Attack of the Seawolf

Morris looked at the interior of the escape trunk, nodded he was satisfied, and called to Lennox to climb into the sphere. As the older commander climbed in, huffing from humping the heavy vest and scuba tanks, Morris shook his head at Black Bart. The toughest part of the operation would be getting this bubble head submariner safely aboard the Tampa. Finally Lennox had climbed into the sphere and sat on the wood bench, precariously balancing the tanks on his back and the weapons in his combat vest, and began to put on his swimmer’s fins, struggling to reach his feet over the bulk of the combat vest and buoyancy compensator.

“Ready, Lennie?” Morris asked Lennox.

“Let’s go,” Lennox managed to say, ignoring the derision in Morris’s voice.

Morris raised a phone handset to his lips.

“Upper level, escape trunk. Shutting lower hatch.” He then unlatched the heavy spring-hinged steel hatch and shut it over the hole leading to the forward-compartment upper level. The light and warmth of the ship were suddenly replaced by the shadows of the interior of the escape trunk, lit only by a single pressure-resistant bulb. Morris rotated the wheel of the hatch, engaging the ring latch.

“Lower hatch shut and dogged,” he reported on the phone.

“Flood and equalize the trunk.”

A rush of loud noise filled the spherical airlock as cold sea water flooded in the bottom of the trunk from a four-inch line and began to lap over the men’s feet.

Lennox grabbed his Draeger mask and put it over his face, testing the regulator for air. He was getting air through the unit but was obviously anxious, the mask of the unit fogging up but not enough to hide his wide eyes.

Morris looked down at the water level rising and looked over at Black Bart in shared amusement at Lennox as the water climbed above the men’s knees and rose to their waists. The air in the space was foggy from the pressurization. Black Bart yawned to clear his ears. Morris clamped his lips shut and blew, relieving his eardrums against the pressure, then yawned.

By then the water was up to his chin, the air foggier and hotter from the compression. As the water filled the sphere to the upper hatch, Morris put on his Draeger mask and blew out the water with his nose, tasting the coppery air from the lung. He then keyed a button on his belt, inflating the buoyancy compensator until it overcame the weight of the vest, then deflated it slightly to avoid being over buoyant — no sense popping to the surface and alerting the Chinese.

Morris peered through the dim light of the murky water to look at the faces of Bart and Lennox. Bart gave him an “okay” sign. Lennox, still wide-eyed, was under control and also returned an “okay” signal.

Morris reached to the bulkhead of the sphere and rotated a switch-handle, cutting the light, and the sphere plunged into blackness. He felt up into the overhead for the wheel to the upper hatch, rotated it, and when the dogs clicked home he pushed upward, letting the spring hinge assist the heavy hatch to the vertical position.

He pushed it until it latched and then swam out of the opening into the lukewarm water of the bay.

Scarcely thirty feet overhead was the surface, their position less than a hundred feet from the supertanker-pier. He felt his way up and out of the chamber, holding onto the hatch and waiting for Black Bart to swim out behind him. The water of the bay was totally black, not so much from being dirty but from the absence of light. The moon would light their way close to the surface and on the boat, but this far down the moon was useless. The swimming would have to be done almost completely by feel.

Morris and Bart felt their way to the trailing edge of the sail, where a recessed lug was set into the sail’s steel. Morris pulled out a line and attached it to the lug, then grabbed Bart and swam with him to a similar lug ten yards aft of the escape-trunk hatch and set flush into the deck. Once the tie-off line was in place Morris swam back into the escape trunk and pulled out Lennox, making sure his buoyancy compensator was filled to lift him up with the combat weights but not so light that he would have to struggle to remain deep. Satisfied, Morris pulled Lennox to the tie-off line and attached his lanyard to the line. No sense having the bubble head float off into the bay.

Morris and Bart pulled the equipment out of the trunk and tied off the bundles to the tie line, then shut the hatch and tapped on the hull. Below, in Seawolf, the first platoon would be draining the trunk, loading their gear and locking out. With the dark water, it would take a half hour just to get everyone out of the ship. Morris frowned inside his Draeger mask — thirty minutes to lock out was not good enough. This operation should have been done with a swimmer-delivery submarine, one of the old missile subs that used the ballistic missile tubes as airlocks and could lock out thirty men in a few minutes. So much for progress.