“Sir?”
“Lieutenant, this is my classified briefing room as well as our wardroom mess. So speak up. Everyone on the Squallfish, including our engineers, is cleared up to top secret, so you aren’t going to spill the beans on anything we are doing. Even if you did, it wouldn’t make one hell of a difference, because word on a submarine is quicker than the speed of light. What is said in the forward torpedo room is known by the aft torpedo room before you or I could walk from the bow to the stern on this boat.” Shipley slapped the paper in his hand. “So tell me, young man, how you expect us to do this without getting ourselves blown to smithereens?”
Logan took a deep breath and began telling Shipley what he knew about the mission: about how Admiral Frost, the Director of Naval Intelligence, wanted proof positive of what the Soviets were doing; and that he and his team were assigned to bring back that evidence.
The spooks had brought with them special equipment to secure the camera to the search periscope, and the special environmental collector to one of the main induction valves. Shipley did not bother asking how they intended to take a photograph of another submarine. Just because the submarine was Soviet did not mean its skipper subscribed to any premise other than that a submarine mission could only be accomplished by staying submerged.
An hour later, Shipley stood. “Lieutenant, I know we are going to talk again, but I need to see to the boat. You can use the safe in the radio room. It’s not big, but the COMMO, Lieutenant J. G. George Olsson, will help you. I’ll have him track you down. We should be on station in ten days. That should give you time to get acclimated to the boat.”
Logan stood as Shipley started to leave. At the entrance to the mess, Shipley turned around. “Lieutenant Logan, this is your first time on board a submarine, you said?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“Before you try to flush one of our toilets, you have someone show you how. We don’t have the luxury of daily showers out here, and I don’t want me or the crew having to smell you until your shower day.” Without waiting for a reply, Shipley turned and headed aft, toward sick bay.
Behind him, Logan asked, “Shower day?”
Potts squatted near the third battery in the row. “Zero six one, charged; operating.” Then he moved to the next one, reciting the number on top and repeating the words “charged” and “operating.” Whenever the Squallfish submerged, he and Fromley, two of the six electrician mates on board, checked the batteries. Two other sailors were in the aft battery compartment doing the same thing. Without batteries, once the Squallfish reached a depth below fifty feet and the diesels kicked off, the boat would have no power. Batteries were also very temperamental, as his asshole lieutenant Greaser Bleecker enjoyed saying. Temperamental, hell! If salt water soaks them, they short out, and the next thing you’d know we’d be breathing deadly chlorine gas. Thankfully, not for long.
Of course, any sailor knew that if salt water was soaking the batteries, you were already near death, like those sailors in 1939 aboard the USS Squalus.
Across the compartment, Fromley leaned over a small shelf with a logbook propped open against the bulkhead. The stubby pencil needed a sharpened point. He licked the point before each entry as he scribed into the venerable logbook every word Potts uttered about the batteries.
“I ain’t going to take that shit from anyone,” Potts complained as he moved along to the next battery. “Who the hell does he think he is to threaten me like that? This ain’t the coal-firing Navy of the thirties.”
Fromley lifted his pencil. Should he write down those words? He didn’t want to, but the Navy said everything should be in a log. Potts spoke up with another battery report, resolving the dilemma.
“Battery zero six four, charged and operating.” Potts straightened. “If he thinks he’s got me bullied out, he’s full of shit. You know me, Froms; I ain’t nobody’s queer.” He poked himself in the chest as he moved to the next battery.
The whistle on the sound-powered circuit drew their attention. “There he is now, checking up on us two. I don’t think he trusts us.”
“You want me to answer him?”
“Well, somebody has to answer him. You want me to do everything?”
“No,” Fromley replied nervously. “I just wanted—”
“Answer the damn thing before Bleecker comes busting through the door and I have to coldcock him.”
Fromley lifted the microphone. “Fromley here.”
“Fromley! You’re supposed to say ‘forward battery compartment,’ ” Petty Officer Gledhill corrected.
“Yes, sir, Petty Officer—”
“And quit calling me ‘sir’; my parents are married.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Potts said as he squatted by the battery. “Tell him we’re doing the battery check and are about halfway finished.”
Fromley passed the word along, then hung up the microphone. “He said we’re too slow.”
“I heard him, asshole. He can just wait until we’re done. If we do it too fast, then we get ‘you can’t have checked everything you’re supposed to.’ If we do it too slow, then we get ‘you’re too slow, hurry up.’ There’s no pleasing them.”
“Kind of like Goldilocks, ain’t it?” Fromley asked, chuckling. “Goldilocks. Funny.”
“No, it ain’t like Goldilocks and it ain’t funny, From; why in the hell do I put up with you?”
For the next few minutes, Potts moved along the batteries, checking them closely and reporting them accurately. He never noticed the glisten in Fromley’s eyes caused by his harsh remarks.
He had grown used to being told how shitty he was while growing up, and he did everything he could to live down to those expectations as a sailor.
It would take nearly thirty minutes to check the condition of each of the batteries, then another half hour to go through the final checks of the battery compartment. Potts looked up at the large round Navy clock someone had mounted on the bulkhead. “What time did we submerge?”
Fromley flipped the logbook back a page. “I have seventeen forty-seven on my logbook.”
The clock read 1830 hours. “We’re running behind.”
“That’s what the leading petty officer said.”
“I don’t give a shit what he says, and you don’t, either. The point is I know we are running behind.”
“Maybe if you—”
“It isn’t me, Froms; you’re writing too slow.”
“How can I write too slow?”
Potts stood and walked over to the taller but thinner sailor. He slapped Fromley upside the back of the head and laughed. “Because I said you are.”
Fromley smiled. “I’ll try to write faster.”
Potts walked to the other side of the compartment and started down that row of batteries. “I’ll try to talk faster.”
As Potts moved down the row, hurrying to finish before Gled-hill called again, he tried to speak faster, casting a look each time at Fromley, wondering if the man was catching everything he said. He’d better, or he’d beat the shit out of him.
The Squallfish had two compartments filled with battery cells. The forward compartment was sandwiched between the forward torpedo room and the pump room. The pump room was directly beneath the control room.
The aft battery compartment was immediately forward of the forward engine room, which was immediately forward of the aft engine room. The forward and aft engine room nomenclatures gave a wrong impression to nonsubmariners, who upon hearing the description believed a submarine had one engine room in the forward portion of the boat and a second in the aft section. The two engine rooms on the Squallfish were aligned together, with the forward engine room containing two of the “beloved” Fairchild diesels directly forward of the aft engine room, with its two Fairchilds.