100 Fathoms Below

by Steven L. Kent

  A pulse that Stubic could hear as clearly as the ticking of a grandfather clock.

  “What are you doing, Stubic?” Bodine asked, taking a step back.

  Bodine’s blood—that was what he smelled, the source of the sweet, enticing scent. Stubic hadn’t been hungry all day. Just the thought of eating had sickened him. But now, suddenly, he was hungry. So very hungry.

  He reached for Bodine quickly, faster than he ever thought he could move.

  CHAPTER SIX

  To Lieutenant Gordon Abrams, the department head in charge of the galley, operating the mess on a submarine felt a lot like tending bar. He got to know the crew the way bartenders got to know their regulars: by listening to them talk. And boy did they love to talk. Through first meal, lunch, dinner, and midrats—those midnight meals for sailors still on duty—every day of every operation felt like a new episode in an ongoing soap opera. If a realistic movie was ever made about life on a sub, it would be a lot less Run Silent, Run Deep and a lot more Peyton Place. But you couldn’t seal 140 men in a can for three months and not expect their deepest, darkest shit to come to light. If any sailor was nursing a grudge, picking fights, cheating on his girl back home, or even suspected someone of pissing in the showers, Gordon was usually the first to know.

  The current topic of conversation was the tension between one of the POs, Jerry White, and Lieutenant Junior Grade Charles Duncan. Duncan had chewed White out in front of everyone over a stink White made on his last assignment. Apparently, he had lodged a career-ending complaint against his XO, who happened to be a pal of Duncan’s, and now Duncan was riding White hard in the control room. Word spread through the boat quickly, as it always did, and a new and palpable tension had developed between White and the rest of the crew as well. Too bad for White. Without any friends on the boat, it was going to be a long three months. Only Tim Spicer seemed to be sticking by him.

  Gordon prided himself on having his ear to the ground. Nothing happened on Roanoke without his knowing about it.

  He left his stateroom and went to the galley early to supervise the preparations for first meal. Glancing down the corridor to the mess, he noticed Lieutenant Commander Jefferson and an auxiliary tech from Engineering standing by one of the tables and looking up at the ceiling. He walked into the mess and noticed four more crewmen sitting at one of the other tables. They had playing cards spread out in front of them, untouched as they looked up at where the XO and the tech were staring. Gordon paused when he saw it. One of the overhead fluorescent light fixtures had been smashed. Shards of glass littered the table below and the surrounding floor.

  “Lieutenant Commander,” Gordon said, “what happened, sir?”

  “What does it look like, Abrams?” Jefferson replied. His duties as XO included being in charge of security on Roanoke, and he didn’t look happy at having to deal with this. “We’ve got a goddamn vandal on the boat.”

  The fixture looked as though someone had put his fist through it. The glass shield that covered the fluorescent tubes had been smashed in, leaving a jagged round hole. Dried blood clung to the spiky shards and, now that he noticed, flecked the table and the floor below. The vandal had cut himself nicely breaking the light. Good. Gordon hoped it hurt like hell.

  Jefferson turned to the table of crewmen. “Are you men sure you didn’t see anyone when you got here?”

  “Positive, sir,” one of them replied. “It’s like I said when I went to get you: it was like that when we found it.”

  Jefferson shook his head and looked up at the fixture again. “Whoever broke it must have been in and out fast.”

  “Fast” was an understatement. There was no place to hide in the mess, so the miscreant would have had to smash the light and run. But where? The galley? Sick bay? There wasn’t much room to hide there, either. The head, maybe? But how could anyone move so fast he wouldn’t be seen?

  Gordon shook his head. This had come out of nowhere. He hadn’t heard anyone talking about anything that might have led up to this. So much for nothing happening on Roanoke without his knowledge.

  The auxiliary tech, Goodrich, a skinny kid with copper-red hair and a face full of freckles, pulled on a pair of thick black rubber insulating gloves. He carefully cleared the broken glass off the table and into a trash can. Gordon made a mental note to have the table thoroughly cleaned before first meal. The floor too. Goodrich stepped up onto the bench and then the tabletop for a closer look. He removed what was left of the broken glass shield. Inside, both yard-long fluorescent tubes behind the shield were shattered. The ends were still in their sockets, but the rest of the tubes had been reduced to dust and little curved splinters of razor-thin glass. The tech climbed down and dumped the remains of the shield in the trash too.

  Gordon wished he had been here to catch the son of a bitch, or even stop him, but when he left the galley and hit his rack before midrats, the light had been just fine. The mess was rarely ever completely empty, even in the hours between midrats and first meal. It was where sailors tended to gather during their downtime to study, play cards, or watch a movie on the small TV and VCR setup. Whoever did this either had been very lucky to find the mess empty or had waited for a moment when no one was around.

  “Any idea who would do this, Abrams?” Jefferson asked.

  Gordon shook his head. “Sir, my mama worked for twelve years as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. If there’s one thing she taught me, it’s that you can’t understand crazy. Don’t even try.”

  Jefferson sighed. “I was hoping for something a little more concrete than that. Like a name.”

  The auxiliary tech climbed back up onto the table. He pulled the broken ends of the tubes out of the fixture and dumped them in the trash. Then he took a pocket light out of his poopie suit, turned it on, and clamped one end between his teeth. He used both hands to open a little hatch in the back of the fixture, then took the light out of his mouth to check the wiring inside.

  “The ballast that regulates the current is trashed, sir,” Goodrich said. “You’re definitely going to need a whole new fixture.” He turned off his pocket light and looked down at Gordon. “Unfortunately, sir, we don’t have any spares.”

  “What do you mean?” Gordon asked.

  “If it were up to me, sir, we’d bring everything we might need on an underway, but we don’t have the space. The Supply Department brings only the essentials.”

  “You’re saying there are no spare light fixtures on board?” Gordon said.

  “Sorry, sir,” Goodrich said. “If you have a light fixture back there in the galley that you don’t need, I could cannibalize it to replace this one. But I’m afraid that’s the best I can do, Lieutenant.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Gordon muttered.

  “Can you get by with fewer lights in the galley?” Jefferson asked.

  Gordon sighed. The mess was supposed to be bright, cheerful, and inviting for the crew—their home away from home. It made sense to take a light from somewhere else if it meant keeping the mess cheery and welcoming, but it felt like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

  “Not the galley, sir. We need to see what we’re cooking.” He added reluctantly, “Maybe one from the pantry, sir.”

  “Do it,” Jefferson told Goodrich.

  Sure, do it, Gordon thought glumly. He could just use a flashlight every time he needed flour or canned goods. He was only keeping the crew fed; why should anyone care whether he tripped over something in the dark and broke his goddamn neck?

  “Whoever did this won’t be hard to find,” Jefferson said. “He nicked his hand good.”

  “Everyone on Roanoke comes through the mess eventually,” Gordon said. “All we have to do is keep an eye out for someone with cuts on his hand.”

  “Why wait? I’ll inspect every damn sailor’s hands on this boat if that’s what it takes.” Jefferson looked up at the broken light again and shook his head. “It’s the damnedest thing. Why break a light? And why break this light?”

  CHAPTE
R SEVEN

  There was a gravity to being Roanoke’s executive officer that Lieutenant Commander Lee Jefferson gladly shouldered. As the submarine’s second in command, he was the one who would step into the role of commanding officer if anything should happen to Captain Weber. He liked to think he was ready for that. Hell, he knew he was ready. He had heard rumors back at Pearl that the navy was thinking of giving him his own command when this underway was over. He had heard it enough times to think there might be something to it, but for a black man in the US Navy, a healthy degree of skepticism was in order. He had already lost count of how many times white officers with half his experience had been promoted over him. He knew why too, and it sure as hell wasn’t about performance.

  It wasn’t that long ago that black sailors weren’t allowed to rise above the ranks of enlisted men, and most had been restricted to steward’s mates—the equivalent of seagoing bellhops. Things were different now, but Jefferson knew all too well that the ghosts of the past still haunted the navy’s mind-set.

  And yet, for all its frustrations, there was nowhere else he wanted to be. He had dreamed of being a navy officer with his own boat since he was a kid, agog in front of an old black-and-white TV set watching movies of pirates swashbuckling their way over the seven seas. If he had to wait longer than most to realize that dream, so be it. He would show the navy the error of its ways by being the best goddamn commanding officer in the fleet.

  First, though, he had to get through this underway, and he already had the feeling this would be no easy task. Someone on Roanoke was already losing his shit. That smashed light fixture was no accident, and he was determined to root out the culprit as quickly as possible. If he let it go too long, well, the last thing anyone needed was another Mitch Robertson situation.

  After alerting Captain Weber to what had happened and his plan to find the man responsible, Jefferson and COB Farrington spent the next few hours traversing the boat and checking the crewmen’s hands for cuts. Luckily, the pool of suspects was a small one. There were 124 enlisted men and 16 commissioned officers on Roanoke—140 men in all, and that was counting himself, Farrington, Gordon, Captain Weber, and others who couldn’t possibly be involved. He and Farrington moved methodically through the boat, level by level, space by space. They inspected the hands of men at their stations and men on their downtime, men studying for their quals, and men training and drilling. Farrington inspected the hands of the enlisted men eating first meal in the mess, while Jefferson inspected the officers dining in the wardroom. A few of the officers were surprised by his order to put out their hands for inspection, but no one argued. As XO, he outranked them all. He and Farrington even went through the head to make sure they didn’t miss anyone.

  And yet, neither of them found anything. The blood on the broken glass clearly indicated that the vandal had cut himself in the act, but no one had lacerations consistent with putting his fist through a light fixture. With each uninjured hand he saw, Jefferson’s frustration increased. He was impatient to find the vandal and be done with it.

  He and Farrington split up. While the COB searched the berthing areas, Jefferson went up the main ladder to the top level. He walked through the attack center and fire control, looking at the hands of the men at their stations. Still nothing. Damn. He moved on to the control room.

  Captain Weber stood with the quartermaster at the plotting tables behind the periscopes, mapping the submarine’s course on the charts laid out before him. He looked up when Jefferson walked in.

  “How goes the search, Lieutenant Commander?” he asked. “Have you found your man?”

  “Not yet, Captain,” Jefferson replied. “Farrington is inspecting the men in their racks now. All that’s left are the men in the control room. Permission to inspect them, sir?”

  “Permission granted, Jefferson,” the captain said, returning his attention to the charts. “Just be quick about it.”

  Jefferson inspected the quartermaster’s hands, the watchstanding OOD’s, and the radioman’s, and then crossed the control room to the sonar shack. The space was narrow and cramped inside, forcing Jefferson to remain standing in the doorway. Along one bulkhead were four consoles, each manned by a sonar tech. Tim Spicer sat at the one nearest the door, the bright colors from his sonar screen playing across his face. Jefferson glanced at Spicer’s hands, at all the techs’ hands. Still nothing. Hands, hands, hands—he was getting sick of looking at everyone’s damn hands, especially when it wasn’t bringing him any closer to catching the vandal.

  “Mr. Spicer, can I have a moment of your time?” Jefferson said.

  Spicer took off his headphones. “Yes, sir. Is everything all right?”

  He started to get up from his seat, but Jefferson waved at him to stay.

  “This will only take a moment,” he said. “At some point after midrats, someone went into the mess and smashed one of the light fixtures. I was wondering if you heard anything.”

  “No sir, I’m sorry,” Spicer said. “I was in my rack, sawing logs. Didn’t hear a thing.”

  “The mess is just down the hall from the berthing areas,” Jefferson said. “You’re sure you didn’t hear anything? Didn’t notice anyone leaving their rack?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” Spicer said. “Sir, why would somebody smash one of the lights?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Jefferson said. He addressed the other techs in the sonar shack. “What about the rest of you? Anyone hear anything? See anything?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Either this guy’s a ninja, or you’re all the heaviest damn sleepers I ever met,” Jefferson said.

  “Sorry, sir,” Spicer said.

  “Carry on,” Jefferson replied.

  As Spicer put his earphones back on, Jefferson returned to the control room and inspected the chief of the watch’s hands, and those of the diving officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Duncan.

  The watchstanding planesman, Jerry White, had his hands in plain view on the yoke, making it easy to see that he wasn’t the vandal. Jefferson knew all about White’s trouble with his previous XO on Philadelphia. Captain Weber had consulted with both him and COB Farrington before accepting the transfer. Farrington had been against it, convinced White would be a troublemaker, which meant it would fall on him as COB to keep him on a short leash. Jefferson, on the other hand, had been in favor, arguing that White deserved the benefit of the doubt, especially after his heroism in saving USS Philadelphia from a fire. In the end, Captain Weber had agreed with him, much to Farrington’s annoyance—and, it seemed, to Duncan’s as well. Everyone on board had heard about Duncan giving White an earful outside the mess. Jefferson didn’t gossip with the men—as XO, it was his duty to remain aloof from all that—but he felt bad for White. It couldn’t be easy having everyone snicker at your public humiliation behind your back.

  Next to White was Steve Bodine, whose own clearly uninjured hands were on the helmsman’s yoke. Jefferson and Bodine had become close at the naval station, though he rode Bodine hard when they were on duty—harder than he rode anyone else, because a black man in a boat that was 99 percent white had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get half the respect. But when they were off duty, Jefferson took Bodine under his wing. They often spoke in private about the issues Bodine came up against, and Jefferson tried to offer the best advice he could.

  Recently, Bodine had told him about an enlisted man who called him an ugly racial slur. Bodine had gone through the proper channels, complaining to the COB. The offending sailor had been punished, but the sting of the insult had stayed with him. He was having trouble seeing the sailor again day after day—it was making him angry and unsettled. When he came to Jefferson for advice, Jefferson told him it wasn’t up to the COB or the other sailor or anyone else to find a way to make it work. It was up to Bodine, and the best way to make it work was to move on. Bodine had trouble swallowing that bitter piece of advice, just as Jefferson had back when he was the same age. B
ut if the kid wanted to make a career for himself in the navy, he was going to have to do what he had to do to get along.

  But now, seated at the helm, Bodine looked distracted, unwell. His shoulders twitched, and he blinked rapidly.

  “Everything all right, Bodine?” Jefferson asked.

  Bodine jolted slightly in his chair, as though he hadn’t been aware Jefferson was behind him. “Sir? Yes—yes, sir. Fine, sir.”

  But he didn’t look fine. He was still blinking rapidly, and he wiped his sweat-beaded forehead with one hand. A drop of sweat rolled out of his close-cropped hairline and down his neck—past two small, red welts.

  “What’s that on your neck, Bodine?” Jefferson asked.

  The helmsman absently rubbed the side of his neck with one hand. “I don’t know, sir. I—I can’t remember where they came from.”

  Jefferson was about to tell him to get checked out by the hospital corpsman, when Farrington burst into the control room, clearly agitated. He walked up to Captain Weber at the plotting tables.

  “Captain, sir, there’s been a development,” he said.

  “Go ahead, COB,” the captain said as Jefferson walked over to them.

  “I was inspecting the bunks just now and discovered one of the racks was empty, sir,” Farrington said.

  “Who’s missing?” Captain Weber asked.

  “It’s Stubic, sir,” Farrington said. “Petty Officer Third Class Warren Stubic.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  While Lieutenant Commander Jefferson and COB Farrington were traversing the submarine inspecting the crew’s hands, Lieutenant Gordon Abrams was busy with first meal, making sure the hungry sailors who weren’t currently on their watch sections had something hot in their bellies.

  Roanoke’s galley felt like home to Gordon in a way that almost nowhere else did, except maybe the house he had grown up in. When things were going right in the galley, every day was the same. Only the menu changed. And that was how he liked it. The banging of pots, the hiss and sizzle of the deep fryer, the noise of his culinary specialists cooking an all-you-can-eat buffet for 140 men—these sounds had become his constant companions, his comfort zone. He got nervous only when the noise stopped, because that meant something was wrong. Still, he had to admit, there were times when he envied the variety he was sure the other crewmen experienced each day. Keeping watch for Soviet boats, steering Roanoke through deep and enemy-infested waters, manning the torpedoes. But he knew he didn’t really have the temperament for it. This was where he belonged, amid the noise and controlled chaos of the galley, supervising the culinary specialists who cooked chow for the men; the bakers who were responsible for making fresh muffins, dinner rolls, and desserts; the dishwashers; and the team of stewards who brought the chow to the wardroom on one side of the galley and the mess on the other. Gordon took pride in his contribution, making sure his galley produced the finest food in the fleet.