The Pouakai

by David Sperry

  Every few hours, an emergency drill sounded onboard the sub. Whether it was a simulated fire in the torpedo room, a steam leak from the nuclear reactor, or even a collision with a surface ship, the emergency bells and sirens went on and off, signaling yet another drill. A booming voice came over the speaker system announcing the type of emergency. The crewmen tumbled out of their bunks, grabbed their emergency equipment, and dashed to their stations. Some time later, from a few minutes to half an hour, the voice would come over the speakers again, and tell the crew to return to their watch stations. I had no idea if this was a normal training cycle, or if the Captain was just being sadistic. Either way though, it usually interrupted a meal, or sleep, or both. The crewmen worked harder every day, and it coincided with them becoming distant to us. It seemed everyone felt the pressure to perform while parked next to Palmyra. Captain Baker’s mood was blacker than ever. He had a perpetual scowl when we passed in the corridors.

  At the end of the third day, Colin and I were eating dinner at our table. The crew had just finished another drill, this one being a reactor scram. Several crewmembers, enlisted and officers alike, were walking through the mess, back to their normal positions. The Captain blasted into the mess, unannounced. Everyone, except us, snapped to attention.

  “Lieutenant Ainsworth,” Baker shouted as he entered. “That scram took sixteen seconds longer to stabilize than yesterday. That is unacceptable.”

  A young, bespectacled officer stared straight ahead, the Captain in his face.

  “Yes sir,” the crewman shouted.

  “You are relieved. Lieutenant Werner is now the EEOD.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Baker strode out, favoring us with a withering glare.

  There was five seconds of silence once the Captain left, before the crewmen started to move. I looked at Colin, who rolled his eyes. Then I saw a familiar face.

  “Lieutenant Hanson,” I greeted the Navy SEAL walking by. He held a mug of coffee, and moved slowly through the mess. He looked down, and smiled.

  “Good evening, sir,” he replied.

  I offered a seat, and after a momentary hesitation, he sat down.

  “I gotta run,” Colin said, wolfing down the last of his mashed potatoes. “It’s time for my shift at the monitor.”

  “Happy hunting.”

  “Have a good evening, sir,” Hanson added.

  Colin left, and Hanson carefully studied his chipped coffee mug. I looked around the room and saw a lot of unhappy faces. I had no idea what was going on, and Hanson wasn’t saying anything. The uncomfortable silence dragged on.

  “I’ve never said thank you for rescuing us from Nanumea. So, thank you.”

  “No problem, sir. Just doing my job.”

  “Is your team always assigned to the Ohio?”

  “Yes sir, for now, sir. My squads are assigned to the Ohio, and we are used wherever necessary.”

  The muscular Lieutenant didn’t look at me as he talked, but fidgeted with his coffee mug. Something wasn’t right, and I wanted to know more about what was going on with the crew. I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject, however. From my own days in the Air Guard, I knew that everyone complained about their superior officers, so I tried that tack.

  “So what’s got into the Captain?”

  “Bad performance on the reactor scram,” he replied, still staring at the mug.

  “So he demotes one of the reactor operators, and rides roughshod over the crew?”

  Hanson shrugged. “They have performance standards to keep up.”

  “It just seems the Captain is being harder on the crew, compared to when you rescued us.”

  After nearly a minute of silence, he looked at me. “Sir, how much do you know about submarine ops?”

  “Only what they taught us in the two days at Pearl Harbor.”

  He sighed, and shook his head. “When a submarine puts out to sea, the Captain gets a packet of orders. It’s a list of tasks to be accomplished while out on patrol. Always, number one on the list is ‘remain undetected’. That’s the primary goal of any sub cruise. When we were assigned to support your operation however, we couldn’t do that. We had to cruise near the surface on the way down here, so the radar would work. We have to stay stationary on the surface here too, so you guys can communicate with your trap. All that goes against what the crew has been trained to do, which is to hunt the enemy, and not get caught.”

  “Why would anyone want to catch us here? We’re trying to do something to save the world.”

  “You know the saying about poking an angry animal? There are other countries that are hurting because of what the Rocs have done. They’re like an angry animal, and we’re poking at them just because we have what they want. The U.S has got oil, coal, gas, and other things they want, so they get angry. We need it for ourselves, and it’s not enough, but they want it.”

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  “This sub is a symbol. We’re a target, sitting here. The Ohio is supposed to be unseen, submerged, protecting what’s important to America, but we’ve been visible, and surfaced, for most of the trip so far.”

  He looked around casually. Most of the others had left the mess. A few sullen crewmen sat at the far end, drinking coffee.

  “Do you know what this sub is designed to do?” he asked quietly.

  “Lob nukes at our enemies?”

  Hanson shook his head. “No, not any more. It used to though. The Ohio was originally a Trident ballistic missile sub. However this one, and three others, have been modified. They’re set up now for more modern warfare. They carry cruise missiles instead of the ballistic ones. Some of the cruise missiles are nuclear, but the Ohio can deliver conventional weapons too. There’s also equipment for delivering our SEAL teams ashore without being detected. Plus lots of equipment for, um, other types of operations.”

  “You guys fight terrorists?”

  “Among other targets, yes. The whole point of this sub though, is to remain quiet, and undetected, while getting us close enough to the target to do our job. What the Captain is required to do by helping you goes against everything he’s learned and trained for as a submariner.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said quietly.

  “There have been rumors,” Hanson continued, “that subs from Russia, China, and North Korea are all nearby, watching us, gathering data on us.”

  “They’re trying to figure out what we’re doing here?”

  “No, they are watching the Ohio. They’re probably wondering if they should take the chance to fire on us.”

  My stomach flopped. “But we’re trying to help the whole world, including them!”

  Hanson looked around, and shook his head minutely. Don’t talk so loud he seemed to be suggesting.

  “It’s not about the Rocs. It’s about getting the upper hand against us. The Rocs have changed the way the world works. Nothing is the same any more. Everyone is scrambling to survive, which puts everyone on a short trigger. Everything we’re doing is to protect our country. It’s the same for them. They are all about getting what we have, and what they think they need.”

  Three senior officers walked through the mess on their way to the reactor control room. Hanson downed the rest of his coffee and, without a word, left me sitting alone. How could a mission of discovery about humanity’s common enemy become just another bit of international intrigue?

  7

  There were simply no Pouakai showing up at Palmyra. The world’s news sites buzzed continuously about the missing Pouakai. Big die-offs were happening everywhere, and people were speculating why. The church groups took credit for their prayer meetings, and said it was God’s will that the devil had left. Others thought it had to be biological, while a few insisted it was a hoax from the beginning, fabricated to allow prices to be jacked up. If that was true, that was one hell of a hoax Colin speared on Palmyra.

  Colin, Alan, Mina and I sat at our table the next morning, poring over the news reports. Steve
was on duty at the trap controls. Colin also had a running email discussion going on with several other scientists. Everyone had a different opinion, but nobody had credible data to back up their thoughts.

  “Great,” Alan said, “look at this, Colin. It’s only been a couple of days, and the oil companies are already pressing governments to let them run their tankers across the equator.”

  “That won’t happen right away. It’s too soon. There could be a huge flock of Pouakai we don’t know about.”

  “Tell that to the oil shippers. They want to get back into business before they go broke.”

  “It’s too fast. We just don’t know enough.”

  “People are excited,” Mina said. “There is hope, which they have not had for a long time.”

  Colin shook his head. “It has only been a few days since we noticed the die-off. The Pouakai have been here for three years. It’s happening too fast to make big decisions yet.”

  We went back to our online reading. I found an article complaining about the lack of knowledge regarding the Pouakai. It read like it had been written by one of Colin’s scientist buddies. The main point was that we had no information on what preceded the Pouakai’s disappearance. Nobody knew whether there had been a gradual decline leading up to now, or if it had happened all of a sudden. The data from the newly tuned satellites didn’t go back far enough.

  As I read that statement, I realized there were people who might know the answers to that question.

  “Colin, read this.” I turned my laptop toward him.

  After finishing it, he said, “That’s what I’ve been saying all day.”

  “So let’s do something about it.”

  “We are. We’re trying to pull all the information we have together, to see if we can make some sense out of what’s going on.”

  “No,” I said, looking at the others at the table. “The article asked what led up to the disappearance, but there’s nobody who would know.”

  I waited, hoping someone would take up my train of thought. All I got was a series of blank stares.

  “We know people who would have seen any changes, and been able to track subtle alterations in the Pouakai’s behavior.”

  Another moment of silence passed, until Colin’s eyes brightened. “Nanumea!”

  “Yes. Nanumea.”

  “Of course,” Alan said, with a grin. “They’ve been living with the Pouakai. They would have noticed any changes with them.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “We should head down that way and talk to the Chief.”

  Alan’s mouth clamped into a tight line.

  “You don’t think we should do that?” Colin asked.

  “I do, but I was hoping we could hang around here a little longer, just to see if we could catch more Pouakai.”

  “In an ideal world, we would, Alan. We need to get moving if we want to keep up with the changes though.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Shit. I’ll head up to the control room, and let Steve know.”

  “I guess we should get ready to go. Do you have anything to add Mina?” Colin said.

  She shook her head demurely.

  “Then let’s tell Captain Baker about the new plan.”

  It was hard to tell if the Captain was happy or not. First, he had to relay our plan back to his headquarters in Hawaii and wait for a reply. Colin did the same with the university, although that was more of a formality. I found out that by his orders, Captain Baker had to do whatever Colin wanted, and couldn’t say no unless it put the sub and her crew in immediate danger. Both replies came back within a few minutes of each other: Proceed.

  Alan shut down the trap remotely, leaving it tied up to the dock at Palmyra. Eventually, someone would come by to retrieve it. Either that, or it would slowly rust away like everything does in the tropics, and sink to the bottom of the lagoon.

  An hour after receiving the go ahead for our plan, the last man came down from the sail, and closed the hatch behind him. One of the men on the inflatable boat had told me it was now called the ‘fairweather’, but after a lifetime of watching submarine movies, I couldn’t call it anything but a sail. The Captain gruffly invited Colin and me up to the control room as they readied to dive.

  Unlike an airplane pilot, the Captain didn’t actually steer this beast. He stood at the back of the room, watching the organized mayhem. Orders were barked out by another officer to those in the room, and over an intercom system to the engineering officers. It wasn’t like those movies where they immediately dive, either. The officer kept asking about depth as we moved away from Palmyra, waiting, I guess, for it to be deep enough for him to order us to dive.

  The ride felt disorienting. I was used to knowing exactly where I was in relation to the outside world while flying, either through the window or from my instruments. Here though, I couldn’t make out anything like a map, compass, or anything else that would give me our location or the direction we were moving in. The sub bucked and rolled strongly as we moved out from the lee side of the island into open water, but otherwise it felt about the same as it had the last several days.

  Captain Baker kept quiet. He peered over his half-glasses, looking for signs of anything out of order. After witnessing how explosive his temper could be over the last few days, I wasn’t surprised at the tension in the control room.

  A quiet discussion began between several officers, until one of them barked an order that I didn’t catch. The ah-oogah horn sounded, just like it did in those old movies, and someone in front of us shouted, “Dive, dive, dive.” A great rushing sound roared through the sub, and gently, the floor started tipping downward. I wasn’t expecting that, or for the angle to keep increasing until I had to hold on to a railing behind me. The roaring sound faded away, replaced a few minutes later by unsettling pops and creaks from the hull.

  “Test depth,” someone called out, as the deck leveled out. More orders were given, and then a quiet settled on the room. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. I glanced at Colin, but he just looked at the Captain, back at me, and shook his head.

  The officer in charge asked for a sonar report. Another crewman rattled of a bunch of numbers and words like target, range, and delta. I got the impression they were tracking another submarine, possibly one of the foreign ones Lieutenant Hanson had mentioned a few days earlier.

  Then the officer started turning us left and right, and going up and down a little. The deck pitched with each of these maneuvers, but not as sharply as the first dive. At least I understood some of what he said this time, as the language of heading, bearing, rise and dive made some sense.

  We stood next to the Captain for nearly two hours, until the sonar officer stated that contact was lost. Several of the men in the room gave each other pats on the back, and the tension eased measurably. Captain Baker stood up. “Come with me.”

  Colin and I followed the Captain forward, past the communications room and into a tiny stateroom, smaller than the Amtrak stateroom Jennifer and I had used on our cross-country vacation last year. Despite the size, it was the biggest sleeping quarters I’d seen onboard the Ohio.

  “Sit down.”

  We complied, feeling like we were being shown into the Principal’s office.

  Captain Baker sat down behind a tiny desk and, surprisingly, took a deep breath and sighed. “We’re clear for now,” he said.

  “That’s good,” Colin replied. “What was all that about for the last couple of hours?”

  “We’re under way, and gave the other subs the slip.”

  “Someone was after us?”

  “There’s always someone looking for us. It’s what we do. A Russian Akula and a Chinese Shang have been watching us since we arrived at Palmyra.”

  I nodded. “I heard something about that from the crew.”

  “Whatever you heard, it wasn’t complete,” Baker said sharply. Then he took a breath and softened his tone. “Shipboard rumors are always making the rounds, and they’re almost never accurate. The t
wo other subs arrived at Palmyra about the same time we did. Obviously, their satellite observations saw us escorting the Kilo Moana down here, and their Pacific Fleet commanders sent them to investigate.”

  “So there wasn’t any danger from them?”

  “There’s always danger, Major Boone. I don’t know what their orders are, and my number one job is the safety of this boat and her crew. Leaving ourselves exposed on the surface for so long, where the others can take their time gathering data about us, compromises that safety.”

  “They won’t find us now?”

  “I don’t think so. We’re heading toward California…”

  “Wait a minute…” Colin objected.

  “Keep your voice down,” Baker said quietly, but sternly. “If you’re going to stay on this boat, you must remember your training, and stay quiet. We’re heading toward California right now to give a false lead in case they are still tracking us. Once we are sure we’re not being tracked, we’ll turn south, loop around Palmyra, and head for Nanumea.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Good. Now get some rest, and stay quiet. We should be at Nanumea in about three and a half days, depending on when we can turn south.”

  We left the Captain’s quarters, and walked back to our table in the mess. The others were there, but without an internet connection, we didn’t have much to do. We ate with a few of the other crewmen, until we went to our bunks to read.

  The crew had set up our temporary quarters in the forward torpedo room, since they didn’t have spare rooms for guests. My cot straddled a torpedo, against the port side of the sub. The first night aboard I’d barely slept, thinking about the five hundred pounds of high explosives a few inches from my head. Now, I simply lay back, and resigned myself to boredom, and frequent emergency drills, as we slipped through the deep black ocean.

  8