“Come on, XO,” he said, offering a hand. “Let’s get you to the wardroom. The doc can check you out there.”
“No, McKennitt… No!” Bloomfield struggled to say between coughs. “Don’t let… anyone … know about this … Just … let me stay here… for a while.”
He looked up to see the weathered senior chief return a slight nod, his face twisted in a disgusted scowl as if he utterly detested what his eyes beheld. The scowl remained as McKen-nitt donned his flash hood and mask once again, then opened the tunnel door and headed back into the engine room to rejoin the hose team.
He must have been a pathetic sight, Bloomfield thought, especially to a hardened undersea warrior like McKennitt who had spent his whole life in the trenches aspiring to his senior enlisted position. Obviously, the senior chief had little or no respect for him.
As he sat in the passageway all alone, his heaving chest slowly returning to normal, his sweat-streaked face glistening in the emergency lighting, Lieutenant Commander Warren Bloomfield thought about how different he was from the young Ensign Bloomfield of twenty years ago. Honor, courage, commitment, they were words to live by at the academy. How strange that he would only come to understand their true meaning twenty years later when he was on the verge of retirement. How strange that he would discover after all these years, that he had little respect for himself.
“Damage is extensive, Captain, but the fire is out, and we should have the main seawater system up and running within the hour.”
Edwards stood with crossed arms on the periscope platform as a very smoky and grimy Lieutenant Coleman made his report in person. Battle stations were still manned in the control room, though a few sailors with some very nasty contusions had to be carried off to the wardroom for medical attention. Most of the loose equipment dislodged by the torpedo detonation still lay strewn about on the deck.
“I can give you five knots on the EPM right now, Captain,” Coleman continued. “It’ll drain the battery, but we should be okay. There’s nothing wrong with the reactor, and we can start it up once main seawater’s restored.”
“Good. We need that five knots, Mr. Coleman. As you can see, we’re six hundred feet below test depth, and I’ve used up just about all our high-pressure air to keep us from going any deeper. I’m this close from an emergency blow.”
As if on cue, a loud groan of overstressed steel filled the room and passed fore and aft before subsiding. The hull was under an enormous strain. At this depth Providence could be likened to an aluminum soda can with a heavy weight on top. One slight twist in the wrong direction, and the can would undergo a catastrophic collapse. Most of the leaks caused by the explosion had been stopped by automatic isolation valves, and that was a good thing. But fighting leaks under this kind of pressure was not a simple task. Two decks below, the auxiliary machinery room had reported a tiny leak the size of a pinhead. Nothing to be overly concerned about, except that one of the unlikely mechanics had stupidly passed his index finger through the water stream and was horrified to see it neatly sliced off.
“Helm, ahead one third. Dive, make your depth one hundred fifty feet,” Edwards ordered before turning back to Coleman. He wanted to get Providence out of the danger zone before going any farther, and there was still much to do. The smoke-filled engine room would have to be ventilated with the outside atmosphere, the air banks needed recharging, and the refrigeration plant needed restarting. With all the electrical power these tasks would require. he half-considered snorkel-ing to preserve the battery, but he hesitated. Starting up Providence’s noisy diesel generator was a risky proposition with the threat of the Hatta still out there.
“What about the main engines?”
Coleman shook his head. “The main engines may take awhile, sir. I’ve got both off-line right now. From what we’ve been able to discern, we definitely had an oil flow problem on the forward bearing of number two. I’m not sure what caused it. The only way to tell is to crack open the main engine housing and conduct a full inspection.”
“That will take time,” Edwards said gravely, briefly imagining the ordeal of conducting such an inspection. The area would have to be cordoned off, every tool tracked, every disassembled item properly tagged and marked for reassembly. The whole process could take ten or twelve hours, and they needed a whole lot more than five knots to keep their appointment with the shore party.
“What about number one main engine?” Edwards asked suddenly. “Why is it racked out?”
“Well, Captain, I’m not sure what caused the loss of flow on number two. I can’t be certain we don’t have the same problem on number one. I thought taking it off-line was the wiser approach.”
Edwards shook his head. “I need that engine, Mr. Coleman, or should I say Eng, because you are my acting engineer. One day when you become a full-time engineer you’ll learn that a captain never likes to be robbed of his mains.” Coleman started to speak but Edwards cut him off. “Always remember, your job is to maximize propulsion in any way possible to the extent of breaking your equipment. Once you get the reactor back, I want you to restore number one main engine and place it back on-line, please. Thanks for your report, Eng. Keep me informed up here.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Coleman said halfheartedly, then headed for the aft ladder. He obviously didn’t agree with his captain’s order, but Edwards knew that someday he would learn. They all did, just like he had years ago.
As the deck angled upward and the ship crept up to her creeping five-knot speed, Edwards considered how fortunate they were to still be alive. Providence’s decoy had done its job, drawing the torpedo shallow just before the smart weapon detonated upon detecting Providence’s magnetic influence field. The explosion had been too high to rupture the pressure hull, but it had been close enough to do some serious damage, and he couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if he hadn’t ordered the main ballast tanks vented at the last minute. Did that act alone take Providence deep enough and give her the extra cushion of seawater she needed to absorb the blow? Perhaps they would never know. Or at least not until some pencil-necked geek back at NavSea spent five million dollars doing a study on it to come up with the conclusion that he had acted stupidly.
“Passing eight hundred feet, sir,” the diving officer called out. Everyone in the room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief now that Providence was well within her design depth specifications. The hull felt the relief too as the HY-80 creaked and popped, expanding to its former shape.
He noticed Miller in the starboard corner conversing in a low voice with Chief Ramirez, who had just emerged from the sonar room.
“Any contact on our assailant, gentlemen?” Edwards called over to them.
Miller and Ramirez exchanged glances, then approached the platform together.
“The chief was just telling me, Captain,” Miller said. “Sonar picked up a loud explosion to the south of us before that enemy torpedo exploded.”
“We were too busy tracking the enemy torpedo, Captain,” Ramirez uttered, abashedly. “That’s why we didn’t report it before, but I can bring it up for you on the historical display.” Ramirez reached up to the conn’s sonar display and rapidly pressed a series of buttons on the touchscreen, passing the display through several screens before stopping on the one that had the passive sonar waterfall showing the last four hours’ worth of data. He pointed to a small bright green blip just above a saturated portion of the display that represented the close-aboard torpedo explosion.