Collapse Depth

by Todd Tucker

  Cindy turned her head so he could kiss her cheek. She resumed her conversation with her sister before Soldato was gone, unshaken by his sudden departure. She’d been a navy wife too long to ever assume a full meal together was a guarantee.

  He sped to the gate where the protestors and added security were slowing him down. He tried hard to control his temper at the two disparate groups that were holding him up, the earnest Marines with their clipboards and inspection mirrors, and the protestors with their glazed eyes, sandals, and smudged pamphlets. He declined to accept one when they came to his window. He actually had a lot in common with the protestors, it occurred to him. Like the protestors, Mario had spent hours worrying about the US, China, and Taiwan. But his concerns at the moment were far more immediate.

  He finally made it to the gate and zipped through before the Marine had even lowered his salute. Down Trigger Road and to the pier, he ran up the stairs at squadron headquarters where Commander Bushbaum was standing by his desk with the message. He handed it to him without a word, knowing better than to offer an interpretation before the commodore had read it. Soldato imagined the scene in control as it was typed by the radiomen, vetted by the communicator, and then hurriedly approved by the captain and transmitted. He fought back the urge again to think that none of this would have happened had he still been in charge.

  SAFETY FLASH – LARGE AMTS FREON LOST. SOME TRANSFORMATION TO PHOSGENE DUE TO THERMAL CONTACT WITH SCRUBBERS. ONE DEAD NO INJURIES. SIX HOURS TO VENTILATE INTO SPEC MAKING UP TRACK NOW ESTIMATE ON TIME ARRIVAL TO PAPA ZULU. INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY IN CONJUNCTION WITH PREVIOUS FLASH INCIDENT.

  He dropped the message to his desk and rubbed his temples. Bushbaum took this as a signal that it was time for him to speak.

  “I guess the good news is that they still think they can make it to Taiwan in time.”

  “I know every man on that crew,” Soldato snapped. “Including the dead one.” He let the reproach hang in the air.

  “Sorry sir…I didn’t mean…”

  Soldato waved his hand in a way that said…that was a stupid fucking thing to say, but we’ve got more important shit to worry about at the moment. “After six hours at PD fighting the casualty…in EAB’s for Christ sake….they still might make it.”

  “And it’s a good thing,” offered Bushbaum cautiously. “The CNO’s office is asking for updates almost hourly. His number two called me the other day to tell me that a White House speechwriter was working on something, wanted some facts and figures about Alabama. He thought POTUS might actually be there in Taiwan for the weapon transfer.” Bushbaum was an absolutely naked careerist, the reason he’d been able to make 0-5 at the age of thirty. He couldn’t keep the glee out of his voice at being just two degrees removed from the Commander in Chief.

  Soldato looked back down at the message and tried to read into it what he could. A massive Freon leak, phosgene gas, a dead sailor. Six hours to replace all the bad air with good: a shit ton of Freon. Soldato tried to imagine how that much could be dumped, and failed to come up with a scenario. He imagined large amounts of food were turning bad inside the coolers of the Alabama. At the speeds they would be travelling, they wouldn’t be able to TDU it fast enough. They might run out of food. Odor would become an issue, although it was the least of the issues in his mind.

  “Is Navships aware of this Freon-to-Phosgene conversion?”

  “They knew there was a theoretical concern.”

  “More than theoretical now, I guess.”

  “They’re revaluating the advantages of the new refrigerant.”

  Soldato had to wait a moment again for his anger to subside at that galactic fuck up by Navships, and then looked back down at the message. “Revaluating,” he said. “I’ll fucking bet. If I had more time, I’d track down that cocksucker EDO who recommended this change.”

  “Did you also notice, ‘In conjunction with the previous incident.’”

  “The dryer fire.”

  “Right. That caught my eye too,” said Bushbaum.

  It bothered Soldato, too, although he couldn’t put his finger on why. Words were like gold in a message like that, you didn’t include them unless you absolutely had too. These weren’t letters home, they were the first piece of paper in a stack that would grow into a mountain of documentation. They would be studied for months, possible even years, as the bureaucracy went to work and tried to figure out who to blame. Especially with a sailor dead…the incident would employ an army of investigators and desk jockeys for months to come. There was an art to writing messages like that, to include every essential fact and not one thing more.

  “Why mention that the two investigations are in “in conjunction?”“

  Bushbaum shrugged. “They’re being done by the same guy?”

  “Probably.”

  “But why mention that?”

  “Maybe they think the two incidents have a common cause.”

  Bushbaum stepped back. “What in the hell could be the common cause of a dryer fire and a Freon dump?”

  Soldato hesitated. “A saboteur.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. You’re too young to remember, but when I first got in the navy, during Vietnam, it was a real concern. They called it “Stop our Ship,” or SOS. Set fires, threw wrenches into reduction gears, sailors refusing to show up, shit like that.”

  “On submarines?”

  “No, it was mostly those pussies on carriers.”

  “But you think it might be politically motivated? Because of the Taiwan mission?”

  Soldato shook his head. “I doubt it, those orders are secret to the crew, only the officers know.”

  “You think maybe an officer…”

  “No,” said Soldato, cutting him off. But the thought chilled him. The boat’s equipment had been designed by some of the most brilliant engineers in the world. But none of that mattered without the right men in charge, from the newest enlisted man all the way to the captain, with whom all the responsibility ended up. Admiral Rickover, the patron saint of naval nuclear propulsion, had personally interviewed every officer in the program, knowing that strong men would be the fleet’s greatest asset. And if somehow the wrong guy made it into the wardroom of a nuclear submarine…

  “I’m glad they didn’t put anything about sabotage in the message…we’d have NIS banging down our door right now.”

  “If that’s what it is, they’ll need to figure out for themselves what’s going on inside the Alabama. The NIS can’t help them where they are now.”

  Bushbaum walked to a large map on the wall and took note of the approximate position of the Alabama. “We’ll need to figure out how to let the families of the crew know about the death when the boat hits Taiwan. At least we’ve got a week to figure that out.”

  “They’ll find out before then,” said the captain with a sigh. “They always do.”

  • • •

  Here’s how they found out.

  Lieutenant John Knight was Engineering Duty Officer who had recommended the change to the new refrigerant—he was the cocksucker EDO that Captain Soldato had fantasized about finding and beating. He was a Naval Academy graduate who’d dreamed of being a submarine officer himself, but at his pre-commissioning physical, he’d learned to his shock that he was colorblind. Submarine officers need to be able to distinguish the red and the green of port and starboard running lights from the periscope; colorblindness was a disqualifying disability. Knight became an EDO because it was as close as he could get to being on a submarine.

  He was in charge of a group of engineers, both civilian and military, who were charged with understanding every facet of the submarine fleet’s air conditioning and refrigeration plants. The switch to a new refrigerant, designated R-118, was the result of an exhaustive two year-long study that he and his team had conducted. They’d approved the new Freon because it was more stable in transport, it was more efficient within refrigeration machinery, and yes…it was che
aper. And many different varieties of Freon can, theoretically, break down into other possibly dangerous by-products under various conditions. But the studies they’d done, in conjunction with the manufacturer, had indicated that the amount of R-118 and the amount of heat necessary to cause the transformation into Phosgene were enormous. Like good engineers, they’d decided that the advantages of the change outweighed the potential risks. And, in reading that terse message from the Alabama, Knight realized that they’d made a disastrous miscalculation.

  He knew that there would be possibly career-ending consequences for his mistake, but decided quickly that, while he was still in a position to do something about it, he would make sure that no other boat suffered from his error. Rather than try to cover his ass by arguing that R-118 was still safe, or that the men of the Alabama must somehow be at fault for the casualty, Knight quickly drafted an emergency safety flash message, explained it to his chain of command, and had it approved and transmitted. By midnight, R-118 was banned from US submarines.

  Knight then worked to prepare for a hastily scheduled 0800 meeting with Admiral Patrick Cheever, NAVSEA-08, the man charged with all the engineering on all the navy’s nuclear submarines, the heir to Rickover’s throne. Banning R-118 had been easy; the details would be hard, and the details were what Knight worked on all night. The meeting was convened precisely on time with Cheever at the head of a table crowded with officers, every one of whom outranked Knight. It was held in a spartan conference room dominated by a scarred table and mismatched chairs; all of Naval Reactors took pride in their no-frills environs. It was yet another vestige of the reign of Admiral Rickover, who bragged that he had designed the Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, from an office that was a converted women’s restroom.

  Despite the array of heavy brass that stared back at him. Knight was so exhausted, and so determined to right any wrong that led to a tragedy, that he was beyond intimidation. He was also certain that however badly he might have fucked up, no one else in the world understood the refrigeration plants of US submarines better than he. He began his brief.

  “There are three groups of submarines to consider,” he explained. “The first and largest group is those still using the old refrigerant, R-114. They are obviously fine, and just need to cancel any plans they had for switching to R-118.” He allowed his audience to view a large list of submarines on the screen, then clicked his mouse and called up the next slide.

  “The second group consists of those boats currently at sea that have already switched to R-118. There are only two, both out of Bangor.”

  “Coincidence?” asked the Admiral. It was the first word he’d spoken.

  “No sir. We decided to achieve the modification one squadron at a time, and Trident submarines, with their large refrigeration capacity, were made the top priority. The two boats are the Alabama and the Florida. I recommend we recall them both immediately.”

  “The Alabama will not be recalled,” said the admiral. Everyone waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. As an engineering duty officer, Knight was once again intrigued by the secretive missions of the boats that he devoted his life to, even though they stubbornly refused to allow him, as an engineering duty officer, to know their mysteries.

  “Well sir, there’s probably very little R-118 left onboard the Alabama anyway.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he snapped. “She’s staying at sea. The Florida we can discuss.” With that the most spirited debate of the morning began. Some argued that that while the incident on Alabama had been a disaster, it was probably a fluke, and that Florida could safely complete her patrol and switch out refrigerants in a normal refit. Others argued that now that disaster had struck, they had no choice but to correct the situation immediately: the position Knight advocated. Florida had only been at sea three days, was not yet alert, and with a long patrol ahead of them why take that chance? After ten minutes of arguments and counter-arguments, all heads turned to the admiral.

  “Bring her in,” he said. There was no uncertainty in his voice, and Knight watched the officers who had advocated leaving Florida at sea squirm a little in their seats.

  It was an unusual step, recalling a boat like that, and would require logistical mountains to be moved, but suddenly everyone agreed with the admiral that it was necessary and the calls were made to squadron and the machinery began to move to get Florida back to Bangor and get its new refrigerant replaced with the old. It was settled. “There is one other boat to consider,” said Knight.

  “Enlighten us, lieutenant.”

  “Alaska, sir. Also in Bangor. Just completed the modification to R-118 in refit, but she’s sitting at the Delta Pier.” Knight himself had been on the phone with Alaska’s engineer just days before discussing the change and how smoothly the operation had gone.

  “Well that’s easy,” said the admiral. “Tell them to switch back.”

  A message was composed and hurriedly sent to Squadron 17.

  Lieutenant Dean Hysong was preparing for his last patrol on Alaska. He had decided to stay in the Navy, and had orders to the ROTC unit at Creighton, where he hoped to get an MBA on the navy’s tab during his two-year shore tour. As the most experienced junior officer in the wardroom, he was the DCA, or Damage Control Assistant, in charge of A-Gang. The refit was in its final days, and he was eager to get home, eager to be with his wife as much as he could. Of course, every man longed to be with his wife in those final days, but Dee Dee was unusually hot, unusually energetic, and unusually demanding in bed. It had been six days since he’d touched her, which was torture. But even worse, he knew soon he’d be gone for one hundred days or more, and every minute he spent on the boat pierside, while his wife waited for him at home, passing the time with crunches and leg lifts, seemed a crime against nature.

  But Dean was happy because that night it seemed he might actually get off the boat in time to shower at home, screw his wife, and eat dinner. In that order.

  He checked in a final time with the engineer, not quite saying he was getting ready to leave, but verifying that there was nothing preventing him from going home, no urgent problems demanding his attention. He skulked by the XO’s stateroom, to control, and actually had one hand on the ladder to freedom when the radioman spotted him. “Lieutenant Hysong?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “You might want to see this,” he said, arm extended with a clipboard.

  “No. I really don’t.”

  The radioman nodded sympathetically, and Hysong took it from him. He read it with increasing disbelief.

  “They can’t fucking be serious.”

  “Priority one, it says. Supposed to start tomorrow. The Freon truck is already on the pier.”

  Hysong’s head was spinning. The message called for a brief, but everyone, including his chief, had already gone home with roughly the same plans he had. But their wives weren’t freaking aerobics instructors. And they had just completed the incredibly tedious, time-consuming operation of switching out every ounce of refrigerant. Now the navy wanted them to switch back.

  “I’m not doing it. Fuck’em. Retards.”

  “Says safety issue,” said the radioman.

  “Fuck safety.”

  “Look at the bottom,” he said.

  “Oh fuck, is there something else?” He flipped over to the second page. What he saw there was even weirder.

  “Holy shit. They’re calling back the Florida?”

  “That’s what it says. They’re going to tie up outboard of us and make the same switch.”

  Dean dropped the message to his side and thought that over. Calling a boat back from patrol was extremely odd…he’d only seen it a couple of times in five years. The whole operation was odd, and reeked of bureaucratic panic. He tried to remember a message they’d gotten a few days earlier, some kind of warning they’d received about R-118. To achieve this kind of rapid motion, to actually turn a boat around at sea and bring it back to the pier, one had to overcome massive amounts
of inertia, and it could usually only be achieved by disaster.

  Suddenly he was certain that someone had been killed.

  And he knew, from the pre-evolution briefs, that only three boats had made the change: Alaska, Florida, and Alabama. And since nothing had happened on Alaska, he knew the fatality had to have happened on one of the other two. His gut told him it was the Florida. They were bringing her back in, after all, no word about the Alabama. And, as much as he hated to admit it, the Alabama was the tightest ship in the squadron, always at the top of every ranking. He didn’t picture her at the center of this kind of fuck up.

  He went topside and walked to the pier to call home, before he’d even shown the message to the engineer or the captain, because he knew that once the word was out he wouldn’t have a spare second.

  “Hello?” she said. He could hear a lilt in her voice. She thought he was calling to say that he was on his way home.

  “I’m stuck here,” he said.

  “How long?” she said without trying to hide her disappointment or disgust. He sighed. “Probably all night. I’ll be lucky if I’m home for dinner tomorrow.” “Okay,” she said, knowing better than to ask why. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  • • •

  Hysong worked all night preparing the work plan, and by the morning he was ready to brief all the players. As they scrambled to prepare, everyone was asking the same question: What the fuck? Hysong had his theory, that someone had been killed on either Florida or Alabama, but kept it to himself. After he completed his 0900 briefing in the wardroom, the squadron EDO told them that Florida would soon be tying up outboard of them, and would actually get to make the change first—the priority was to get her back to sea as quickly as possible. This gave Hysong a few minutes to catch his breath. He grabbed a cup of coffee and went topside to watch Florida pull in.

  It was a beautiful, crisp morning, the type of morning that made the coffee taste better, and made him mourn the sunshine and fresh air that he was about to be locked away from for months. Florida pulled along their port side head to tail, and was nudged gently into place by the civilian tug the Mitchell Hebert. As soon as a gangplank was placed across, Hysong walked over and found Rick Curtis, their DCA. They looked at each other with grim, appraising smiles.