The Marathon Watch

by Laswell, Lawrence K

  The pitching motion of the sea became secondary. The sounds of the storm were drowned out. Every piece of machinery in the engine room roared in determined exertion. As the engine speed increased, the deafening howl increased, seemingly without limit. The engine room was electrified and trembled under the sudden release of power. Ross’ thundering colossus had awakened, venting its fury through the turbines. The screws thrashed angrily at the sea.

  The emergency back flank order on the port engine seemed as if it would tear the ship in two. Stucky had thrown the ahead throttle closed and opened the astern throttle while the shaft was still turning at over one hundred revolutions per minute. The deck heaved under the sudden reversal of power, and steam pipes the size of telephone poles flexed. The truck-sized turbine recoiled, sending shudders throughout the ship. The reduction gears screamed in ear-piercing, metal-tearing agony.

  With the astern throttle half open, Stucky stopped, not knowing whether to close the valve or wait for the tremulous shaking to cease. “Jam it open, son. All the way. She can take it.” Ross screamed.

  The sudden change in the engine room had initially terrified Ross’ young crew. Never before had they seen such power. Never before had they realized the fantastic power of the giant they tended. Yelling orders, Ross jumped up onto his bench and grabbed the main steam stop valve wheel to steady himself. He stood like a pillar, preventing collapse. Ross’ crew drew strength from him, and he from them.

  §

  High above the storm on America’s flag bridge, Admiral Eickhoff was idling his way through some administrative message traffic when he was distracted by an aide who approached to hand him a message.

  Eickhoff’s stomach turned into a twisting painful knot. The Farnley seemed possessed by some sinister spirit bent upon his destruction, a spirit that made their captains go insane and commit suicide. Didn’t Meyers know what his orders meant? After removing the unauthorized parts, the Farnley would never be able to survive a rescue attempt in treacherous sea conditions.

  The Farnley would be lost with all hands. The board of inquiry would dig deep. Eickhoff knew he couldn’t afford that. Everything would be open to investigation. He’d done many things the current aristocracy wouldn’t understand, including his lie to Durham about safety and his orders to Meyers. Fear led to panic. His promotion was at risk, and the political leverage of Operation Marathon was slipping away. He couldn’t afford to lose the Farnley now. He was so close. He had to stop Meyers.

  §

  RTEEKYT RUKLKDTOTY 009682-EIEIEI-RAKDKESB.

  ZNYEEEEE

  R 05 0845Z DEC 71

  FM: COMSIXTHFLT

  TO: USS FARNLEY

  REF: A) YOUR 05 0832Z DEC 71

  SUBJ: MAN OVERBOARD

  BT

  CLASS: UNCLASS

  SEA STATE INDICATED REF A INDICATES RESCUE IMPOSSIBLE AND RISK TO SHIP SIGNIFICANT. DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT ATTEMPT RESCUE UNIDENTIFIED MAN OVERBOARD 0827Z.

  BT

  N5957

  NNNN

  §

  Buried in a torrent of water, Ensign Nat Hayes, helpless and on his back, tumbled across the deck like a leaf in the wind. He’d strapped himself into a safety harness used for working aloft and had tied a safety line to the back of the harness. With strong men holding the line in the aft deck house, he’d managed to rig two temporary safety lines on deck. They weren’t much, but they were something to grab onto.

  He’d been over the side three times already, but he wasn’t counting. The men were keeping a tighter rein on the line now, and when the last wave decked him, they immediately began heaving him in. The water cleared from the deck, and Hayes scrambled to his feet. With the door locked open, the aft passageway was awash in six inches of water.

  Another man was strapping on an identical harness. A phone talker had wedged himself into a corner, two more men wrestled a portable pump into position, and another thirty men sitting in the sloshing water, jammed shoulder to shoulder in the narrow passageway, coiled and uncoiled lines. If anyone else was going to be lost, the sea would have to pull all thirty men overboard with him.

  “Bridge says we’re coming down on the man now. Thirty feet to port,” the phone talker yelled.

  Hayes hadn’t regained his bearings, but someone thrust a tethered life ring into his hands, and he turned to face the storm again. The ship jerked violently, throwing Hayes against the door combing and opening a gash above his left eye. Recoiling from the blow, Hayes fell backward on top of the line handlers. Hands came up, caught him, then pushed him back to his feet. Without a word, men paid line as Hayes made his way to the rail. Hayes caught sight of the man. It would be a long throw, and he would have to compensate for the wind. He would have to let the man pass his position, throw the ring as hard as he could, and hope the wind would blow it down on the man.

  The man saw Hayes and raised one hand. Hayes thought he recognized Morrison, but he couldn’t be sure. Covered with blood, the man’s face was partially obscured by a large flap of skin hanging from his scalp. Hayes looked up the deck and gauged the foaming wall of water bearing down on him. The man slid past Hayes’ position. He needed more time but wouldn’t get it. Just before the wall of water hit him, Hayes let go of the railing and stood as straight as he could. Totally unprotected, he leaned over the railing and threw the life ring as hard as he could.

  The wave threw Hayes against the deckhouse with such force, his organs and brain thudded in his body. Just as suddenly, it tore him away from the deckhouse and threw him toward the sea. A stanchion hit him in the gut, kicking all the air from his lungs. He somersaulted over the railing into the swirling water that sucked him deeper and deeper.

  Thirty feet of rough half-inch hemp line tore through bleeding hands. Men screamed in agony, but no one let go. A chant went up. “Heave. Heave. Heave. Heave.”

  Stunned, Hayes fought to keep his mouth shut, but it was too late. Water caught in his lungs, and he coughed violently. Hayes felt the steady jerk on the line pulling him back to the surface. When his head broke water, Hayes coughed and frantically gasped for air. He twisted his head back and forth trying to find Morrison. The wind had blown the life ring almost forty feet past him.

  §

  “The man has been in the water one five-minutes. Survival time remaining: four-five minutes,” the quartermaster yelled.

  Biron had seen it. That was their third attempt to get close enough to Morrison to get a life ring to him. They finally got close enough to try, and the storm viciously denied success.

  Biron knew the problems were enormous. He couldn’t stop the ship or it would flounder in the seas. He’d tried coming at the man upwind and downwind. At slow speed, his rudder was useless.

  If he got too close to Morrison, a wave could suck him under the ship and into the screws; too far away, and they couldn’t reach him. “It’s going to take blind luck to get him back, Captain. I have almost no rudder control at low speed in these seas,” Biron yelled to Meyers.

  “Screw the rudder; it’s useless. Maneuver with the engines,” Meyers yelled back.

  “That’s crazy, Captain, you’d have to use flank bells to have any hope at all.”

  “Then his only hope is for us to use flank bells, Biron. He’s not giving up, and I’ll be damned if we are,” Meyers replied. “Take us around again, keeping him to port. This time let’s see if we can keep her straight and let the wind blow us down on him.”

  Biron shouted engine orders while Meyers tried to find the man in the confusing gray sea.

  “Captain, we just got a flash message from Sixth Fleet.” Meyers turned to see the dry radioman standing beside him and took the clipboard with one hand while holding onto the rail with the other. Meyers looked at the message for several seconds.

  “Any reply, Captain?” the radioman asked.

  Meyers held the clipboard at arm’s length until the wind caught it, then let go. It sailed out of sight before it hit the water.

  “What was that?” Bi
ron asked.

  “Don’t know. I lost the message.” Then, to the waiting radioman, he said, “I don’t have time for this now. Get another copy and bring it to me when this is over.”

  Smiling, the radioman replied, “Aye, sir.”

  “There he is off the starboard bow,” a voice shouted from the signal bridge.

  “Hard to starboard, Biron,” Meyers yelled.

  That attempt failed, as did the next.

  §

  Disgusted and mad at himself for taking a nap the previous afternoon, Durham gave up trying to fall back to sleep and switched on the TV, hoping he could find an early-morning news program. The secure phone rang. He picked it up halfway through the first ring.

  “Sir, this is the watch officer. I have two messages on the Farnley, one she sent and the other sent to her from Sixth Fleet. I’m not sure they’re important, but I thought you might want to know.”

  “Read them,” Durham said, and by the time the man was done, Durham’s mind had already formulated his response. He had for the moment forgotten his suspicion about the Farnley, but under no circumstances was he going to put up with what Eickhoff had done. No admiral, no one, was ever going to second-guess an on-scene commander; and no one, especially not an admiral in his navy, was going to tell a captain to abandon a crewman. It was against everything he’d ever learned and against everything he and his teachers stood for. Not in my navy.

  There was nothing he could do for the Farnley crewman but pray; however, he could do something about Eickhoff.

  Dispassionately, Durham asked, “Who’s the next senior officer in the Mediterranean theater after Admiral Eickhoff?”

  After a second, the response came. “A Captain Patrick O’Toole.”

  “Good,” Durham began. “Patch me through to the senior duty officer in Naples.”

  When he was done, Durham hung up. O’Toole will never forgive me.

  §

  Ross had problems. The engines had taken more abuse in thirty minutes than they had taken in the previous thirty years. The engines were thrashing themselves to death, and leaks were springing up everywhere. Plumes of steam from pipe fittings strained past their breaking point filled the engine room with wet heat. Ross was playing a giant game of Chinese checkers ordering equipment isolated, fittings tightened, then equipment put back online.

  Ross watched two men try to isolate the lube-oil pump. The work was difficult; they had to use both hands and were denied the luxury of hanging onto something solid. Their hands, already burned by steam or hot metal, were wrapped in rags; precious little protection against the hot fittings they were working on. The ship heaved hard to starboard. One man was thrown into the hot pump housing, the other thrown across the bilge like a toy. Both recovered and went back to work on the pump.

  So far, Ross had counted eleven men injured or hurting in some way. They were all minor injuries, but Ross was concerned by the cumulative toll the injuries were taking. The toll would only get worse as physical fatigue slowly claimed his crew. He prayed they would get the man back soon.

  §

  “Man has been in the water three-five minutes. Survival time remaining: two-five minutes,” the quartermaster yelled.

  Meyers made his way across the bridge to the phone set near the captain’s chair and put the phone to his ear. “Let me talk to Hayes,” he said.

  As Meyers stood talking with Hayes, his free arm bent back and forth at the elbow, indicating the ship’s position as if Hayes could see it.

  “Good, let’s do it. It’ll take us a few minutes to get in position. It’s probably our last chance.” Meyers concluded the conversation and headed back to the bridge wing to rejoin Biron.

  “Man has been in the water four-zero minutes. Survival time remaining; two- zero minutes.”

  §

  O’Toole fastened the leather buckle on his small weekender suitcase, then checked his small, boxish room at the BOQ to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something. Before he left, he needed to stop by the operations center and send his preliminary report to Durham. There was no hurry since his train for Genoa wouldn’t leave for another three hours and the taxi ride to the train station would only take thirty minutes. Still, O’Toole wanted the extra time; the combination of jet lag and lack of sleep had slowed him to about half speed.

  He had read reams of paper over the last few days, but none were as interesting as Pew’s report. He knew Pew’s report, although well crafted, was little more than a cover-your-ass piece, but it provided inside background and supporting documents that pulled all the other pieces together.

  Pew was another problem altogether. O’Toole had run into two officers like Pew before and had them both transferred to assignments where they couldn’t hurt anybody. One he sent to a five-man communications station on the arctic circle, the other to the Mechanicsburg, PA supply depot, where he spent the remainder of his tour inventorying toilet paper and undergarments for enlisted WAVES, but Pew, being assigned to Sixth Fleet, wasn’t his problem.

  Tomorrow when he talked with Ross and Meyers in Genoa, his investigation would be complete. No matter what happened, he was sure Durham would make Eickhoff answer a long list of questions Eickhoff would have great difficulty answering, but O’Toole knew that wasn’t his job. He just collected the facts. Durham would be the judge.

  O’Toole reached the door when the phone rang. He thought for a second, then stepped back into the room and answered.

  “Captain O’Toole?” O’Toole immediately recognized Pew’s voice.

  “Yes?” O’Toole let the displeasure of hearing from Pew fill his voice and was rewarded by a long, silent pause.

  “Sir,” Pew said finally, “this is Lieutenant Pew, the watch officer. We got an urgent call for you from Admiral Durham. He wants you to see some urgent message traffic we have on the Farnley and then call him back. I have a driver on the way to pick you up.”

  §

  Fatigue was creeping in. Ross could see it. His men were moving slower. Heavy labor and heat didn’t go together well, but they weren’t giving up.

  The throttlemen had the hardest time; constantly spinning the heavy throttle wheels open and closed quickly turned their arms to rubber. He’d taken a position between the throttles and was rotating throttlemen every few minutes, trying to keep them fresh.

  Stucky, his young freckled face edged in grim determination and without its boyish glow, was back on the throttles again. “How much longer is this going to go on, Chief?” Stucky yelled so Ross could hear him.

  “I think we’re just starting. Seems we got a captain who didn’t bother to read the book,” Ross screamed back.

  “What book?” Stucky asked, throwing the astern valve open.

  Ross held the rail tight to steady him against the throbbing protest of the turbines.

  “The one that says you can’t charge hell with only a bucket of ice water,” Ross yelled as he turned to see how the other throttleman was doing.

  §

  They were coming about again and were in the trough. A mountainous wave crashed down on the Farnley and bent her like a plastic comb. A man running down the main passageway above the engine room watched the ship flex until he couldn’t see the far end of the three-foot-wide corridor. In one violent convulsion, the Farnley heeled over and snapped back like a spring to her normal position.

  §

  Ross’ feet became airborne, but his tight grip on the railing kept him from flying across the deck. He looked down at the lower level. All of the men had been knocked off their feet. He turned back toward Stucky, but he’d disappeared. No one was manning the throttle.

  §

  Ensign Nat Hayes was ready. He’d stripped to his underwear and lashed himself back into the safety harness. Next he had put on two inflatable life jackets. The first one he put on normally, the outer one he put on backwards. In addition to the two deflated life jackets, he had three pieces of short, loose line tied to his harness. The shortest piece was only a foot long
, and tied to its end was a spring-loaded snap hook.

  With his eyes riveted on Morrison, he stood shivering on the deck. A man carefully coiled Hayes’ safety line on his lap so it wouldn’t get tangled in the sloshing water.

  Hayes could see and hear the towering wave plummeting down on him. He was still too far away from Morrison. He wanted to wait another ten or fifteen seconds, but he couldn’t. He dove headfirst over the side and into the torrentuous mountain of water.

  A wall of water poured through the door into the deckhouse. Oblivious to the water, the man nearest the door concentrated on the line so it wouldn’t get tangled. Three other men leaned into the onslaught and held him so he wouldn’t be knocked over.

  When Hayes came back to the surface, all he could see were mountains of moving, angry water. He spun around looking for the Farnley. She was gone.

  §

  “Get the stokes stretcher down here on the double.” Ross yelled, tearing his shirt off.

  Kneeling in the bilge next to Stucky, he carefully felt the arms and chest of the unconscious man. Satisfied no bones were broken, he lifted Stucky’s head and pressed his shirt against the large gash across the back of Stucky’s head.

  “Hurry up. Get the corpsman down here.” Ross yelled. Ross knew it was a miracle Stucky was still alive. The wave had thrown Stucky under the gauge board, and he’d fallen over twenty feet into the bilges. Ross couldn’t remember how he’d gotten into the bilge.

  Stucky opened his eyes and blinked for a second, then closed them. Ross grabbed the front of Stucky’s shirt and shook him, yelling. “Son, Stucky, damn it, son, stay awake.”

  Stucky’s eyes blinked open, and he tried to smile.

  “That’s it, son. Fight it. You gotta stay awake. You’re a fighter, you can do it. You’ve gotta survive.” Ross screamed.

  Ross kept yelling at Stucky to stay awake while three other men placed him in the wire-mesh, form-fitting stretcher and strapped him in.

  The men lifted the stretcher, and Ross stood. A sharp, jagged pain stabbed at his right ankle, and searing pain shot up the calf of his leg. The pain took Ross’ breath away, and he collapsed onto the bloodstained, gleaming white bilge.