The final days of our run to Pearl Harbor pushed us further to the point of becoming intolerant of anything and everything. With Chief Mathews still recovering from his near tragedy and Brian Lane walking back and forth with a half-smile and glassy eyes, we were all beginning to trudge to our watch stations. News bulletins told of more disciplinary actions against the men of the nuclear Navy by Admiral Rickover, more riots by students against our military, and expanding, drug use throughout society. The world seemed to be falling apart.
The last news bulletin that I read before deciding to read them no more included an order "from the top" that no longer would qualified submariners be thrown overboard. This tradition had been determined to be too dangerous.
So, when Baby Bobbie's body odor finally "got" to everybody on the Viperfish, several men took corrective action by thoroughly saturating his sheets with talcum powder. The next time the man swung himself into his rack, a huge cloud of powder puffed into the air. This led to an instant fury that carried all the way to the chief petty officers' desks. Soon thereafter, we received a new directive-a direct order not to coat sheets with talcum powder, no matter how bad anyone might smell.
The attack of channel fever was especially intense. Most of us stayed awake for two days before arriving at Pearl. We finally surfaced several miles off Oahu and stationed the maneuvering watch. Leaving the nightmare of the Soviet sector behind us, we glided up the warm channel waters toward the submarine base. The traditional flowered lei was placed around our sail, and a boat delivered an admiral and a team of hospital corpsmen and doctors to our boat. As the admiral inspected the Viperfish, the medical personnel examined Mathews and Davidson. They took Lane into protective custody for ambulance transportation to Tripler Army Hospital, the first step in the process of ending his career in the Submarine Service. He would eventually receive a medical discharge from the Navy.
Our mission failure was symbolized by the absence of the broom tied to the top of our periscope. The broom represented a "clean sweep of the enemy to the bottom of the ocean"-a symbolic message of a successful mission, a declaration of victory that had been used since the days of U-boats and conventional submarines. Without the broom, the approaching Navy brass would know of the Viperfish's failure before we even tied up to the pier.
Keiko was finishing her master's degree and preparing for our wedding in Los Angeles, so Marc Birken and I again faced the row of colorful and beautiful people with nobody waiting for us. I walked toward the brow to leave the boat and was stopped by an enlisted man in charge of distributing mail.
"You are Petty Officer Dunham, right?" the man, a pimply-faced, short fellow with a whining voice, asked.
"That's right," I answered tersely.
"Good," the man said. "I'm supposed to hand deliver this to you from the Honolulu Police Department, and I need you to sign here." He handed me an envelope covered with official police markings, and I signed the receipt for the delivery. "And, this brick is for you, too," he said, tossing me a stack of sixty-two letters from Keiko, one for every day I was gone.
I opened the Honolulu Police Department envelope and discovered a warrant for my arrest. I had failed to answer their directions to fix my defective front windshield, the warrant said, and if I did not turn myself in they would come and get me.
Shortly after Chief O'Dell announced that Paul Mathews was "non-volunteering" from submarine duty, I discovered that somebody had stolen the speed-shifting gearbox from my '55 Chevy while we were at sea. Feeling a mind-numbing anger begin to emerge, I wandered into the submarine barracks and tried to figure out how to get a couple of drinks in Waikiki without a car and without the risk of being arrested.
Marc, sitting on his rack, was waiting for me. He looked serious.
"Hey, Rog, did you see the news?" he asked.
"No. And I'm not sure I want to see the news, Marc. Who's rioting about what, now?"
"They just showed it on TV. Robert Kennedy was assassinated last night by some slimy character known as Sirhan something-or-other."
I looked at him in silence. Then, I turned and picked up my seabag. Slamming it against my rack, I started cursing the entire civilized world with genuine passion. I cursed the Honolulu Police Department, the thieves in the night, the banana-smoking druggies, the assassins, the student activists, and I cursed the nonexistent targets at the bottom of the ocean.
When I was finished, Marc congratulated me for my eloquence and mentioned that he wouldn't be around for the next Viperfish patrol. He was finishing his tour in the Navy, he said, and going back to Ohio, a place with fewer disruptions, to sail on Lake Erie where waves did not exceed six inches. Also, he planned to go back to school-to a peaceful institute of higher learning called Kent State University, whose students knew how to behave themselves. He was going to be a civilian, and he hoped that the Viperfish and her crew would have better luck on the next mission.
We both knew that the depleted uranium core of the Viperfish would allow for only one more mission to the distant waters of the Golden Dragon. Soon, she would be taken out of active service to undergo nuclear reactor refueling operations at Mare Island, California. I would have just enough time for my wedding in Los Angeles and a honeymoon in Canada before our final voyage to the North Pacific to continue our search for the mysterious target at twenty thousand feet below the surface of the sea.
12. The final search
No sunlight illuminates the impenetrable black water concealing the secrets at the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean. At a latitude of 35° N, light rarely penetrates the surface of the sea for more than a hundred feet on the clearest days, and it never reaches through the three miles of water separating surface craft from the mud below. At twenty thousand feet below the surface, there is only a somber dark peace far removed from the turmoil of the world above.
Entering the silence with the noise of her own destruction, the submarine PL-751 fell like a freight train to seventeen thousand feet below her crush depth. Breaking up from the forces of the high-pressure water, she spilled her lifeblood of men and equipment as she accelerated to the bottom of the ocean. The larger parts of the submarine crashed into the ocean floor with such force that their retrieval by any surface craft, struggling over the pieces in years to come, might be technically impossible. As the larger central section rolled on its side in a final agonal movement beyond the control of any human being, the sediment stirred by the impact slowly began to settle across the lifeless remnants. The once-powerful Soviet instrument of destruction had been transformed into a collection of broken and silent objects.
In the silence of the months that followed, nothing disturbed the remaining bodies of the. Soviet sailors contained within the hull of the destroyed vessel. More than four tons of pressure compressed every square inch of skin on reaching the bodies through openings in ruptured pipes and destroyed bulkheads that had buckled and caved under such extremes of pressure.
Outside the broken ruins of the PL-751, the outstretched bones of a skeleton, lying on the mud, could not touch a large steel Fish that came from more distant waters and slowly glided past the area. As the Fish moved closer, controlled by men working in another world five miles from the scene of destruction, her brilliant flashing strobe pierced the black shroud covering the ocean floor. With a subtle change in direction, the Fish turned and directly approached the remains of the disaster. Methodically, it searched for the evidence that had been awaiting its arrival with the infinite patience of the dead.