Collapse Depth

At home, Dee Dee was waiting, still grouchy from being stood up the night before. She looked achingly beautiful, her body toned perfectly from her many hours at the gym. They had two nights left before he went to sea again, and Dean desperately wanted to make things right with her, wanted to explain to her how fucked up the last twenty-four hours had been, how he really, truly, had had no choice. And, as he imagined pulling the thin sweatshirt over her head without even leaving the living room, he wanted to explain it all to her in the shortest possible period of time.

“Hey,” she said, hands on her hips, awaiting his justification.

He hesitated for just a moment. “Somebody got killed on the Alabama.”

• • •

The next day was Thursday. A happy and satisfied Dee Dee Hysong told most of the class at the gym what she’d learned before Angi and Molly even showed up, their customary ten minutes late. By the time they took their positions, the entire group was chattering about death aboard the USS Alabama.

• • •

Jabo checked the position no the chart again, to verify they were making up track. The position was all DR, of course, just an estimate based on speed and heading. They would only be able to get a GPS fix every eight hours or so, during their furtive trips to PD. Any estimate of position between fixes was just a math problem, an educated guess represented by an X on a thin pencil line on a virtually unmarked chart based on course and speed. Whatever errors existed in those measurements were magnified by their high bell. Their location on the planet had become very abstract.

And they were behind. At Ahead Flank, stopping the bare minimum number of times they had to in order to catch a broadcast and a GPS fix, they would arrive at Papa Zulu precisely on time, without a minute to spare. But they would be playing catch up the entire time.

No one on the boat could remember running Ahead Flank for so long. The most strained part of the boat was the engine room, where everything was running at high speed, every back up seawater and coolant pump was on, and nothing could break, or even be secured for routine maintenance. The engineer and his team were managing to keep it together but the strain was showing on both the men and the machinery. Hot bearings alarmed, high pressures caused reliefs to lift, and water levels had to be watched and adjusted continuously.

The pressures in the control room were different and scarier in some ways — they were going fast and deep in an unknown ocean. But other than check course and speed, there was little else the officer of the deck could do except worry about it.

Flather walked into control from radio, a stack of messages in his hand.

“More updates?” said Jabo.

He nodded. He looked exhausted. “All for the chart we’re on: JO91747. I’m just barely keeping up with track.”

“None for the next chart? It looks like we’ll be there in an hour or so.”

Flather flipped up the corner of JO91747 to reveal the number of the next chart beneath it: JO90888. He then flipped through the messages in his hand. “Nothing for 0888. Good for us. All on 1747.”

“Anything to worry about?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I won’t lie, though — this kind of navigation keeps me awake at night.”

Jabo pointed to a faded line that had marked their track…it had been altered slightly, you could see the ghost of the line left by the eraser. “What’s this change?”

Flather nodded. “I don’t know. The navigator did it last night. Steering us a few degrees south, it looks like.”

“But it sounds like there’s nothing on the next chart to worry about, right? Was our original track wrong?”

“There must be some reason. Who knows?”

“Shouldn’t you know?”

Flather bristled a little at that. “I’m trying to keep these charts up, sir. We’re going as fast as we can into an area we’ve never been. I haven’t had time to take a shit, much less ask the navigator to explain everything he’s done. I came up here after two hours of sleep and he’d made these changes. If you’ve got a question, why don’t you ask him? I’d like to know the answer too.”

“Okay,” said Jabo. “Relax. I will ask him.” Flather walked over to the table, sat heavily down on the stool, and began marking up the chart.

Jabo took the sound powered phone off the latch and growled the navigator’s stateroom; no one answered. He tried the wardroom and officers’ study…again no answer. He considered sending the messenger. He had every right to, as officer of the deck, but still there was something mildly untoward about a junior officer summoning the navigator to the conn. He would wait a few minutes; hopefully the navigator would find his way to the control room during the watch.

Jabo turned to the stack of papers on his clipboard, the start of his investigation into Howard’s death. He scanned the yellow sheet of notebook paper that Howard had written.

It was wrinkled, and smudged in some places by moisture. But it was by and large readable, thanks to Hallorann, who’d apparently saved it.