Collapse Depth

At the end of the compartment, he came to Petty Officer Simpson’s body at the bottom of the ladder. His head was at almost a right angle to his body; there was no question he was dead. Jabo again felt a surging rage toward the navigator.

He considered grabbing the nearest 4MC and alerting control about the body, but quickly decided not to. Simpson was dead, there was nothing anyone could do about that, and he was sure that control was being overwhelmed with information. He didn’t want his report to distract Kincaid from his real priority: saving the ship. With a twinge of guilt, he climbed over the sailor’s dead body and shot up the ladder.

The hatch to the forward compartment was right at the top of the ladder. Just as Jabo started to climb through it, one hand on the top sealing ring, the watchstander from Missile Control Central, on the other side of the hatch, heard the rush of water in the forward compartment. Anticipating the order to rig for collision and flooding, he jumped from his chair, ran into the passageway, and slammed the three-hundred pound steel hatch shut, breaking every finger on Jabo’s left hand.

• • •

When Kincaid heard his friend and roommate yelling on the 4MC, he was startled. But he followed his recommendation.

“Dive make your depth one-six-zero feet!” he said. The Diving Officer immediately gave the orders to the helm and lee helm, and they both pulled back on their controls. The ship rose, giving Kincaid just a moment to wonder what the fuck Jabo was doing. Then they hit.

Kincaid was thrown forward into the Dive’s chair. The Dive was actually wearing his seat belt, one of those small miracles of the day that might have prevented immediate and total catastrophe. He was thrown forward and jackknifed across the nylon strap, but not propelled headfirst into the ship’s control panel, not knocked out when the ship’s survival depended on his quick actions.

Kincaid got to his feet and jumped back onto the conn. The lights in control flickered but stayed on. The chief of the watch climbed back onto his stool and hurriedly cut out the dozen or so wailing alarms that dotted his panel. Not everyone else had gotten up; a number of men were sprawled across the control room, bleeding and unconscious. Paper was everywhere; while the ship’s equipment had been designed to withstand such an impact, the ship’s innumerable three-ring binders had never been shock tested, and the control room floor was awash in paper. Paper and blood.

There was a bang followed by a roar below his feet, in the torpedo room.

While Jabo had feared that Kincaid, the Officer of the Deck, would be inundated with frantic reports, the opposite was true. He had almost no information, just indications: the bilge alarms in the torpedo room, the horrifying sound of the ship’s hull scraping the earth, the roar of the flooding below decks. He knew intuitively they had collided with something, but the repeaters in control all said they were still going flank speed. In a drill, the communications were carefully choreographed, and the exercise always began with a 4MC announcement. Had Petty Officer Juani in the torpedo room lived, he might have made such an announcement, telling control about the flooding in the torpedo room. But he was dead, and Hallorann was fighting his way into the space past a frigid blast of water.

Kincaid waited what seemed like an eternity for someone to say something informative on the 4MC, to give him something he could announce, pass along, sound the alarm, get the crew moving. But he’d been around long enough to witness real casualties at sea, and he realized that a cogent announcement might not come any time soon. More importantly, he realized that whatever was wrong, he was the Officer of the Deck, and he wasn’t doing any good by standing there with his thumb up his ass waiting for someone to tell him that something was wrong. He muttered, “fuck it,” and grabbed the 1MC.

“Flooding in the forward compartment!” he announced. “Rig ship for flooding and general emergency.”

He hung up the mike, his heart racing and sweat running down the back of his neck. As calmly as he could, he turned to the chief of the watch, one of several watchstanders in control who were staring at him, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Chief of the watch,” he said. “Sound the alarm. Ahead Full.”

• • •