100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As soon as Oran returned to the galley, Gordon Abrams put him right back to work, helping prep first meal. LeMon stood by the stove, stirring a big pot of bright yellow liquid with red flecks. The sharp, peppery fumes coming out of that pot made Gordon’s eyes water. He wasn’t sure what was in there, let alone whether it was fit for human consumption, but he had learned to trust the Guidry brothers’ culinary skills as long as the crew was happy.

The three of them talked among themselves as they always did while the Guidrys were cracking eggs and frying bacon for first meal, but all conversation ground to a halt when Lieutenant Commander Jefferson stormed into the galley. Behind him were Jerry White and Goodrich, the copper-haired auxiliary tech who had replaced the broken light fixture in the mess. Jefferson looked angrier than Gordon had ever seen him.

“Lieutenant, did you hear anything out of the ordinary earlier?” Jefferson demanded.

“No, sir, nothing,” Gordon replied. “What’s going on?”

“Grab a lantern and catch up to us in the head,” Jefferson said.

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, Jefferson, White, and Goodrich hurried away. LeMon shot Gordon a concerned look.

“What’s goin’ on, suh?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Gordon said. “Stay here, both of you. I’ll be right back.”

He opened the galley cabinet where his battle lantern was stored. Every department had its share of the portable, battery-powered electric lights in case the power went out, which it rarely ever did, so the things tended to gather dust. They were bulky yellow waterproof cubes of molded high-impact plastic, with thick, sturdy handles on top, and bracket attachments on the back so they could be mounted on bulkheads. Gordon grabbed his lantern and ran out of the galley.

Jefferson had asked him to meet them in the crew head. Something must have happened in there. His mind was already preparing for the worst.

Someone had blown a shitter.

As funny as the expression was, the reality was no joke. Emptying toilets was a major problem on submarines. At 400 feet down, the pressure pushing in on the hull was about 300 pounds per square inch. If the boat tried to flush out its human waste with less pressure than what was pushing in, all that shit would fly right back into the boat. That was why, instead of flushing into the ocean, the toilets on Roanoke emptied into sanitary tanks, which Engineering purged every few days.

But purging the tanks still meant the contents had to be pressurized so that they didn’t all come flying back. If the pressure on the hull was 300 pounds per square inch, the sanitary tanks had to be pressurized to more than that—a minimum of 301 pounds per square inch. Auxiliary Division posted signs all over the head before they pressurized the tanks, warning sailors not to use the facilities, but if some idiot ignored the signs and flushed the toilet while the tanks were pressurized, the poor bastard would be rewarded with a 301-psi enema. For comparison, the water in fire hydrants was pressurized to only 100 pounds per square inch. This would be three times as strong. Under that kind of pressure, the shit would quite literally fly.

But as Gordon approached the head, the first thing he noticed was that he didn’t smell anything. If someone had blown a shitter, the stench of sewage would be overwhelming. Hell, now that he thought of it, he would have been able to smell it all the way back in the galley.

The second thing he noticed was the absence of any light coming out of the open hatch.

When he entered the head, he found Jefferson, Jerry White, Goodrich and two other aux techs standing in a completely dark room, pointing lanterns up at the ceiling. All the light fixtures in the head had been smashed. The floor was littered with shards of glass and pearly white dust from the fluorescent tubes.

“Oh, Christ, not again,” Gordon said.

“Earlier, the son of a bitch got the lights down in the auxiliary engine room too,” Jefferson said. “But this time, we have a witness. Isn’t that right, White?”

“Yes, sir,” White said. “I just wish I had more information to give you. The sound of it woke me up, but I didn’t see it happen. At first, I thought it was a dream, so I didn’t get out of my rack right away. I wish I had, sir; then I might have caught whoever did this.”

Even if they did catch him, what then? Roanoke didn’t have a brig, and they sure as hell weren’t going to lock up someone who seemed compelled to destroy everything around him in one of the officer staterooms. They couldn’t hand him off to a surface ship, or they’d wind up alerting the Soviets to their presence again, and as far as Gordon was concerned, one Victor shadowing them was one too many.

Back when his mother had worked in the psychiatric hospital, she taught him that people who did inexplicable or harmful things were more likely mentally ill than malicious. Whoever was breaking the lights on Roanoke obviously fit that bill. Stress, claustrophobia—all sorts of things could make a submariner lose his mind. This was Mitch Robertson all over again, except that the light-smasher was turning his anger outward instead of inward. He desperately needed help, but what help could they offer him? There was no shrink on board, and Matson didn’t have any psychiatric meds in sick bay. Were they just going to have to tie this guy up somewhere until the op was over?

“Sir, there’s more,” Goodrich said, swinging his lantern over to the stainless steel sinks at the far end of the room.

The mirrors above the sinks had been shattered. Someone had put a fist through them, leaving round spiderweb fractures in the silvered glass. The sinks were filled with fallen shards and spatters of blood, and more broken glass littered the floor below.

Gordon was flummoxed. How the hell had the culprit gotten away with it? Breaking the light fixtures and the mirrors? That would have taken time. White had heard it, but he hadn’t investigated right away. Surely, someone else must have heard the racket and come looking. Only a third of the submarine’s crew was on duty at any given time. That left a third of the crew on their racks right next to the head, and another third milling around the deck. The head was never empty for long, and there was no way to lock everyone out—no sign, like those on a commercial airplane’s lavatory doors, that he could turn to occupied. With no way to keep it quiet and no way to keep people out once he started making noise, how had the vandal done it? Gordon supposed that if the head’s hatch to the corridor and its hatches to the berthing areas were shut, it was possible the noise would be dampened. Still, the vandal would have had to be fast to escape without being spotted—faster than Gordon could imagine anyone moving.

But the question of how paled beside the question of why. Why break the light fixtures and the mirrors?

“Sir, what do you think it all means?” he asked.

Jefferson shined his lantern at the shattered mirrors, then back up to the smashed fixtures on the ceiling.

“It means the people on this boat are losing their goddamn minds,” Jefferson said. “They’re breaking lights, mirrors, the radio, and God knows what else.”

“Sir, do you think the captain will cut the op short?” Gordon asked.

“I doubt it,” Jefferson said. “As far as the captain’s concerned, this op is too important to abort. He wants to hang tight and see if the techs can fix the radio, but Coms doesn’t think they can.” He sighed and shook his head. “Frankly, we’re hosed. We can’t radio COMSUBRON for instructions, some crazy son of a bitch is breaking our lights, and we’ve got two sailors dead from bubonic plague or whatever the hell it is.”

“Two, sir?” Gordon asked. “Someone else died?”

“Steve Bodine,” Jefferson said sadly. “He passed a few hours ago.”

“What, sir?” White said.

At the same time, Gordon asked, “Are you sure, sir?”

“Of course I’m sure!” Jefferson snapped, looking at them both. “What’s gotten into the two of you? Matson called me himself over the circuit to inform me.”

“Sir, I’m confused,” White said. “I could have sworn I saw Bodine when I woke up, before I left the berthing area.”

“Impossible,” Jefferson replied.

“Sir, I’m not so sure about that,” Gordon said. “Oran Guidry told me he saw Bodine earlier too. Ensign Penwarden was talking to him outside the auxiliary engine room. And, sir, didn’t you mention the lights had been broken there too?”

Jefferson stared at Gordon. “It’s impossible. Matson told me that Bodine died.”

“Sir, if Bodine is dead, then who did I see?” White asked. “And who did Oran see, sir?”

“That’s a damn good question,” Jefferson said.

Leaving the aux techs behind to clean up the glass, Jefferson led Gordon and White back to the galley. He questioned Oran on exactly what had happened in the auxiliary engine room. LeMon watched nervously, stirring his pot as Oran related his story. Gordon listened intently too, but nothing Oran told the lieutenant commander differed from the story he had told Gordon earlier.

“So you didn’t actually see Bodine yourself?” Jefferson asked.

“No, suh,” Oran replied, “but Ensign Penwarden did. I heard him say Bodine’s name twice, suh.”

“And where is Ensign Penwarden now?” Jefferson asked.

“I don’ know, suh,” Oran said. “He was gone already when I come back up to the galley, suh.”

“What about you, White?” Jefferson asked. “Have you seen Ensign Penwarden since you left the berthing area?”

“No, sir,” he replied.

“Lieutenant Abrams?” Jefferson asked.

Gordon shook his head. “No, sir. If you like, I can keep an eye out for him during first meal.”

“Please do,” Jefferson said. “I want to talk to him.”

“Sir,” Gordon said, “two sightings of Steve Bodine alive and in places where the lights have been purposely broken—it can’t be a coincidence.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Jefferson said, though his words held far less conviction this time. He thought a moment, then said, “All right, Guidry, White, come with me. Lieutenant Abrams, let me know if you see Ensign Penwarden.”

“Where we goin’, suh?” Oran asked.

“To the torpedo room. You both think you saw Bodine, but Matson told me he’s dead. I intend to put this matter to rest and, with any luck, get to the bottom of whatever the hell is happening on this boat.”