The hall that was so empty yesterday was now filled with people in uniform, mostly navy, with a sprinkling of business suits. The conference room where he’d been read into the Tensor compartment seemed far too small for this many people, but the other doors appeared to lead to offices, so Jerry followed the crowd.
The conference room was nearly filled with people, and was clearly not the venue for the mission debrief, but in true navy tradition, had been furnished with two coffeemakers and numerous boxes of donuts, which showed signs of attrition.
A table at one end of the room had a large model of an Improved Los Angeles—class sub, while framed pictures in front of the model showed the crew of Toledo at different sporting events and group photos. It was a nice touch, Jerry thought, but it did make the briefing seem a little more like a wake.
He scanned the crowd. Dr. Perry was speaking with a two-star admiral while Abbott hovered nearby. Searching each knot of conversation in turn, he finally spotted Commander Louis Weiss, CO of Jimmy Carter, with SUBRON Twelve’s commander, Captain Dorr. Weiss was almost as short as Jerry, thus hard to find in a crowd.
Fortunately, they were standing next to one of the coffeemakers, which saved time. Both saw Jerry’s approach and by the time he’d reached them, Weiss was offering his commodore a just-filled cup.
Jerry shook hands with both, then gratefully sipped while he congratulated Jimmy Carter’s skipper. “Lou, you did a five-oh job up there. You’re out here, so I’m guessing you’re all prepped and ready to go.”
Weiss nodded, but for someone who could maneuver a nuclear submarine close to the Russian border, he looked a little nervous. “Most of the submarine chain of command is going to be in there. Putting together the brief was easy, but I keep on worrying that my dolphins are on upside down.”
Dorr reassured him. “I’ve checked twice, Lou. You’re fine. And I don’t blame you,” the commodore observed. “The whole Navy wants to know what happened to Toledo.”
“They aren’t going to like the answer,” Weiss replied grimly.
“I think it’s more accurate to say they aren’t going to like what the answer implies,” Jerry added.
LCDR Travis appeared next to the three. “Gentlemen, the CNO’s party is on their way down.” That was the signal to find a chair, and Travis added, “Right and down the hall.” He told Jerry, “You’re in the second row.”
A much larger conference room, almost an auditorium, looked tailor-made for debriefs. As Jerry entered, he could see that seats were being filled quickly. Neatly lettered index cards marked each chair, and Jerry found himself sitting between Commodore Dorr on one side and a civilian he didn’t recognize, who turned out to be one of the deputy undersecretaries of the navy.
Weiss was at the podium, while Perry helped make last-minute equipment checks. The incoming stream thinned, but increased in rank. Jerry recognized two other east coast squadron commanders, who must have also flown in, then SUBFOR, a three-star who was responsible for every submarine in the U.S. Navy.
Travis called “Attention on deck!” as Secretary of Defense Richfield came in with the National Security Advisor, Bill Hyland, closely followed by the Secretary of the Navy, Clifford Gravani, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Bernard Hughes. The quartet was followed by a gaggle of aides and assistants. The instant all four were seated, the lights dimmed and Commander Weiss began speaking.
After introducing himself, Weiss quickly reviewed receiving his new orders and Jimmy Carter’s voyage to the designated search area. The trip had been routine, and without incident, but procedure demanded at least a summary. He then described the two unmanned underwater vehicles the submarine carried, their capabilities and limitations.
He spent more time on the search plan, especially since it had taken his UUVs within spitting distance of Russian territorial waters. There had been a contingency plan that actually extended the UUVs’ sensors across the border, but this had required the remotes to maneuver right up to the edge of Russian waters, within what Weiss had described as the “control margin.” Luckily, that was unnecessary.
The slide they’d all waited for appeared next.
It was impossible to get all of Toledo into a single photograph, but someone in the crew with very good graphics skills had created a mosaic of the UUVs’ close-in shots. The viewpoint was almost directly overhead, but showed the boat on her starboard side, the sail half-buried in the mud. She lay on a slight slope, with the bow down and the screw, stern planes, and rudder well clear of the bottom.
A wave of sadness passed through Jerry, and he heard softly spoken comments from those around him. The most common was “Rest in peace.” The image made it all too real. Then he took a mental breath and pushed his feelings to one side. He had to focus on the how and why, rather than who.
Carter’s captain gave the audience a moment to take it in, then added a symbol marking the location of the torpedo hit. A Los Angeles—class submarine was 360 feet long and 33 feet in diameter, and the opening marked by the small red circle didn’t look all that lethal. Of course, neither did a bullet hole in a corpse.
Weiss was explaining what they believed was the sequence of events. “We believe the hit flooded the forward compartment very quickly, but it appears the forward reactor compartment bulkhead was weakened by the blast and eventually gave way as well, so over half of the submarine’s interior was flooded within minutes.
“She impacted the bottom very hard. Note the crushed sonar dome, and the impression along the seabed suggests the hull bounced two, possibly three times before coming to a stop. The propeller shaft was badly bent, which means the engine room probably also flooded, albeit the rate of flooding would have been slower. No one on board could have survived for any significant length of time, and she was too deep to attempt an escape. I had the UUVs listen carefully along the engine room, just in case; there were no indications of survivors.”
Weiss’s words were chilling and comforting at the same time. This was every submariner’s nightmare, and the only mercy could be that it was over quickly. Toledo was far too deep to ever be raised, but they were no longer lost. The navy would be able to tell the crew’s loved ones where they lay.
The next image zoomed out from the sub, including more of the surrounding seabed. A new circle appeared, some distance away from the hull. “We evaluate this debris as the rear section of an MPT-1 Kolibri torpedo, based on measurements of its diameter—324 millimeters.” A close-up showed a crumpled cylinder with a tapered end and two propellers. “This torpedo is a copy of an early U.S. Mark 46 and is currently only used in the PMK-2 moored, propelled warhead mine and the 91R and 92R ASW missiles.”
Another debris symbol appeared, closer to the hull. In the detail photo, it turned out to be a cylindrical object, even smaller than the torpedo remains. One end was damaged. Jerry recognized it instantly as a SATCOM buoy. It was designed to be launched from a submarine’s signal ejector, float to the surface, and transmit an encrypted message via satellite. It allowed submarines, who did their level best to stay hidden, to transmit messages without revealing their location. The satellite would relay the recorded message to nearby ships or planes, or back to shore, as needed. It even had a timer so the sub could be well away from the place before the buoy started sending. After transmitting, it would sink to the bottom.