by Larry Bond
“But it stopped again, and the chief ran out of things to do. They’ve got him bundled up in a blanket off to one side in the wardroom. Guys keep coming over to it and patting it, saying good-bye. Robinson’s sitting with him right now. He and Blocker are taking it pretty hard. I mean, we all are, it’s just bugging them more . . . I guess.”
They aren’t the only ones, thought Jerry as he wiped the stinging salt water from his face. “Thanks for coming up to tell me.”
Lamberth nodded sadly and moved over to the lookout position. Jerry turned back to check the bridge instruments, but then the petty officer spoke again.
“He’s got family in Florida, I think.” He had to raise his voice to be heard.
Jerry searched his memory of Rountree’s service record. “Parents and a younger sister,” Jerry answered. He’d never met them. Rountree hadn’t been aboard long enough for his family to visit.
Lamberth nodded and raised the binoculars again. Conscious of their exposed position, Jerry kept searching the sky, hoping he wouldn’t see anything. If something did appear, they couldn’t escape quickly. Nuclear subs couldn’t crash-dive the way the old fleet boats did in WWII. Come to think of it, he didn’t want to dive at all. Not with all those leaks, and the depleted air banks . . .
“Will we bury him at sea?” Lamberth asked. It took a moment for Jerry to realize he’d asked a question, and the petty officer had to repeat it.
Jerry paused before answering. Finally, he shook his head.
“I don’t think so.” Then more definitely, “No. We should bring him back to his family.”
“But where will we keep him?”
It surprised Jerry that they would have to think of such things, but there was hardly a spare inch of space on Seawolf, in spite of her size.
“They’ll have to put him in the freezer.”
Lamberth considered Jerry’s answer for a moment, then shrugged. It made sense. What else could they do?
There’d be a death investigation, Jerry realized. And how would they explain this to Rountree’s parents? The navy couldn’t tell them what really happened. They’d have to make up a cover story about something. Shoot, the navy would need a cover story for everyone on the boat. They couldn’t pull into port with this kind of damage without some plausible explanation.
A voice from the sound-powered phones broke Jerry’s train of thought. “Bridge, control. Lieutenant Wolfe wants to come up and take a look at the bow.”
“Control, bridge. Send him up.”
Greg Wolfe came through the access hatch as quickly as possible. He didn’t even greet Jerry, his attention fully taken up by Seawolf’s damaged bow. “Oh, migod. I was hoping the XO was wrong. It’s trashed!”
“He thinks the sphere, the low-frequency bow array, and the medium-frequency active array are all gone,” Jerry suggested.
“I think he’s right,” Wolfe answered in awe. Then more apologetically, “Oh. Sorry to hear about Denny Rountree.”
“Yeah. Thanks, I guess.” His division was the closest thing to family Rountree had aboard, and that made Jerry the head of the family.
“The whole boat’s taking it pretty hard. Everybody liked the kid.”
Jerry felt something sting his cheek and automatically turned in that direction, into the wind. He was rewarded with particles of wind-driven snow pelting his face. Or ice. Whatever it was, he turned to avoid the stuff, then half-turned back to study the advancing front more closely.
He’d been an aviator in an earlier life, and had developed a good sense for weather. This oncoming storm was going to be a bad one. The front had advanced in the past hour, and Jerry could see a dark gray haze living under the cloud line.
“Greg, are you done?”
Wolfe had been looking at the storm front as well. “I’m gone,” and he was through the hatch.
Jerry pressed the intercom. “Control, bridge. What the status of the repairs?”
Lieutenant Constantino, the ship’s supply officer, was in control as the contact coordinator after Seawolf had secured from General Quarters. His answer was not helpful. “Feeling the cold, Jerry?”
“Everyone’s going to feel it when this storm reaches us.” Jerry then described the advancing weather.
“Those ice floes will beat us to death,” Constatino agreed. Some of Seawolf’s sonar arrays were mounted on her sides. They weren’t designed to be hammered by multi-ton hunks of ice.
“And the ride’s going to get a lot worse,” Jerry added from the bridge.
“Understood, Mr. Mitchell.” The XO’s voice surprised Jerry. “There are new issues. The collision may have cracked the pressure hull forward. We were stripping some wet insulation from the bulkhead and found out that one of the frames is bent.”
Jerry took a moment to take that in. The frames were steel ribs that reinforced the pressure hull. The force involved when the two subs came together must have been massive . . .
“We could change course, sir, run before the storm. Just five knots would buy us more time.”
“Negative, mister. That would mean heading east and closing on the Russian coast. We keep heading west.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Can you ask the chief to pass us up some safety harnesses?”
The harnesses came up a few minutes later, along with some hot cocoa for Jerry and Lamberth. Never did anything taste and feel so good to the two men.
The nylon webbing went on like a parachute harness, with some difficulty, over their parkas. It had a line that could be clipped to different spots on the hull. There were several such places in the bridge cockpit and up on the top of the sail when the flying bridge was erected. After Jerry double-checked Lamberth’s line, he made sure his own was secure and tried to guess how long it would be until they needed them.
Jerry had matter-of-factly accepted their need to stay on the surface. Until they figured out how badly the pressure hull was damaged, they dare not submerge.
He tried to visualize the impact. Two subs, each over three hundred feet long and displacing nearly ten thousand tons, slamming into each other at high speed. The hull had been weakened at more than just one small point. He imagined an area the size of a window, or a door, or the side of a house, laced through with invisible cracks. Under pressure, it might give way. In fact, it definitely would give way, at some depth. He wondered if they could submerge at all. But if they did, how deep could they go?
The roughness of the sea changed suddenly, well before the clouds reached them. Sea state three with four-foot waves became sea state five with peaks two or three times as high. The wind tore the tops off, adding their spray to the snow already flying into their faces. Small pieces of ice were picked up and hurled against the hull. And it was going to get worse.
Seawolf rolled violently in the swells, a fast combined pitching and rolling motion that threatened to knock Jerry off his feet. He looked up at Lamberth, who was hanging on to the cockpit’s handrails, his face pale. “Get below! You can’t do any more good up here!”
With careful timing, Lamberth unhooked his harness and almost dove into the bridge access trunk. Jerry steadied him as he went down. A sudden loud clang told him the larger ice chucks were starting to get thrown about. The wind’s intensity was picking up even more and had shifted toward the south. They were facing a full-blown winter gale. Jerry called down a course correction, a little more southwesterly.
Constantino acknowledged the course change, and added, “We’re ballasting her down a little as well. I know it gives you less freeboard up there, but it should help reduce the rolls.” After a moment, he added, “They’ll be done soon.”
Jerry held on tightly to the coaming with one hand and the binoculars with the other. Facing directly into the wind, he was glad to have the binoculars. At least his eyes were protected from the spray. He hoped someone down in control was watching their heading, because he couldn’t spare the time.
It started getting really bad when the waves began breaking halfway up the
sail. Sheets of ice-cold water leapt over the top of the cockpit, drenching Jerry. Every once in a while he had to literally dodge a chunk of ice that was thrown by the waves. But as long as they were on the surface, somebody had to be up here.
He was getting ready to change the ship’s course again when Fisher appeared from the hatchway below. “We’re ready to submerge. I’ll get the suitcase.”
The console was caked with ice, but they finally knocked enough off to detach and close the lid, after which it was hurriedly manhandled below. With one last scan of the horizon, Jerry unclipped his safety harness and dropped through the hatch. He gratefully dogged it shut, double-checking to make sure it had sealed properly.
By the time he dropped into the control room, they were already heading down. He heard Lieutenant Wolfe, the new OOD, order “One hundred feet” and began to worry. That was shallow for a submarine of Seawolf’s size.
Jerry’s face must have shown his concern, because Wolfe reassured him. “The XO wants us to take it slowly. We’ll work our way down to three hundred feet, but in baby steps.”
“Well, it’s got to be better than riding it out on the surface. It’s way beyond nasty up there,” Jerry replied as he struggled to unzip his parka with half-frozen hands. And then more lightly, “I guess someone really pissed off King Boreas, because he’s hopping mad right now.”
“Wasn’t me; honest,” cried Wolfe defensively.
Jerry chuckled and then groaned as he gratefully stripped off the icy foul-weather gear. He hadn’t realized just how sore he was. Somebody handed him a towel, and he stepped to one side, blotting the seawater from his face, while another sailor mopped up the puddle he’d left on the deck.
“The XO wants a status on all the gear ASAP.” Jerry acknowledged Wolfe’s message as he stepped over to the chart table. QM3 Bishop was tending the nav plot, and Jerry studied their track, the twists and turns of their encounter with the Russian, their slow northwest crawl since. Their submerged speed was still just five knots.
He took a quick bearing to LaVerne’s programmed location. Wolfe already had them on course to the rendezvous with the UUV. At five knots, they’d reach her in an hour or so.
Sighing, he asked the chief of the watch to please send the messenger of the watch to find Mr. Chandler, Chief Hudson, and QM1 Peters. “Tell them to meet me in the wardroom immediately.” He headed aft, straight to the wardroom, half-expecting to find injured sailors, but the corpsman had finished his work. The space was clean.
QM1 Peters showed up first, then Chandler and finally Chief Hudson. The chief’s clothes were stained and wet.
With all three of his divisions’ leadership present, Jerry got straight to business. “All right. Who else was hurt?” He didn’t need to mention Rountree.
Peters spoke first. “Gosnell slammed his shoulder, but that’s all.”
Hudson said, “Troy Kearney landed wrong on the deck and broke his wrist. The doc’s already put a splint on it.”
Chandler added, “Minor bumps and bruises, but nobody’s reported anything serious.”
“Chief?” Jerry dreaded Hudson’s reply, but they had to know. “Does anything work?”
“We’re still trying to get power to the racks. Between finding shorts and replacing charred cables, that’s been hard enough. We’ve restored power to the ship control circuits, internal comms, and the WAA. I can tell you right now that the radar and ESM are a total loss.”
“Matt, what about the radios?”
“Without power, we couldn’t test the gear.”
Jerry waited a moment, expecting to hear more, but Chandler seemed to be finished. “Fine. QM1, see what your people can do to help the ETs and the ITs. I know you’re not techs, but they’re shorthanded. Hourly reports. That’s all.”
They all turned to leave, but Jerry asked, “Matt, stay a minute.” As soon as Peters and Hudson were gone, Jerry said, “I need to know more about our radios.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir. I’ve been busy with other things.”
That “sir” thing again. Jerry fought to control his irritation. “What could be more important than fixing the radios, Matt?”
“Documenting the collision. I’ve been working on my account of events. I wanted to do it while they were still fresh in my mind.” He reminded Jerry, “You know, we’re all going to have to provide them.”
Between Chandler’s self-serving response and his own grief over Rountree’s death, Jerry snapped. His anger flashed into full bloom. “Lieutenant, we’re in the middle of the Barents on a boat that’s deaf, dumb, and blind. Now is not the time to cover your ass.”
“Sir, I resent the implication that I’ve neglected my duties.” Chandler’s injured demeanor increased Jerry’s anger.
“I’m not implying it, I’m saying it. Drop the damn paperwork and get to work on those radios.”
“Sir, are you ordering me to not work on recording my account of the collision?”
Jerry pulled himself up short. His irritation changed to caution. Chandler was looking for Jerry to say the wrong thing, something angry while he was cold and tired and strung out. It would go right into his report, part of an official record.
Jerry adopted a formal tone. “I am informing you of what our priorities are in this critical situation, and reminding you, as always, to spend your time wisely and to do your duty accordingly.”
After a moment, Jerry added, “This is no time for mind games. Report to me in control in five minutes. I need to know exactly how quickly we can get one HF transmitter and receiver on line. And don’t ever tell me that ‘nobody’s reported anything’ to you. It’s your job to find out. Is that clear?”
“Yes sir.” Chandler’s tone and expression didn’t change, but Matt was no fool. The message had been received, for now.
Cursing Chandler, Jerry quickly changed into some drier clothing and headed for the electronic equipment space. He needed to know just how bad it was.
Standing outside the door, Jerry could smell burnt paint and rubber. Inside the cramped compartment, illuminated by work lights, three enlisted men struggled to pull blackened electronics modules from their racks. Every module had been sprayed with salt water, and would have to be thoroughly cleaned before anyone dared to run power through it.
Their movements were hampered by a wooden framework that had been roughly braced to the deck. Several beams angled up to an area of gray metal on the forward bulkhead. The insulation that normally covered it had been torn away, and Jerry could see the ribs that lined the inside and strengthened the pressure hull, spaced a few feet apart. Three ribs were exposed, and the center one was deformed inward—not a lot, but Jerry could see where it was no longer a perfect circle.
The wooden braces would shore up the weakened rib, although there was no way of knowing how much strain the area could take. He was enough of an engineer to know what their vulnerabilities were. He just couldn’t calculate how much trouble they were in.
One enlisted man from auxiliary division, wearing sound-powered phones, had been posted in the space. His only job was to watch for signs of stress in the hull or the shoring, and for any new leaks.
One of the technicians, ET1 Kearney, looked up from his work and asked, “Need something, Mr. Mitchell?”
“No, Kearney. That’s what I was going to ask you. How’s your wrist?”
Kearney held out his right arm for Jerry to inspect. A metal splint surrounded his arm from below the elbow to his palm. “The chief did a good job. He says it’s hardly more than a greenstick fracture.”
Jerry flashed back to his own injury, a shattered right wrist that had ended his aviation career. “Now you’ll always be able to tell when we change depth. How’s the pain?”
Kearney shrugged. “It hurt like hell when he examined it, but since then it’s just a dull ache.”
“It’s going to swell some. Keep taking the ibuprofen that the doc prescribed.”
“How’d you know he’d told me that?”
>
Jerry held out his own wrist, showing him the scars. “Been there, done that, bought the pharmacy.”
Jerry headed for control. He found the XO there, watching as Greg Wolfe cautiously took Seawolf deeper. They’d worked their way to two hundred and fifty feet and seven knots. Reflexively, Jerry checked their sea room on the chart and found no issues. They would reach the rendezvous with LaVerne in half an hour.
Lieutenant Chandler showed up, but as Jerry asked for his report, the XO appeared. “Department head meeting in the wardroom. Pass the word.”
Chandler followed Jerry and the XO to the wardroom, with Lavoie and Wolf arriving moments later. Shimko sat down tiredly and the others did the same. Sonar Technician Senior Chief Mike Carpenter, one of the intelligence riders, knocked on the door and then took a seat at the XO’s invitation.
“I asked the Senior Chief to tell us what he can about the Russian submarine—as much as he can, anyway,” Shimko added. Jerry hadn’t seen much of the acoustic intelligence, or ACINT, riders. There were three of them aboard, but they kept to themselves.
Carpenter’s sandy hair made him look younger than his early forties would suggest. As a senior chief, Jerry guessed that he had at least twenty years’ experience listening to Russian submarines. “In this case, sir, it’s pretty much everything we know. We’ve got twenty-eight minutes of recordings that covers the time from our first detection until the collision. She was running at high speed, and using her sonars freely, so we got plenty to work with. In fact, we haven’t gotten through all of it, but we’ve seen enough.”
Carpenter stopped, and the XO waited for a moment before asking him, “For what?” He was impatient, but curious.
“We didn’t get a positive match to anything in our database. That was the funny part. With so much recorded, we figured it would be simple to match his acoustic signature to one of the Northern Fleet’s boats, but it’s definitely not a match, which means it’s Severodvinsk by default, their newest boat. She’s been running trials, but we haven’t heard her before.”