Vaughn’s voice sounded eerie in the highly pressurized space, its pressure equal to outside the ship. Without mixed gas for breathing, the oxygen in the space would become toxic in minutes. They had to get out or die here. Pacino’s feet and legs had left him long before. His hands were going and now even his torso was nearly numb.
Vaughn filled the first man’s Steinke hood, the plastic going over the man’s head to chest level, a small clear plastic window in the mask showing the man’s pained face.
“Don’t forget to scream all the way up,” Vaughn said.
Vaughn hit a hydraulic lever that opened the upper hatch.
Pacino could hear a bubbling sound as the trapped air out side the partition left the trunk. The chamber was now open to the sea, the surface 1,200 feet above, the only air what was trapped in the partition.
The men left one by one. Now it was Pacino’s turn.
Vaughn put on his hood, the high-pressure air filling it, the taste of it dry and coppery. Vaughn then filled his own and dropped the hose, looking at Pacino.
“Let’s go, sir. Don’t forget to scream. See you on the surface.”
Vaughn and Pacino ducked down, their heads popping underwater and emerging on the other side of the partition wall, now directly under the upper hatch. Vaughn went first.
In the dim light, still shining underwater, Pacino saw Vaughn rise up through the circle of the hatch and vanish.
Just for a moment, Pacino was tempted to shut the upper hatch and go back into the chamber, but Vaughn’s words rang in his ears. What would the XO tell the crew?
Pacino felt his way, the air in his hood making him buoyant. He pushed himself up, the hood pulling him upward. He put his hands on the hatchway, guided himself out, and as he passed out the hatch he said the words aloud, knowing there was no one else to do it.
“Seawolf, departing.”
The light shone weakly from the open hatch. He had the briefest impression of the green hull extending into the darkness fore and aft, the hull ending at a jagged rip. He let go of the metal of the hatch, surprised that he could still feel something with his fingers, and now he looked up, beginning to feel the water flow as he began to rise.
It was a strange sensation being in arctic seawater, body numb, knowing it was a quarter-mile to the surface. He wondered if he was succumbing to nitrogen narcosis, rapture of the deep, a drunkenness from the toxicity of nitrogen at the high partial pressures. He looked up to the surface, seeing only blackness, and he screamed, screamed to prevent his lungs from exploding as he moved into shallower and shallower water with the easing of the pressure, but he also screamed because he felt like screaming.
“Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho!”
The shout they’d taught them all at sub school when they’d made a simulated escape from 100 feet. Back then it had seemed a lark, an adventure. Today it was something else.
He screamed and screamed.
“Listen to this. Captain.”
Kane took his eyes from the periscope and joined Mcdonne at the speaker of the UWT system. There was a multitude of bubbles, rushing noises, and what sounded like screaming.
“Must be a school of whales,” Kane said, returning to his periscope. He
lit the low-light enhancer and gasped. “We’ve got open water here. We’ve got to get the blower ready to go.
God knows how much power we have left. It could be gone.”
“Houser, line up the system. Prepare to surface.”
“AFT COMPARTMENT, CAPTAIN, WE ARE PREPARING TO SURFACE. PUT A FIVE-DEGREE UP ANGLE ON THE SHIP USING THE STERNPLANES. I SAY AGAIN—”
Kane nodded. They might have no power at the surface but at least they would be where the world could see them, and the only power he would need was enough to transmit on the HF radio distress signal.
Then they would have to wait. Wait… The hull inclined upward. Mcdonne and Houser were pumping out the depth-control tanks and getting ready to blow out the water from the ballast tanks with the low-pressure blower. Kane could only hope there would be enough battery power left just to do that.
“Scope’s breaking,” he called as the phosphorescence flashed against the periscope view. He turned off the light enhancer. The light from the surface was diffuse, as it would be in the dawn, perhaps an overcast dawn. “Scope’s clear.”
Kane spun the instrument in several circles, his vision obscured by fog and dense clouds close to the surface as well as the snowflakes whipping by the lens of the periscope. He found himself looking at the snow instead of the horizon.
The snowflakes were distracting, Kane thought, as he realized he’d never seen snow at sea. “Open the induction mast and put the low-pressure blower on all main ballast tanks.”
He picked up the UWT mike.
“AFT COMPARTMENT, CAPTAIN. WE ARE STARTING A LOW-PRESSURE BLOW ON THE BALLAST TANKS. TRY TO KEEP THE EPM UP FOR ANOTHER TEN MINUTES.”
He dropped the mike and looked out the scope, watching as the sea got lower. The added height did little to improve visibility in the snowstorm. Even as he watched, the wind picked up, the snowflakes suddenly accelerating almost to the horizontal in the wind. The waves sprouted whitecaps in the gust. Kane could almost feel the deck heel over from the force of the wind on the sail. He trained the view to the left, to the east, hoping to see a brightness from the sun, but the clouds were just as dense where the sun should have been.
Kane bit back disappointment. He had hoped to see the sun again, to seal the ordeal behind him and remind him that he was alive. Instead, there was a blizzard. He trained his view to the left, to the east, saw the sun rise over the horizon, a sight he had never thought he would see again.
The roar of the blower started, the ballast tanks filling with water. Soon they should be stable on the surface and he could talk to the men aft face to face on the hull.
Within ten minutes he could see the top of the hull in the gray water. The ballast tanks were dry, the ship surfaced.
“Secure the blow.” He picked up the microphone.
“AFT COMPARTMENT, CAPTAIN, WE ARE ON THE SURFACE. ALL STOP. OPEN YOUR ESCAPE TRUNK HATCH AND COME UP FORWARD.”
He trained the view aft, and watched as the hatch slowly popped open, the haggard men climbing from the hatch, looking dazed at the falling snow, unsure of whether to rejoice at reaching the surface or curse to be in the middle of a winter storm. As they walked they hugged themselves against the cold.
“XO, get those guys in here from the aft hatch.”
Mcdonne left to get the engineroom crew in. Kane looked out the periscope for a few minutes. They had, by God, lived. The Phoenix now drifted in the sea, its battery nearly dead.
He realized he needed to get to radio. He left Houser on the periscope and found Binghamton in the room, his parka and gloves on, his breath coming out in clouds.
“Can you bump up the bigmouth?” were Binghamton’s first words. Kane called the request to Houser. Binghamton handed Kane the microphone and they listened to static for a few minutes, then Binghamton waved Kane on.