I ignored the voices in my head shrieking at me to slow down, hooked my hands under the dead crewman and turned him over.
He was a kid, a teenager whose cheeks were devoid of facial hair. The man’s skin was the color of ash, his bluish lips providing the only contrasting hue. Thin, black brows arched over his half-closed eyes. Only a crescent of white was visible below the lids.
An exaggerated grimace distorted the sailor’s mouth and exposed two rows of crooked teeth. His tongue’s swollen tip poked out between the canines on the left side, pale and dry. It seemed trapped behind the yellowed enamel.
“I have rolled the deceased over to his left. He is now on his back,” I said into the tape recorder after standing up. “Cyanosis evident in lips and fingers. Two exit wounds visible in left shoulder area.” I leaned down and measured them. “Wounds spaced approximately… thirteen centimeters apart. Left-hand wound approximately ten centimeters to right of midline. Both wounds located two centimeters above clavicle.”
Three more digital images captured the face, torso and full body of the dead sailor. A fourth documented the patch of deck he had occupied before I moved him.
“Deceased is cool to the touch. Moderate rigor mortis. Blood is coagulated.”
There were some smears of blood on the deck where he had lain but not enough to collect in a pool. A few fibers, which appeared to be the same color as his jumpsuit, were stuck in the tacky red marks on the floor.
“Little blood evident beneath body.”
The coveralls’ front zipper was open halfway down his chest, revealing a T-shirt that was struggling to be white despite shadows of ground-in grease. The suit had two breast pockets, both of which were zipped, and two loose pockets sewn into the front just below the waist. Tugging the shirt’s neck down a few inches, I peered down its front, trying to gather an image of the sailor’s sternum.
“Dependent blood pooling visible on deceased’s chest,” I said after a few moments.
If I cut off all his clothes and examined him in a more clinical setting, I’d see more of the same. He hadn’t been moved since he died, and the blood had settled in the parts of his body closest to the floor.
His hands were half-curled, as though he had been trying to ball them into fists but ran out of energy. On the middle finger of the right hand, I found what I was looking for: an unhealed cut traversing its tip. I photographed it.
I turned and saw Grimm, who had been staring at the seat of my jeans, now struggling to regain his austere martial expression. A guilty half-smile flashed across his face. I made it easy for him by ignoring his presence as I brushed past and walked the long way around the control room to the forward hatch.
The door, which swung into the control area, was ajar and lay against the wall, held in place by a simple latch. Its white surface and candy-red closing apparatus gleamed amid their grim neighbors.
Pulling a flashlight from my bag, I examined the edges of the opening, which was about five inches thick. The inside surfaces were scratched, and I noted similar marks around the circumference of the door. No blood anyplace.
I kneeled in front of the opening, and poked my head and flashlight hand through. The muscles in my left arm vibrated with the strain of holding me upright as I examined the floor on the other side. The flashlight’s beam revealed nothing but the scuffed gray deck.
Pulling myself back through, I stayed on my knees for a moment, looking through the circular opening. There was a hallway beyond it, lighted by a series of caged bulbs set in the ceiling. It didn’t look wide enough for two men to pass without bumping shoulders. A handful of closed doors were set flush with the walls.
I pivoted and looked back down the length of the control room. The hatch at the opposite end offered a circular view into the next room aft. The rubber band snicked against my skin once, twice, the sting lost amid my thoughts. The nervous routine of snapping it had begun years ago, under more stressful circumstances, and now had become a part of my normal work process.
I pulled myself to my feet, walked over and crouched next to the hatch. In my peripheral vision, I could see the tips of Grimm’s combat boots reorient toward me.
The doorframe was identical to the one in the forward bulkhead, a scarred, utilitarian porthole connecting two watertight compartments. Again, no blood. But on the floor… yes.
I must have said it out loud.
“What?” Grimm said.
“Nothing. I mean, I found something. Hold on.”
The floor on the control room side of the hatch was the same worn surface I had encountered everyplace else on the boat. But its uniformity was interrupted by a glitter in the beam of my flashlight. A cartridge casing.
I stood and took a picture of it and its surroundings, then kneeled back down for a close-up. The brass had been lying in the shadow of the hatch door. I circled it with orange chalk, then used tweezers to slip it into a plastic pouch, which I sealed and marked “CASING 1-CONTROL ROOM FLOOR.”
“Hey, what is that?”
“Shell casing,” I said, leaning through the hatchway. This was trickier because I had to be careful not to smear the chalk outline. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to pull myself into the compartment without disturbing something vital, but as it turned out I didn’t have to.
Another shell casing was standing upright against a ceiling-height cabinet or control box mounted just to the right of the hatch opening. One handed, I snapped a couple of pictures, then drew another circle, half on the deck, half on the cabinet. The casing went in a separate plastic pouch.
I extricated myself from the hatch and stood, hearing my back pop.
Grimm looked down at me, eyebrows raised. It seemed to double the length of his nose.
“You done?”
“Not even close. How much time do I have?”
He glanced at the watch fastened around his sweater’s sleeve.
“Seven minutes.”
“Shit.” I looked around. “Did anyone leave this ship after it surfaced?”
“I wouldn’t know for sure. But if they did leave, they’re drowned by now or floating around in a life jacket. Our briefing said the hatches were closed when the Rickove/s party reached the ship. Does that help?”
I almost smiled. His government-issue monotone was edged with eagerness.
“Not really. Sorry.”
Priorities and theories whirled in my head, whipped into a shapeless nebula of thought. But one idea kept floating to the surface: assuming the gun that had ejected this brass was still onboard, I needed to find it before the SEALs came onboard and kicked it into a torpedo tube or something.
“I’m going to search the ship,” I said, pivoting on the balls of my feet and moving toward the control room’s forward door.
“What? You’re going to search… what are you looking for?” Grimm was following me.
“The gun that killed this man. But wait.”
I stopped and turned again. Grimm’s chin came within inches of bouncing off my forehead as he pulled up short.
“When you guys come onboard, do you have a plan? Are you just going to rush everyplace at once, or are there priorities?”
Grimm’s confused look told me what he was going to say before his lips formed the words. I cut him off.
“What areas of the sub do you need to control first? Where are the first places Larsen will send you guys?”
“Oh. Um, we’ll secure the weapons storage and control areas first. Engineering. The control room, obviously. Everything else can wait until we’re submerged and underway, I guess. Why… hey, where are you going?”
I had walked over to the hatch and was sizing it up, plotting the best way to maneuver my way through it.