Collapse Depth

by Todd Tucker

  COLLAPSE DEPTH

  By

  Todd Tucker

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  About the Author

  Other Books by Todd Tucker

  Epigraph

  Glossary of Acronyms

  Prologue: East China Sea

  Book One: Underway

  Book Two: Ahead Flank

  Book Three: Disaster At Sea

  Copyright

  About the Author

  TODD TUCKER attended the University of Notre Dame on a full scholarship from the US Navy. After graduating with a degree in history in 1990, he volunteered for the nuclear submarine force, and made six patrols onboard the USS Alabama. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana.

  Other Books by Todd Tucker

  Nonfiction:

  Notre Dame vs the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan

  The Great Starvation Experiment: The Heroic Men who Starved so that Millions Could Live

  Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History

  Fiction:

  Over and Under

  “Oh God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.”

  Prayer of Breton fishermen. Given on a plaque to every submarine commanding officer by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy.

  Glossary of Acronyms

  1MC An announcing circuit heard by the entire ship

  2MC An announcing circuit heard in the engine room

  4MC An announcing circuit used exclusively to announce serious casualties

  7MC An announcing circuit for communications between the EOOW and the OOD.

  AC Alternating Current

  ASR Submarine Rescue Ship

  BCLU Battery Charging Line Up

  BRI Bearing Repeater Indicator

  BST Buoy “Beast” Buoys, an emergency communications beacon

  CAMS Computerized Atmospheric Monitoring System

  CNO Chief of Naval Operations, the highest ranking officer in the Navy

  CO Commanding Officer

  COD Carrier Onboard Delivery

  CODC Commanding Officer’s Display Console

  COW Chief of the Watch

  DC Damage Control or Direct Current

  DCA Damage Control Assistant, the junior officer in charge of the boat’s damage control gear and Auxiliary Division.

  DOD Department of Defense

  DR Dead Reckoning, an estimate of position based on course, speed, and time

  DSRV Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle

  EAB Emergency Air Breathing, a system of breathing masks that plug into fixed manifolds throughout the ship.

  E Club Enlisted Club

  EDO Engineering Duty Officer

  EOOW Engineering Officer of the Watch, the highest-ranking watchstander, and the only commissioned officer, in the engine room of a nuclear submarine.

  ESM Electronic Support Measures

  ET Electronics Technician, an enlisted rating

  EWS Engineering Watch Supervisor, the senior enlisted man in an operating engine room.

  Fitrep Fitness Report

  GPS Global Positioning System

  Hipac High Pressure Air Compressor

  JO Junior Officer, an officer on his first sea tour

  LET Logistics Escape Trunk

  MBT Main Ballast Tank

  MCC Missile Control Central

  Medevac Medical Evacuation

  MM1 Machinist’s Mate, First Class

  MS1 Mess Specialist First Class, a head cook

  NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

  Nav ET Navigation Electronic Technician, enlisted men in charge of the ship’s numerous electronic systems for navigation.

  Navsea Naval Sea Systems Command

  Navsea-08 The title given both to the office in charge of Naval Nuclear Power, and the admiral at its head.

  NIS Naval Investigative Service

  NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

  NTM Notice to Mariners

  ODAS Ocean Data Acquisition System

  O-5 An officer’s rank: A commander in the navy, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, Army, or Marine Corps

  O-6 An Officer’s rank: a captain in the Navy, a Colonel in the Air Force, Army, or Marine Corps

  OOD Officer of the Deck, the top watch officer on a submarine at sea.

  OS Officers’ Study

  PD Periscope Depth

  POTUS President of the United States

  PRC People’s Republic of China, the Communist Nation of China

  PSI Pounds per Square Inch, a unit of pressure

  QM1 Quartermaster First Class

  RM1 Radioman, First Class

  ROC Republic of China, Taiwan

  ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps, a source of commissioned officers consisting of training units at colleges and universities

  RPM Revolutions per Minute

  S1-C One of a series of prototype nuclear power plants used for testing and training naval operators. S1-C was located in Windsor, Connecticut.

  SAS Sealed Authentication System, used to validated launch coded for nuclear weapons

  SGWL Steam Generator Water Level, pronounced “Squiggle.”

  SOA Speed of Advance

  SRDRS Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System

  SSN A nuclear-powered attack submarine

  SSBN A nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine

  Subpac Commander of the Submarine Forces of the Pacific

  TDU Trash Disposal Unit

  TEU Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, a measure of a cargo unit on a container ship.

  TMA Target Motion Analysis

  USNA United States Naval Academy

  USNS United States Naval Ship, a non-commissioned ship that is property of the US Navy.

  USS United States Ship, a designation given to commissioned ships in the United States Navy

  VA Veteran’s Administration

  VHF Very High Frequency

  X1J A phone circuit connecting the captain to the officer of the deck.

  XO Executive Officer, the second-highest raking officer onboard

  Prologue: East China Sea

  For three days, as the big container ship Ever Able steamed northward from Singapore, Captain Colin Wright listened to the Chinese military circuit. The Chinese had appropriated a radio frequency along with a huge rectangle of ocean, declaring to the seafaring world that both were off limits indefinitely. The Captain didn’t understand a word of Chinese, although he could foresee a day when fluency in Chinese would be required in his profession. But, sensing that it was somehow important, he listened anyway.

  He eavesdropped on their chatter in the mess hall while he ate, on the bridge while he stood watch, and in his stateroom as he slept. When he toured the vast cargo areas of the ship, he took with him a handheld radio so he wouldn’t miss a second of the unintelligible conversations that had become his constant companion. He tried to decipher what he could from their tone, which sounded in turn bored, aggressive, frantic, and even taunting. The crew became used to the sound of static and Chinese voices that surrounded their brooding captain like a cloud.

  On the third day, as he napped at his desk, he jerked awake. The fragments of a sad dream evaporated as he roused himself. He shook his head, trying to discern the reason for his waking.

  All the chatter on the radio had stopped. The Chinese had gone silent.

  He hurried to the bridge.

  • • •

  The bridge was atop the seven-story “house” that contained all their quarters, their mess hall, and hospital. Once underway, it was where the twenty-two man crew spent the vast majority of their time, even though it occupied but a small
portion of the ship’s massive volume. Almost all the other space was taken up by containers, the metal boxes designed to be lifted directly from the ship and placed onto either train cars or trucks. The ship was near its capacity of 1,164 TEUs, or Twenty-foot Equivalent Units, an unscientific measure of how many containers it could hold. For this leg of their journey they were carrying plastic pellets, Reebok shoes, tires, a variety of car parts from factories throughout Asia, and, he’d been proud to learn, five tons of food for the World Food Programme, destined for Cambodia.

  He quietly stepped onto the bridge, where his third mate and a cadet were reliving their adventures in Singapore. They’d visited Orchard Towers, a legendary Singapore brothel that was a veritable shopping mall of the sex trade. It was known affectionately to sailors around the world as “four floors of whores.”

  “Captain,” they both said, acknowledging him as he walked in.

  “Reviewing my night orders?” he snapped.

  “Captain…” stammered the third mate, surprised by the harshness of the Captain’s tone and his gaze.

  “Bullshit on B Deck, after watch,” he said. “Right now I need you to mind my ship.”

  “Yes sir,” they both said at once.

  He stepped up to the radar screen, a plasma monitor with symbols for every ship in the tracking system. By scrolling the cursor over each, he could see their present course, speed, and the closest they would approach Ever Able. He noticed a cluster of ships in red near the coast of Taiwan, and scrolled over them.

  “Are those the same warships we’ve been tracking?”

  “Yes sir. They’ve pulled out of the restricted area…I wonder if the exercise is over.”

  “Interesting,” said the captain. He hoped the Chinese were done with their games. It would explain the sudden radio silence as well. “But we’ll continue staying out of their way.”

  He checked the ship’s speed: near its maximum of 18 knots. He walked over to a chart table where the second mate had drawn out their course. Their track would take them closer for a few more hours, then, finally, they would start to open distance to the Chinese fleet. A rectangle made of bright red tape marked the off-limits area. The resulting detour would add a full day to their voyage to Shanghai. It galled Captain Wright both as a shareholder of the Evergreen Marine Corporation, and as a man who believed in the freedom of the seas with religious fervor.

  The rise of Chinese commerce had been the great change of Wright’s twenty-three year career at sea. Chinese ports were now the busiest in the world, and almost all his containers were either bound for China, or, in much greater numbers, contained the products of Chinese factories. But as China’s industrial power grew, so too had its military. Once barely a force on the world’s sea lanes, they were now flexing their muscle, and not just in Asian waters. They seemed unconcerned about the gentlemen’s agreements that the world’s merchant fleets had used to coexist with each other for centuries.

  There were accents on the VHF radio that reassured him when he heard them, the voices he identified with traditional seafaring nations: Sweden, Ireland, Australia, and, of course, England. For much of his career, he’d known that his American voice on the airwaves had sometimes discomfited other seafarers: his accent marked him, to many, as potentially aggressive, arrogant, and even dangerous. There was a sense that the Americans had more power than they deserved or could safely wield. Now at the pinnacle of his career, when hearing those frenetic Chinese voices day and night, he understood that feeling. He walked to the far corner of the bridge, fiddled with the controls, verified again that the Chinese radio circuit had gone quiet.

  “About time they shut up,” said the third mate, trying vainly to defuse the tension.

  They listened to the static for a few minutes together, when suddenly a few words broke through, a rapid burst of chatter that got their attention. The captain turned up the volume as they went quiet again. Then, from a single speaker came short words spoken at a regular, even pace.

  Shi…jyo…bah…

  Stepping away from the radio, Captain Wright looked ahead, seeing nothing but ocean as the words continued. The bridge was like a greenhouse, nothing but glass on all sides, and it was the kind of day that sailors lived for: clear, bright, and calm with smooth open water in all directions, nothing to hamper their journey forward. Even though he knew from his review of the radar screen that they were far out of visual range, he lifted his binoculars and stared in the direction of the Chinese fleet. The voice continued on the radio behind him, almost like a chant. Although he didn’t recognize any of the words, there was something familiar about it that unnerved him.

  Chee…lyo…woo…ssuh…

  “Something wrong, captain?” His men stared, perplexed. The captain knew, somehow, that the chant was nearing its conclusion.

  Sahn…urr…yee…QIDONG!

  With that final, emphatic word, he realized what he was listening to: a countdown.

  “Right full rudder!” he ordered. The third mate jumped to comply. Wright knew from looking at the chart that a turn to starboard was the quickest way to open distance from the exercise area. The giant container ship began to respond slowly. A shrill alarm sounded on the radar console.

  The captain stepped to the screen: a red arrow with an open circle around it had appeared between them and the Chinese fleet. Under it were the words unidentified contact.

  “What is it?”

  It disappeared briefly from the screen, and then reappeared, having closed half the distance to Ever Able in seconds.

  “She can’t be moving that fast,” said the third mate, looking at the approaching blip in disbelief, fooled into thinking that the new radar contact was a ship, because the computer had, by default, assigned it that symbol.

  Captain Wright ran out the door the starboard bridge wing, binoculars still in hand.

  Spotting a small, fast-moving object on the ocean was extremely difficult, but Wright had good eyes and a lifetime of experience staring across the waves in search of peril. He saw the exhaust first, a triangle of intense yellow light behind the missile that was moving directly toward them. A finally honed instinct told them that they were on a collision course.

  “All stop!” he yelled, a last desperate attempt to save the ship.

  But Ever Able was doomed. The missile slammed into the hull amidships, just above the waterline.

  Book One: Underway

  Ensign Brendan Duggan stood at the opening to the massive diesel fuel oil tank, located near the center of the big submarine. The tank was empty, for the moment, except for a lone, unseen enlisted man whose rhythmic banging with a rubber mallet sounded like a mournful gong. When the petty officer was done, Duggan would climb in. It was his second day on the boat.

  He had been invited to enter the empty tank by Lieutenant Danny Jabo, who stood there waiting with him, casually fingering one of the twelve large bolts that had been removed to give them access through a twenty-two inch hole. There was a folder of miscellaneous paperwork on the deck: the certification that the tank’s air was safe to breathe, a form for Jabo to sign upon completion of their inspection, and a copy of the danger tags that would (theoretically) keep shut all the valves that, if opened, would flood the tank with either seawater or diesel fuel. While they waited, Duggan read through it all earnestly, more eager to make a good impression on the lieutenant than he was to actually study the information.

  In the strictest legal sense, Jabo barely outranked Duggan. They were both junior officers on their first sea tour: Jabo near the end of his, Duggan at the very beginning. While Duggan still held the rank of Ensign, the rank given to him along with his diploma at the Academy, Jabo had been promoted twice, first to lieutenant j.g. (junior grade), and then to full lieutenant. So Jabo had been in the Navy just a few years longer than Duggan, but those years were, importantly, sea time: five long patrols on a nuclear submarine. Duggan had exactly zero days underway. But the most important difference between them was something unquan
tifiable, something not easily reduced to pay grade or days at sea. Jabo was hot shit. He was the Junior Officer all the enlisted men wanted to work for, the one the department heads wanted to mentor, the one the other JOs wanted to emulate.

  “You ready?” said Jabo with his mild Tennessee twang.

  “I think so,” he said, trying to sound somewhere between too nervous and too confident.

  “You know the only requirement is that an officer close it out—you don’t need your dolphins. So you can go in alone if you want.”

  Duggan hesitated for a minute, saw that Jabo was joking, and exhaled nervously.

  “You’re lucky we’re doing this,” said Jabo. “This is a tough evolution to see. Impossible to get underway.”

  “Yes,” said Duggan, squelching the urge to say, “Yes sir.” Even though Jabo did outrank him slightly, junior officers didn’t talk to each other that way. But Jabo had that kind of aura. It made Duggan mildly jealous, as the new guy, months away from having anybody respect him for anything. He also fought down the impulse to resent the fact that an ROTC guy like Jabo could rise to the top—he felt like four years of celibacy and eating shit at Annapolis should entitle an Academy guy to hold that role. That had been the promise, that the ROTC guys were barely competent part-timers, while their years of toil at Annapolis would make them military superstars. But despite getting his degree at a school with frat parties and pompon girls, Jabo was clearly an outstanding officer. And Duggan had seen Jabo’s wife, Angi, at the farewell party the night before, a redheaded, athletic knockout, the kind of girl he imagined would turn heads even at a school full of southern beauties. Another reason to resent his monastic life at the academy, another reason to be jealous. But, in spite of all that…Jabo was just impossible to dislike.

  “He’s comin’,” said Jabo. Duggan heard it too. The gonging had stopped, replaced by footsteps on the iron rungs of the ladder that were bolted to the inside of the tank. Light from a flashlight grew in intensity as the petty officer neared, until his head popped out of the manway.