by Todd Tucker
But they had to keep Howard on the watchbill for now because of the oxygen generators. Only two other men were qualified to run them. If they busted him, they’d have to go port and starboard in machinery two, meaning each watchstander would have to stand an exhausting cycle of six hours on watch, six hours off watch, instead of the normal three-section watchbill of six on, twelve off. Apparently, the captain and XO didn’t want to have the oxygen generators, along with the other crucial atmosphere control equipment in the space like the burners and the scrubbers, tended by exhausted men. So they’d reluctantly delayed Howard’s punishment. Howard knew he was lucky—Captain Shields was a merciful man. Merciful to him, merciful to the men who would stand port and starboard in his absence. Captain Soldato would have done the opposite, would have taken him to mast the night of the fire, busted him, screamed at him, and laughed as they racked his shipmates and gave them the good news that they were six on and six off for the rest of patrol because of Howard’s fuck up.
So Howard was determined, absolutely determined, to stand each watch flawlessly. That, combined with the passage of time, might make whatever sentence they eventually passed on him a little more lenient. And his secret hope: if enough time passed, maybe he would find out what actually started the dryer fire. Although, certainly, he was the only person on the boat that thought the crime was unsolved. He’d been working on it, writing down what little information he had, a few thoughts about the possibilities, trying to piece it altogether before they finally got around to hanging him. He kept his notes on two neat sheets of yellow notebook paper, and when he was on watch they were on his clipboard, directly behind his logs, so he could record his ideas as they occurred to him, points of data that, when fully assembled, would prove his innocence.
As he finished tweaking the oxygen generator back into compliance, it was that clipboard he grabbed, ready to take another perfect round of logs in machinery two, a small step on the road toward redemption.
He started on the level he was in, third level, taking logs on all the operating machinery. No burners were running, but, oddly, two scrubbers were. This despite the fact that carbon dioxide was at zero, because of the recent ventilation. He finished his round of logs on both machines, noted the high but appropriate temperature of each: both were running perfectly, if needlessly.
He descended the ladder to Machinery 2 Lower Level. In addition to the machinery that concerned him as a watchstander, it was also home to the ship’s modest complement of exercise equipment. But no one was working out—with the tempo they were operating everyone was too tired to exercise. It was too bad, it was nice having the company down there, made the watch go a little faster to watch someone else using the space recreationally, even if he was at work. It depended on the person, of course.
During the first hour of the watch, the navigator had come aft to work out, wearing faded blue USNA gym shorts and a plain white T-shirt stretched across his bony shoulders. Howard caught himself staring at the pink, starburst-shaped scar on the nav’s knee, from when he’d stabbed himself with the dividers in control: that story had rapidly become legend with the crew, further evidence that craziness was tolerated among officers. It was another example of Captain Shields’s willingness to give second chances; rumor had it that the XO wanted to throw the nav off before his knee had scabbed over. The navigator had caught him staring at the scar and Howard quickly averted his eyes and finished his logs. He made note of the nav’s presence in the same section of the logs he would have recorded the smell of smoke, flickering lights, or mysterious rattles that might give away their position to the enemy.
Howard saw gratefully, upon descending to lower level for the second time, that the navigator had already gone. He stood at the bottom of the ladder and took the emptiness in, true solitude being unusual on the boat. He realized he was staring at the deck, zoned out in a way that surprised him: he was actually relatively well-rested. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then lifted a deck plate to check the level of water in the bilge, one of the entries on his logs.
He put his pen to the paper and tried to write DRY but couldn’t remember how to get the word started. When he remembered, he couldn’t get the tip of his pen to the appropriate box, directly below the DRY he’d written an hour before.
Shit. He stood, shook his head again. Something was wrong, he realized, he was suddenly leaning on the aft bulkhead, trying to get his bearings, his back cold against the steel. It was getting harder for him to think, he started to slide down into a seated position.
Even as he faded out, he realized that something was out of place. It was a knack all experienced watchstanders had, the ability to know that something was out of position before they’d actually isolated what it was, an ability they’d gained by staring out at a normal line up for hundreds of hours. Reactor operators in the engine room were known for it, an uncanny way of looking at their panel of over fifty indicators as one giant picture, sensing immediately that some dial had moved form its normal position, even though it would take another half second to figure out which one. Howard experienced the same thing surveying Machinery Two Lower Level.
Part of him knew he needed to climb the ladder; whatever was wrong seemed worse in lower level. But then he isolated exactly what was wrong: a small valve in the very corner of the space, a valve he’d never seen operated, a valve that was always closed, its purple-handled operator perpendicular to the pipe. The handle, Howard realized through a fog, was sticking straight out, parallel to the pipe, and the valve was wide open. This could be it, he thought with his last conscious breath, lunging toward the valve. I’ll shut it, save the day, save the crew. The fire will be forgotten. He collapsed with his hand outstretched, the clipboard crashing against the deck.
• • •
“Get him yet, chief?”
“No sir,” he said, growling machinery 2 even as he spoke. “Howard’s not answering.”
Jabo’s mind raced, electric, in casualty mode, even though no alarm had yet sounded and no urgent words had yet crossed the 4MC. Something was happening—he knew it wouldn’t be long.
The oxygen generator was shut down, Freon was creeping up high in machinery two, the ship’s freezers a level below him were warming up, and, most ominously, Howard was not communicating with them from the space where two out of three of these events were taking place. It could be that Howard was simply combating the problem, and whatever was going on he deemed more important than answering the COW’s calls. That was a real possibility, and it was something Jabo was sensitive to, the fact that sometimes a situation demanded action more urgent than updating control. Not more than a few minutes had passed since the oxygen generator shut down; it was very possible that Howard had his hands on the knobs, trying to make the thing safe, recoverable, and that a report was forthcoming.
“Quit calling him,” said Jabo.
“Aye sir.”
Jabo saw Lester at the ladder to control, ready to go.
“Yes,” said Jabo. “Go down there, see what’s going on, see if he needs help.”
“Aye sir,” said Lester, already running down the ladder, giving the timer of the BST buoy a twist as he passed.
Jabo thought it over, trying to connect all the dots. He thought back to his pre-watch tour, remembered seeing Howard in Machinery Two, dutifully on watch a few minutes early, reviewing his logs, something else out of the ordinary that he couldn’t quite remember. The one piece of the puzzle that still didn’t fit was the Freon in machinery two, he couldn’t figure that one out. How did Freon get down there? Would Freon somehow shut down the oxygen generator? Jabo didn’t see how it could, and he remembered that the number one generator was getting a little squirrelly, it had shut down on high cell voltage twice early in the patrol. But somehow the watchstanders had figured out a way to keep it running, some adjustment they could make to it during the watch. Jabo seemed to remember hearing that Howard was the one who’d figured it out, he was always kind of a prodigy with
those machines. So why had it shut down? And why did Jabo have a bad feeling that he was missing something, something big?
The 4MC speaker crackled. Jabo knew that whatever was happening was about to start.
“Injured man in Machinery Two!” came Lester’s voice across the scratchy speaker. “Petty Officer Howard is unconscious!” He sounded winded, his breathing heavy.
“It’s the Freon,” said Jabo out loud. He grabbed the 1MC. “Injured man in Machinery two, Petty Officer Howard is unconscious! High Freon levels in Machinery Two, all hands in the missile compartment don EABs.”
He hung up the mike. He heard steps running below and around him as the crew responded to the alarm. Some of those footsteps, he knew, were the captain on his way to control. “All ahead one third,” he said, and the helm’s hand shot to the engine order telegraph, which soon matched the order with a ding of its bell.
“All ahead one third, aye sir. Maneuvering answers ahead one third.”
“Dive make your depth one-six-zero feet.”
“Make my depth one-six-zero feet aye sir,” said the diving officer, and he began giving orders to the helm and lee helm, bringing the ship shallow, ready to clear baffles and go to periscope depth, ready to ventilate. The change in bells and the depth change had already slowed the boat to under fifteen knots. The big rudder as they cleared baffles would slow them more, below ten knots so they could pop up, raise the snorkel mast, and get whatever bad air they needed to off the boat, bring clean air on. Jabo thought about the track on the chart, what this was gong to do to their speed of advance, but he quickly pushed it aside—that was not at all his priority at the moment. Making the ship safe was his duty. And he knew he was missing something…it gnawed at him.
Ensign Duggan stomped into control, started putting on the headphones by the white board on which they tracked casualties. The navigator was right behind him, he would take over making announcements to the ship and run the damage control efforts as Jabo brought the ship to periscope depth.
“Freon?” said Duggan to the navigator as he put his headset on. Jabo was concentrating on the green CODC sonar display, looking for any contacts to come into view that might impede their trip to PD. Things would start materializing now, the sounds of distant ships that had been masked by their own relatively high noise level borne of their high speed. Jabo could feel the up angle in his feet, the dive was aggressively driving up, pleasing him.
“Yes,” said the navigator. He spoke into the 1MC, announcing to the entire ship, “Rig for General Emergency.”
“Freon’s harmless, right?” said Duggan to the nav when he hung up the mike.
“Yes,” said the nav. Jabo could hear the annoyance in his voice, and he felt it too. Now was not the time for Duggan to either seek nor display knowledge; they were fighting a real casualty. “It’s harmless,” continued the nav. “But it’s heavy; it displaces air.”
Which means at the moment, in machinery two, it’s pretty fucking harmful, thought Jabo. He pictured it all pooling back there now as they took the up angle, collecting invisibly against the bulkhead and the wall of the diesel fuel oil tank. The up angle was good, the Freon would roll backwards, away from the berthing areas. Jabo wondered how the berthing check was going, wondered if they would soon hear about any one else unconscious. Depending on how much Freon was back there, it could be above the second level deck plates now, gathering like an invisible pool of water that Howard may have unknowingly descended into. Jabo pictured it, rising like floodwater up to the oxygen generators, the burners, the scrubbers…
That’s when it finally clicked.
He grabbed the 1MC, saw the nav raise an eyebrow at that, as did the captain, who was just entering control. Jabo almost shouted into the microphone.
“Secure the scrubbers!” he said. “All hands throughout the ship don EABs. There may be phosgene in the atmosphere!”
Everyone in control reached for an EAB, as did Jabo.
“Both scrubbers are secured,” said the navigator sourly, getting the report on the phones. He still didn’t have an EAB on, and Jabo fought the urge to snap back at him, order him to put one on. The captain also stared at him a little befuddled, but he pulled an EAB from the overhead and put it on, and the nav then followed suit.
Jabo stepped down to the CODC display, pulling on his own EAB; the trip to PD was suddenly more urgent. He remembered his pre-watch tour: both scrubbers were running for no apparent reason. There was no doubt that Freon had somehow filled Machinery Two, and with two scrubbers running at temp, it was more than enough to create Phosgene gas, just as the message had warned. It sounded like they had unlimited Freon back there and unlimited heat from the scrubbers; it was like they were running a fucking phosgene factory. They had to get up quickly and get clean air onboard. If the sonar screen was clear when they slowed down, Jabo was going to recommend to the captain that they emergency blow to the surface.
But the screen wasn’t clear, not even close. Surface contacts were everywhere. Blowing to the roof might add a collision and flooding to the list of shit going wrong. The captain leaned over his shoulder as he stared at the congested sonar display.
“Phosgene?” His voice sounded distant coming through the built in mouthpiece of the EAB.
“Yes sir, there was just a message about this a few days ago—the new refrigerant can mutate into Phosgene at very high temps, and both scrubbers are running back there.” “Both scrubbers are running?” said the captain with a raised eyebrow.
“Not sure why.”
“Noise isolation exercises last watch,” said the navigator, with his back turned to them. He was somehow eavesdropping even with the headset on and a dozen people jabbering in his ear. “We were determining the TIMS baseline.” TIMS was a system of noise meters on virtually every machine on the boat. Originally designed to aid in sound silencing efforts, they’d learned to use it for maintenance. A baseline for every connected machine was established, and if the noise level went up, it could mean something was going wrong with the machine and someone needed to take a look. They periodically had to run equipment to gather baseline data.
“And that might create phosgene?” asked the captain.
“Yes—we received it in a safety flash last week.”
“I don’t remember that.” Jabo saw him file it away. They both were focused on the grainy green sonar display in front of them, where several bright white bands indicated that they were not alone in their patch of ocean.
From sonar: “Conn, Sonar we have six contacts…”
“We see them,” said the captain. He was touching them on the screen, he stopped on the brightest one. “What do you hear at two-one-zero, the contact designated Sierra Two?”
There was a pause, and then Petty Officer Leer, the sonar supervisor, appeared at the door to control. What would normally be a five second walk took a minute as he unplugged his EAB, walked to them, and replugged in the manifold by the CODC in control, the look of concern evident even through his plastic mask. “These guys just came out of nowhere when we slowed. We’re effectively surrounded by them. Maybe a fishing fleet, maybe squid boats.”
“Distance?”
“I’ll need a TMA maneuver to be sure, but we can hear the screws turning, clear RPM counts—they’re close. Probably within two thousand yards. I thought I could hear chains rattling on one of them.”
“So fishing boats. Very close fishing boats.”
“That’s right.”
“Danny, give them a TMA maneuver.”
“Helm, right full rudder.”
“Right full rudder, aye sir! My rudder is right full.”
“Make your course zero-one-zero.”
“Make my course zero-one-zero, aye sir.” Leer took a deep breath, unplugged his mask, and trotted back to sonar.
The ship began turning immediately, and the white bands shifted radically on the screen. Assuming that the contact’s course and speed remained constant, the ship could change course lik
e this and calculate with a fair degree of accuracy the distance and course of the contacts: it was the art of Target Motion Analysis. Performed skillfully, this would allow them to choose a safe place to arise to periscope depth. But turning also unveiled the section of ocean that had been behind the submarine, its acoustic blind spot, or baffles. As they turned, two more white bands emerged.
“Wonderful,” said the captain.
Leer was back in sonar and on the mike. “Conn Sonar, two new contacts coming out of the baffles. Eight now in all.”
“We see them,” said the captain.
“Sonar, conn, we’ll take two minutes on this leg an then do another maneuver.”
“Aye sir.”
Jabo looked away from the console and saw Lieutenant Maple standing there with a green book of all the ship’s piping diagrams. He was breathing heavy, the mask of his EAB was fogged from perspiration.
“Are you here to solve the mystery of the Freon?” said the captain.
Maple nodded, and opened the book to the page he’d saved. “Right here,” he said. “Freeze seal piping. It’s the only Freon pipe anywhere down there. Yaksic went down there and the valve was wide open. He shut it, but it probably dumped the whole system.”
“Freeze seal,” said Jabo. “Fuck.” He cursed himself for not thinking of it. Whenever maintenance was done on a high pressure water system, the water had to be isolated from the work, lest the workers be sprayed by water that was high pressure, high temperature, or, in some cases, radioactive. Good practice required that the work, and the workers, be protected by at least two closed valves. But sometimes, by virtue of the location or other unusual circumstances, two valves weren’t available. In these cases, flexible tubes of Freon could actually be wrapped around the pipe, and freeze a slug of water in place, a frozen chunk of ice that could seal a system amazingly well—Jabo had seen them perform hydrostatic pressure tests with 1000 psi against freeze seals. So throughout the ship ran purple pipes linked to the central Freon reservoir, in case this kind of work was necessary.