Submerged

by Graysen Morgen

  "Do we have a radiation leak? Have you checked the levels?"

  "Negative on the leak, I have the monitor running."

  "Okay. Report every five minutes."

  The captain was on the other side of the control room trying to get a fax out on the EAM, but with the power outage it was impossible. "Damn it." He slammed his hand on the periscope rail. "I can't get a message topside. We need to get the power restored now."

  "The reactor shut down, sir. We're dead in the water at the moment and we will probably hit bottom in the next couple of minutes."

  "What's our depth?" he asked as he looked at the dark electronic table.

  Scooter ran to her cabin and pulled the paper charts from her desk. When she returned she spread them on the table and began pointing. "The impact was around this area here. We're currently at fifteen hundred and descending about fifty feet per minute."

  "What's the depth here?" He pointed to the area they thought they were in. He didn't have his reading glasses at the moment and was unable to read the tiny print on the large map.

  She took a deep breath. "If we didn't get blown too far off course or drift we're looking at twenty-two hundred feet."

  "Okay. We're tested at twenty-five hundred."

  "Yes sir, but a hundred yards off course and the depth drops to thirty-seven hundred feet," she said as she met his eyes somberly.

  "We have no idea of knowing for sure." Without full power they pretty much only had floor lighting and oxygen. All of the systems were down because the generator couldn't power them.

  "Correct," she said. When the intercom phone rang she snatched it up. "Tell me you have something good to report."

  "I'm sorry, ma'am. We have no idea why the reactor shut down."

  "What's the radiation level?"

  "Still zero, ma'am."

  "What's the reactor temperature? We definitely don't need a meltdown situation." She knew the reactor would get warm quick without the power running the cooling equipment.

  "It's still cold, ma'am."

  "Stay on top of it Mills." She hung up and briefed the captain. He hung his head and waved her towards the hall leading out of the control room.

  "We have about seventy-two hours before that reactor gets hot. That is if we can handle the depth when we hit bottom."

  "I know."

  "We need to get our sub up and running now. If another sub hit us and is suffering the same fate whoever gets power first has to take the other out." He wiped the sweat from his brow even though the sub temperature was steadily dropping from the freezing water temperature outside of the sub and the air control system going down in the power outage.

  "Our fate lies in the hands of three young guys. I know I drilled on this situation while I was doing my maintenance rotation, but in the simulation we were up and running in five minutes, not three or four days." She took a deep breath. This was it. Her life could be possibly be over very soon. She wondered if Libby would be okay. She thought of Layne telling her she loved her. Did she love her back? The burning ache in her chest answered the question for her. She always knew she could go at anytime, her job wasn't safe, but knowing it was coming made it worse. She always thought it would be so quick she would never even know it.

  Chapter 30

  Scooter had been gone almost three months with only one single email. Libby was at her wits end with the news reports. When she walked out of her office to help tend the busy bar she was surprised to see Layne Carmichael sitting at the end of the bar nursing a glass of wine with her eyes glued to the new flat screen TV attached to the back wall.

  "No Margarita?" Libby asked as she topped of her wine glass.

  "Not in the mood I guess."

  "Are your friends joining you?" Libby looked for her two sidekicks, but their usual table was empty.

  "It's just me tonight." She sipped her wine. "I wasn't really in the mood for company and somehow sitting alone in my apartment just didn't feel right."

  "I know the feeling." Libby offered a fake smile. "Let me know when you need a refill."

  ~~~

  An hour later, the door to the bar opened and a gentleman dressed in a dress blue Navy uniform covered in decorations with yellow shoulder boards removed his cap and walked towards the bar. Libby dropped the glass she was holding. Layne saw the glass smash from her end of the bar and turned to see what Libby was looking at. She hoped it was Scooter, but her heart sank when she saw who it was.

  "I'm looking for Libby Mitchell," The Officer said.

  "I'm Libby."

  "I'm Rear Admiral Muerk from Point Loma Naval Base. Are you the next of kin for LCDR. B. Scuttero?"

  "Oh God." The tears fell before Libby could react. "She's my sister," she sobbed.

  "I'm sorry to have to tell you this. The submarine that she is deployed on, the USS Lincoln has been out of radio contact following a reported explosion in the area of the last known coordinates."

  "No! Oh God, not Scooter." Libby shook her head and bawled.

  He stood ramrod straight. An act they were all trained to do, show no emotion. "At this point, we are letting the Submarine Commander and Executive officer's families know of the situation. We ask that you treat this information very discreetly, as it is highly classified. Ms. Mitchell there is still a possibility that the sub is damaged and just unable to get radio contact at this time. I will inform you when the situation changes." He turned and walked out of the bar.

  Libby was crying so hard she didn't notice Layne helping her to her office with tears streaming down her face too. This was all wrong. Scooter was supposed to come home. She said she was coming home. Libby always wondered if this would happen and she thought she was prepared, but no one could ever be prepared for death.

  "Is she gone?" Layne asked softly as she wiped the tears from her face.

  "Her sub is missing after an explosion. They don't know. They don't know anything," she sobbed again. "My sister could be alive and dying at the bottom of the ocean or she could have been blown to tiny pieces. They have no fucking clue," she cried. Layne wrapped her arms around her and they cried together.

  "Hopefully, the sub will be found soon and she comes home alive and safe." Layne wiped her own tears and kept an arm around Libby.

  "She doesn't deserve this." She looked at Layne. "She doesn't deserve any of this, not the hell you put her through and certainly not possibly losing her life for someone else's stupid fucking war."

  "I know." Layne hung her head. "I'm so very sorry for the trouble I caused your family. I love Scooter. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt her."

  Libby raised an eyebrow. "You really love her? Since when?"

  "I think I've loved her since the night we met." She paused, thinking about that night. "Anyway, she hates me."

  "Does she know you love her?"

  "Yes, I think so. I told her again the day she deployed."

  "What did she say to you?" Libby asked.

  "Nothing."

  "She's been so hurt, I don't blame her for ever loving anyone again, not to mention all of the shit you put her through. How could you do that her if you loved her?"

  Layne wiped more tears. "I was forced into it. My boss knew I slept with her, yet he still made me try the case. I resigned as soon as it was over. I knew she wasn't guilty. She was the most gentle, passionate lover I have ever had. There was no way she raped that girl. I tried to bring charges up on the District Attorney, but it was thrown out. He has most of the judges in his pocket."

  "She scared me during that whole mess. She was so damn sad. I thought she might drink herself to death by accident. I've never seen her that miserable. You hurt her so bad. I don't know if she will ever forget that or forgive you. It took her a very long time to recover. I was just starting to see the old Scooter again when all of this war shit started."

  "I don't want her forgiveness. I hate myself for not resigning on the spot. I'll be sorry for the rest of my life. She is an amazing woman and if that is all the
time I get with her in this world, then I will cherish it forever."

  Libby watched the emotion play across Layne's face as the tears fell.

  Chapter 31

  "Mills, tell me you have that goddamn reactor fixed!" Scooter said as she stepped through the hatch that led to the reactor compartment and engine room.

  "Almost, ma'am. The temperature is rising, but the radiation level is still zero."

  "The generator battery will run out in the next twelve hours. When that happens we won't need to worry about the reactor heating up, we'll have no fucking oxygen to breath." She wiped the sweat from her brow, and ran a hand through her hair and sighed, "Look, I know you're doing everything you can do. What's the situation in the engine room? Do we know how bad we're damaged?"

  "It looks like we have a bent screw and possibly bent rudder. We won't know for sure until we get the power restored."

  "Okay. Keep me updated. And Mills, let me know if you need a hand. Any one of our crew members would bend over backwards to help you guys out, myself and the captain included." She walked back through the hatch and up the corridor to the tiny ladder of stairs that would take her up to the control room. The captain was standing in front of the dark chart table. Everything was cast in a ghostly red hue from the tiny emergency lights.

  "Mills thinks he's close on the reactor and we more than likely have a bent screw and rudder. It's probably the starboard side, that's where the impact seemed to resonate."

  "We have about fifteen hours," he said somberly.

  "I know." She met his eyes. "The reactor is starting to heat up, but the levels are still zero."

  "If he gets the power restored we're still dead in the water with the amount of damage we have. We'll need to blow to the surface and try to get a message out before we're detected."

  "Hopefully, they're looking for us."

  "Four days…" He shrugged. "Maybe after five they know we're gone."

  Scooter swallowed the lump down her dry throat. She'd slept a total of twelve hours in four days. Everyone on the sub was disheveled, hungry, tired, and in need of a bath. Without power, they had no access to water, so they were drinking the stored water supply which was becoming scarce by the hour and eating freeze dried emergency rations. She was checking their paper charts again. Since they didn't implode they were either still on course or the sub could go much deeper than they were ever told. When the intercom phone rang she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  "Mills, tell me something good."

  "Commander, I have a plan, but I need another pair of hands or two. Goodwin and Macpherson are up to their elbows in the engine room trying to figure out how bad the damage is. They also reported a slight water leak around the starboard screw seal."

  "How small is small, Mills?"

  "Half a cup an hour maybe."

  "I'll be there in a minute with assistance." She slammed the phone down.

  "What's the update?" The captain asked.

  "Minor leak in the starboard side prop seal, it's too small to even be minor at this point. Mills may have something. He asked for a couple extra pairs of hands. I'm going down there and I'll grab someone from the galley to assist."

  "Be careful, if that reactor level rises at all get the hell out of there and seal off the compartment."

  "Yes, sir," she said as she walked past him towards the ladder that would take her down to the main corridor that ran the length of the sub.

  ~~~

  Scooter was lying on the floor of the sub with her head inside the base of the reactor that housed numerous wires and electrical panels. The midshipman that she commandeered from the galley was next to her. Chief Mills had them loosening and moving wires around as he kept an eye on the reactor panel and the radiation levels.

  "Okay, when I tell you to I want you to remove the exact same wire at the exact same time. Then, you will put it back at the exact same time. I'm going to try to reboot the system and see if maybe a wire or terminal came loose or lost a signal because of the impact."

  Scooter looked at the kid next to her. He was stark white in the dark compartment. There was a flashlight between their heads shining light onto the bundles of wires above their heads.

  "What color are we starting with?" she asked.

  "I'm looking at the paper diagram book. I think I have the order figured out, so let's go in order. On three we will pull black, then on three put it back, same thing for white, red, blue, yellow, brown, and green. Then we will start with the striped wires."

  Scooter held her breath and listened for the count. She prayed the kid next to her would pull the wires at the same pace as her. Otherwise, they could cause all kinds of catastrophic damage to the reactor.

  On three, Scooter pulled the black wire and waited for the count to put plug it back into the panel. They went through the sequence very slowly and methodically. When they finally reached the blue wire with the red stripe the cooling system for the reactor hummed back to life. Scooter jumped and cut her forehead on the sheet metal casing of the tiny compartment they were in when the system came back on.

  "It looks like there might be a short somewhere. I know what wires to trace. The reactor will start cooling down and once I find the short I will have the rest of the power back on," he said with excitement. "Commander, you're head is bleeding." He handed her a clean rag from his pocket.

  Scooter wiped the warm liquid running from her forehead down around her eye. She was surprised to see the amount of blood on the thin white rag. "Damn. I had a knee jerk reaction when that fucking thing buzzed. I thought for sure we were toast." She laughed.

  "You might need stitches, ma'am." The young kid that was in the compartment with her finally spoke.

  She didn't need to announce it, but she had a feeling he may have peed his pants. There was a strong smell like urine permeating the tiny area they were all occupying. "Go ahead and go back to your post. Stop by your bunk first if you need to." She watched him walk away in the semi-darkness.

  "Poor kid." Mills smiled. He remembered what it was like when he was still wet behind the ears with green gills. He'd been in the navy ten years and half of them had been served on submarines.

  "He'll be alright. We were all there once. You did good, Mills. That's one problem down. Update me as soon as you find that short."

  ~~~

  Scooter walked back into the control room with the white towel against her forehead. CAPT. Undell looked at her sideways and raised his eyebrows. "Did you get into a fight?"

  "No." She grinned. "we got the cooling system running. It looks like the impact caused a major short in our electrical system. Chief Mills has a pretty good idea which wire it is and he's tracing it as we speak. I had my head in the electrical compartment pulling wires alongside a green as goose shit midshipman I pulled from the galley. We were simultaneously pulling wires until we found the hot one. When the damn thing buzzed my life flashed before my eyes and I smashed my forehead into the panel."

  CAPT. Undell laughed. "Damn, Scuttero. Go see the medic and get that stitched up before you bleed to death."

  Chapter 32

  Libby was relieved when Rear Admiral Muerk walked into her bar and told her confidentially that the USS Lincoln had been located. He wasn't able to tell her when or where it was, but he did say there were no reported casualties on board. That was three weeks ago.

  Now, she was on her way to the base to meet her sister when she finally made port. Thankfully, the Koreans never fully engaged in an all out war on each other and most of the other subs and ships in the fleet were also returning home. No one was allowed anywhere near the submarine dock because of the severity of the situation, so Libby had to wait with the other family members that gathered outside of the fenced off area. The atmosphere was intense. The only family members that were informed of the confidential situation were the captain's wife and Libby because Scooter was the Executive Officer of the sub.

  ~~~

  Scooter was glad to be finally on her way home
. After another six hours, Chief Mills was able to find the short and fix the panel that came loose and short circuited numerous wires in the electrical system. The oxygen level was at zero when the power was finally restored to the badly damaged submarine. Slowly, each system started to come back up. They blew the ballasts and shot out of the water like a cannon. Thankfully, they surfaced a few hundred yards from a U.S. Navy destroyer who immediately came to their aid. The starboard rear of the submarine was smashed in a twenty foot area, the rudder and starboard prop were both so badly twisted they were unrecognizable. The entire crew boarded the ship for the journey home and a Naval Tug Ship arrived a few days later to tow the crippled sub back home. The ship stayed close to the sub for safety precautions during the trip across the Pacific. After surveying the damage, Scooter realized just how lucky she was to be alive. She had come within inches of losing her life. She knew she'd probably get another medal for this, but she was starting to wonder how many medals she really needed or how many times she needed to put her life at risk for a career she loved.

  It took almost two weeks for the entourage to arrive back at Point Loma. The crew was broken up by their level of involvement during the fiasco when they disembarked the ship. Scooter and CAPT. Undell were taken to separate rooms to be debriefed and the other officers were also all separated and debriefed along with everyone that worked in the maintenance compartment of the submarine. This was protocol. What happened to them was no one's fault. There would be no blame. Scooter was finally told at the end of her meeting that the Navy believed they may have hit a mine that was still active from WWII. Which, was why it didn't carry enough force to explode the sub, only cripple it with severe impact.