Piranha: Firing Point

The thought spurred him on. “Let’s go! Move it!”

Chu waved the platoon to follow him down the catwalk to the starboard side, where the catwalk continued forward. Chu leaned against the weight of his equipment and began sprinting to the forward bulkhead.

The starboard passageway dead-ended at the forward bulkhead of the compartment and continued transversely back to the centerline. Chu rounded the corner and advanced to the passageway’s end. There he brought his men to a halt. Before them was a large hatch. This would lead into the reactor compartment, on their way forward. Above the hatch was a large red-lit panel, Japanese script evident, the red light flashing.

“What’s the annunciator alarm say?” Chu asked Lo Sun, who understood Japanese. Chu’s expertise was Korean and English.

” ‘High radiation area,’ Admiral.”

“Let’s go.”

“Sir, is it possible the reactor is still operating?” Lo asked, frowning.

“Doesn’t matter. There’s no shielding at this bulkhead.

This space is as radioactive as the reactor compartment.

If that reactor is up and running, we’re already dead men.”

He reached for the hatch-dogging mechanism and spun the chrome wheel rapidly, the hatch dogs slowly rolling back until the wheel stopped. Chu pushed the hatch open into the compartment, stepped over the calf-high coaming and into the reactor compartment.

In comparison to the diesel-battery compartment, the reactor compartment was stiflingly hot and humid. The space was as well lit as the diesel compartment, but the equipment crowded everywhere made it seem dimmer.

Bizarre shadows were thrown by the irregularly spaced and sized vessels, pumps, and pipes. Chu stood immediately aft of a large tank, the curving flank of it reaching three decks high. This must be the reactor shield tank, he thought, the tank surrounding the reactor vessel, the vessel itself half the size of the entire inner hull. Chu ducked around it to starboard, but the catwalk ended at the curving line of the hull. He pushed back through a crowd of men entering the hatch, heading to port, where the catwalk passed three huge vertical pieces of equipment — reactor circulation pumps, according to the intel manual — and continued forward. The catwalk grew narrow and serpentine, going around what Chu knew to be the liquid metal surge vessel, then forward between the four steam generator vessels to the forward bulkhead.

The forward bulkhead, which would lead to the steam compartment, was crowded with tanks and pipes.

Tucked between them was another large hatch. Chu had reached for hatch dog mechanism when a loud snap resounded throughout the compartment.

The snap was followed by several more. Frantically Chu spun the forward hatch mechanism. The loud noises were most likely reactor control rod-drive motors. By now Wang, the submersible pilot, would have shut the lower and upper hatch to the diesel compartment, and the automatic circuit would have cleared of its reactor trip indications. Either the crew was restarting the reactor or the computer system was doing it for them. Chu got the hatch opened and rushed through it, shouting to his men to go. Remembering the video of the dying medical experiment prisoner, Chu raced through the steam compartment, past the heavy equipment — condensers, turbines, piping, pumps. They had to reach the hatch to the command compartment before the reactor came back online.

At the forward bulkhead of the steam compartment Chu halted in confusion. In front of him was a hatch, but there was also a ladder leading to the catwalk one level above. And through the grating of the catwalk of the elevated deck Chu could see a second hatch. In spite of the need to get out of there, Chu stopped and forced himself to think. He realized he was breathing like a sprinter, his air bottles probably containing only minutes or seconds of air. He tried to picture the floor plans and maps he had memorized of the ship. None had shown a middle-level hatch.

The lower hatch should open to the lower level of the command compartment, where the electrical panels and the second captain computer modules were housed. The upper hatch must allow entry to the middle level, where the officers’ messroom and staterooms were. It would make more sense to enter on the lower level, where the space was most likely unoccupied. Opening the hatch to the middle level, where all the hotel accommodations for the crew were located, would be suicidal.

When he reached out for the hatch-dogging mechanism for the lower hatch and tried to spin it, though, it would not budge. He motioned several of his men over, and together they tried to open the hatch, to no avail.

The dogging wheel was hitting a hitch and going nowhere.

Good God, Chu thought. The hatch was locked, obviously to protect the crew in the command compartment.

And with the hatch locked, Chu and his platoon were trapped in the engine room of a nuclear submarine with a reactor about to be restarted. Within minutes he and his men would look like that civil war prisoner.