100 Fathoms Below

by Steven L. Kent

  CHAPTER THREE

  Fully stocked, Roanoke’s torpedo room held 24 torpedoes, 20 of which were housed in the storage racks. The other four currently rested on a set of skids along the bulkheads—trays that were used to load live torpedoes into the tubes. The space was long and narrow, no more than eight feet across from bulkhead to bulkhead, but with the skids taking up two feet on either side, that left only four feet of width for Warren Stubic and the other sailors manning the torpedo room.

  They moved about the space, double-checking that the torpedoes had been properly secured for the launch. If one came loose, it could roll out of the racks or off the trays when the submarine dived. It wouldn’t explode when it hit the floor—this wasn’t a Road-Runner cartoon—but the fall could damage it enough to render it useless as a weapon, and one dud torpedo during an exchange with a Soviet sub could mean Roanoke’s number was up. And that wasn’t even taking into account the injuries it could cause if it fell on a sailor. Torpedoes were long, heavy, and made of steel. If one got loose, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  Stubic knew the routine. This wasn’t his first time helping secure a torpedo room, but he found it hard to concentrate. He was sluggish, groggy, and deeply worried because he couldn’t remember what happened last night in Waikiki. A dull, throbbing headache had developed behind his eyes this morning, and it showed no signs of leaving.

  “Look alive, pal.” One of the other torpedomen grinned at him. “Plenty of time to deal with the hangover later.”

  Stubic smiled back weakly, blinking in the bright, painful light. If only this were a hangover. Then he would have an explanation for at least some of what was happening to him. But not for everything. Even if he’d had too much to drink last night, which he damn well hadn’t, it wouldn’t explain the marks he found this morning on the side of his neck. Two small welts like bug bites. The tropical climate made Hawaii a welcoming environment for all sorts of insects, especially the nocturnal ones. Something had bitten him, and he wondered whether his symptoms were an infection brought on by the bite. Oh, God, was this malaria? He took a deep breath and tried not to think about it.

  His head throbbed as if it were being jackhammered from the inside. The waves were getting worse with each one that crashed over him. Maybe he should go see Matson, the hospital corpsman, and get himself checked out. Except that he couldn’t, could he? Matson would want to know where he’d been, and Stubic couldn’t tell him. If anyone knew he’d gone to a brothel, he could lose pay or get bumped down in rank. Matson would also want to know everything that had happened, and Stubic wouldn’t be able to answer that, either, because there were things he simply couldn’t remember.

  Why couldn’t he?

  After he entered that dark hallway, everything was a blank until he woke up in his barracks at the naval station, feeling like shit. He couldn’t remember driving home from Waikiki. He couldn’t remember anything. Something had happened to him in that hallway …

  The sharp klaxon of the dive alarm jolted Stubic from his thoughts and made his head flare with pain.

  Another torpedoman shouted, “Grab hold of something, Stubic. We’re about to dive!”

  He held on to the steel support of the torpedo rack. A moment later, the deck tipped dizzyingly downward. He closed his eyes. This must be what it would be like to be awake when they lowered you into the grave.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tim Spicer’s first watch section went smoothly, though not quickly. As one of Roanoke’s sonar techs, his job kept him planted in front of a sonar display screen for the full six hours of his watch. It was harder work than it looked. People thought he got to just sit there, basically watching TV, goofing off until a blip appeared on his screen. But the reality was more like being a guard in a maximum-security prison. He had to be on constant alert, his mind focused and continually interpreting data. If he took his eyes off the sonar display for any extended time, he would be leaving his boat vulnerable to attack. Staring at a screen for six hours straight was enough to leave even the strongest mind feeling wrung out. But, of course, there was nothing dangerous for the sonar to pick up yet as they sailed north from the Hawaiian islands—just other friendlies sailing into and out of port.

  The details of a submarine’s military operations were routinely classified and were never revealed to the crew until they were underway. It was a security measure designed to prevent leaks, but it also meant Tim had no idea where they were going until Captain Weber finally got on the main circuit and announced their orders. Roanoke would be sailing toward Petropavlovsk on the Soviet Union’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Tim recognized the name. Petropavlovsk was where the Soviets kept their biggest submarine facility, Rybachiy Nuclear Submarine Base. The news put him on edge. Not that this was an unusual op. The navy was constantly sending boats to the international waters near the Soviet Union, and besides, Roanoke was a fast-attack sub, a hunter-killer, she could certainly hold her own if she found herself in trouble. But the state of the world had become a lot more agitated lately, worse than Tim could remember. Earlier this year, a South Korean 747 jetliner bound for Seoul had been shot down by a MiG fighter after apparently straying into Soviet airspace. All 269 civilians aboard had died. Two months later, terrorists had blown up a US military base in Beirut, killing 227 marines. If the navy wanted to send Roanoke to the very edge of Soviet waters, there was surely a good reason for it, but suddenly it felt a lot more dangerous than it normally would.

  When his watch was over and another tech came to relieve him, Tim left the sonar shack. Crossing the control room toward the stern, he could see that White and Bodine had already been relieved at the helm by two other sailors. He kept walking, through the attack center, which housed the equipment necessary to operate Roanoke as a warship, through fire control, where the combat control systems were maintained and operated, until he reached the main ladder, which led down to the middle and lower levels.

  The growling of his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in half a day. He climbed down the ladder to the middle level and made his way to the mess. He got in the chow line and grabbed a long foil-wrapped hoagie sandwich from the heating rack on the counter. It was supposed to be a fried-shrimp po’boy. Tim had never had such a thing before, but his hunger made him adventurous. Besides, the chow on Roanoke had never let him down. Holding his tray, he scanned the crowded mess deck, looking for a place to sit. The mess had six tables, each with a bench for four or five men, bolted to the floor on either side. A lot of the sailors who had been on the first watch section with Tim were eating now, so most of the tables were filled to capacity. He spotted Jerry White in the crowd and noticed a free seat at his table, right across from him. The captain had asked him to keep an eye on the new transfer, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any to get acquainted. Tim walked over to the table and put his tray down across from White.

  “Mind if I join you?” It was a question one rarely had to ask in the mess, but he figured it was a good way to break the ice.

  White looked up at him. “Suit yourself,” he said, and took a bite of his sandwich.

  Tim sat down. “White, isn’t it?”

  White nodded, chewing.

  “Tim Spicer,” Tim said, extending his hand across the table.

  White shook it. His grip was strong and confident. “Call me Jerry. When I hear ‘White,’ I think of my father.”

  “Then you can call me Tim,” he said. “Is your father in the navy too?”

  Jerry shook his head. “He manages a used-car lot back in Idaho.”

  “So what brought you to the service?” Tim asked.

  Jerry looked at him for a long moment, then said, “I grew up in Idaho, and the family business was used Buicks and Subarus.”

  “Point taken,” Tim said. “Welcome to Roanoke.”

  Jerry chuckled, his blue eyes flashing with intelligence. “A submarine with the same name as the sixteenth-century colony in North Carolina where everyone mysteriously disappeared? You can’t
tell me that’s not a bad omen.”

  Tim frowned. “I don’t think that’s what she’s named after.”

  “I was joking,” Jerry said. “Don’t people make jokes on this boat?”

  “Not good ones,” Tim said. He unwrapped the foil around his po’boy and took a bite. The crisp bread and battered shrimp crunched between his teeth. He chewed for a moment, enjoying the spicy, savory taste, then looked down at the sandwich in surprise.

  “Something wrong?” Jerry asked.

  “No, I just never had Cajun food before,” Tim said. “It’s damn good.”

  “I guess you’ve never been to Louisiana, huh?”

  “Nah,” Tim said. “Before they sent me to Pearl, I was stationed in San Diego and Tudor Hill.”

  “Tudor Hill?” Jerry said, growing more animated. “The listening post in Bermuda?”

  Tim smiled. “I know. I was lucky. I spent more time working on my tan than listening to submarine traffic.”

  “Damn right, you were lucky,” Jerry said. “While I was freezing my tits off in Idaho, you were soaking up sun on the beach.”

  “Hey, now, I know a thing or two about freezing,” Tim said. “I’m from Maine, a little town up north called Presque Isle. It’s farther north than Nova Scotia! On good years, we saw five months of sunny days. On bad years, maybe three.”

  “Why the fuck would anyone live there?” Jerry asked.

  Every new sailor on Roanoke had his guard up for a while. Even Tim had been a little prickly when he first joined the crew. But now, judging from the smile on his face, Jerry’s guard was coming down. So far, he struck Tim as an all right guy. Maybe keeping an eye on him wasn’t going to be so hard after all.

  “Potatoes,” Tim answered.

  Jerry raised his eyebrows. “Come again?”

  “My folks were farmers,” he said. “I never really took to it the way they did, but that’s not why I left. It was the damn winters. Ice and snow are one thing, but the darkness—that’s what bothered me the most. Elsewhere, kids spend their free time flying kites or riding bicycles. Me, I spent my free time inside, praying for sunshine.”

  “Strange that you would go into the submarine service, then,” Jerry said. “It’s always dark down here. Permanent midnight, and no moon.”

  “We all have to face our fears sometime,” Tim said.

  “I guess so,” Jerry said. “How’s that working out for you?”

  Tim gave a half shrug. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  ***

  When Jerry White had first entered the mess, he was worried, as he had been ever since his transfer orders came through, that he might never fit in on Roanoke. Leaving the sailors he had served with on Philadelphia and transferring to a boat where he didn’t know anyone was hard enough, but a lot of these guys already seemed to know each other pretty well. It was easy to feel like the odd man out, as if he were still that shy high school kid worrying about who he was going to sit with in the cafeteria. He certainly hadn’t expected to leave the mess thirty minutes later having made a friend. Tim Spicer seemed like an okay guy—a little stiff, maybe, but his friendliness had put Jerry at ease. Maybe this transfer wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “White, hold up,” someone called.

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Duncan stepped out of the wardroom, where the commissioned officers took their meals.

  “Yes, sir,” Jerry said, pausing.

  “Come here, White.”

  Duncan beckoned Jerry over to the side of the corridor. He wore a sullen expression, bordering on angry. Jerry walked over to him, wondering what was going on.

  “I thought I should give you a heads-up, White,” he said. “Your old XO, Frank Leonard, is a buddy of mine. We go way back.”

  Shit, Jerry thought. He had a bad feeling where this was going.

  “Your little stunt on Philadelphia cost a good navy man his career,” Duncan said. “I hope you’re happy.”

  “Sir—”

  “Save it,” Duncan interrupted. “I’m watching you, White. You step out of line, you screw up, you so much as miss a button on your uniform, and I will be on your ass. Don’t doubt it for a second.”

  Duncan walked off. Jerry stayed where he was, watching him go. Damn. Just when things were starting to look up. He glanced nervously at the other men moving through the corridor, hoping they hadn’t seen what just happened, but on a submarine, privacy was as scarce as sunshine. Everyone knew everyone’s business. Of course they had seen. He could feel their eyes on him. His cheeks burned. They would talk about it too. There was no stopping it. Gossip ran through a submarine faster than beer through a sailor on shore leave.

  Welcome to Roanoke, Jerry thought. Only three months to go.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sailing deep and slow to avoid detection, it took a week for Roanoke to reach the international waters south of Kamchatka Peninsula. For Warren Stubic, that week passed agonizingly slowly. The dull pain behind his eyes had stayed with him since the day of the launch. It was getting harder to concentrate on his duties, on studying for his quals, or on the “hot run” drills they ran in the torpedo room, where they practiced what to do if a torpedo blew inside the tube. Now, on top of everything else, he was feeling physically ill as well.

  It had started slowly, with the glare of the boat’s fluorescent lights intensifying an already blinding headache. But in the couple of hours since his watch section ended, the throbbing had worsened to the point where a mere glimpse of a light fixture felt like staring into the sun. It burned his eyes and pierced his skull like daggers.

  Then there was the heat. He was sweating like a sumo wrestler, really burning up, but it didn’t feel like any fever he’d ever had. It felt as if someone were stoking a coal forge in his chest.

  Stubic locked himself in one of the stalls in the head. Everything in the head was stainless steel: sinks, stalls, toilets, and all of it reflecting the searing light from the overheads into his eyes. But where else could he go to be alone? He couldn’t let anyone see him like this. They would make him go see Matson, the hospital corpsman, who would need to know when it started and where he’d been, and soon enough, everyone on the damn boat would know he had been to a brothel. Sailors gossiped worse than his grandmother’s canasta circle, especially on a submarine, where there wasn’t much else to keep them entertained. Worse, it would turn into a black mark on his record, and then he could kiss his navy career goodbye. Being a navy man like his father and grandfather before him was all he had ever wanted. He couldn’t lose that. He just couldn’t.

  But his eyes were burning. His head was burning. His whole body was burning. He just wanted to stand under a freezing-cold shower for half an hour. Or even just 10 minutes. Hell, he’d settle for five minutes—anything to stop the feeling that he was burning up from within. But it wasn’t allowed, not on a submarine. Water was too scarce. They had to distill potable water from seawater, which gave them only a limited supply for drinking, cooking, and bathing. When you took a shower on a sub, you were supposed to turn the water on and wet down, then turn the water off and soap up, then turn the water on again and rinse off. You couldn’t ever leave the water running anywhere, not even while brushing your teeth. If Stubic turned on the shower and let the cold water run over him for as long as he wanted—dear God, what blessed relief that would be—it would draw attention, and that was the last thing he or his career needed.

  Maybe the fever would break on its own. Maybe he could just ride it out and not have to see Matson. Yes, that was it. He just had to tough it out, soldier through it, walk it off, as his high school coach used to tell him.

  But he kept having flashes of that Filipino girl with the strange jade-green eyes. Every few minutes, the memory barged into his mind, like an unwanted guest. The girl … the hallway … the eyes in the dark. Those eyes—what were they? Something had been with him in that pitch-black hallway. Something whose eyes weren’t … Weren’t what? Weren’t human? That was ridiculous. What else c
ould they be?

  Had those glowing eyes even been real, or were they something his feverish mind had dreamed up—a false memory?

  But instead of comforting him, the thought filled him with terror.

  What had happened in that hallway?

  Why couldn’t he remember?

  Stubic heard someone come into the head, enter the stall next to his, and latch the door. He heard the sailor urinating, the sound amplified by the stainless steel toilet, and winced as the noise sharpened his headache. Sweat rolled down his face. God, all he wanted was to be somewhere cold. It was too hot here. Too hot everywhere aboard Roanoke. He wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere that was cold.

  He heard the toilet flush, the stall door open, and the sailor begin washing his hands at the bank of sinks along the bulkhead. Stubic stayed still, not wanting to be noticed, just wanting to be left alone—but a scent came to him on the air. Not the usual stench of the head, but something sweet, enticing. He had never smelled anything like it before. It compelled him to stand up, unlock the stall door, and walk out into the head.

  Steve Bodine, the helmsman, stood at the sink, washing his hands. He looked up when he heard Stubic approach.

  “How’s it going, Stubic?” he asked in his pleasant Oklahoma twang. He turned off the sink and did a double take. “Jesus, man, are you all right?”

  “I’m—I’m fine,” Stubic said. That scent … It was coming from Bodine, from inside him, somehow.

  “You don’t look fine to me,” Bodine said. “In fact, you look like hammered shit.”

  Stubic blinked rapidly, squinting against the painful light.

  Bodine moved closer. “Hey, man, you want me to get the hospital corpsman?”

  “No, no, not Matson,” Stubic insisted.

  He stepped closer to Bodine. Somehow, he could see the network of veins and arteries running beneath Bodine’s chestnut skin. He could see the blood moving through them, pushing forward in time with Bodine’s pulse.