Continuing our presumably westward journey to enter the icy waters of the Soviet sector, we pushed through the ocean with wide-open throttles for several more days. We finally approached a destination of sorts, somewhere, I guessed, near the Kamchatka Peninsula. The announcement came with an abrupt change in our bell, the first new propulsion order in more than a week, that bolted Marc Birken to attention with the order, "Slow to one-third! Do not cavitate! Do not cavitate!"
Marc rapidly cranked his throttle wheels nearly shut as everybody sitting in the maneuvering area of the engine room looked up at the cavitation indicator lights. The noise from the tiny bubbles spinning off the screw made a cracking noise that could be heard for miles. It was essential, if we were to avoid detection by others, for us to slow the screws and rig the ship for silence.
Since "do not cavitate" was now a standing order for the engine room, it was apparent to me that the captain suspected that somebody, out there in the ocean, might be listening for us.
The captain and executive officer also spread the word for us to do everything possible to maintain silence. Although we could talk, watch movies, and move around the Viperfish in a relatively normal manner, we were careful to avoid slamming the steel hatches separating the compartments and to avoid dropping anything on the decking.
Of greatest importance was the garbage. Any light bulbs in the debris ejected from the Viperfish would implode with a bomb-like detonation that could be heard for hundreds of miles. Silence was imperative. Garbage bags were checked and double-checked. It was almost as if we had started tiptoeing through the dark spaces of a stranger's house because somebody, probably armed with an arsenal of lethal weapons, could be nearby-awake and listening for the sounds of an intruder.
We shifted in the chairs of our watch stations as these thoughts penetrated our consciousness. The unknown nature of the listening force added to its ominous nature and made it seem more powerful and frightening. Moving slowly and silently through waters that were likely within the Soviet sector, we could almost feel the presence of something or someone above us or around us — listening, waiting, ready to take action against us if we were detected. The crew's morale, already burdened by the problems of the society we had left behind, was further weighted by this new threat. Nobody speculated about what would happen if we were detected, but the subject persistently haunted us while we concentrated on the cavitation monitor and silence.
Chief Morris obviously felt it as much as the rest of us. That evening, he snapped at one of the crewmen, "There's a flashlight in the engine room with dead batteries. Didn't you guys run the PM[6] last week?"
"I'm sure we did, Chief," the electrician answered, calmly. "Which flashlight is it?"
Glaring at the man, the chief stuck out his jaw and said, "I'm not going to tell you. You're going to have to find it yourself."
The man looked at the chief but restrained himself from making any comment. He roamed throughout the engine room as he tested each flashlight one at a time. It took him a half hour, but he finally found the bad light and replaced the batteries.
The rest of us jumped on the chief from that point on. In the subtle manner of submarine crews everywhere, we delivered our message without running afoul of the military chain-of-command structure. When anyone asked where something might be located, the answer, almost always within earshot of Chief Morris, was always an impudent, "I'm not going to tell you. You're going to have to find it yourself."
At that point, we still had almost two more months on patrol.
There would be no escape for the chief. He would receive the same message, over and over, wherever he might wander throughout the Viperfish. He learned fast, however, and never pulled a "you gotta find it yourself" trick again.
More than a week after leaving Pearl, and nearly two years since the Viperfish had started her long journey as a spy submarine, we reached a destination that was unknown to most of us The SOBs in the hangar compartment prepared for the search They checked and double-checked our coordinates from the ship's navigation system and compared the data with the information they had been given in Hawaii. Working diligently, they began to prepare the Fish for the complex process required to lower it into the high-pressure ocean.
Finally, they started lowering the Fish down the hole and out through the belly of the Viperfish. It was a cooperative effort by Lieutenant Dobkin, Robbie Teague, Captain Harris, and the cluster of civilians. They all tossed out ideas and orders as they eased the Fish, one foot of cable at a time, into the ocean on the start of its journey that would take it miles away from our submarine.
We did not linger around the hangar during this time, so that the SOBs could do their work without our intrusion. Hoping that something worthwhile would come of it, we managed the rest of the boat. It was apparent that our ability to function as a seagoing submarine in matters of military defense was highly limited with the expensive Fish trailing several miles below us. We could not quickly change course, we could not speed up or slow down, and we were unable to change our depth abruptly without destroying the search pattern or damaging the Fish. We were like a military aircraft, flying through the middle of a battle zone at dangerously slow speeds with flaps extended, landing gear down, and controls frozen.
The Viperfish was vulnerable, and everybody knew it. Even though the Fish was nearly twenty thousand feet below us, it had to be carefully pulled by its cable so that it would remain only a few feet off the ocean floor. The entire operation was extremely delicate, and its success depended on our moving slowly, systematically and deliberately at all times.
During the first few days of the search, my biggest worry was the consequences of any flooding. The Fish and its cable likely would be destroyed during any emergency surfacing action or by a sudden loss of propulsion power resulting from any problem in the engine room. I found myself forcing these thoughts from my mind during the long hours of sitting in front of the reactor panel and wondering who was out there listening for us. All of us worked hard to concentrate on the meters spread across our panels.
After two weeks of quietly moving back and forth across our search pattern, the noise from the first explosion hit our submarine. It was clearly audible to all of us, a distant "whomp!" followed by a long period of stunned silence from our crew.
"What the hell was that?" I asked Brian Lane. Brian and I had been sitting side by side in front of our control panels for the past three hours, as we watched our meters, puffed on cigars, and tried to stay alert despite the monotony and boredom of our tasks.
Lane turned in his chair and looked at me. For a moment, I thought he hadn't heard the noise-his eyes didn't seem to register the enormity of an explosion in the ocean thousands of miles from land. He looked inappropriately relaxed as he spoke the hang-loose Hawaiian vernacular of the day, "Ain't no big thing, bruddah."