Collapse Depth

by Todd Tucker

  He’d been at his desk for almost eight hours when Commander Bushbaum knocked and stuck his head in the door. “Sir, the Navajo is in visual contact with Alabama.”

  Despite the fact that he’d been reading radio transmissions from the boat for hours, that made him feel good, a shot of optimism, the thought that of real human eyes seeing the ship on the ocean. “What do they see?”

  Bushbaum shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary, but probably most of the damage is below the waterline. These guys are skimmers anyway, not sure they would know what they were looking at if something was wrong.”

  “True,” said the Captain. He wished he was out there, on the bow of the Navajo, speeding toward his old boat with salt spray soaking through his uniform.

  “The two OODs are communicating with each other on bridge-to-bridge, sounds like the Alabama is making about eight knots.”

  Soldato looked up at that “They’re talking on VHF?”

  “Yes,” said Bushbaum, a little startled by the strength of Soldato’s reaction. “They’re no longer on alert, and they’re using call signs anyway, so it’s acceptable.”

  “Can we hear them?”

  “Yes,” said Bushbaum. “It’s being patched through in Group Nine’s radio room….I was just down there.”

  Soldato stood and darted past Bushbaum, who followed him. They took the drab Navy van in front of the pier up to Group Nine, whose headquarters looked as nondescript as a small insurance agency, or a public library built sometime in the late seventies. Only the prickly array of exotic radio antennas atop the roof gave away the fact that interesting things might occur inside.

  Soldato flashed his ID at the guard with Bushbaum right behind him and with an electronic buzz at the inner door they were allowed inside. They descended down a narrow staircase into the part of the building that was reinforced and “survivable,” built to withstand a nuclear blast for at least a moment, so they could transmit to the boats of Group Nine the orders to launch their missiles and fight a nuclear war. The space was small, windowless, and packed with electronics. Perhaps not intentionally, it was exceedingly reminiscent of being on a submarine. The duty radioman nodded briefly as the two men entered. Soldato was surprised that he knew him: RM1 Hanson, he’d been a striker onboard Skipjack. He was one of those guys you knew would do alright, and he was a natural for the Group Nine billet: a kid confident enough in his abilities that he wouldn’t mind admirals and captains constantly looking over his shoulder.

  “You’ve got 731 on bridge-to-bridge?” said Soldato.

  “Yes sir,” said Hanson. He was wearing a working uniform and sat in front of an actual operational radio console, and it made Soldato’s spirits soar again, just to be in the room with someone who was actually accomplishing something, doing real work. “We’re not listening to it now, because we have all these priority one messages we’re sending back and forth, modifying patrol orders and alerting the other boats…”

  “I understand,” said Soldato. “But can you patch it in for me? I need to hear it.”

  “They’re really not saying much now, sir,” said Hanson. “Once the two OOD’s made contact, they didn’t have much to say to each other. And we can’t talk to them, we’re just patched through.”

  “I understand,” said Soldato again.

  Hanson shrugged, and looked down at his messages, which were becoming increasingly lengthy and administrative. As a radioman, he liked hearing the scratchy voices of men’s voices being carried on the airwaves too…so if the commodore wanted to hear it, who was he to say no?

  He stood and leaned toward a controller that was over his main computer monitor, and flipped a toggle switch. Immediately the white noise of static came through a speaker behind them. He adjusted another switch, and the static quieted slightly, replaced by an occasional crackle that told them they were tuned to a radio signal. Soldato turned and found the speaker by his shoulder, turned a knob to raise the volume.

  “That’s it,” said Hansen. “They’re not saying anything right now.”

  They waited, until finally a voice came through.

  Sturgeon, this is steelhead, do you copy?

  “Sturgeon is Alabama,” said Hanson. He pointed to the frayed book of NATO call signs on his desk. “Steelhead is the Navajo.”

  After a pause…Sturgeon, this is steelhead, do you copy?

  Soldato held his breath awaiting a response. Even though he too was eager to hear something from the submarine, he scowled at the impatient tone of the second request from that skimmer officer on Navajo: my God, do you know what they’ve been through? What they must still be combating on their end? Give him a fucking second.

  Finally, a response. Steelhead this is sturgeon, go ahead. But the sound was garbled, hard to hear, and trailed off.

  Sturgeon, this is steelhead, are you changing course?

  There was a long pause, and then the officer of the deck of the Alabama replied: Steelhead this is sturgeon, we are turning to port to heading zero-seven-zero, request you stay on station, over.

  This time, the voice of the officer of the deck came in remarkably clear, despite the many miles that separated them. And there was no mistaking in it a mild Tennessee twang.

  “Thank you Hanson,” said Soldato, turning toward the steps. Bushbaum reflexively turned to follow him, a look of confusion still on his face. “You wait here,” said Soldato. “Meet me in the van in ten minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Bushbaum, looking a little stung, a hint of reproach behind his eyes. He didn’t know what Soldato was doing, but it was something he didn’t want his Chief of Staff to hear.

  And Soldato didn’t give a shit.

  He strode out of Group Nine into the van, sat in the passenger seat, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed a number that he had stored.

  “Hello?” Angi picked up before the first ring was over, her voice weak with worry. He could hear a news station in the background. She was waiting for CNN to tell her what the Navy wouldn’t.

  “Angi, this is Mario. I can’t tell you anything else, but…Danny is fine.”

  • • •

  The wounded submarine limped eastward on the surface, crippled but operating under her own power. For a time the Navy had two sea-going tugs standing by, but towing was a humiliation the proud boat was able to avoid.

  The XO took over the navigator’s duties, and spent almost all his time in Control. While the navigator had been crushed by his responsibilities, the XO was energized. With a sharpened pencil tucked behind his ear, he studied the chart like a general looking for weaknesses in an enemy position. Between fixes and DRs, he updated the charts, coached the JOs on the conn, and told dirty stories about the glory days of Subic Bay and Olongapo.

  • • •

  Jabo was the last one into the Officers’ Study, having just left the watch. The captain and Chief Flora were there waiting to begin the qualification board.

  As dictated by tradition, Hallorann had supplied the room with snacks and beverages; the coffee pot was full, and a pitcher of coke sat in the middle of the table. A mixing bowl full of Hershey’s Kisses was being passed around. Jabo was handed Hallorann’s battered yellow qualification book to review for completeness. He flipped through it, saw signatures from the men he knew so well in every blank. He stopped at one page and felt a pang seeing the signature JUONI, TM1, one of their dead.

  Hallorann stood at the front, in a neatly pressed poopie suit, dry erase marker in hand. As Jabo took his seat, the captain said, “Ok, chief, why don’t you start us off?”

  Flora cleared his throat. “Diagram our ship’s sonar system.”

  Jabo fought back a chuckle. It was a very hard question…and Hallorann, when he saw that a nuke chief was on his board, had probably boned up on all the engine room stuff. But if he got through this…

  Hallorann paused, and then turned to the board. He drew a crude approximation of the spherical array, and then the towed array. He took a red mark
er and drew acoustic beams emanating from it. When the drawing was complete, he turned and began to explain it to them.

  Jabo’s mind wandered as he spoke; he could tell immediately that Hallorann knew the system passably well. Better than that—he seemed to actually understand what he was saying, and wasn’t just repeating back by rote something that he’d read. Jabo, and everyone else on the boat, already knew Hallorann was smart. They also knew that he worked his ass off. The only thing he had left to prove during the board was that he could function under pressure. And this, too, was something Jabo already knew, he’d seen Hallorann perform under much greater pressure than this, in the heat of a fire and the cold of nearly freezing ocean water pouring in under such pressure that the noise alone was a hazard.

  “Any follow up questions?” said the captain when Hallorann paused. “Lieutenant Jabo?”

  “What’s the status of the spherical array right now?” said Jabo.

  Hallorann hesitated. “It’s out of commission, sir.”

  They all chuckled at that. “That’s one way to put it,” said Jabo.

  “Ok,” said the captain. “Lieutenant, I believe it’s your turn to ask young Hallorann a question.

  Jabo paused. He was really pulling for the kid, wanted to ask him something hard enough that it would impress the captain, but not so hard that he would stumble and drop the ball. He thought about all that Hallorann might know, the things he’d learned at sea.

  “Hallorann, can you explain how the torpedo room flood control works?”

  Hallorann turned, erased the board, and started drawing a line diagram of the system.

  • • •

  Twenty-four hours before Alabama was due to pull in to Pearl Harbor, a tug pulled alongside to make a brief exchange. From the tug came three boxes of critical spare parts, a bright orange bag of mail, and some fresh food that the chop, in a small act of heroism, had somehow managed to requisition: fresh lettuce, tomatoes, apples, oranges, and real milk. The last container of milk was followed by a lieutenant commander in dress whites. Jabo waited for him at the bottom of the forward LET as the XO had requested him to do; he was Lieutenant Commander Carr of the Naval Investigative Service.

  “Lieutenant Jabo, sir,” he said, feeling sloppy in his poopie suit.

  He extended his hand. “Lieutenant Commander Carr. Nice to meet you lieutenant.”

  Jabo led him to the navigator’s stateroom.

  He looked it over. Flipped through the copy of Rig for Dive that was still on his rack. The messages he’d hidden. Nodded his head thoughtfully. He seemed more down to earth than the few other NIS agents Jabo had met before; he suspected based on his age and that air of confidence that he was prior enlisted. He also suspected that the NIS had probably sent one of their top men to get the initial groundwork done. He was a good listener, barely saying a word as Jabo told the whole story, from the leg stabbing before their departure to seeing the Nav’s dead body in Machinery One. He found himself recalling scenes he’d almost forgotten, like the time he’d heard the Nav talking to himself in the Officers’ Study. Jabo wondered if he was getting too comfortable, and forced himself to stop.

  “Well,” said the commander. “I’m just here to do the preliminaries. There’s never been a case like this—sabotage on a nuclear submarine. So the final report will be signed by someone several pay grades above me.”

  “But what do you think?” said Jabo. He found himself wanting answers.

  “I think…based on my initial investigation…that you’re navigator was fucking nuts.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Lieutenant, you’ve been in the Navy long enough to know what’s coming next. Something this major…there will have to be consequences. Maybe someone could have seen this coming. Maybe there were enough signs…” He jabbed his finger into his leg with a stabbing motion.

  There was a rap at the door…the yeoman. Danny wondered how long he’d been standing there. He had a courtier’s aptitude for eavesdropping.

  “Any outgoing mail, lieutenant?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “Are you sure? The bag is getting ready to go across and the captain specifically told me to ask you.”

  Danny thought for a moment, wondering what that could mean. He’d already written a short note to Angi and put it in the bag, but that’s nothing the Captain would take an interest in. Then he remembered, the letter that had passed between them on their first day at sea.

  “No,” he said. “No letter from me.”

  The yeoman nodded and walked back to his office to seal the outgoing mail bag.

  “Lieutenant, let’s go take a look at the body,” said Carr. “And then maybe you can help me find a cup of coffee.”

  “Aye sir,” said Jabo, backing out of the stateroom.

  • • •

  Angi flew to Hawaii with a group of the other wives to meet the boat. During their layover in Los Angeles, she bought a newspaper where for the first time, she saw a story about the events onboard the USS Alabama: the vaguest possible description of an incident at sea, the Navy’s vaguest possible confirmation of fatalities, and a boilerplate description of a ballistic missile submarine. Captain Shields was mentioned by name, his official photograph positioned over a stock photo of a submarine, a Los Angeles class submarine that Angi could tell was misidentified as a Trident. The dead men were not named, but their families had been notified, and Angi thought it probably wouldn’t be long before the world knew. While waiting to board in LA, a first: a grandmotherly passenger recognized that she was pregnant, and put her hand on Angi’s belly.

  During the long flight, Angi read through the rest of the paper, including an article on page four about the cooling off of tensions between Taiwan and China. The prime minister of Taiwan had made some conciliatory remarks toward the mainland leadership, and shortly after the Chinese had made a remarkable apology and agreed to pay damages to the shipping companies and the families of the dead crewmen of Ever Able. That article finished with a series of numbers about the staggering importance of China in the world economy.

  The Alabama was scheduled to go into the floating drydock in the shipyard but would pull in first to the pier at Ford Island, a tiny dot of land in the middle of Pearl Harbor. By the time they got there, the tropical sun was low. The weather was, of course, beautiful. Just off the pier was the twisted, rusty wreckage of the USS Utah, sunk on December 7, 1941. Angi was surprised to learn that in addition to the famous Arizona memorial, just on the other side of Ford Island, there were uncelebrated reminders of the Japanese sneak attack everywhere in Pearl Harbor. Ford Island, in particular, isolated from the rest of Oahu, seemed frozen in time, as if they might at any moment hear the buzz of descending Japanese Zeros. The place was so fundamentally beautiful, Angi could see how a sneak attack had succeeded. It would be easy to be lulled by a place like this, deceived into a sense that nothing could ever go wrong.

  She stood waiting at the small Utah memorial with a group of four other wives, including the captain’s wife and Cindy Soldato, and read and re-read the plaque a dozen times while they waited:

  NEAR THIS SPOT, AT BERTH FOX 11

  ON THE MORNING OF 7 DECEMBER 1941,

  THE USS UTAH WAS STRUCK ON THE PORTSIDE

  WITH WHAT IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN

  THREE AERIAL TORPEDOES AND WAS SUNK.

  SHE WAS SUBSEQUENTLY ROLLED OVER

  TO CLEAR THE CHANNEL BUT WAS

  LEFT ON THE BOTTOM.

  At first they were the only people there. As a group, they tried to fight off the fear that the ship’s plans had been changed, perhaps they were pulling into a different berth, or directly into the drydock. None of them expected the Navy to tell them anything if such a change were ordered.

  Within an hour, though, two salty looking bosun’s mates arrived on the scene, and began pulling serious looking ropes from a line locker on the pier, a sight that set Angi’s heart soaring. One of them had a black radio clipped to his belt, a
nd Angi

  listened closely to the crackling communications on it, alert for any mention that would mean anything to her; the name of the ship, Danny’s voice, anything of the kind.

  She heard a whistle from sea before she saw anything.

  “There they are,” said Cindy, pointing.

  Angi could see them then, a single dot on the horizon that soon grew. She saw that there were tugs on either side of the submarine, their jaunty profiles contrasting with the round, black mysteriousness of the submarine’s hull.

  A jeep suddenly pulled up behind them on the pier, one captain driving another captain. The driver was Mario Soldato. Angi didn’t know the other one, but she thought she might have seen him around base, at some function or another. He wore gold dolphins and a command pin. She presumed he was Shields’ relief. Or, perhaps, Soldato’s relief. While the Alabama had survived catastrophe, Angi knew that many careers would not.

  “Can you see them?” said Mario.

  Angi nodded and Cindy stepped to her side. They got out of the jeep and walked to the Utah memorial with them to get a better view. Both captains, Angi saw, had binoculars.

  After taking a look and focusing his, Soldato handed them to Angi. “Take a look?”

  She lifted them to her eyes, taking a moment to find the Alabama in the view. Danny was on the bridge.

  He was serious, but happy, she could see. He was pointing toward them with a massively bandaged hand. She wondered if he’d already spotted them, and recognized her the same way she had instantly recognized him. Without lowering her binoculars, she lifted her left hand and waved.

  His smile broadening, he lifted his bandaged hand and waved back.

  Angi put the binoculars down. With her free hand, she verified again that in her pocket was the ultrasound photo of their unborn baby girl.