In the strictest legal sense, Jabo barely outranked Duggan. They were both junior officers on their first sea tour: Jabo near the end of his, Duggan at the very beginning. While Duggan still held the rank of Ensign, the rank given to him along with his diploma at the Academy, Jabo had been promoted twice, first to lieutenant j.g. (junior grade), and then to full lieutenant. So Jabo had been in the Navy just a few years longer than Duggan, but those years were, importantly, sea time: five long patrols on a nuclear submarine. Duggan had exactly zero days underway. But the most important difference between them was something unquantifiable, something not easily reduced to pay grade or days at sea. Jabo was hot shit. He was the Junior Officer all the enlisted men wanted to work for, the one the department heads wanted to mentor, the one the other JOs wanted to emulate.
“You ready?” said Jabo with his mild Tennessee twang.
“I think so,” he said, trying to sound somewhere between too nervous and too confident.
“You know the only requirement is that an officer close it out — you don’t need your dolphins. So you can go in alone if you want.”
Duggan hesitated for a minute, saw that Jabo was joking, and exhaled nervously.
“You’re lucky we’re doing this,” said Jabo. “This is a tough evolution to see. Impossible to get underway.”
“Yes,” said Duggan, squelching the urge to say, “Yes sir.” Even though Jabo did outrank him slightly, junior officers didn’t talk to each other that way. But Jabo had that kind of aura. It made Duggan mildly jealous, as the new guy, months away from having anybody respect him for anything. He also fought down the impulse to resent the fact that an ROTC guy like Jabo could rise to the top — he felt like four years of celibacy and eating shit at Annapolis should entitle an Academy guy to hold that role. That had been the promise, that the ROTC guys were barely competent part-timers, while their years of toil at Annapolis would make them military superstars. But despite getting his degree at a school with frat parties and pompon girls, Jabo was clearly an outstanding officer. And Duggan had seen Jabo’s wife, Angi, at the farewell party the night before, a redheaded, athletic knockout, the kind of girl he imagined would turn heads even at a school full of southern beauties. Another reason to resent his monastic life at the academy, another reason to be jealous. But, in spite of all that…Jabo was just impossible to dislike.
“He’s comin’,” said Jabo. Duggan heard it too. The gonging had stopped, replaced by footsteps on the iron rungs of the ladder that were bolted to the inside of the tank. Light from a flashlight grew in intensity as the petty officer neared, until his head popped out of the manway.
There was no graceful way to exit the tank. The petty officer handed Jabo his flashlight and rubber mallet, which Jabo placed on the deck before grabbing his outstretched arms and pulling him through. He got to his feet, took a deep breath, put his hands on his hips, and looked Duggan up and down.
“You the new guy? Sir?”
“That’s me,” said Duggan, trying again to strike a balance between confidence and modesty. He got the distinct impression that the enlisted man…Renfro, that was his name…was waiting for him to say or do something stupid that he could report back to an amused crew. Renfro had a pencil thin mustache and that muscular, small build that seemed characteristic of so many submariners, standard issue along with the hard, challenging stare. All three of them were wearing identical, insignia-free green coveralls for the occasion, not even a nametag among them. But no one observing the scene would have had any trouble picking out who among them was the respected lieutenant, who was the experienced petty officer, and who was the boot ensign.
“You an Academy guy?”
“That’s right.”
“Hmm,” said Renfro, nodding his head with disapproval. Renfro was “qualified,” a wearer (when in a normal uniform) of the coveted silver dolphins. This meant that despite the difference in their nominative ranks, Renfro outranked Duggan in an unofficial, but very important way. It would be months of non-stop work, study, and endless on-the-job training before the captain pinned dolphins on Duggan’s chest. (Closing out a tank was one of about two hundred “practical factors” he had to complete along the way.) Furthermore, Renfro was an “A Ganger,” a member of Auxiliary Division, the men in charge of the dirtiest, most important equipment on the boat: the diesel engine, the oxygen generators, all the ship’s damage control equipment. They made the claim, with much justification, that they were the Navy’s truest submariners.
“You ready?” said Jabo.
“Yes,” said Duggan. The dark tank didn’t seem all that inviting, but he suddenly wanted to get out from under Renfro’s hard gaze.
Jabo went in first, somehow effortlessly squeezing his considerable frame through the manway. Duggan followed him, while Renfro stood watch at the entrance.
“Don’t worry sir,” said Renfro as they descended. “I won’t let them start filling it up ‘til you’re half way up the ladder.”
“We appreciate it,” said Jabo.
Duggan climbed down the iron rungs, which were welded directly to the side of the tank. The side of the tank was also the concave side of the ship, making it tricky to reach the next slippery step as they curved outward, away in the darkness, most of his weight hanging from his hands rather than supported by his feet, until he was halfway down and the hull curved back.
The darkness of the tank and the geometry of the ladder made it impossible to see how far he had to go; it was deeper than he imagined. He felt himself growing tense as he went further, thought about the single valve handle and the listless watchstanders that were the only things standing between him and thousands of gallons of diesel fuel. As he got deeper, the air in the tank grew thicker, harder to breathe, the smell a combination of diesel fuel and the sea, a more concentrated version of what permeated the entire ship. He kept his eyes on the manway above him, his only escape. It got smaller as he descended, like a full moon in a black sky.
Jabo had navigated the steps deftly and waited at the bottom, swinging the flashlight on its lanyard, making the shiny walls of the tank seem to sway.
“Okay, you know why we’re here?” said Jabo. His voice echoed metallically. Duggan realized that he still clung on to the bottom rung, afraid to lose contact with it in case Jabo dropped his light, or the batteries died. He forced himself to let go.
“Duggan? Why are we here?”
“To close out the tank.”
“You know what that means?”
“Make sure there’s nothing left down here?”
“Like tools and stuff? Sure. Good answer. And?” He held up the mallet.
“Sound shorts?”
“Sound shorts, anything loose. We’ll bang on everything, make sure it’s all squared away. Because if there’s something rattlin’ around down here, it will be impossible to fix at sea. And remember, we’re a submarine…we don’t like making noise. Any time we empty a tank like this and do work, before we’re done, a qualified enlisted man closes it out, then an officer verifies. Do you know why this tank is empty?”
“We did some maintenance, right?”
Jabo nodded, and pointed his flashlight to a corner of the tank, where a pipe rose like a stalagmite, extending the full height of the space. The walls of the tank gleamed like glass in the beam, the steel preserved pristinely by the blanket of fuel that normally covered it. “We had to fix that: the level detector. You know how that works?”