Attack of the Seawolf

The throttle man sweated as he watched the steam pressure gages on the astern turbine steam boxes, heard the Engineroom Supervisor shouting out “more steam” and “less steam” trying to stop the tons of steel spinning a hundred feet aft. As the attempt to stop the shaft entered its second half minute the throttle man wondered why he was stopping the shaft. There could only be two reasons: either there had been a complete loss of the main lube oil system … or there was a man overboard.

The MLO system was fine, which meant that if he failed to stop the shaft, he could be grinding somebody to a bloody pulp … “More steam!” the ERS called. The throttle man puffed the astern turbines one last time.

“Shaft is stopped, lock the shaft,” the ERS shouted.

After a moment, the throttle man heard the report:

“Shaft is locked.”

He shut the throttle wheel and sat heavily in his seat, the sweat pouring over his face, wondering if he had been in time.

* * *

Jack Morris shut his eyes as the screw approached, its vortex roaring in his ears as the blades spun in the dark water. When the screw hit him, the blades were frozen in the water. The ship was still moving from its own momentum, but the screw had stopped. He was pinned against three curved, polished brass scimitar blades.

It was only after being trapped against the screw by the water flow for another minute that Morris realized he had been underwater for maybe three full minutes.

He had survived only because his lungs were so used to diving. Although he was too disciplined an underwater swimmer to thrash for air and gulp water, he well knew that in another ninety seconds or so he would be faint from lack of oxygen, and thirty seconds after that he would pass out. He reached down to his waist to feel for the lanyard hook but couldn’t find it. He reached around to the small of his back, remembering that the lanyard’s shock absorber was hooked onto a metal loop in his back — rigged that way so that if it pulled him hard his momentum would bend him rather than break his back as it surely would if he had worn it in front. As he searched for the lanyard, he felt his ears pop. A moment later they popped again.

This meant the submarine was sinking, submerging with him wired to the screw by his goddamned lanyard.

He gave up trying to reach the back hook, pinned as he was to the screw, and began to try to undo the straps of the safety harness. If he could escape the harness it wouldn’t matter what the lanyard was doing.

As he pulled on the straps of the harness his ears popped again. His body longed for air, even to the point of tempting him to breathe water. He struggled against the harness, loosening one leg strap but realizing he had one more leg strap, a chest strap and two arm straps to go.

Never make it, he thought as he struggled against the straps. He began to suffocate, his body beginning to react to his brain stem alone, ignoring the higher levels of his mind. He was thrashing hard, left and right, the convulsions beyond his control, like a fish pulled from the water on a hook. He had one clear thought … remembering that when he instructed recruits in Survival Swimming School he used to call the near-drowning panic “seeing God.”

And Jack Morris was about to see God.

* * *

The ship settled into the water faster than Lube Oil Vaughn would have thought. The main ballast tanks were flooded, thanks to the SEAL commander, and the shaft of the screw was stopped and locked. But now that the ship was heavy, with no speed, it had begun to sink. The only thing keeping her sail above water had been the bow planes and stern planes the water flowing over them giving the control surfaces enough lift to be able to “fly” the ship up over the surface. With the screw stopped, she was losing the lift, like an airplane trying to take off with failing engines.

Vaughn couldn’t even emergency blow back to raise the ship back to the surface — the vents were jammed open and the EMBT blow system had no more highpressure air left.

The water came up to the lip of the sail and began to flow over it, running down to the deck of the bridge and down the access trunk. Vaughn could hear the shouting from the control room below, the men wondering if he was still on the bridge. He could sense their instinct to shut the lower bridge-access tunnel hatch to save the ship. That was the code of the Silent Service — save the ship, save the plant, then save the men.

And yet, even though the ship was flooding, and he might be washed overboard, he couldn’t just dive down the hatch and leave Morris out there. Without Morris the crew would still be in Chinese hell, dying of starvation or beatings by now. But he also couldn’t order the engines to add speed, because turning the screw might well mean carving up Morris’s body if he were caught on the blades.