AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

“Okay. Get them here ASAP. Were you able to pull GPS coordinates from this phone? Okay, good! We’ll set up a landing zone.”

I looked over to the mangled mess of a girl and hiding a tear in my eye I said,

“Hurry. Please.”

I hand the phone back to its owner while I hold the unconscious girl’s head in my hands.

The teen with the phone asks, “What did they say?”

I ignored him as I try to take care of the girl.

Suddenly, the thought crosses my mind,

She might die and I don’t even know her name.

A crowd of nine other looky-loos have traversed to us, just to watch this girl die.

Later I got mad thinking,

No one. Not one asked or even tried to help.

But what I really became worried about next were the sulfur fumes.

“We’ve gotta get her away from here. The chopper will be in the air in three minutes!”

Several kids finally helped me pick up the unconscious girl and move her.

After she’s been moved I looked into the crevasse that just took a young man’s life.

I suddenly felt nothing. No worry. No sadness. Nothing. That didn’t last long.

As I looked down the majestic mountain I saw what every climber on Mt. Hood fears, a huge storm is about to hit. As the storm rapidly flies up the side of the mountain the kid’s cell phone rings and the kid answers.

“Ya.”

The kid sounds confused.

“What? We ain’t got no shovels.”

The kid, looking terrified, hands me the phone.

I knew exactly what was happening as I spoke to emergency dispatch.

“You have our GPS co-ordinates, right? You’ll never be able to land here.”

We’ll hunker down right where we are.”

Tell the chopper to stand down.”

Send the CAT and a rescue team.”

Hurry. No one here is prepared for this, and this girl won’t live much longer!”

The dispatcher tried to tell me something positive but I just hung up the phone. We didn’t have much time.

“All right everyone start digging. We’re building snow caves.”

The kid, shaking, asks,

“Have you ever done that?”

I reassured him by saying,

“Oh ya, I took a wilderness survival class in high school. We did all this stuff!”

The kid seems satisfied and starts digging.

Little did he know and I wasn’t about to volunteer that I about froze to death in that high school snow cave 4,000 feet lower and in much warmer weather!

Also, I wasn’t about to share this either:

I nearly died when I was eighteen and fell down the mountain in this very spot!

All I could do was be a good example for some stressed out kids. I started digging with my hands as none of us had a shovel.

After just about one minute at this elevation and not being acclimated I was exhausted.

I look at my hands and they’re bleeding.

As I sat back into the snow and ice, I give a deep and long sigh.

I’d be happy right now knowing we are going to make it off this cold rock, alive. A nice warm Christmas dinner at Denny’s would be a plus.

Two things I hate most in this world:

Being cold and wet.

Looks like I’m gonna be both.

And, as luck would have it, on my iPhone Dust in the Wind by Kansas[4] starts to play.

USS Alaska (SSBN 732) — Arctic Ocean

Tom Watson’s Diary

^{Four days ’til Christmas}

It was just another ordinary day.

Ordinary, if you consider waking up at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean aboard a ballistic missile submarine.

My name: Tom Watson. I’m chief communication’s officer, CCO, aboard the USS Alaska (SSBN 732) but this is my off time, for another hour anyway.

On Ballistic missile submarines working the All Systems Silent (Affectionately nicknamed: ASS duty) no one was doing anything right now.

In the old days, ASS duty was when a sonar officer heard something which sounded like a sub in the water and about the only thing everyone was allowed to do was sit on their ass until the sound was positively identified! Today, we basically watch computers. The computers “listen” for anomalies and we then have to determine if the anomaly is a potential threat or is something else.

Aside from ASS duty and a fool for a commander, I love my job.

Silence is a submarine’s best weapon. For if no one knows you’re there you can destroy the enemy before they even know what hit them!

And the Arctic is a great place to hide.

Under the ice of the North Pole it’s constantly noisy here. Ice creaks and groans as it calves and breaks. It’s almost impossible to hear anything.

Hence, computers do most of the listening.

We’ve programmed the computer systems to listen for specific submarine signatures so we can tell what’s around us.

However, if our computers have no record of that signature then all bets are off and it comes down to a competent sonar technician to recognize the anomaly (More about “competent” later).

The United States and Russian subs are becoming more and more aggressive in searching for and following each other around. So, silence aboard a sub is both our first line for both offense and defense.