Cold Choices

by Larry Bond

  “Our work will involve using the three prototype UUVs we are carrying. As it is early fall up there, we will spend most of our time under sea ice. None of this will be any more unusual or hazardous than our typical hair-raising exploits. All we have to do is work our tails off, get the job done, and then we’ll return home quickly and safely. That is all.”

  As soon as the briefing broke up, Jerry headed forward to control. As navigator, he’d made it his business to look at the chart table at least twice each watch. Yes, they were still in the Atlantic Ocean, with hundreds of miles of water hundreds of fathoms deep below them. Then Jerry imagined how embarrassed he’d be if they ran aground.

  QM2 Keith Dunn had the watch. His folks were Georgia farmers, Jerry remembered, and he had five-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. The petty officer was leaning on the chart table, quietly talking with another member of the watch, when Jerry came into control. Dunn quickly turned to the chart table.

  “Afternoon, sir.” He pointed to a spot in the chart. The quartermaster reeled off his report with practiced formality. “As of 1330 we’re ninety miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, which is also the closest land. Still on course zero eight zero at sixteen knots, depth two hundred feet. Next planned course change isn’t for two days until after we clear the Grand Banks. It’s going to be a bit dull for us quartermasters, sir.”

  Dunn’s report was routine, and Jerry double-checked to make sure he was updating the chart properly. Jerry had watched QM1 Peters take the last GPS fix, just before they submerged, which raised Jerry’s confidence about their location. As long as they were underway, Jerry would be responsible for making sure that Seawolf was where she needed to be, and knowing where she was supposed to go next.

  Driving a submarine was very different from what he’d expected to do in the Navy. Jerry had been selected for aviation and trained as a pilot, and he’d done well. He was short and athletic, with the reflexes and eyesight that flying a fighter demanded. But a tire had blown on takeoff one day, forcing him to eject. He’d made it out of the jet alive, but landed badly, shattering his right wrist. While the doctors had been able to repair the damage, his right hand had “a limited range of motion.”

  Those hated words had washed him out of aviation, at least as a pilot. Years of training had been wasted, and the Navy had wanted Jerry to settle for an assignment to surface ships. Jerry was too much a competitor to settle for something offered to him. He’d asked for submarines, another elite branch with a long and difficult entry. The Navy had initially refused. He’d made it, though, using every trick in the book to get the transfer. And he’d made it through nuclear power school and the rest of the submarine training pipeline.

  He’d had to adjust. Instead of a single man controlling an agile fighter, he was part of team that controlled a massive underwater machine—a creature of the sea instead of the sky. And while a plane would fly as part of a squadron, a sub always operated alone.

  There were similarities, though. Technology made it possible to live and work underwater, just as it let him fly. It let him find and fight an enemy, if he needed to, and the hardware could also kill him if he didn’t stay on top of it. Submariners and aviators both tended to be detail freaks. It was the little stuff that made the difference.

  And practice made perfect. The ship’s 1MC system announced, “SIMULATE UUV LAUNCH OPERATIONS.” Launching and operating a UUV involved only control and the torpedo room watchstanders, but getting the vehicles launched and recovered was going to be critical to the mission. The torpedo division held loading drills every day.

  Jerry watched Dunn hook up his sound-powered phones and check communications with the torpedo room. For a real launch, Seawolf had to slow to five knots, and the captain would authorize the UUV’s launch and recovery. And the vehicle’s position had to be plotted, so Dunn monitored the control circuit. For the drill, Dunn would provide control’s responses, but Seawolf wouldn’t actually maneuver.

  Jerry wasn’t involved with the loading drill, so he headed aft. There was a mountain of paperwork that he’d put off, and it was all due to the XO before they returned to port. He’d been working only about twenty minutes when the phone buzzed. “Jerry, it’s Greg. Can you come down to the torpedo room?”

  Lieutenant Greg Wolfe was Seawolf’s weapons officer. He was responsible for the UUVs as well as the sub’s torpedoes and cruise missiles. The two department heads had worked closely on the UUV operational plan for this mission. Jerry’s extensive experience with UUVs aboard Memphis had been very useful during the planning phase. He could tell from Wolfe’s voice that something was seriously wrong.

  Jerry stopped outside the door to the torpedo room. He could hear urgent voices inside, and wondered for half a moment if there was a genuine emergency. Logic answered that question immediately, though. If there had been a real problem, alarms would have sounded minutes ago.

  Instead, as he stepped in, alarms went off inside him. Enlisted ratings clustered around the starboard tube nest. The recovery arm, used to bring the UUVs back aboard the sub, was pulled halfway out of its tube back inside the torpedo room.

  Cables and equipment clustered around a thick steel beam. Painted a bright green, the recovery arm was designed to fit in a twenty-one-inch-diameter torpedo tube, but just barely. Even though Seawolf’s tubes were larger, they had been sleeved to take the smaller weapons in the U.S. submarine inventory. While the tube was a little over twenty-three feet long, the arm actually expanded out to sixty feet when it was deployed outside the hull.

  When a UUV returned to the sub, the recovery arm telescoped out of the uppermost starboard torpedo tube. It had a short-range acoustic homing beacon on the end that guided the underwater robot to within a few feet. Then the arm automatically grabbed the vehicle and lined it up with the torpedo tube below. Finally, it guided the UUV into the tube and retracted back into its own tube. It was as complicated as a Chinese puzzle and as easy to work on as a tax form.

  Chief Johnson was directing some sort of activity while Palmer and Wolfe stood in one corner, flipping through tech manuals. Both officers looked up at the same time and saw Jerry. He hurried over to join them, but Wolfe started talking while Jerry was still a few steps away.

  “It’s jammed halfway in.” Jerry’s heart sank. He didn’t bother asking how. Wolfe was already explaining.

  “We interrupted the loading drill when the recovery arm showed a hydraulic leak. We found the problem and corrected it simply enough, but when we tried to re-stow the mechanism, it only slid part of the way in.

  “As we pushed it back into the tube, it made a scraping noise—the kind of sound you don’t want precision machinery to make. When we tried to back it out and look for the cause, it made the same noise, only louder.”

  “Did you ever see this on Memphis?” Palmer asked.

  Jerry answered quickly, “No. Whenever we worked on the arm, it always went back in smoothly. But the retrieval system and procedures were a lot different since we used a tethered vehicle.”

  “It’s like I said, it’s gotta be the tracks.” Palmer was insistent, but then added, “We’re screwed.”

  “No we’re not,” Wolfe said firmly. “We’ll sort this out.” He turned to Jerry. “I’ve got Chief Johnson and the division locking it in place so it doesn’t move until we figure out what’s wrong.”

  “Losing a vehicle would be bad enough, but losing the arm kills the entire mission. It’s the one thing we can’t replace or work around. We aren’t out even one day and this happens.” Palmer sounded like he was ready to go back to his stateroom and start packing his bags. Jerry thought he sounded frightened, worried more about his career than the jammed arm. Jerry was grateful that they were speaking softly.

  “I said we’ll sort this out, and we will,” Wolfe repeated. “Now go make sure the arm can’t shift if we have to maneuver.”

  While Palmer checked on the division’s progress, Wolfe said, “I was hoping you might have seen something like t
his on your last boat. We routinely pull it out for servicing, and the arm seems to work well. In the sea trials last week, we launched a vehicle and everything worked perfectly.”

  Wolfe sighed, then asked Jerry, “Would you brief the XO? I know it’s my job, but I want to stay on top of this, and,” jerking his thumb in Palmer’s direction, “I’ve got to keep a lid on Palmer.”

  “Okay.” Jerry nodded, and glanced at his watch to mark the time. “It’s been what, five minutes?”

  Wolfe checked the clipboard. “Ten since we tried to re-stow the arm.”

  “Yeah, it’s time to put the XO in the loop.” Jerry headed forward. He climbed the ladders between the two decks without even thinking about it, his mind trying to process the implications of a jammed recovery arm. He knocked on the XO’s door and heard, “Come.”

  Lieutenant Commander Shimko was examining two forms, one in each hand, as if comparing signatures. As Jerry started to tell the XO about the problem, he methodically laid them back into a folder and placed the folder precisely on the corner of his desk.

  He frowned as he heard the news, but nodded agreement when he heard Wolfe’s apology for not making the report personally. Jerry expected the XO to hurry down to the torpedo room, but instead he asked Jerry, “Is there any hazard to the boat?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is there any need to change our course or depth?”

  “Not at this time, sir.”

  “And Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Palmer are both on task?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then tell Mr. Wolfe I’ll be down there in a while. I’ll report to the Captain in the meantime. Thank you, Jerry.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Jerry showed up in control at 1730 hours, half an hour before his watch started. He’d eaten an early dinner, in the first sitting. Not only did his rank allow him his pick of which sitting to use, a pending watch preempted everybody except the captain. It was a good meal—stuffed pork chops. Jerry savored the salad. The fresh vegetables would disappear after two weeks.

  The captain or the XO couldn’t be in control all the time, so qualified officers stood watches as “officer of the deck” or “OOD.” Responsible for the operation of the sub when the captain wasn’t there, the OOD acted in the captain’s name. Any aspect of the ship that affected its operations was his responsibility. An OOD was expected to keep the sub out of trouble, deal quickly with any casualty, and if necessary, fight the boat until battle stations were manned. If there was time, he would notify the captain of developments, but he didn’t need the captain’s permission to act.

  Lieutenant Commander Stan Lavoie had stood the noon-to-six watch in control, along with two chief petty officers and five enlisted men. Other officers and enlisted men stood watch elsewhere in the boat. The sonar displays were always manned, as was engineering, with almost twelve men tending the nuclear reactor and the engines. Others took care of the auxiliary machinery, located throughout the sub. About one-quarter of Seawolf’s 130-man crew was on watch at any one time. While the working day technically ended at dinnertime, the boat never slept.

  Lavoie was waiting for Jerry, and had his briefing ready. While Jerry reviewed the ship’s course, speed, depth, and other information, the enlisted men on watch each passed information on to their reliefs, and then traded places, reporting to the chief of the watch, who also briefed his relief. Although somewhat crowded with twice the number of men it normally held, control remained quiet, the men speaking in low voices.

  The chief of the watch reported to Lieutenant Commander Lavoie, “Sir, the watch has been relieved.”

  “Very well, Chief. Thank you.”

  Lavioie turned to Jerry. “I am ready to be relieved.”

  Jerry responded formally, “I relieve you sir,” then said, “This is Lieutenant Mitchell, I have the deck and the conn.” Each of the enlisted operators acknowledged Jerry’s announcement that he was now in charge.

  Jerry toured each of the enlisted men’s stations—conn, sonar, fire control, the chart table, and the rest. Everything was in order, as it should be when Seawolf was simply moving from Point A to Point B.

  The captain had even suspended any drills until the UUV arm was unstuck. Normally after a boat went to sea, the XO ordered a flurry of emergency drills: fires, equipment failures, flooding, a simulated radiation leak. Those drills would still happen, but not until the weapons department solved their “little problem.” In the meantime, Jerry periodically updated the heading they’d need and the time it would take to reach New London, just in case the captain asked.

  The quiet and lack of change wore away at Jerry’s alertness. He’d developed and enforced a routine, checking important displays every five minutes, and every display on the half hour. He paced the limited space, and thought up questions to ask himself.

  Robinson did show up with the two junior electronics technicians. Although the extra bodies crowded everyone, he was glad for the activity, and to watch some of his men at work.

  Halfway through the watch, Lieutenant Wolfe appeared, grinning widely. “War’s over,” he announced, almost euphoric. “The arm moves freely and appears undamaged.”

  Jerry felt several bricks fall from his shoulders. The mission could continue. “How’d you fix it?”

  “All it took was a bucket of bear grease, a crowbar, and Chief Johnson cursing a blue streak.” Wolfe grinned and Jerry could see the strain falling away. He felt it himself, and he wasn’t even responsible for the retrieval arm.

  “We found some debris on two of the wheels. It’s gummy, and there was some solid material in it, either grit or metal. Anyway, the chief thinks it may have been lurking, stuck to the underside of the mechanism. The division’s inspecting the entire arm now—top, bottom, and sides—for any piece of gunk big enough to see or feel.”

  The XO walked into control and saw Wolfe. “I’ve briefed the Captain. He says well done, and he wants your report when you’re finished with your inspection.”

  “Aye, aye,” Wolfe answered brightly.

  “OOD, call away a fire drill. Make it in the auxiliary machinery room, third level.”

  Jerry smiled. It was going to be a good watch.

  5

  TRIALS

  20 September 2008

  Atlantic Ocean, Lat 58°25'N, Long 035°50'W

  Course 015° true, speed 16 knots

  * * *

  Jerry’s alarm clock went off at 0530. The recorded bird songs and the wind rustling through trees gradually grew louder, drawing him gently from his semicomatose state. He’d spent quite a bit of money on it, and it was worth every penny. Not only did it show the day and date, but it could display multiple time zones and it gave him a choice of “gentle environmental noises” designed to wake him slowly. He’d bypassed the “ocean surf” in favor of forest sounds.

  Jerry spent a moment looking at the clock’s digital display, fixing the day and date in his mind; like the ship’s ordered course and speed, it helped him to orient himself. It was Saturday, the 20th of September. They’d been at sea five days. Seawolf would reach the op area in the Barents in four more days.

  Jerry needed the clock. The unchanging hum of machinery gave no clue to time of day or season. On top of that was the submarine force’s unorthodox watch rotation of six hours on and twelve hours off, which threw any normal human being’s circadian rhythm into chaos. In the berthing spaces, the lights were turned to red at night, but in the control room and other working spaces, the white lights were almost always on. There were no windows, and even if there had been one, it would have showed only dark water.

  One clue to the time of day was the sound of quiet movement in the passageway outside his stateroom. And Jerry could smell breakfast in the wardroom, just a few feet down the passageway.

  Jerry shared his stateroom with Lieutenant Chandler, who occupied the lower bunk, and Ensign Tim Miller, who had the top rack. Being a department head, Jerry had the middle bunk—the easiest one to get in and ou
t of. Still, Jerry was always careful to make sure of Chandler’s location before getting out of his bunk. He remembered the perils of being in the lower bunk during his tour on Memphis when Lenny Berg nearly jumped on him once or twice. Space management becomes very important when three people occupy the floor space of a walk-in closet—a small closet.

  Chandler and Miller were gone, already risen and dressed, much to Jerry’s relief. It wasn’t just the extra floor space. Ever since Jeff Chandler’s promotion, there’d been friction.

  There used to be four lieutenants aboard Seawolf, and then there were five. Jerry was competitive. He understood the natural drive, not to reach some goal, but to beat someone or something.

  But he didn’t understand Chandler. His roommate, subordinate officer, and shipmate was doing everything he could to get ranked as the best lieutenant aboard Seawolf, and that “everything” went far beyond just doing a stellar job.

  Every officer was evaluated annually on a standard fitness report form. It was filed in his jacket and used to decide if he merited promotion. It was also used by the Bureau of Personnel to see if an officer was a good fit for their next duty station. A “bad” fitness report, even as a junior officer, could haunt someone throughout their entire career. And bad, in the highly competitive, small-town community of submarine officers, could be interpreted as anything less than perfection.

  Shortly after Chandler’s promotion, they’d both been doing paperwork in their stateroom. Chandler had to leave and offered to take a stack of Jerry’s finished paperwork to the XO on his way. Jerry had of course agreed, but later the XO asked him about some of the documents. Several were missing, and had to be redone. Jerry was sure he’d done them—pretty sure, at any rate.