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“They want a status update?” said Kincaid, trying to contain his frustration. Me and two other guys are parked in machinery two hoping that there’s not any dry rot on these fucking rubber masks that might result in our immediate agonizing deaths, he thought, that’s our fucking status.

“The rig,” said McCormick. “They’re ready to ventilate, just waiting on us.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Kincaid. He’d sent everyone forward, there was no one to do the rig.

“I got it sir,” said Yaksic, grabbing the laminated sheet from the metal holder, and ably moving through the space, unplugging, plugging, checking valves, ducts, and dampers all while reading the sheet. Yaksic had done more than his share of saving people’s asses that day, thought Kincaid. In no time he was done.

“Rigged,” he said.

Kincaid nodded at McCormick who reported it to control.

“Start the low pressure blower,” on the 1MC. Not the diesel, Kincaid was glad to hear, even though the diesel would have moved the air a lot faster off the boat. But a diesel engine burned hot — and they’d learned a valuable lesson about high temps and Freon.

In his feet, Kincaid could feel the rumble of the blower. He checked his watch, watched thirty minutes crawl by.

“Check Freon,” he said to Yaksic, who was ready with an ampoule. He cracked it.

“No change, sir.” He held it up.

Kincaid did the math in his head — the ventilation half life with the blower should have been about eight minutes, maybe ten minutes max. Which meant after about thirty minutes, the level should have dropped drastically. But it hadn’t budged. “What the fuck,” he said.

“Maybe it’s just that high out of spec — the ampoules are swamped.”

“Maybe.” He looked at his watch again, leaned against the oxygen generator, and resolved not to check for another thirty minutes.

After an hour, control asked for them again to report the Freon level. Kincaid was actually impressed that they’d been able to restrain themselves that long — he pictured their position on the chart, falling further and further behind the track. But after an hour, the Freon level had still not dropped at all. “What the fuck!” said Kincaid. “Check the rig.”

Yaksic grabbed the card and went through the space again. “It’s rigged,” he said. “You can feel the air moving out of here.”

It was true, Kincaid could feel it on his hands, the motion of the air as the blower took its suction on their space. Fresh air from outside should be replacing it, and Kincaid longed to rip off his mask and smell it. But something wasn’t working the way it should.

• • •

“Machinery Two reports that Freon levels are not dropping,” said the navigator.

“Shit,” said Jabo. They’d been up for an hour, transmitted their message about the Freon and Howard’s death, gotten a terse reaction from squadron: Jabo pictured Soldato at his desk initialing the message with an angry jab of his pen before it was transmitted. They’d even managed to shoot some trash while they waited, a difficult job for men in EABs. Freon should have been sucked down to nothing after an hour.

“What do you make of that?” said the captain. “Something wrong with the blower?”

“I don’t think so — I can hear it. Kincaid has checked the rig twice.” Jabo thought it over, again pictured the pool of Freon gathered at the back of the space. The ventilation line up was designed, in large part, to get smoke out of a space. It hit him.

“It’s heavy,” he said.

“What?”

“Freon’s too heavy. What is it, twice as heavy as air?”

Maple appeared at his side, nodding. He got it too. “Four times. Four times heavier than air…”

“So the blower’s not moving it,” said the captain. “It’s just sitting there. Let’s get some fans down there, nav.”

The navigator called down to Crew’s Mess, where everyone was waiting in the masks for the casualty to be over, discussing the death of their shipmate, trading rumors about phosgene.

• • •