Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

He took a deep breath and opened the hatch. The first thing he noticed when he stepped into the torpedo room was the hammock they had set up for Bodine, where he now lay with a cold compress on his forehead. He was asleep, but the way his facial muscles and eyelids kept twitching told Jefferson he wasn’t sleeping peacefully. Jefferson’s gaze tracked to Stubic’s body bag on the floor, just a few feet from the hammock. It seemed wrong to keep the two of them together in such a small space, the dead and the still living, but he hadn’t had a choice. It would have to do until Bodine recovered.

Matson had arranged nine small ampules along the edge of an occupied torpedo tray, the glass bottles positioned against the side of the torpedo. Matson inspected each one, checking the labels that identified the injectable liquid inside. At his feet were a small cardboard box of disposable syringes, and a trashcan designated for medical waste.

“How’s he doing, Matson?” Jefferson asked. Bodine’s skin was slick with sweat despite the coolness of the room. He was breathing fast and ragged, as if he had just done a mile of wind sprints. Jefferson could tell that this was no simple cold or flu. Whatever had him in its grip was killing him.

“I’ve been giving him antibiotics in case this is bacterial in nature, sir, but that’s about all I can do for him,” Matson said. He indicated the ampules lined up along the torpedo tray. “As you can see, I brought my entire supply. I wasn’t sure how much it would take. But frankly, sir, it’s not working. He’s not getting better. I haven’t had to sedate him again; he’s just… out. He hasn’t regained consciousness at all. Sir, if we could take him to a real medical facility, somewhere they could test his blood…”

“The captain made his decision,” Jefferson said.

Matson nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ve given Bodine as thorough a physical as I can under the circumstances. His glands aren’t swollen. There’s no inflamed tissue, no extra mucus production, no rigidity in his abdomen or swelling in his liver or kidneys—at least, none that I could feel. His breathing is shallow and rapid, but there’s no sign of congestion. Physically, the only abnormality I found was a couple of welts on the side of his neck that looked like they might be bug bites. If they were, I thought they might be responsible for the fever, but there’s no redness or pus to indicate infection or envenomation.”

“Could it be food poisoning?” Jefferson asked. “Some of the food the Guidry brothers are whipping up isn’t exactly Betty Crocker.”

Matson gave a thin smile. “I may not have an MD, but even I know food poisoning when I see it, sir. That’s not what this is.”

“Sorry,” Jefferson said. “Just trying to help.”

“I know, sir. I’m as frustrated as you are that we don’t know what this is. Frankly, there’s nothing else I can do but continue to give him antibiotics and hope for improvement. But if we don’t get him to a medical facility, Bodine may die.”

Jefferson met his eye. “It’s up to you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“There’s only so much I can do, Lieutenant Commander,” Matson said.

“Keep trying, Matson. Don’t give up on him.”

Jefferson sighed and looked down at the patient again. He put his hand over Bodine’s, but even with the blanket between them he could feel how uncannily hot the skin was. The man was burning up.

“Come on, Bodine,” he said softly. “Fight this thing. That’s an order.”

He hadn’t expected to feel this close to Bodine, but he couldn’t deny his concern. They had shared a lot, and in some ways they had more in common with each other than with anyone else in the crew. Some of their conversations had gotten intense, and he recalled the one time that Bodine had actually called him “brother.” Hoo boy, had that bugged Jefferson. Brother —as if they were supposed to raise a fist in solidarity: black power, the revolution, and all that. He had told Bodine his name was Lieutenant Commander and reminded him that the only political entity he belonged to was the United States Navy. He had given Bodine a hard time, reminding him that he was from Oklahoma, not Philly, and his favorite music was Hall and Oates, not Marvin Gaye. He grinned at the memory. He’d been tough on Bodine, but he always tried to be fair. And when he could, he tried to be a good teacher too.

“Sir, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Matson said, “but we still don’t know how contagious he is. My advice would be not to stay down here too long, just to be on the safe side. It’s best we contain this before it spreads any further, sir.”

“What about you?”

“If this thing is airborne, I’ve already been exposed,” Matson replied. “I have to remain quarantined too—at least until we know if I’ve been infected.”

“Damn. The news just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”

Before Jefferson turned to leave, he watched the blanket on Bodine’s chest rise and fall, moving in time with his shallow breaths.

“Hang in there,” he said, “…brother.”

Even with Roanoke rigged for ultraquiet and moving at a bare three knots, they couldn’t shake the Victor off their tail. The tightness in Tim’s back and shoulders matched the tension that permeated the sonar shack and control room alike. Captain Weber asked him for constant updates, but it was always the same: she was still there, still shadowing them. After a few hours of keeping his eye on the sonar screen, looking for any sign the Soviet sub was leaving the area, he was surprised to see Senior Chief Farrington, the chief of the boat, come into the sonar shack.

“Spicer, come with me,” Farrington said. “Antopol will relieve you.”

Tim got up from his seat, confused. His watch section wasn’t over yet, but Farrington didn’t seem to care. He led Tim out of the sonar shack as sonar tech Antopol arrived to take his place. Tim followed Farrington out of the control room and down the main ladder to the middle level.

“COB, where are we going?” he asked.

“Your presence has been requested,” Farrington replied, and left it at that. He stopped in front of the wardroom and indicated that Tim should go inside.

Tim had never actually entered the wardroom before. It belonged to the officers, not the enlisted men. It was where they usually took their meals together and spent their downtime. The walls were wood paneled, just like the captain’s stateroom, and filled with storage cabinets and shelves full of notebook binders. A rectangular table, long enough to seat twelve, ran down the center of the room. Sitting around that table were all Roanoke ’s department heads: Supply, Engineering, Navigation, Operations, and Weapons. He recognized many of the faces, including Lieutenant Abrams from the galley, Lieutenant Carr from Engineering, and Lieutenant Carl French, the weapons officer. Since sonar fell under the umbrella of the Weapons Department, French was technically Tim’s boss, although the two rarely interacted.

Tim paused in the doorway. There had to be some mistake. This didn’t look like a meeting an enlisted sonar tech should be in, but no one looked surprised to see him. Farrington waved him inside, but remained out in the corridor, shutting the door behind Tim.

Captain Weber sat at one end of the table, with Lieutenant Commander Jefferson beside him.

“Spicer, thank you for joining us,” Captain Weber said.

All eyes watched Tim expectantly. He felt his face grow hot. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, especially not in a roomful of officers. He stood straight and cleared his throat.

“You sent for me, sir?”