Three days passed, and Austin had still collected only a few Soviet voice transmissions. Benitez decided to make one more nighttime pass to give Austin a chance to find more. Austin would have been willing to sit for weeks. He was itching to nab the grail, to record some Soviet missile telemetry.
It was on this last evening that something began to come through. It didn't sound like a launch, but Austin had also been told to look out for equipment tests. Maybe that's what was going on. Maybe the Russians were tuning up their gear, getting ready for a show. He asked Benitez to order a turn, to try to position Cochino for a clearer signal. Even after that, Austin was still not sure what he was hearing, or even whether it was coming from land or from sea. This wasn't voice, that much he knew.
For a moment the frequencies seemed about right for a weapons test. But there wasn't nearly enough coming through-in fact, not anywhere near the wash of sound that would have signaled the telemetry from a missile test. Intelligence officials hack home might have imagined that the Soviets were engaged in endless launchings, readying to take their missiles to sea. But if that were the case, the Soviets had taken a break just as Cochino came near. Austin's spy mission was a failure, at least so far. He was scheduled to get another try later, but for now, Cochino was going back to her initial mission. She was going to play hide-and-seek with Tusk so the two subs could learn like any young predators how to become hunters and killers.
By now, even Benitez was disappointed as he turned Cochino from the area. For all of the trouble Austin's orders had caused, the commander would have liked to have been able to go back and say, "Ah, we got something," to log in his patrol report that "we intercepted this or we intercepted that." Still, as he began ordering course, west and north, he was glad to be getting on to what he considered his primary mission. In fact, he was feeling quite light-hearted. It was Wednesday, August 24, a day before Cochino's fourth birthday, and Benitez had called for an early celebration.
The cooks were at work, preparing a large birthday cake and a steak dinner that even Austin had to agree was better than Spam. There were songs, jokes, and prerecorded birthday wishes set down that morning by some of the men eating in the mess. Later, Benitez would log, "It was a happy ship, and in the wardroom we expressed the wish that the next birthday would find us all together on board Cochino."
Early the next morning, Cochino spotted Tusk off her starboard beam. By 10:30 A.M. that Thursday, Cochino began moving ahead at snorkel depth. It was her turn to hide. Tusk had already moved away to perform the submarine version of counting to ten.
It was a gloomy day, misty and gray with rough seas. The radio room had earlier picked up a forecast of polar storms, and the winds had been blowing for hours. The waves rocked Cochino, and the planesmen struggled to maintain steady depth, as the crewmen braced themselves, grabbing chart tables and overhead pipes. Others lunged to catch sliding coffee cups and tools. The forward engine room got on the squawk box and told Benitez that water was pouring into the sub through the snorkel, which should have been automatically capped watertight by a valve designed to slam shut as soon as its sensors got wet.
Benitez sent Wright, his XO, hack to investigate as the engines cut off for lack of air. Just about two minutes later, there was a muffled thud and the sub shuddered. Austin slammed hard against the viewer on the number 2 periscope. He was certain they had humped a "deadhead," a log, and just as certain that he'd have two black eyes to prove it.
But what was actually happening was far worse. An electrician saw sparks coming from one of the two compartments that each held two of the massive batteries that powered Cochino when she was underwater. The compartments were located toward the middle of the sub marine. The batteries in one of the spaces, the "after-battery" compartment, were on fire and smoke was filling the room.
"Clear the compartment," the electrician shouted, staying behind to try to find a way to put out the fire. Men began moving forward to the control room, bringing the news to Benitez.
"Fire in the after-battery!" someone gasped. Benitez answered with an order. "Surface!" Then he turned to one of the new devices they were testing, an underwater phone, and sent a message to Tusk. "Casualty. Surfacing."
The men blew ballast, and Cochino broke the surface within moments, rocking fiercely in the stormy seas, sixteen-foot waves crashing against her hull. The captain headed back to the conning tower. Then he opened the hatch and climbed out onto the weather bridge, a large protrusion off the sub's notched steel sail. From here he was well above the main deck, trying to scan for Tusk, his binoculars all but useless.
Calling down the ladder to the control room, Benitez sent one of the sub's youngest officers, Ensign John P. Shelton, hack to report on the fire. Other men ran to try to help fight the flames, but there was a terrible delay. The emergency breathing apparatus that should have protected the lead man from the smoke and gases wouldn't work. By the time he could send for another, the watertight door leading to the room was jammed, perhaps held by the pressures building from within or melted shut by the heat of the fire.
Inside, one battery seemed to be charging another, emitting highly combustible hydrogen gas as a by-product. Unless someone could break into the fiery compartment, unless someone could push a wrench against heavy switches to break the connections between the burning batteries, the hydrogen would build to critical levels and there would be another explosion. With a large enough blast, Cochino could be lost.
Benitez left the bridge and headed to the control room. There he checked the hydrogen detectors. They still read zero. For a moment he was thankful, but just for a moment. Then he realized the detectors simply weren't working. He knew there was only one option. Somebody was going to have to force their way into the battery compartment from the other side, from the forward engine room. Somebody had to try again to get in to disconnect the batteries. Just then, Wright phoned forward-he was going to try to do just that. He outlined his plan tersely and without an unnecessary rendition of the risks. Both he and Benitez knew that the battery space could explode at any moment, that any attempt to enter might prove fatal. They also knew that Wright had to try.
Worried, Benitez climbed back to the bridge to look for the only help nearby, the men on Tusk. He was there when he felt the second explosion, a blast that ripped off a flapper that had isolated smoke from the burning compartment from the rest of the ventilation system. Smoke and toxic gases were now pouring through to the forward part of the sub. Someone called up to the bridge. The men below were in serious trouble.
Benitez ordered an evacuation, calling topside anyone who wasn't manning a critical position or fighting the fire. The men began moving forward, any instinct to panic overwhelmed by the almost unbelievable magnitude of the casualty. One after another, some gasping for air, they made their way to the how, the very front of the sub, and climbed up the ladder leading to a topside hatch. Under captain's orders, they headed to the handrail at the lee side of the sail and lashed themselves to it.