Launch Code

TWENTY-NINE

November 1983, Norwegian Sea

A petty officer, flanked by two sailors, flung open the door to the XO’s stateroom and shoved me inside.

The missile chief had grabbed me as Craig crumpled to the floor, next to Morgan who was groaning in pain. I dropped the wrench. We all stared at the blood seeping through Craig’s hair. I didn’t know if he was dead. He looked it.

Within a minute the XO was in the missile compartment, taking control. A minute later, I was in his stateroom. With Lars.

Lars was pacing the tiny room. He stopped and stared at me. He grinned, but his eyes were wild. ‘I heard the announcement terminating missile launch,’ he said. ‘Did you do it?’

‘Do what?’ I said, although I knew what he meant.

‘Kill Driscoll?’

I shook my head and lowered it.

‘Weps?’

I nodded.

‘Thank God,’ Lars said.

I looked at him. Part of me thought he was crazy. Part of me thought he was the only sane one on board.

‘Actually, I’m not sure he’s dead,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I hit him hard over the head. With a wrench, like you tried to do.’

‘And you don’t think you killed him?’

‘He’s out cold, that’s for sure.’ I felt my throat constrict and my eyes water. It took me by surprise; I never cried.

Lars threw his arm around me. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘Well done, Bill.’

I pushed him away and slumped on to the XO’s bed. ‘I probably killed him, Lars.’

‘And stopped a war.’

‘We don’t know that!’

Lars bent down and grabbed my shoulders. ‘Look! If there’s a war, we’re all dead. But if there isn’t, it’s just Craig.’

‘Just Craig? But he was my friend. Our friend.’

‘Yes he was,’ said Justin. ‘But you did the right thing.’

‘I don’t know. But I’ve done it now.’

I sat and Lars paced. I looked around the XO’s stateroom. It was freakishly neat. With so many people crammed into a submarine, everything on board had to be tidy. But the XO’s desk was completely clear, with the exception of a black-and-white photograph of a woman set at a forty-five degree angle; the books on his shelf were perfectly vertical. It was as if he had used a protractor to adjust the placement of his things.

I stared at Mrs Robinson, if that’s who she was. She was beautiful. An open face, wide clear eyes, a smile that made your heart leap.

How long did she have to live? Was she dead already?

I sat on the bed, hoping. But I wasn’t sure what to hope for. That the launch order was an error, obviously. But that meant that I had to hope that Craig was dead, so that he couldn’t pass on the combination to his safe to anyone.

I didn’t want to hope for that.

But what difference did it make what I hoped for? I had done what I had done. If I was lucky I would live with the consequences.

The door was flung open and the XO entered.

I leaped to attention. Lars glanced at me and did the same.

Lieutenant Commander Robinson’s dark eyes flashed with anger. ‘You are both under arrest. You will be court martialled when we return to port. For murder. For attempted murder. For mutiny. And probably for a whole lot of other crimes.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ I said.

Robinson glared at us; the anger verged on hatred. ‘The rest of the crew were willing to do our duty, what we have trained for years to do, but you two have let us all down. The entire crew of the submarine. The Navy. Your country.’

Neither Lars nor I said anything. Maybe he was right? It was done now.

‘If it was up to me, I would have had you both shot. Now.’

‘Is Weps alive, XO?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said the XO. He gave me a tight smile. ‘He’s unconscious, but alive.’

‘Will he come around?’

‘We don’t know. But if he does we will launch those missiles, I can assure you.’

We waited.

The submarine was still operating under ‘operational security condition alpha’, which was the quietest operational mode. Non-essential machines such as washing machines, fans and the trash compactor were turned off, and the crew were particularly vigilant to avoid accidental bumps and clangs known as ‘transients’ which might alert Soviet attack submarines in the area.

A wrench dropped on the floor definitely counted as a transient.

So the submarine was quiet. In the XO’s stateroom we should still be able to hear announcements over the 1-MC shipwide broadcasts, but not the more specific orders. Changes in depth might give us a clue as to what was going on – the submarine would tilt either up or down.

Lars’s pacing was irritating me. It was difficult enough sitting still when you had a specific role as part of the crew, you knew what was going on and you had been trained for it.

But sitting on a bunk in a tiny stateroom with no clue what was happening in the outside world? That was difficult.

The speaker in the stateroom kicked into life. ‘Secure from battle stations missile.’ It was the captain’s voice.

A few seconds later the floor tilted downwards from the right of the stateroom, the direction of the bow. The crew was standing down from battle stations missile and we were descending.

‘What do you think that means?’ said Lars.

‘I guess it must mean that Craig hasn’t come around,’ I said. ‘They were probably waiting for him to wake up and tell them the combination. But he hasn’t, so they have given up on launching the missiles and descended again.’

‘Thank God for that!’ Lars said. ‘I mean that we haven’t started a war. Not about Craig.’

‘Maybe he’s dead?’ The relief I felt was only partial, and Lars’s face, his whole being, was still tight with tension. ‘Maybe a war had already started.’

‘I wish they’d tell us what’s going on!’

Lars banged on the door, which was opened by a petty officer armed with a rifle. Another stood back, watching.

‘Can you tell us what’s happening?’

‘No, sir,’ said the petty officer. His name was Calhoun, and when he was on watch, he was a throttleman in manoeuvring.

‘I want to speak to the XO. We need to know what’s happening!’

The petty officer hesitated. ‘Please step back into the stateroom, sir, and I will pass on your message.’

Five minutes later, the door opened. It was Calhoun again. ‘The XO says he is too busy to speak with you, sir.’

‘Screw him!’ said Lars as the guard closed the door. ‘We’ve got to know what’s going on out there!’

I agreed, but I wasn’t at all surprised that the XO hadn’t come down to enlighten us.

‘We don’t even know if war has broken out,’ Lars said.

I shook my head.

‘Do you think the captain knows?’

‘How could he? We would have heard the Alert One alarm if there had been another EAM.’

‘I’m sure that message was an error,’ said Lars.

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘It might have been. I know we were right to do what we did. But it’s just as likely that there are missiles flying around out there.’

We were both quiet.

‘They would have struck by now, wouldn’t they?’ said Lars.

‘Some,’ I said. It would depend when they were launched and where they were launched from, but if Russia and NATO were flinging thousands of warheads at each other, some would have landed. A lot would have landed.

I tried to imagine it. It was clear what would happen to the direct targets like New York and indeed the New London Submarine Base. Flattened. Massive explosions and temperatures at thousands of degrees. Anyone close to a thermonuclear explosion would die instantly. Millions would be dead in the world’s great cities. Washington. Moscow. London. Paris.

New York.

Donna.

It wouldn’t have hurt. There would have been a brief warning, enough to provoke panic in the powerless civilians who heard it, but actually many New Yorkers would take a while to figure out what the Civil Defense sirens meant.

Then almost instant death.

And what about my parents, on the banks of the Susquehanna? They might still be alive. How long before the fallout would kill them? A day, maybe two at most, given the amounts of radiation in the atmosphere around the eastern United States. I remembered the symptoms from my radiation sickness training: vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, fever and then death.

‘So if there is a war, what happens to us?’ said Lars.

‘I guess they will let us out of this stateroom. And then we all stay submerged for as long as we can.’ A Lafayette-class submarine could stay under water for at least fifteen years. But humans couldn’t.

‘How long do you figure we’ve got before we run out of food?’

‘We’re a month into the patrol. Three months maybe, with aggressive rationing, perhaps four?’

‘And then what?’

‘We surface somewhere. New Zealand? And hope there are still people alive.’ This was something we had never discussed, or only in jest. I remembered a conversation over a few beers with Craig about giant mutant bunnies. I also remembered laughing at the time.

‘Did you ever see On The Beach?’ Lars asked.

‘I read the book.’ It was a novel by Nevile Shute set in Australia a year after a nuclear war had wiped out life in the northern hemisphere. The population waited as the radiation cloud drifted slowly southwards. In the end, everyone died.

Everyone.

‘But that was in the fifties,’ I said. ‘There’s going to be much more radiation now. There will be nowhere to go.’

Lars propelled himself at the door and banged. ‘Tell us what the fuck is going on out there!’ he yelled.

The door remained shut.

I tapped Lars on the sleeve. ‘Hey, man. Calm down. There’s nothing we can do here except wait. All will become clear in time.’

Lars pushed himself away from the door and resumed pacing.

I sat back down on the XO’s bunk, my mind a jumble of my parents and Donna. And trees and streams and meadows. Birdsong.

I had thought long and hard about a nuclear war since I had joined the Navy at eighteen; I was sure we all had. But it had always been in the abstract. Now, because it was so real, it was difficult to process.

The 1-MC burst into life. ‘Man battle stations torpedo!’ Usually this would have been followed by the loud bong-bong-bong of the general alarm, but the captain must have ordered silence to avoid alerting any nearby Soviet attack subs.

‘What’s that about?’ said Lars. ‘Are we under attack?’

The floor of the stateroom tilted up and to the right. The Hamilton was ascending steadily. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. If we had been, the submarine’s movement would have been much more extreme as it evaded a possible torpedo, the ‘angles and dangles’ we had practised ad nauseam.

We had no idea how deep the submarine was, but the ascent took a while. When the boat eventually levelled out, I could feel a slight movement from side to side signifying we were near the surface. ‘I think we are at periscope depth.’

‘That means he’s going to transmit!’ said Lars.

‘It also means we’re sitting ducks,’ I said. ‘If a war has started, the Soviets will hear us right away. They’ll be after us.’

That was why the captain had ordered battle stations torpedo – in case the Hamilton got into a shooting battle with a Soviet fast-attack submarine. In addition to nuclear missiles, the Hamilton carried anti-submarine torpedoes. The Soviet submarines were faster and more agile; they would know exactly where we were, and we wouldn’t locate them until they were upon us. The Hamilton’s significant advantage was its ability to hide silently, but by rising to surface depth and broadcasting to the world, we had thrown that advantage away.

If the Russians could get to us before we had finished transmitting and dived again, they would sink us.

We would have a minute or two’s warning. When the sonar shack detected an incoming torpedo, the captain would instantly start throwing his big vessel about in an attempt to dodge it. That, Lars and I would feel.

But the huge submarine was steady, swaying a tiny amount in the chop above the surface, as the captain contacted the outside world – probably COMSUBLANT, the headquarters for the Atlantic submarine fleet in Norfolk, Virginia.

Lars stopped pacing. We both stared at the tiny speaker in the stateroom.

At last, it came to life.

‘This is the captain. I have been advised by COMSUBLANT that the previous EAM we received authorizing the use of nuclear weapons was an error. The use of nuclear weapons has not been authorized. The change of readiness to DEFCON 3 was also an error. We remain at DEFCON 5. Stand down from battle stations torpedo.’

‘Thank God!’ I leaped to my feat. Lars punched the air. We embraced.

DEFCON 5 meant no war. No attack by a Soviet submarine. No nuclear holocaust.

Lars stood back. On the other side of the stateroom door we could hear a cheer ripple throughout the vessel.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘That was close.’

‘So close.’

I felt drained as the tension left my body. I could scarcely move my limbs.

I took a deep breath. ‘I sure hope Craig lives.’

I rapped on the door again. Our two guards wouldn’t let us out, even though they were both grinning.

After an hour, a sailor with a sidearm came to escort me to the captain’s stateroom.

I knocked and entered.

Commander Driscoll was sitting at his desk. He seemed ten years older than the last time I saw him. His face, normally so calm under pressure, looked ravaged.

‘Take a seat.’ He indicated the bed.

I sat down.

‘Bill. You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘As did da Silva. Even when he was trying to kill me, he did the right thing.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And I didn’t.’ Driscoll ran his hands through his hair. ‘If we had launched those missiles as I had ordered, the Soviets would definitely have retaliated, especially if the XO is right about them expecting a pre-emptive attack from us. Millions of people would have died, hundreds of millions. And it would have been my fault.’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I might never have found out it was the Hamilton that had started it, if we had launched. But as it is, I know I would have begun a nuclear war if you hadn’t stopped me. That’s something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.’ He winced. ‘That’s going to be difficult.’

‘You did what your orders told you to do,’ I said. ‘You followed procedure. That’s what you are supposed to do in a crisis.’ And I meant it. I understood what Driscoll had chosen to do; I had been through the same thought process myself.

But Driscoll shook his head. ‘You and da Silva figured it out. The procedures were wrong. There was only one correct alternative. I should have chosen it.’

‘How’s Weps?’

‘He’s come around. We have the combination to his safe. Who knows? We may yet need it.’

I swallowed. ‘Can I see him?’

It took a while. The captain kept Lars and me under armed guard in our stateroom, the JO Jungle. He explained he had to. We had breached Navy regulations in about as serious a way as was possible. And the submarine was still on patrol. She still might be ordered to launch her missiles, in which case the captain decided Lars and I should be kept away from where we could do further damage.

The wardroom steward brought us supper, and then there was a knock at the door. It was the XO, come to take me to the wardroom to speak to Craig.

Like the captain, the XO looked drained. I didn’t know what to say to him.

‘Bill,’ he said, as we walked along the passageway, every passing sailor staring at us. ‘I’m sorry for what I said back there. And I’m sorry for backing the captain to accept the launch order. I was wrong.’ He sucked through his teeth. ‘I was really worried that the Soviets were going to launch a nuclear strike in response to Able Archer. So when we received that EAM, I immediately assumed that’s what had happened. I thought we couldn’t afford to screw around worrying about erroneous messages. I was so wrong.’

What could I say? How could I absolve a man from nearly blowing up the world? I settled on ‘thank you’. It takes some courage for a senior officer to apologize to a junior one.

Craig was in the wardroom, slumped in his usual chair, a thick bandage obscuring the top of his head. He looked rough.

He lifted his head as I came in, his eyes hostile.

‘How is it?’ I asked.

‘It hurts like hell.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Sorry.’

Craig just stared at me. ‘You tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘I was doing my duty and you tried to kill me.’

I had feared that response. It was true, of course, but somehow I had hoped that Craig would forgive me.

‘At least we are still alive.’

‘You didn’t know the launch order was an error,’ Craig said. ‘How could you?’

‘You said yourself that East Berlin was weird.’

‘Yes, but in a real war there will be orders that seem weird. And we will follow them.’

‘Like I said, Craig. I’m sorry.’

Craig looked down at his fingernails. ‘Get out.’

I never saw Craig again. Two days later the XO came into the JO Jungle where Lars and I were still in custody to tell us that Craig had just collapsed. They were watching a movie in the wardroom – not Barbarella – and he had just keeled over.

He died nine hours later. Bleeding in the brain from the initial blow with the wrench.

I had killed him after all.