Larry Bond - Cold Choices

“Will we bury him at sea?” Lamberth asked. It took a moment for Jerry to realize he’d asked a question, and the petty officer had to repeat it.

Jerry paused before answering. Finally, he shook his head.

“I don’t think so.” Then more definitely, “No. We should bring him back to his family.”

“But where will we keep him?”

It surprised Jerry that they would have to think of such things, but there was hardly a spare inch of space on Seawolf, in spite of her size.

“They’ll have to put him in the freezer.”

Lamberth considered Jerry’s answer for a moment, then shrugged. It made sense. What else could they do?

There’d be a death investigation, Jerry realized. And how would they explain this to Rountree’s parents? The navy couldn’t tell them what really happened. They’d have to make up a cover story about something. Shoot, the navy would need a cover story for everyone on the boat. They couldn’t pull into port with this kind of damage without some plausible explanation.

A voice from the sound-powered phones broke Jerry’s train of thought. “Bridge, control. Lieutenant Wolfe wants to come up and take a look at the bow.”

“Control, bridge. Send him up.”

Greg Wolfe came through the access hatch as quickly as possible. He didn’t even greet Jerry, his attention fully taken up by Seawolf’s damaged bow. “Oh, migod. I was hoping the XO was wrong. It’s trashed!”

“He thinks the sphere, the low-frequency bow array, and the medium-frequency active array are all gone,” Jerry suggested.

“I think he’s right,” Wolfe answered in awe. Then more apologetically, “Oh. Sorry to hear about Denny Rountree.”

“Yeah. Thanks, I guess.” His division was the closest thing to family Rountree had aboard, and that made Jerry the head of the family.

“The whole boat’s taking it pretty hard. Everybody liked the kid.”

Jerry felt something sting his cheek and automatically turned in that direction, into the wind. He was rewarded with particles of wind-driven snow pelting his face. Or ice. Whatever it was, he turned to avoid the stuff, then half-turned back to study the advancing front more closely

He’d been an aviator in an earlier life, and had developed a good sense for weather. This oncoming storm was going to be a bad one. The front had advanced in the past hour, and Jerry could see a dark gray haze living under the cloud line.

“Greg, are you done?”

Wolfe had been looking at the storm front as well. “I’m gone,” and he was through the hatch.

Jerry pressed the intercom. “Control, bridge. What the status of the repairs?”

Lieutenant Constantino, the ship’s supply officer, was in control as the contact coordinator after Seawolf had secured from General Quarters. His answer was not helpful. “Feeling the cold, Jerry?”

“Everyone’s going to feel it when this storm reaches us.” Jerry then described the advancing weather.

“Those ice floes will beat us to death,” Constatino agreed. Some of Seawolf’s sonar arrays were mounted on her sides. They weren’t designed to be hammered by multi-ton hunks of ice.

“And the ride’s going to get a lot worse,” Jerry added from the bridge.

“Understood, Mr. Mitchell.” The XO’s voice surprised Jerry. “There are new issues. The collision may have cracked the pressure hull forward. We were stripping some wet insulation from the bulkhead and found out that one of the frames is bent.”

Jerry took a moment to take that in. The frames were steel ribs that reinforced the pressure hull. The force involved when the two subs came together must have been massive..

“We could change course, sir, run before the storm. Just five knots would buy us more time.”

“Negative, mister. That would mean heading east and closing on the Russian coast. We keep heading west.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Can you ask the chief to pass us up some safety harnesses?”

The harnesses came up a few minutes later, along with some hot cocoa for Jerry and Lamberth. Never did anything taste and feel so good to the two men.

The nylon webbing went on like a parachute harness, with some difficulty, over their parkas. It had a line that could be clipped to different spots on the hull. There were several such places in the bridge cockpit and up on the top of the sail when the flying bridge was erected. After Jerry double-checked Lamberth’s line, he made sure his own was secure and tried to guess how long it would be until they needed them.

Jerry had matter-of-factly accepted their need to stay on the surface. Until they figured out how badly the pressure hull was damaged, they dare not submerge.

He tried to visualize the impact. Two subs, each over three hundred feet long and displacing nearly ten thousand tons, slamming into each other at high speed. The hull had been weakened at more than just one small point. He imagined an area the size of a window, or a door, or the side of a house, laced through with invisible cracks. Under pressure, it might give way. In fact, it definitely would give way, at some depth. He wondered if they could submerge at all. But if they did, how deep could they go?

The roughness of the sea changed suddenly, well before the clouds reached them. Sea state three with four-foot waves became sea state five with peaks two or three times as high. The wind tore the tops off, adding their spray to the snow already flying into their faces. Small pieces of ice were picked up and hurled against the hull. And it was going to get worse.

Seawolf rolled violently in the swells, a fast combined pitching and rolling motion that threatened to knock Jerry off his feet. He looked up at Lamberth, who was hanging on to the cockpit’s handrails, his face pale. “Get below! You can’t do any more good up here!”

With careful timing, Lamberth unhooked his harness and almost dove into the bridge access trunk. Jerry steadied him as he went down. A sudden loud clang told him the larger ice chucks were starting to get thrown about. The wind’s intensity was picking up even more and had shifted toward the south. They were facing a full-blown winter gale. Jerry called down a course correction, a little more southwesterly.

Constantino acknowledged the course change, and added, “We’re ballasting her down a little as well. I know it gives you less freeboard up there, but it should help reduce the rolls.” After a moment, he added, “They’ll be done soon.”

Jerry held on tightly to the coaming with one hand and the binoculars with the other. Facing directly into the wind, he was glad to have the binoculars. At least his eyes were protected from the spray. He hoped someone down in control was watching their heading, because he couldn’t spare the time.

It started getting really bad when the waves began breaking halfway up the sail. Sheets of ice-cold water leapt over the top of the cockpit, drenching Jerry. Every once in a while he had to literally dodge a chunk of ice that was thrown by the waves. But as long as they were on the surface, somebody had to be up here.

He was getting ready to change the ship’s course again when Fisher appeared from the hatchway below. “We’re ready to submerge. I’ll get the suitcase.”

The console was caked with ice, but they finally knocked enough off to detach and close the lid, after which it was hurriedly manhandled below. With one last scan of the horizon, Jerry undipped his safety harness and dropped through the hatch. He gratefully dogged it shut, double-checking to make sure it had sealed properly.

By the time he dropped into the control room, they were already heading down. He heard Lieutenant Wolfe, the new OOD, order “One hundred feet” and began to worry. That was shallow for a submarine of Seawolf’s size.