Roger Crossland - Red Ice

The lockout procedure was hazardous, yet simple in principle. By operating the controls within the trunk or the dual controls in the lower passageway, we could gradually flood the trunk with water from the sub’s reserve tanks. Once the pressure inside the trunk was slightly greater than the pressure outside the sub’s hull, the top hatch, which was already undogged and only held shut by the outside pressure, would pop open and the divers in the trunk could swim out. From there they would glide along a safety line, which stretched from the top hatch to the periscope. The line kept the divers from drifting back into the sub’s screws.

I would have preferred to use oxygen rebreathers—Draegers—which left no telltale bubbles. However, a diver breathing pure oxygen under pressure stood a good chance of blacking out at depths exceeding thirty feet. The distance between this submarine’s hatch and the surface, running at periscope depth, came uncomfortably close to that depth. Draegers were therefore out, open-circuit scuba was the rig of the week.

The lockout was one way of deploying raiders in enemy waters undetected. It placed great demands on divers, especially in waters as cold as the Okhotsk, but it allowed the submarine to stay below the surface. Submariners dreaded the detectability and vulnerability of surface running.

The next evening we assembled the men for the drill. Every man wore a bulky bubble dry suit. These suits were warmer, but more cumbersome than the old-fashioned dry suits we had worn for Kunashiri.

The first diver pair, Puckins and Lutjens, climbed up into the trunk and secured the lower hatch. As the assigned safety divers, they wore single-hose regulators with octopus extensions. Puckins operated the controls inside the trunk. Dravit, his ankle cast propped on the lower knife edge of the hatchway, stood by the series of valves and pipes that duplicated Puckins’s controls within the trunk. Puckins announced over the waterproof intercom each adjustment as he made it.

“Flooding.”

I could hear the pumps forcing water into the trunk. Dravit repeated each message back to Puckins.

I could imagine the rising water level, first knee high, then waist high, then chest high…

“Tell him to have Lutjens put his mouthpiece in and test it below water level.” It was a routine command. The divers had, of course, made a cursory regulator check when they had strapped on their tanks.

“Lutjens… is having… trouble.”

The resonance of Puckins’s words had changed as water poured into the trunk. I could hear coughing in the background over the hum of the pumps. Puckins vented the trunk.

“Try yours… he may have to buddy-breathe off your octopus rig.”

More coughing and gagging.

“Something wrong”—cough—“getting water through the”—cough—“regulator…. Water’s real high… nearly to the hatch lip.”

“Get up into the bubble. Don’t touch any of the controls.”

“Captain Dravit, take over, using your controls. Abort the lockout. Flood down the trunk. Whatever we do, we can’t lose the bubble. Chief, we are aborting the drill.”

The bubble was now their only source of air. If Dravit manipulated the controls in the wrong order, the bubble would slip out the wrong pipe and the divers would drown, trapped in a dark round coffin of steel.

“Flooding down.”

The pumps reversed flow. I realized I was in a cold sweat.

When the trunk had finally emptied, Lutjens opened the lower hatch, and the two shaken divers climbed out. Wickersham grabbed their regulators and pried them open with a screwdriver.

“Mr. Frazer, take a look at these.” Wickersham held out the two regulators.

“No mushroom valves.”

A mushroom valve was a soft, flexible rubber disk that, during the breathing cycle, kept water from entering the mouthpiece as exhaust air escaped. These disks were missing. We examined the other regulators. Their valves were missing, too. This was no manufacturer’s error. It meant deliberate sabotage—the kind a diver wouldn’t normally detect until it was too late—sabotage that killed with choking horror.

“Gurung, let the control room know we’ve called off the lockout drill.”

“Thought it might have been a Jonah back in Korea, but we’ve got a Judas with us. Don’t we?” Wickersham thought aloud.

“Yes, it appears we do. But he hasn’t stopped us… yet.”

“Break out the kayaks. It looks like this boat’s going to have to surface, after all.”

Keiko and I shared the same stateroom but barely spoke to one another. She had become distant, or perhaps I had become distant. It didn’t matter since I was busy checking and rechecking, inspecting and reinspecting, planning and replanning. A chill had fallen on our relationship and I just could not spare the time to lift it. If that were possible.

A howling storm hit us three-quarters of the way across the Sea of Japan. Forty-foot waves tossed the surface-running sub around like a beer can in a washing machine. The heads became awash with vomit and we were forced to strap ourselves into our racks. Several crew members sustained broken ribs or collarbones as they caromed down passageways or attempted to climb to the sub’s conning tower. The waves picked the boat up with perverse relish, hesitated, and then abruptly dropped it into the raging sea.

On one occasion, several hundred gallons of seawater cascaded down an open hatch. A lookout had opened the hatch for his watch relief. The relieving crewman was knocked senseless and the seawater short-circuited a number of powerlines. Fortunately, the seawater did not get into the sub’s batteries. Seawater and batteries combine to generate deadly chlorine gas.

The storm had lasted for twenty-four hours and left everyone hungry and exhausted.

I was alone in the submarine’s wardroom when Dravit and Chamonix filed in.

“Skipper, I think we’d better take a second look at this operation,” Dravit opened.

His color was up. Chamonix wore a similar look of intensity. A confrontation.

I was seated. They stood over me. Dravit’s cast clunked against the bench seat. I had been expecting something like this. Now the two of them had me cornered.

“We’re out on a limb already and I can hear some bugger making little chopping noises behind us,” he said through clenched teeth.

I searched their faces for a hint of indecision or inconsistency, and found none.

“Mister Frazer,” Chamonix added in even tones, “there has been a serious pattern of acts, of, how do you say—it is the same word in English—sabotage. We cannot disregard these acts. To endure difficulties, this is admirable. To ignore clear signs of treachery, that is foolhardy.”

Dravit drummed his fingers on the table softly, unconsciously.

“You mean you want me to pull the plug?” Not quite the right expression to use aboard a submarine, I thought as I said it.

They hesitated. They had come this far and now they stood before me awkward and flat-footed. None of us had wanted to be the first to say it.

“We’re compromised,” Dravit pleaded.

“Maybe. I don’t think so.”

The Frenchman looked down at his shower shoes. Dravit slumped into the bench seat across from me. Then he pulled himself up to a more adversarial posture.

It was disquieting being at odds with your second and third in command. Both Dravit and Chamonix were seasoned combatants with a wide range of field experience between them.

Dravit countered, “Well, then, who do you ken is responsible and what are you going to do about it?”

“Anyone. Everyone. Nothing for now.”

They gave each other confirming looks.

“The pattern seems pretty subtle,” I continued. “The camera, the Japanese police, your accident, the regulators… Why do they keep trying to spring the trap before they can get all of us? Why not wait and stop us once and for all?”