At first Fogarty had been impressed by the enormous power and fabulous mystique of the nuclear sub. Nautilus and the ships that followed her had conquered the great ocean and opened a new frontier. He very much wanted to be part of it.
At an early age he had learned to distinguish the different types of submarines. First, there were the SSNs, fast attack subs, hunter-killers like Nautilus and Barracuda. Then there were the FBMs, the Fleet Ballistic Missile subs, the city-killers that had captured the public's imagination after the first one, the USS George Washington, was launched in 1960.
The missile subs had frightened him. The idea of a ship that by itself could destroy a civilization drove a wedge of doubt into his adolescent mind. It seemed crazy to him that such a wonderful device could be turned to such a terrible purpose. Though he never wavered from his ambition to join the Submarine Service, he grew increasingly haunted by dark visions of nuclear war with the Russians. In the end World War Three would be resolved by submarines. If and when the war occurred, the primary function of attack submarines like Barracuda would be to find and sink enemy missile subs. If they succeeded and sank the enemy "boomers" before they could fire their missiles, at least something might be preserved. In effect the SSN was a defensive weapon, an anti-ballistic missile system. Fogarty wanted very much to believe that serving on such a ship was a decent if not noble endeavor, but a little corner of his mind remained unconvinced. When he was old enough to enlist, he argued with himself. In the years he had spent studying submarines and naval warfare he had developed an understanding of the consequences of nuclear war, in particular nuclear war at sea. He realized that if the American and Soviet navies started sinking each other's ships with nuclear torpedoes, rockets, depth charges and mines, they also could very likely kill all marine life and thereby doom life on earth.
Such questions bothered Fogarty, but in the end he realized there was only one place to find the answers. Besides, no matter what, nothing was going to keep him off a sub.
Boot camp, sub school, sonar school, and here he was, breathing air-conditioned air, listening to Muzak and sitting watches with the great Sorensen himself. In sonar school the scuttlebutt had been that Sorensen was the only American enlisted man whose name was known to the Russians. He doubted that, but who could be sure? In any case he didn't have to deal with Sorensen the legend but Sorensen the taskmaster, who had no intention of making Fogarty's life easy.
Leave your mind behind.
In the maneuvering room Master Chief Alexander Wong, the head nuc, and the three men on watch were discussing the high-paying civilian jobs waiting for them when they got out of the navy. Surrounded by the maze of instrumentation that accompanied controlled nuclear fission, the nucs — nuclear engineers who had completed a course at one of the navy's nuclear power schools — figured they had it made.
When the captain walked in, though, they stopped talking and stared at their displays. Springfield stood for several minutes in silence, hands on hips, watching the engineers. Without warning he reached over Wong's shoulder to the main control panel and flipped a bright red switch. The control rods dropped into the reactor vessel and the reactor scrammed. The neutron chain reaction came to a complete stop.
With no chain reaction, no more heat was created in the reactor. If the engineers continued to use the residual heat to make steam the reactor would cool too quickly and crack, spewing radioactive material all over the compartment.
The reactor control team responded instantly.
"Close main steam feed," ordered Wong.
The technician sitting at the steam panel spun a wheel and the steam supply to the engine room was cut off. With no steam, no power was delivered to the turbines. The ship was now without main propulsion power. As the prop stopped turning, the ship lost way and began to sink. The trim was off and the ship slowly sank at an angle, stern down.
Wong grabbed the intercom. "This is a drill, this is a drill. Reactor scram, reactor scram. All hands to damage-control stations. All hands to damage-control stations. This is a drill. This is a drill."
Sorensen felt a shudder run through the ship and was out the door and past Barnes before alarms began sounding in every compartment.
In the torpedo room the alarm burst in on Lopez and his ritual. Leaving the fly untouched, the scorpion retreated to a corner of its cage. "Son of a bitch," Lopez said, "what is it this time?"
In the mess Strother Martin had Paul Newman trapped inside a church. "What we have here is a failure to—" and the film stopped dead.
In the forward crew quarters Pisaro stood in the hatch. "This is a drill. Off your asses and hit the deck."
Sleepy sailors stumbled out of their bunks and into their shoes. Like firemen, many slept in their clothes, ready for such a moment. Fogarty delayed long enough to zip up his jumpsuit. Pisaro swatted him on the butt as he rushed out.
The passageway was jammed. The new seamen collided with one another in the hatches and banged into hard steel at the turns. Grunts and howls of pain rattled around in the dim light.
Fogarty was dizzy. More than anything on the ship, the reactor terrified him. Every minute aboard he knew he was being irradiated. Yet now he was rushing through the ship because the reactor was shut down.
Throughout the ship, damage-control teams put on asbestos suits and checked fire extinguishers. Everything loose was fastened down. Everything already fastened down was double-checked.
In the galley Stanley was indignant. The cook could not have explained the physics of a reactor scram, but he knew that with no power to his stove his sauce was ruined. He slopped the brown fluid into a plastic bag and swore in Tagalog.
Sorensen moved rapidly through the ship on bare feet, one step ahead of the confusion. In the control room Lt. Hoek still had the conn. As Sorensen passed through he noticed the blissful look on the young officer's face as he gave the commands to recover from the scram.
"Engineering, rig for battery power."
"Batteries on line and ready to go."
"Very well, switch to batteries."
"Batteries engaged."
"Very well. Blow forward trim tanks."
A sailor spun a valve and compressed air was forced into the tanks, expelling the water into the sea. The rate of descent slackened.
"Blow after tanks. Slowly, very slowly. Let's not spill the coffee."
Willie Joe was on duty in the sonar room when Sorensen burst in. The screens were clear. There was nothing around them but ocean, nine thousand feet of it under the keel.
"Okay, go," Sorensen said. Willie Joe quickly changed into a white asbestos suit and hurried to his damage-control station.
Fogarty came in, eyes red and swollen. Sorensen frowned.
"You have to get in here quicker than that, Fogarty. Much quicker."
"The passageway was blocked."
"No excuses. If people are in your way, jump over them, run through them. I don't care, just get in here."
"Aye aye."
The ship was still going down. Fogarty stared at the digital fathometer: six hundred fifty, seven hundred, seven hundred fifty feet. His face remained impassive. The sea didn't frighten him.
Sorensen liked his nerve.
At eight hundred feet the ship leveled off and stopped. The sea was quiet.
"Tell me what you hear," Sorensen said.
"The Atlantic Ocean," Fogarty replied. "The turbogenerator," he added quickly.
"That's all?"
Sorensen punched a button and the overhead loudspeakers came on. An intermittent scratching sound came from the sea.