The Navy lost two nuclear-powered submarines in the 1960s. First was Thresher, lost at sea in 1963, followed by Scorpion, lost in 1968. This led the Navy to seriously reevaluate its rescue capabilities, given the depths at which modern nuclear submarines operated, and the DSRV, or Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, was born. The Navy built two of these ships, Mystic (commissioned in 1970) and Avalon (1971), and positioned them both at the North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego. They were, in effect, deep-diving miniature submarines that could fit inside the belly of an Air Force C-5 cargo plane, to be flown within hours of a submarine disaster to its last reported location. Once on the scene, they had to operate with a mother vessel, either an ASR, or another submarine. They were not perfect, but their capabilities vastly exceeded that of the old ASRs operating by themselves. The DSRVs could operate at depths up to 5,000 feet, and rescue up to 24 men at a time.
The DSRV program lasted until Mystic was decommissioned in 2008. The program was officially replaced by the SRDRS program, Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System. The very title of the program addressed one of the DSRV program’s greatest weakness: the fact that another vessel was needed to rescue submariners at pressure. The main vehicle of the SRDRS program, named Falcon, was self-contained, and not reliant on another vessel. But in some ways the program was a step backwards. Falcon could only conduct rescue operations in water up to 2,000 feet. And it could only rescue 16 men at a time. Finally, the old DSRV program was abolished before the cornerstone of the SRDRS program was even completed: the decompression system. For years, during the Cold War, some had believed deep water submarine rescue to be so unlikely that they deemed the DSRV program a cover operation, and claimed that Mystic and Avalon were actually spy ships. With the last hope of a sunken submarine being the Falcon and its half-complete support systems, it seemed the Navy had almost given up on the concept as well.
But with the message launched from Alabama’s BST buoys, Falcon was hurriedly loaded aboard the USNS Navajo, a seagoing tug, and raced westward, toward the location of Alabama. The water at their destination was far deeper than 2,000 feet, they already knew, and they would be approximately twenty-four hours to the scene. Getting Falcon to the site of the bleating BST buoys seemed almost a hopeless gesture. But the Navy had to do something, and deploying Falcon was all they could do.
Captain Soldato was the fifth person notified about the BST buoys, forty-six minutes after they were launched, at 5:30 in the morning. He’d been dreaming of his grandson when the phone rang, dreaming about the first time they’d fished together, off a pier in Groton Long Point, Connecticut. His grandson was tiny then, small even for the six year old that he was, and was fishing with his line barely off the pier. But he’d hauled in a massive Tautog, a fat, glistening black fish that weighed at least eight pounds. His grandson had literally jumped up and down with excitement when they landed the gasping fish on the pier. The dream was free from any psychedelic or odd associations like dreams often have: the tautog didn’t start talking, or flying. It was more like an exact replay of an exceedingly pleasant moment, a home movie that his memory had wished to replay.
He was so groggy that the Group Nine duty officer had to ask him twice to switch to a secure phone. As Soldato stumbled out of the bedroom, Cindy stirred and frowned, alert on some level that bad news had arrived.
In his study, he picked up the antiquated-looking secure phone that the Navy had provided him and connected with the duty officer. They both turned plastic keys simultaneously, switching the phone to secure mode.
“Captain, we have flash traffic from a BST buoy in the western pacific.”
Soldato was now fully awake. “Which boat?” he asked. But he already knew.
“Seven-thirty-one. The Admiral is calling an emergency meeting in the secure conference room in thirty minutes.”
Soldato hung up without saying another word and donned his uniform silently to avoid waking Cindy, who had fallen back asleep.
Angi was running. It had rained during the night, cooling the air to a perfect running temperature. It was still dark, but she planned to run fourteen miles, which would take her a good two hours, and she had timed her start so she could enjoy the sunrise as she ran. She was already nostalgic about running, knowing she’d have to give it up soon. She’d come to the sport late, never ran in high school, but took it up with a vengeance in her junior year at Vanderbilt, after completing her first 5K. Her boyfriend at the time had talked her into it, and she decided she very much liked the feeling of running by him, and those sorority girls wearing make up for a race, and, even more, those posturing fraternity boys, who gasped for breath as she glided by. She’d run seven marathons in her life, a dozen half marathons, and more 5Ks than she could count. Now it would be taken away from her. She could get one of those jogging strollers, she supposed, after the baby was born…but sometime between now and then she would just have to stop for a while. In the meantime, she would enjoy each run like it was her last.
She ran her usual route, out of her neighborhood onto Trigger Road, feeling good in her legs, with only a slight twinge in the right knee that occasionally gave her problems. She was fast and strong, enjoying the first part of the run down to the Trigger gate that was all slightly downhill, the perfect warm up. The run to the gate was about a mile and a half, just about the amount of time it took for her to begin sweating mildly, breathe properly, and to feel the soreness in her feet and hips disappear. She was alert for any sign that her pregnancy was affecting her running — or that her running was affecting her pregnancy — but so far, so good. She just felt fast. She cruised down the hill toward the gate, her stride lengthening.
There were a few cars at the gate, some government vehicles, some civilian contractors showing up early. Only two gates were open, so even though it was early, the cars were backed up, their brake lights casting long, red reflections on the damp asphalt. She approached the back of a minivan and recognized it immediately; the Soldato’s. What would bring him to base so early? She wondered. There was no telling when your world consisted of eight submarines and all that could go wrong with them.
She ran past it, and confirmed that Soldato was driving, but he was worriedly fumbling with something in his passenger seat, maybe getting out his military ID for the gate guard, and he didn’t see her. She ran about another one hundred yards to the gate and turned around, ready now to really get into the meat of her run. She was facing Soldato now.
As she neared him, he saw her, then recognized her. She lifted her hand to wave, but the look on his face stopped her cold. He looked like a man who was staring absolute calamity in the face, and when their eyes locked, she knew beyond any doubt that it involved Danny.
He drove through the gate and left her behind, standing on an empty road outside a submarine base, on the side of the gate where no one knew anything.
In Maneuvering, Duggan pulled a cloth flash hood from an EAB, twisted it a few times, and tied it around his forehead, banzai style. He pushed on the center of it, felt the blood soaking through, hoped it would at least keep the blood out of his eyes so he could do his fucking job.