100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER ONE

Without a doubt, the most insidious dangers were the ones that hid in plain sight, camouflaging themselves inside the minds of rational men. Petty Officer First Class Tim Spicer of USS Roanoke knew this all too well. He had seen men—good men, strong men—who thought they were equipped to handle life on board a submarine discover otherwise after being crammed into a three-hundred-foot tube in the depths of the ocean with over a hundred other men. Most underways lasted three months, some longer, and in that time even the sharpest minds could crack under the pressure.

Case in point, Roanoke’s previous planesman. Petty Officer Second Class Mitch Robertson had been fresh out of BESS, the Basic Enlisted Submarine School, which had opened just a year before in Groton, Connecticut. He thought he was ready for everything the ocean depths could throw at him, but his first underway had been a long one—nine months escorting a carrier group around the tip of South America and into the Atlantic. Robertson had lasted only the first three months, growing more frantic and disheveled as time passed. In the mess, he kept to himself, eating less and less until he stopped altogether. In the control room, his response to orders became sluggish. Not seeing the sun for months, not breathing fresh air or seeing any new faces had driven him to the edge. But nothing went unnoticed on a submarine. As a matter of course, the officers kept a close eye on the crew, watchful for signs of fatigue. They had to. Everyone’s lives depended on their recognizing it in time, and they caught it right away in Robertson. On long underways such as that one, Roanoke would visit port every three months to stock up on food, since she could only carry a hundred days’ worth at a time, and Captain Weber had decided to swap Robertson out at the next port. When Robertson found out, he went to his locker and got his toilet kit, went into the head, and slit his wrists with his shaving razor in one of the stalls. Maybe he was ashamed that he didn’t have what it took, or maybe something deeper and darker inside him drove him to it. Tim never knew. It was he who found Robertson there, slumped over in the stall, blood from his wrists pooling on the floor—more blood than Tim had ever seen, so much that his gorge rose at the sight. He had rushed to get the hospital corpsman, who, fortunately, had been able to patch Robertson up in time. Afterward, Roberston was transferred to one of the carriers, where they had the doctors and medical facilities to look after him, and Tim got a lot of pats on the back from the crew for saving the man’s life.

So when Captain Weber summoned him to his stateroom shortly before Roanoke was set to pull out of port, Tim thought maybe it had something to do with Robertson. A personal meeting with the captain wasn’t something most petty officers ever experienced, especially with Captain Weber, who was notoriously standoffish with his enlisted men. The summons had sounded urgent, and Tim double-timed it, worried that the captain would tell him Robertson had tried to kill himself again—or, worse, had succeeded this time.

Roanoke was a 688, a Los Angeles–class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, outfitted with three levels that housed the crew’s living spaces, weapons systems, and control centers. Captain Weber’s stateroom was on the top level, forward of the control room, in a short corridor known as the captain’s egress.

When Tim got there, he found the stateroom hatch open. The space inside was small and cramped even though it belonged to the captain. There just wasn’t enough room on the boat for anything larger. Inside, Senior Chief Farrington, chief of the boat and highest-ranking enlisted man aboard, was deep in conversation with the captain. Farrington was a no-nonsense career sailor, an aging senior chief petty officer with scant hope of making master chief before retiring. Word on the boat put him at fifty, maybe even fifty-five. Old enough to have grandchildren back home, and certainly the oldest man aboard Roanoke. As COB, Farrington was the primary liaison between the commissioned officers and enlisted men such as Tim, which meant that he too had to be present for this meeting with the captain.

Captain Weber, a short, roundish man in his forties, sat at the desk that folded down from the wood-paneled wall. A calendar had been pinned up, the days X-ed off up to today—Thursday, November 17, 1983.

“You sent for me, Captain?” Tim said, standing at attention in the doorway. Saluting was never done indoors, not even for the captain.

“Come in, Spicer,” Captain Weber said, barely looking up from the papers strewn across his desk.

Not the warm-and-fuzziest commanding officer Tim had ever seen, but not the kind who spent the entire tour yelling at crewmen, either—even though he did have stringently high standards, which he expected his men to meet. He was more the strong-and-silent type, like John Wayne, only in Barney Rubble’s body. Tim stepped into the stateroom, then waited to be addressed before speaking. A file folder was open in front of the captain. Tim read the name across the top, upside down: White, Jerome: Petty Officer Second Class.

“Have you met your new planesman yet, Spicer?” Captain Weber asked. “PO2 White?”

“I’ve seen him, sir, but we haven’t spoken,” Tim replied.

“What have you heard about him?”

“Nothing yet, sir.”

Senior Chief Farrington, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, said, “What if I were to tell you our new planesman suffers from a bad case of CRIS, Spicer?”

CRIS was seaman’s jargon: cranial-rectal insertion syndrome.

“Sir?” Tim asked the captain.

Captain Weber sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What Farrington is trying so colorfully to say is that it appears White comes with some baggage. There was an incident on his last boat, USS Philadelphia.”

Philadelphia was a Sturgeon-class sub, Tim knew. Sturgeons were real workhorses, but they were old. They were already being phased out in favor of Los Angeles–class subs like Roanoke.

“White lodged a formal complaint against his XO, an officer by the name of Frank Leonard,” Weber continued. “I don’t know the details of the complaint, but it wound up costing Leonard a promotion.”

“Permission to speak frankly, sir?” Farrington asked.

The captain nodded. “Of course, COB.”

“I know men like White, sir,” Farrington said. “They don’t respect authority, they’re lazy, they don’t want to perform their duties or run their drills, and as soon as an officer gets tough on them for it, these mama’s boys run off to lodge a complaint.” He turned to Tim. “White got what he wanted, and the lieutenant commander was passed over for promotion. Unfortunately, it was the third time he got passed over.”

Tim winced. When an officer was passed over for promotion three times, his career with the navy was over. Whatever had happened on Phildelphia, it cost the XO everything.

“Except that we don’t know for sure that’s the kind of man White is,” Weber cautioned. “He also happens to be responsible for singlehandedly saving Philadelphia from catastrophe. Something went wrong in the auxiliary engine room—some aging piece of equipment failed and a fire broke out. According to the report, White didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed a pair of fire extinguishers and charged into the room while everyone else was running away from it. He spent the next month in a hospital being treated for burns.

“Whatever happened between White and his XO, it’s clear he showed extraordinary courage, selflessness, and initiative in saving Philadelphia. That’s ultimately why I accepted his transfer for Roanoke. But I share some of the COB’s concerns about who PO2 White is when there isn’t a fire. I need someone to keep an eye on him, and let Farrington or me know if there are any problems. I believe that you, Spicer, are the man for the job.”

Tim gulped. “Me, sir?”

Captain Weber arched an eyebrow. “Is that going to be a problem, Spicer?”

“No sir. Sorry, sir,” Tim said quickly.

He knew why the captain had chosen him. He had saved one man’s life, and only by being in the right place at the right time, but apparently now he was the go-to guy for keeping an eye on potentially difficult sailors. He supposed he should feel flattered, but he couldn’t help wondering whether this was a good idea. What did he know about keeping White—or anyone, for that matter—on the right path? He was a sonar tech, not a shrink.

“See to it I didn’t make a mistake accepting White’s transfer to Roanoke,” Captain Weber said. “Dismissed.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Tim said.

He turned and started out of the stateroom.

“Actually, Spicer, hold on a moment.”

Tim turned back to him. “Yes, Captain?”

Captain Weber stood up from the desk. “Meet me on the bridge when we launch this afternoon.”

Tim blinked, unsure he had heard properly. The captain usually had officers and essential personnel with him on the bridge when Roanoke pulled out of port, but a petty officer? That would be a first.

“Aye-aye, sir,” Tim said, barely able to contain his smile.

The captain nodded. “Be there at fifteen hundred hours sharp, or you’ll miss your last chance to say goodbye to the sun.”

When Tim was in high school, he had a summer job in a produce warehouse, lugging crates of fruit and 50-pound bags of potatoes from the storage aisles to the loading dock, eight hours a day. It had been hard work—thirsty work, his grandfather had called it—but it had also been gratifying work. Not just for the paycheck, although as a teenager it had been nice to have some spending money, and not just because the manual labor had honed his muscles and built up his strength, but also because it had taught him how to move quickly and easily through cramped spaces. The warehouse had been as big as a football field, but around harvest time they would ship out so many pallets of potatoes, he could barely fit between them. That was how it felt inside a Los Angeles–class sub every minute of every waking hour. Roanoke was barely longer than a football field and only 33 feet across at her widest, on the middle level. The top and bottom levels were even narrower. It wasn’t a lot of space to begin with, and most of it was crammed tight with workstations and equipment.

The middle level of the submarine was devoted to the crew’s living spaces. At the forward end sat the officers’ staterooms, in an area the enlisted men referred to as “Officer Country.” It was where the officers slept in their dorm-like rooms, much to the envy of the enlisted sailors, who were forced to hot-rack for the duration of the underway. The middle level also held the head, the berthing areas where the enlisted men slept, the wardroom where the officers took their meals, the galley, and the mess where the enlisted men ate, which was at the aft end of the corridor, up against the bulkhead that separated the forward compartment from the nuclear reactor and engine room aft. Tim walked briskly through the middle-level corridor while enlisted men hurried back and forth on either side of him in their poopie suits—the unfortunate nickname given to their submarine uniforms: blue coveralls designed to contain body heat in the event of a flood. No one knew where the nickname came from, but they were pretty sure it wasn’t anything good.

A few of the men were shooting the breeze. Had they seen the third Star Wars movie yet or heard the Ramones’ latest album? The sailors Tim knew nodded at him or gave him a clap on the arm and a quick hello, while the newer faces in the crowd dashed purposefully toward their stations. Morale was high. It always was at the start of an underway, even for the most jaded sailors among them. The ocean was in their blood, and they didn’t like to be away for too long.

Tim spotted a sailor standing near the curtained entrance to a berthing area. Everyone else in the corridor was hurrying somewhere, but he was perfectly still. He was facing away, with his back to Tim, one shoulder leaning against the bulkhead as if for support.

“You okay, buddy?” Tim called as he approached.

The man didn’t answer. He didn’t even move.

“Hey,” Tim called. “Everything all right?”

The man jumped as if Tim had startled him. He straightened up slowly, still facing away. He moved stiffly away from the bulkhead and smoothed down his uniform. He glanced over his shoulder at Tim, who recognized him as PO3 Warren Stubic. Only, he’d never seen him like this before. Stubic had always been someone who grabbed life by the horns, who liked to tell raucous stories in the mess, but today he looked distracted and out of it. His face glistened with sweat, and his eyes looked wild.

“You feeling all right, Stubic?” Tim asked, walking closer.

“Fine, fine,” Stubic muttered.

“If you’re not feeling well…”

“I said I’m fine, Spicer,” Stubic insisted.

He bolted past, his shoulder bumping Tim’s as he went by. Tim turned and watched him go, dumbfounded.

The bridge of a submarine was nothing like the bridge of a ship. It wasn’t the room from which the sub was commanded—that was the control room on the top level—but rather a small, open observation platform at the top of the tall dorsal tower known as the sail. When the clock struck 1500 hours, Tim was already on the bridge, determined not to miss his shot. Captain Weber joined him, along with Lieutenant Commander Lee Jefferson, Roanoke’s six-foot-five executive officer, who had played starting linebacker for the Naval Academy and looked as though he still could. As a commissioned officer, Jefferson wore a different uniform from the blue coveralls of the enlisted men, and to Tim it looked a hell of a lot more comfortable—a starched and pressed khaki shirt and pleated khaki slacks, with the gold oak-leaf pin on his collar that marked him as a lieutenant commander.

Now that Tim was outdoors, it was appropriate for him to salute his superior officers. “Reporting as requested, Captain. Lieutenant Commander, sir.”

“Good to see you, Spicer,” Jefferson said with a nod.

“You too, sir,” he replied.

Tim hadn’t encountered a lot of black officers in the submarine service, especially senior officers, but it was the 1980s now, and it seemed things were finally changing. Here was a man who was going places. Talk among the crew was that Jefferson would have his own command within a year. Tim had served with him on previous underways and found him to be a good man with a sharp mind and a practical outlook. But more than that, Jefferson didn’t mind walking among the enlisted men. He didn’t keep them at arm’s length or consider them beneath him the way other officers did. Even Captain Weber fell into that mind-set much of the time. Tim liked and respected the captain, but the man rarely came out of his stateroom to talk to the crew.

Standing here with the two highest-ranking officers on the boat was an enormous honor, but Tim felt distinctly out of place. Still, he refused to let it bother him. He had always wondered what it would be like to see a launch from the top of the sail, the way the captain and a few lucky officers did, and now he finally had the chance, at the captain’s personal invitation. If anyone had a problem with his being here, they could take it up with Captain Weber.

The sail rose thirty feet above the water, with the observation periscope, attack periscope, and multipurpose antenna mast forming a gray metal forest overhead. From up here, Tim could see everything. It was a clear day with gentle swells in Pearl Harbor, and the Honolulu sun washed over them, bright and warm. Ever since he was assigned to Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Tim had marveled at how warm it stayed all year round, even in mid-November. Sometimes, he thought he would never get used to it. Other times, he felt that he’d rather die than go back home to Presque Isle, where everything was buried in snow, and the sun hid for months at a time.

He looked up into the sky, shielding his eyes. When Captain Weber had said it was his last chance to say goodbye to the sun, he wasn’t exaggerating. The three of them—Weber, Jefferson, and himself—would be the last to see the sky. Once the submarine went under, it would be three long months before anyone saw it again.

At 1530, USS Roanoke, SSN-709, pulled out of port. Captain Weber and Lieutenant Commander Jefferson stared straight ahead at the lane of open water before them. But this was Tim’s first time at the top of the sail, and he turned every which way, taking in the sights. He watched the braids of water twisting along the side of the hull, and the crewmen in bright green life jackets working briefly along the top of the hull, behind the sail, to secure the rigging. They were moving at about eight knots, Tim guessed, and the wind whispered in his ears.

Freighters and destroyers towered over them on either side. As they passed an oil tanker, Tim craned his neck to look up at its deck and saw the silhouettes of sailors staring down at him. He fantasized about waving at them, but that would be a costly breach of decorum. Still, the idea of one final interaction with other human beings above the surface of the ocean, one last gesture before it was just him and 139 other men in the dark water for months, was tempting.

The American flag was lowered from its pole and folded into a crisp military triangle. Their work finished, the life-vested crewmen on the hull below dropped back down into the sub, sealing the hatches behind them. Tim watched the Honolulu shoreline vanish in the distance as they moved out of the harbor and into Mamala Bay. Beyond the bay, the vast Pacific awaited, its depths as dark and quiet as a tomb.

The captain’s hand fell on Tim’s shoulder, pulling him from his thoughts. “Enough daydreaming, Spicer. Time to go below.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

He took one last look up at the sun, as if he could commit its light and warmth to memory. Then he followed Captain Weber and Lieutenant Commander Jefferson down the ladder into the sub. His heart sped up, and an expectant grin creased his face. He was feeling the same thrill of a new mission that he’d seen on the excited faces of the sailors in the corridor.

All except PO3 Stubic, he reminded himself. He couldn’t stop puzzling over how strangely the man had behaved, and the wild, disturbing look in his eye.

Once Tim reached the bottom of the ladder, another enlisted man scrambled up and secured the hatch to the bridge with a loud clang, sealing them all inside.