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“And he did kill himself,” said the XO. “Speaking of that, what are we going to do with the body?”

The captain thought it over for a moment. “The port freezer…there’s more room in there. Confirm that with the chop. And let’s move the body now, while a good portion of the crew is sleeping.”

“Are we going to keep all those freezers online? With all that Freon lost?”

“The DCA is investigating, he’s hopeful we’ll be able to keep at least one of them at temp.”

“No burial at sea?”

“No time,” said the captain. “We’d have to slow down for that. Tell the chop to put him way in back, cover the body bag with more plastic. It’s not the first time I’ve been at sea with a dead body. The crew will get used to it. And frankly…it could have been so much worse.”

“Yes sir.”

The XO turned to Jabo. “When’s your next watch?” Jabo had to think for a minute, the casualty had gone on so long and screwed him up his internal clock. “Noon tomorrow,” he said. “I relieve Hein.”

The XO checked his watch. “OK. It’s six-thirty now. Go back to machinery two, work on the investigation for a couple of hours; look around, take notes, all that good shit. You’ll want to be able to say you went back there within hours of the incident. Then come forward and sleep for two hours, get up, shower, eat lunch, and take the watch. You should be feeling great after that, right?”

“Yes sir.”

Jabo stood, and began to walk to the door.

“Danny?” said the captain.

“Yes sir?”

“Don’t fuck this up.”

“Aye aye sir.”

• • •

On his way aft, Jabo stopped in Crew’s Mess, where the coffee was always fresh due to the huge volume they served up every day, and freshened up his cup. He then went to sick bay, in Missile Compartment Second Level, to see the body.

He was met there by the corpsman. Master Chief Cote was a distinguished-looking old chief with the gray hair and small, scholarly glasses that befit the crew’s sole medically trained crewmen. There were no doctors on Trident submarines, but the master chief had thirty years in the service, more time even than the captain. He’d had extensive training for independent duty, and was one of a handful of guys on the boat who’d been in long enough to see Viet Nam, where he’d served as a medic for a Marine rifle platoon. Angi had been horrified when she learned there were no doctors on the boat, but Jabo wasn’t just trying to make her feel better when he told her that he would rather put his life in the hands of Master Chief Cote than any doctor he’d ever known.

Master Chief Cote was still in sick bay, filling out paperwork about Howard’s body; the Navy had a form for everything. He looked up, unsurprised to a see a junior officer arrive in his space.

“Are you doing the investigation, Lieutenant?”

Jabo nodded.

He stepped aside so Jabo could enter. The room was tiny, the size of a broom closet. Howard had been placed in a body bag that was laid out across sick bay’s very narrow treatment table.

It was actually not the first time Jabo had seen a military-issue body bag. He and his father had hunted with a man who used them to transport the deer they killed. He raved about the thick watertight plastic and rugged zippers, the thick nylon loops that were perfect for lashing the cargo to the roof of his old Ford Bronco. Jabo could still remember unzipping the bags up in the guy’s garage, the thick, wet smell of the of the deer’s fur, the pool of congealing, cold blood that would collect in the bag’s lowest crease.

“You want to see him?” said the master chief.

Not really, thought Jabo. But he thought he should. He nodded and leaned back so the master chief could open the bag.

He pulled the zipper down to Howard’s neck. He didn’t look peaceful, like people always said. He looked stunned. And his eyes were cloudy, Jabo thought probably because they’d dried out.

“Did he die from the Freon or the Phosgene?”

“Not sure,” said the master chief. “But I think the Freon — I think he suffocated. I read a little about Phosgene, and apparently it’s an agonizing way to die, with violent muscle spasms and seizures and the like. Howard didn’t look like that.”

Jabo thought he’d probably looked at the body long enough. He didn’t know what he should be looking for anyway. He pointed at the bag’s zipper and the master chief closed it back up.

“You ever have a dead guy at sea before, master chief?”

He nodded. “Three times, but only once on a submarine. The first two were on carriers, which isn’t that unusual. You put five thousand guys on a ship for six months, somebody’s going to die…it’s almost mathematically unavoidable. The first time was on my first Westpac, on the Enterprise, some old warrant officer had a heart attack. Of course we had doctors onboard, a whole room full of them, so I didn’t get to do much. Watched them give him CPR, then pronounce him dead. They took him off the boat within an hour on the COD flight. I don’t even think most of the crew was aware of it— that’s how it is on those big boats. I never heard the guy’s name.”

“The second time?”