by Todd Tucker
“It’s too late to do anything about it anyway,” said the Nav.
The commander eyes flew open and he looked at him sharply. “Does anyone know?”
“No one knows.”
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“No one knows!”
“One person knows. And we know from past experience that he is weak. You need to get rid of him before that weakness betrays us, and ruins the plan.”
The navigator was at first confused. But then he realized that the commander was
talking about him.
• • •
Hallorann sat on the edge of his rack and looked through his qualification book for the millionth time. Like most new men, when a page was full, with every signature block signed, he laminated it with a sheet of plastic, a necessity for a book that was carried next to your body for hour after sweaty hour. It was also a measure of progress, and Hallorann’s book only had two un-laminated pages remaining. He had everything about the book memorized, every signature, every question he’d answered to get the signature. He knew which signatures he’d really earned, the areas and systems on the boat that he really understood: sonar and the main ballast system were his best. And he knew which ones were harder for him to understand: the reactor, which still seemed like some kind of black magic to him, a perpetual motion machine that really worked.
But most of all, he knew which signatures he had left to get. He’d made amazing, rapid progress, and it had been noticed. But that also meant that his questioners were less apt to give him a pass on anything. He was supposed to be hot shit, and they all wanted to see it for themselves. And one of the biggest blocks that was left was the diesel.
His confidence was high as he approached the ladder that would take him down into the torpedo room and Machinery One, home of both the diesel and the battery. As he rounded the corner, however, the navigator was hustling toward the same ladder, a grim look on his face. Hallorann hesitated and let the navigator pass, turning to pretend to read the posted Plan of the Day.
He’d hoped to wander down there and find some beneficent A Ganger, bored and looking for something to do, like perhaps spending twenty or thirty minutes talking to Hallorann and signing his qualification book. He knew it was a long shot, especially with A Gang being short handed and always busy. His second choice, if there was no one down there, would be to spend a few minutes alone with the machine, walking through the procedures, getting that much more prepared for his qualification.
But he had no desire to be down there alone with the navigator. The crew liked to make fun of the eccentricities of the other officers, like Hein’s dweebishness, Jabo’s goofy country charm, and Kincaid’s constant reminders to everyone that he had been enlisted once, too. But the feelings about the nav were different, an almost superstitious kind of discomfort. He was weird, and nobody wanted even to talk about him, other than an occasional word of pity for those enlisted men like Flather who worked directly for him. Which is why Hallorann hesitated, deciding to wait a few minutes to see if the nav might come back up quickly before he descended into Machinery One.
After a few minutes he began to feel uncomfortable loitering in the heart of Officers’ Country. He was standing near the CO’s and XO’s staterooms, the Officers’ Study, and the wardroom. Plus, he was ready, eager to get down the ladder, to the diesel and that much closer to his dolphins. He had no reason to be afraid of the nav…did he? He hesitated one more moment in front of the officer’s bulletin board, pretending again to read the plan of the day and the watchbill. Then he turned and climbed down the ladder.
There was a watchstander in the torpedo room, laughing at something on his computer screen, waiting for his watch to end. Hallorann took a few steps forward into Machinery One.
He saw the nav’s feet first. The soles of his back oxfords dangled a few inches off the deck. Hallorann’s eyes went up. The navigator had hung himself from an overhead pipe with his khaki belt. The navigator seemed to have oriented the belt with deliberate precision, centering the Alabama belt buckle right below his Adam’s apple. His face was turning bright purple and his eyes were bulging, looking directly at him. Then the nav blinked and emitted a small croak, and Hallorann knew that, for the moment, he was still alive.
• • •
Duggan got permission from Lieutenant (jg) Brian Morgan, his best friend on board, to enter maneuvering. He’d just completed perhaps the most thorough pre-watch tour in submarine history. He lifted the chain and went inside, aware that for the first time, he was doing so alone, without Morrissey watching over him.
“Gosh!” said Morgan. “I can’t believe it! You’re actually going to start contributing around here.” Morgan was a Mormon, and the fact that he could get through a submarine patrol avoiding both caffeine and profanity was one of the most impressive displays of religious devotion Duggan had ever witnessed.
Duggan nodded and smiled. “I guess so.” He’d spent hundreds of hours in maneuvering on the boat. He’d stood every enlisted watchstation and performed every job in the engine room, from turbidity tests in lower level to analyzing samples of radioactive reactor coolant in the small chemistry lab. And before that, he’d done the exact same thing on a working, land-based reactor in Charleston, South Carolina, as part of his training. And before that…the meat grinder of nuclear power school. But it felt undeniably different, getting ready to take the watch over an operating nuclear reactor on a warship at sea. Nothing could match the terror of actually being the man in charge.
He took note of the maneuvering watchsection, all three men with their backs to him as they dutifully concentrated on their indications: EM1 Patterson at his far right on the electrical plant, ET1 Barnes in the center as reactor operator, and MM2 Tremain on the left, the throttleman. Out in the spaces, he’d seen during his tour, MMC Fissel was the Engineering Watch Supervisor. It was a very experienced, senior group of enlisted men that he was ostensibly supervising on his first watch—Duggan was sure that was not an accident. The XO had probably orchestrated it that way when he scheduled his board, putting the newest EOOW with the saltiest enlisted team. Duggan wasn’t insulted; he was deeply grateful. He started scanning the logs from the previous six, uneventful hours.
“How was your board?” Morgan asked. “Who sat it?”
“The eng, the XO, and Lieutenant Kincaid.”
The reactor operator, Barnes, turned around slightly. “I heard he used to be enlisted, is that true?” They all laughed.
“Kincaid was the hardest,” he said. “He made me go through the complete electrical system, one bus at a time.”
“Every bus?”
“Everything…even the 400 hertz stuff. Really drilled me on it, made me draw it all out. I think that’s when they decided to qualify me, because I actually knew all that shit.”
“Now you can start working on OOD,” said Morgan. “And then…your dolphins. You are definitely on track. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” said Duggan, a little embarrassed at the praise.
He looked up at the three panels, a final check before taking the watch from Morgan. Everything was pegged…they were still at ahead flank and you could almost sense the engine room, and the reactor, begging for mercy. There were a few yellow warning lights scattered across the panels, bearings that were hot, water levels that were low. One red light caught his attention. “The alarm?”
“Engine room upper level ambient. It’s a hundred and ten degrees up there, hotter than heck.”
“From the main engines?”
“The main engines and those high pressure drains. All that steam is really heating things up, the refrigeration units can’t keep up. Especially since we’re down to two, with all that Freon we lost.”
“And water?”
“Everything is going into the reserve feed tanks. We’re probably going to have to suspend showers on your watch. Hope you took one.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well let me get mine in be
fore you shut the valve.”
Duggan looked behind Morgan, at the primary system status board, wondering if there was anything else he should ask.
“You’re ready,” said Morgan. He said it as a friend, not as someone just trying to get out of the box and to dinner.
“You think so?” Duggan laughed. “The watch qual book says I am, so I guess I am.”
“You know something is going to happen right?”
“I’ve heard.” It was an old superstition, one he’d heard many times in the days leading up to his board.
“It always does. Something always happens on your first qualified watch.”
“What happened on yours?”
“I remember,” said Barnes, without turning around. “That was my first watch too. Thought we had carry over. Almost shut the whole thing down.”
“That’s right!” said Morgan. “I forgot you were in here with me. They’d done SGWL maintenance on the previous watch.” He referred to the system that controlled steam generator water levels, pronouncing it as ‘squiggle.’
“They fried one of the flip flops,” said Barnett. “But we didn’t know because it was high range. Didn’t pick up till we increased power on our watch.”
“That’s right. So we get over fifty-percent reactor power, and in here, it just looks like level is going up. In both generators.”
“Doesn’t shoot up…just creeps up,” said Barnett. “Just like it really would in a casualty.”
“But we didn’t have any of the collateral indications,” said Morgan. “No noise in the engine room, nothing. But all I know is what I’m seeing here. I’m afraid water is getting ready to carry over, go right out there and shred both main engines, both turbine generators.” It was a frightening prospect—any moisture travelling into the thin, precisely engineered turbine blades at their high speeds would destroy them, obliterating both propulsion and electricity. Morgan continued.
“Tremain was the throttleman…he had his hands on the cutouts.” He pointed to the big hydraulic valve handles that should shut off all steam to the engine room. “We’d still lose power, still lose propulsion, but we’d save the turbines.”
“Jesus,” said Duggan.
“Right, I know…it would cause a scram, too, don’t forget, automatically. And we were ready to do it. I was ready to give the order. I was two hours into my first watch.”
“Then Chief Flora comes haulin’ ass in here from instrument alley,” says Barnett. “Saying, ‘don’t do it! Don’t do it! We fried the flip flop!’”
“He’d been reviewing the maintenance records and noticed a discrepancy…ran back to the engine room just as we were calling it away, put it all together and stopped us just in time,” said Morgan.
“I still think you should have called it away,” says Barnes. “If you’d been following the procedure…you had the indications. You had no way of knowing. What if Flora had just lost his mind? What if he’d decided to try to kill us all?”
“I guess Flora was right,” said Morgan, grinning. “And so was I. So…I wonder what will happen on your watch?”
“We’ll see,” said Duggan. “Hopefully nothing.” He took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Morgan, I am ready to relieve you.”
“I’m ready to be relieved. Reactor is at 100% power, normal full power line up, reactor plant is in forced circulation, all main coolant pumps on fast. Keep an eye on the main engine bearings, and make sure someone takes McCormick some ice water in upper level, so he doesn’t pass out or puke.”
“Will do. I relieve you.”
“I stand relieved!” Morgan slapped him on the back and started to walk out.
“Ensign Duggan is the Engineering Officer of the watch,” he said. He wrote the time and same words on the EOOW’s log, his first entry as a qualified watch officer.
“Throttleman, aye.”
“Reactor operator, aye.”
“Electrical operator, aye.”
Morgan spoke from the other side of the chain. “Good luck, pal.”
“Thanks,” said Duggan. He watched him walk away, and a few seconds later heard the clank of the engine room watertight door. Morgan was gone, and Duggan felt the full weight and loneliness of being the sole officer in the engine room of a United States nuclear submarine. He reached below his small desk, where copies of all the reactor plant manuals and casualty procedures, thousands of pages of documentation, were kept. He pulled out one of the thicker books, opened it, and began to review the procedures for steam generator water level casualties.
• • •
As Jabo walked aft he was aware of the throbbing in the deck plates beneath his feet—it was the feeling of the boat moving very fast, a harmonic that ran through the very hull caused by both the friction of the cold sea against the ship and by every piece of machinery on the boat running at maximum speed. He’d never been on the boat when they ran so fast for so long. Or, for that matter, so deep for so long, the depth dictated by the submerged operating envelope. The boat was designed to operate at that speed indefinitely, of course, but it was just so unusual, after a few days it was unnerving, a feeling that the boat was frothing like an overworked horse, begging to catch her breath.
As he walked, he thought again about the nav, and all that had happened that patrol. That business about him stabbing himself in the leg; the talking to himself in the officer’s study, all the general weirdness. And now…a missing message hidden in his desk.
Jabo was glad he’d kept the folder with him, lest the message disappear again before he got a chance to talk to the captain. The word ‘evidence’ floated through his mind, and he thought again about another odd place the nav’s name had come up: on Howard’s yellow sheet of paper, where the sailor had been trying to compile evidence (that word again) to exonerate himself.
Jabo arrived in Machinery Two, nodded at Renfro, who was exhausted and trying to stay awake by the oxygen generators.
“You doin’ alright, Renfro?”
“Fuck no, sir. You ever been port and starboard this long? It kinda sucks.”
He pointed to the deck. “Anybody down there?”
Renfro nodded. “No, all that exercise shit is still tagged out. Not that anybody has the energy or the time to work out right now anyway.”
Jabo climbed down the ladder into the lower level.
The treadmill was silent, a red DANGER tag hanging from its switch. Jabo walked over to it, read the tag. Signed by the corpsman, which was unusual, within hours of Howard’s death and the Freon casualty. He checked his watch; the navigator wanted to meet him in the captain’s stateroom in about two minutes. Jabo’s confidence was building, and he didn’t want to get their meeting started by arriving late.
He hesitated at the treadmill, and then on impulse flipped the switch to ON, in violation of the danger tag. All the lights on the console came on, and then the readout began to scroll. WORKOUT COMPLETE….10.0 MILES….WORKOUT COMPLETE…
He stepped off the treadmill and thought it over. Kincaid was right…he was the only person on the boat that would put those kind of miles on the treadmill in one workout. Certainly the navigator hadn’t devoted that kind of time to running in his pristine running shoes. So Kincaid had been the last person to run before the Freon casualty and the treadmill got tagged out. And yet…the navigator had been down there, in his workout gear, right before the Freon casualty. His presence down there had seemed notable enough for Howard to write down in the logs. And now it seemed the navigator hadn’t even exercised while he was there. Which begged the question…what had he been doing in Machinery Two?
Jabo suddenly felt the clipboard in his hands again, and he opened it up to the Freon message. He noticed for the first time that there was another message on the page behind it. He read the subject line: NOTICE TO MARINERS, and got about halfway though the body where a chart number was highlighted: JO90888. Jabo remembered the faded pencil line of their track on the chart, and the slight adjustment the navigator had made for no app
arent reason.
He lunged toward the 4MC against the starboard bulkhead, lifted the handset and shouted into it.
“Rig for collision!” he shouted. “Kincaid, get shallow now!”
He ran forward, as fast as he could, his feet pounding heavily on the lower level deck plates. He now understood why the navigator had wanted him to wait ten minutes.
• • •
Duggan was stooped over, returning the casualty procedures to their place beneath his desk, when the amplified voice of Jabo came across the 4MC speaker behind him.
“RIG FOR COLLISION! KINCAID, GET SHALLOW NOW!”
Duggan jumped to his feet, all the watchstanders sat straight in their chairs, their eyes alert, scanning their panels. He turned slightly to his right, to an analog depth gage. He felt a slight up angle in his feet, and the ship’s depth, at that speed, responded quickly. The needle began to move counter-clockwise as the ship drove upwards. Duggan waited for something to happen.
The ship collided with an underwater mountain, and everything went dark.
Book Three: Disaster At Sea
The seamount that Alabama struck was shaped like a tree stump, a flat-topped ocean floor feature called a guyot. Made out of dark brown volcanic basalt that had hardened into place a million years before, it was slightly over 10,000 feet high, but it was atop and in the center of a much larger, much rounder feature that rose from the sea floor. It had all only recently been identified by oceanographers, mapped in precise detail by the oceanographic research vessel White Holly three weeks before the collision. White Holly had meticulously mapped the guyot and transmitted the results to the NOAA, which in turn transmitted the information to the mariners of the world so they might update their charts. With the exception of the precisely aimed beams of sound from the White Holly’s fathometers, no part of the mount had ever been touched by man until the Alabama crashed into it, eighteen thousand tons of steel travelling faster than twenty knots.
Thanks to Jabo’s 4MC announcement, and Kincaid’s quick reaction to it, the ship had achieved a slight up angle and some slight upward momentum, which reduced fractionally the total amount of force transmitted through the hull. The ship struck the seamount with its front, port side.