND REPORT TO DCHQ.’
The men around her sprang into action, disappearing down the ladder at a rate of knots as Dan stood up properly, aware that her eyes were wide and that she was covered in nervous goose-pimples.
She heard raised voices from further into the engine rooms.
They were shouting, repeating something, each taking up the call as the message worked its way up towards her.
‘Casualty – casualty – casualty. Casualty in the engine room lower level!’ screamed a sailor in her direction.
‘Pass it on, ma’am,’ he said, waiting.
Dan hesitated, unsure if she could remember exactly what had been said in the heat of the moment, but there was no need as she heard the words repeated over the broadcast; the message had made it through.
The main broadcast sounded again and Dan wondered what more could possibly be going to happen.
EMERGENCY STATIONS – EMERGENCY STATIONS; FIRE – FIRE – FIRE. FIRE IN THE SHIP’S OFFICE. DON EBS THROUGHOUT THE SUBMARINE.’
The watertight door was opening, not using the hydraulic lever as she had seen Aaron do; it was quicker than that. A large man in blue overalls bodily pushed it and clipped it open again. The engine room filled with bodies. The submariners who had been asleep were back aft in what seemed to Dan an instant. The constant pipes over the main broadcast and the sound of the general alarm all left her looking around, feeling more than ever that she was out of place and formed no part of this machine that was operating around her.
Bleary-eyed, the sailors ran into the engine rooms, working valves and grabbing for equipment.
The pipes that kept coming over the main broadcast seemed to Dan to make no sense at all, and yet, despite what appeared to be a mixture of shouting and chaos, the men around her worked in a completely cohesive pattern.
‘Don EBS, ma’am,’ yelled one sailor as he pulled a mask over his face.
She looked around her.
Everyone else was already wearing EBS. They were fleeting quickly around the engine rooms; the movement, which Dan had found so difficult initially, seemed as normal as walking to those around her as they hurried about their duties.
It was now impossible to tell them apart as they all wore the same blue overalls, the same boots, and their faces were completely covered in the black rubber masks, with their hoses plugged into the breathing system connectors, identical to those in the bomb-shop.
Dan gripped the mask in front of her and hooked the straps over her head, pulling the mask out as far as she could and sliding it onto her face. She reached up quickly, forcing the connector into the system, before she pulled the straps tight. The mask felt cumbersome and she realised that she was breathing heavily, the confines of it reminding her again of how hot the engine rooms were, how tight it felt against her face.
‘Break out the breathing apparatus,’ shouted a man a few feet in front of her.
He stood facing her, waiting expectantly.
She looked around, raised her palms towards him, not knowing what to do. The large sailor, his overalls already darker around the shoulders as the sweat began to soak through, pointed to the red lockers beside her, gesturing that she should open them.
Dan reacted. She felt her breathing quicken even further, just as her hands began to shake. She was fit, ran regularly, but she already felt weak and out of breath as she turned and fumbled with the first latch. Then she had it open and could see an air bottle and face mask, with a yellow fire helmet resting on top. She dragged it out and passed it to the man.
‘Good stuff,’ he bellowed. ‘And the next one, ma’am. Keep them coming.’
Dan turned and repeated what she had done, handing four more heavy sets of apparatus to the large figure who immediately handed them away to others who had formed a chain behind him.
Past him, through the opening of the watertight door, Dan could see a five-man firefighting team readying themselves, dressed in thick woollen fire-retardant suits with heavy breathing bottles on their backs.
One of the warrant officers was shouting at the men, ‘Continuous aggressive attack, get in there and maintain a continuous aggressive attack.’
The men nodded as he patted each one on the back and they headed forward, past the manoeuvring room.
The large sailor who had demanded the firefighting equipment
from Dan now turned back to her, grabbing her by the arm to get her attention. He put his head close to hers, something she had seen others do to improve communications.
She closed her eyes as she waited for what he would say.
‘Good job, ma’am,’ he shouted. ‘Now, in those lockers next to you, there’s some more huggy bears – the big woolly fire suits. I need them too, OK?’
He waited.
Dan opened her eyes, already nodding.
‘Good job,’ she heard again as he moved away.
She looked up at her hose connector. She would need to move it, to fleet to a different coupling to reach the kit that he wanted. She looked back to the waiting figure and took a deep breath. Reaching up, she unplugged the hose and stepped closer to the lockers, immediately fixing her eyes on the new connector that she would use. She forced herself to be calm. Her breath was short, the noise and heat making her adrenaline flow, the exertion causing her to need the air more quickly than normal.
The connector went in first time as she pushed it extra hard, waiting to hear that reassuring click before she took a breath. It worked. Immediately she was on her hands and knees and emptying the locker, throwing the gear towards the sailor who gratefully caught it and passed it on.
‘THE FIRE IS OUT – THE FIRE IS OUT. THE FIRE IN THE SHIP’S OFFICE IS OUT. ALL COMPARTMENTS TAKE ATMOSPHERE READINGS AND REPORT TO DCHQ.’
Dan stood up and looked towards the starting platform and the route that she and Aaron had used to head down towards the engine room lower levels. She could see a mass of bodies, like a rugby scrum, messy, but moving towards her with a common purpose.
The Chief Stoker was leading the way, watching her the instant he had line of sight.
Dan made to take her mask off, as she heard that the fire was out.
‘Keep it on,’ shouted the Chief Stoker, and Dan was instantly annoyed she had given him the opportunity.
The big sailor that she had helped so far leaned in to speak to her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Chief Stoker’s a dick. Just keep it on until the atmosphere’s been checked in spec. I’ll tell you when.’