100 Fathoms Below

by Steven L. Kent

One benefit of the red lighting was that it didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust. But in the seconds before he could see clearly, a shape moved through the berthing area. Someone in the darkness, heading toward the curtain that led to the corridor outside. The shape was dusky, purplish in the red light, and moved in a way that struck Jerry as strange. He was jerky and stiff, as if he’d forgotten how to walk and was learning all over again.

  The man pushed the curtain aside and passed through the doorway. As he did, a shaft of light fell across his face for an instant before he was gone. Jerry blinked in disbelief. Though he’d only had a glimpse, he recognized the man right away. It was Steve Bodine. But short of a miraculous recovery, how was that possible? And even if Bodine had come back from having one foot in the grave, what was he doing wandering around the boat? He was supposed to be in quarantine. Matson would never have let him go this soon.

  There were no ladders on the bunks, but it wasn’t a far drop to the floor. Jerry landed quietly on his sock-covered feet. Boots or shoes of any kind weren’t allowed in the racks, since every sailor shared his with two other men and tried to leave it as clean as possible, but keeping your smelly, sweaty feet in your socks was considered a courtesy. Jerry padded quietly across the floor and paused at the curtained doorway. When the brightness from outside had touched Bodine’s face, his skin looked dry and ashen, and he had winced when the light hit him, as if it hurt his eyes. Jerry pushed the curtain aside and peered out into the corridor, but there was no sign of Bodine.

  He turned back and went through the hatch that led from the berthing area to the head to empty his bladder. But when he opened the hatch, he gasped in horror. Then he turned and ran as fast as he could to get Lieutenant Commander Jefferson.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Oran Guidry dropped quickly down the main ladder to the bottom level of the submarine. In preparation for first meal, Lieutenant Abrams had asked him to gather a few cans of tomatoes from the crates stored next to the Big Red Machine in the auxiliary engine room. But when he reached the bottom of the ladder, he paused, feeling a sudden coldness at his back. He turned around. The corridor behind him was empty, but he could have sworn someone had been there a moment ago, watching him. The closed hatch of the torpedo room stood at the other end of the corridor. He had heard that the captain let the hospital corpsman, Matson, use the torpedo room as quarantine for that sick crewman, Steve Bodine. But that was where they’d stored Stubic’s body too, frozen in its body bag. The idea of keeping a sick patient in there with a corpse didn’t sit right with him. It was creepy. And when he thought about how Matson had shut himself in there as well, it felt even creepier.

  His instincts told him to stay away from that hatch, and Oran trusted his instincts. He had learned that lesson in New Orleans. Before enlisting with the navy, he hadn’t strayed far from Bayou Bartholomew, except for that one trip to the Big Easy with LeMon and a few of their friends from high school over Christmas break. After a long night of drinking, he had gotten separated from the others and found himself walking down a dark street he wasn’t familiar with. A strange feeling had come over him then, one he had never forgotten. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was some kind of sixth sense—his grandmother had always claimed it ran in the family—but something told him to turn around and go back. No, not just go back—run back. He listened to that feeling, something he might not have done had he been with the others, and ran away from that dark street. He paused only once to look back, and that was when he saw them, a group of men emerging from the darkness at the other end of the street, knives glinting in their hands. He ran all the way back to the hotel and waited for his brother and their friends there, certain in the knowledge that if he had kept walking down that street, those men would have done a lot worse than just rob him. He was alive today only because he had listened.

  He got the same feeling looking at that torpedo-room hatch. He turned away from it and hurried into the auxiliary engine room—and was surprised to find it dark. The light fixtures had been broken. Two auxiliary techs were already there, standing in front of the Big Red Machine and sweeping up the shattered glass from the floor. They had square, bulky battle lanterns with them to see by, and one turned his beam on Oran.

  “What are you doing down here?” the tech asked.

  With the light in his eyes, Oran couldn’t see their faces. “Gettin’ some o’ these cans out your way,” Oran replied, nodding at the stacked boxes.

  “Halle-fuckin’-lujah,” the tech said. He lowered his lantern and went back to cleaning up the mess. “Damn stuff’s been in the way since we launched.”

  “It hasn’t been that bad,” the other tech joked. “They’ve made it real easy to grab a snack whenever we’re hungry.”

  Oran walked over to the boxes, chuckling. “Better not of. Lieutenant Abrams finds out, he’ll cut you off. All you’ll get’s bread and water for a week.” By the ambient light of the techs’ lanterns, he broke open one of the cartons. “Someone knock out these lights too, eh?”

  “Someone on this boat’s a real head case,” the second tech said. “How is it they haven’t caught the son of a bitch yet?”

  “Thought they did when Stubic died,” Oran said. “Maybe there’s more than one of ’em.”

  “Christ,” the second tech said. “Maybe the whole crew is bat-shit crazy.”

  “So, what’s that make you?” said the first tech, grinning.

  Oran collected an armful of the torn-open cardboard and plastic and carried it down the corridor to the garbage disposal room, where it would be compacted, then ejected into the ocean at the soonest opportunity. As he was walking back to the auxiliary engine room, he paused again. He could have sworn he heard someone walking up behind him, but when he turned, the corridor was as empty as before.

  The closed hatch of the torpedo room seemed to stare back at him. He shivered.

  Maybe there’s more than one of ’em.

  He returned to the auxiliary engine room and started gathering together the armful of cans he needed. He heard footsteps again, but this time when he looked up, he saw someone silhouetted in the doorway, his face in darkness with the light at his back. The techs shined their lanterns on him just as they had on Oran, revealing Ensign Penwarden.

  “Get those lights out of my face,” Penwarden said irritably.

  “Sorry, sir,” the first tech replied.

  “You gave us a start, sir,” the second tech said. “Thought for a moment you might be the mad light-smasher. You never know where he’ll strike next.”

  “Except that he already did,” the ensign said. “I ran into the XO up on the middle level. He sent me to get you. He said you’re needed in the head and the lights down here can wait.”

  “The head, sir?” the first tech asked. “He broke the lights there too?”

  “It’s a little worse than that. You’d better see for yourself.”

  Both techs picked up their tools and left the auxiliary engine room. They took their lanterns with them, leaving Oran in a darkened room with only the light from the corridor outside to see by. He felt a chill again, spooked by the idea of being alone in a dark room with a crazy man loose on the sub. He stooped to collect his tomato cans. He could barely see and had to feel his way. From the corridor outside, he heard Penwarden say something that didn’t make any sense.

  “Bodine? Is that you?”

  Oran glanced up. Penwarden was just outside the doorway. Oran couldn’t see who he was talking to, but he doubted it was Bodine. Wasn’t he quarantined?

  Penwarden said the name again. “Bodine?”

  Penwarden walked away, and Oran collected his cans. Perhaps his bad feeling had been wrong after all. If Bodine was up and about already, maybe there was nothing to worry about from the disease. Matson must have cured it somehow, or maybe the quarantine had given the fever time to run its course and it turned out not to be life-threatening. After all, Stubic had died from freezing himself, not from the disease. Maybe everything w
as going to be all right after all.

  Carrying four half-gallon cans of tomatoes, Oran left the auxiliary engine room. He glanced down the corridor, but neither Penwarden nor Bodine was there.

  The torpedo-room hatch was still closed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As soon as Oran returned to the galley, Gordon Abrams put him right back to work, helping prep first meal. LeMon stood by the stove, stirring a big pot of bright yellow liquid with red flecks. The sharp, peppery fumes coming out of that pot made Gordon’s eyes water. He wasn’t sure what was in there, let alone whether it was fit for human consumption, but he had learned to trust the Guidry brothers’ culinary skills as long as the crew was happy.

  The three of them talked among themselves as they always did while the Guidrys were cracking eggs and frying bacon for first meal, but all conversation ground to a halt when Lieutenant Commander Jefferson stormed into the galley. Behind him were Jerry White and Goodrich, the copper-haired auxiliary tech who had replaced the broken light fixture in the mess. Jefferson looked angrier than Gordon had ever seen him.

  “Lieutenant, did you hear anything out of the ordinary earlier?” Jefferson demanded.

  “No, sir, nothing,” Gordon replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Grab a lantern and catch up to us in the head,” Jefferson said.

  Then, as quickly as they had arrived, Jefferson, White, and Goodrich hurried away. LeMon shot Gordon a concerned look.

  “What’s goin’ on, suh?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said. “Stay here, both of you. I’ll be right back.”

  He opened the galley cabinet where his battle lantern was stored. Every department had its share of the portable, battery-powered electric lights in case the power went out, which it rarely ever did, so the things tended to gather dust. They were bulky yellow waterproof cubes of molded high-impact plastic, with thick, sturdy handles on top, and bracket attachments on the back so they could be mounted on bulkheads. Gordon grabbed his lantern and ran out of the galley.

  Jefferson had asked him to meet them in the crew head. Something must have happened in there. His mind was already preparing for the worst.

  Someone had blown a shitter.

  As funny as the expression was, the reality was no joke. Emptying toilets was a major problem on submarines. At 400 feet down, the pressure pushing in on the hull was about 300 pounds per square inch. If the boat tried to flush out its human waste with less pressure than what was pushing in, all that shit would fly right back into the boat. That was why, instead of flushing into the ocean, the toilets on Roanoke emptied into sanitary tanks, which Engineering purged every few days.

  But purging the tanks still meant the contents had to be pressurized so that they didn’t all come flying back. If the pressure on the hull was 300 pounds per square inch, the sanitary tanks had to be pressurized to more than that—a minimum of 301 pounds per square inch. Auxiliary Division posted signs all over the head before they pressurized the tanks, warning sailors not to use the facilities, but if some idiot ignored the signs and flushed the toilet while the tanks were pressurized, the poor bastard would be rewarded with a 301-psi enema. For comparison, the water in fire hydrants was pressurized to only 100 pounds per square inch. This would be three times as strong. Under that kind of pressure, the shit would quite literally fly.

  But as Gordon approached the head, the first thing he noticed was that he didn’t smell anything. If someone had blown a shitter, the stench of sewage would be overwhelming. Hell, now that he thought of it, he would have been able to smell it all the way back in the galley.

  The second thing he noticed was the absence of any light coming out of the open hatch.

  When he entered the head, he found Jefferson, Jerry White, Goodrich and two other aux techs standing in a completely dark room, pointing lanterns up at the ceiling. All the light fixtures in the head had been smashed. The floor was littered with shards of glass and pearly white dust from the fluorescent tubes.

  “Oh, Christ, not again,” Gordon said.

  “Earlier, the son of a bitch got the lights down in the auxiliary engine room too,” Jefferson said. “But this time, we have a witness. Isn’t that right, White?”

  “Yes, sir,” White said. “I just wish I had more information to give you. The sound of it woke me up, but I didn’t see it happen. At first, I thought it was a dream, so I didn’t get out of my rack right away. I wish I had, sir; then I might have caught whoever did this.”

  Even if they did catch him, what then? Roanoke didn’t have a brig, and they sure as hell weren’t going to lock up someone who seemed compelled to destroy everything around him in one of the officer staterooms. They couldn’t hand him off to a surface ship, or they’d wind up alerting the Soviets to their presence again, and as far as Gordon was concerned, one Victor shadowing them was one too many.

  Back when his mother had worked in the psychiatric hospital, she taught him that people who did inexplicable or harmful things were more likely mentally ill than malicious. Whoever was breaking the lights on Roanoke obviously fit that bill. Stress, claustrophobia—all sorts of things could make a submariner lose his mind. This was Mitch Robertson all over again, except that the light-smasher was turning his anger outward instead of inward. He desperately needed help, but what help could they offer him? There was no shrink on board, and Matson didn’t have any psychiatric meds in sick bay. Were they just going to have to tie this guy up somewhere until the op was over?

  “Sir, there’s more,” Goodrich said, swinging his lantern over to the stainless steel sinks at the far end of the room.

  The mirrors above the sinks had been shattered. Someone had put a fist through them, leaving round spiderweb fractures in the silvered glass. The sinks were filled with fallen shards and spatters of blood, and more broken glass littered the floor below.

  Gordon was flummoxed. How the hell had the culprit gotten away with it? Breaking the light fixtures and the mirrors? That would have taken time. White had heard it, but he hadn’t investigated right away. Surely, someone else must have heard the racket and come looking. Only a third of the submarine’s crew was on duty at any given time. That left a third of the crew on their racks right next to the head, and another third milling around the deck. The head was never empty for long, and there was no way to lock everyone out—no sign, like those on a commercial airplane’s lavatory doors, that he could turn to occupied. With no way to keep it quiet and no way to keep people out once he started making noise, how had the vandal done it? Gordon supposed that if the head’s hatch to the corridor and its hatches to the berthing areas were shut, it was possible the noise would be dampened. Still, the vandal would have had to be fast to escape without being spotted—faster than Gordon could imagine anyone moving.

  But the question of how paled beside the question of why. Why break the light fixtures and the mirrors?

  “Sir, what do you think it all means?” he asked.

  Jefferson shined his lantern at the shattered mirrors, then back up to the smashed fixtures on the ceiling.

  “It means the people on this boat are losing their goddamn minds,” Jefferson said. “They’re breaking lights, mirrors, the radio, and God knows what else.”

  “Sir, do you think the captain will cut the op short?” Gordon asked.

  “I doubt it,” Jefferson said. “As far as the captain’s concerned, this op is too important to abort. He wants to hang tight and see if the techs can fix the radio, but Coms doesn’t think they can.” He sighed and shook his head. “Frankly, we’re hosed. We can’t radio COMSUBRON for instructions, some crazy son of a bitch is breaking our lights, and we’ve got two sailors dead from bubonic plague or whatever the hell it is.”

  “Two, sir?” Gordon asked. “Someone else died?”

  “Steve Bodine,” Jefferson said sadly. “He passed a few hours ago.”

  “What, sir?” White said.

  At the same time, Gordon asked, “Are you sure, sir?”r />
  “Of course I’m sure!” Jefferson snapped, looking at them both. “What’s gotten into the two of you? Matson called me himself over the circuit to inform me.”

  “Sir, I’m confused,” White said. “I could have sworn I saw Bodine when I woke up, before I left the berthing area.”

  “Impossible,” Jefferson replied.

  “Sir, I’m not so sure about that,” Gordon said. “Oran Guidry told me he saw Bodine earlier too. Ensign Penwarden was talking to him outside the auxiliary engine room. And, sir, didn’t you mention the lights had been broken there too?”

  Jefferson stared at Gordon. “It’s impossible. Matson told me that Bodine died.”

  “Sir, if Bodine is dead, then who did I see?” White asked. “And who did Oran see, sir?”

  “That’s a damn good question,” Jefferson said.

  Leaving the aux techs behind to clean up the glass, Jefferson led Gordon and White back to the galley. He questioned Oran on exactly what had happened in the auxiliary engine room. LeMon watched nervously, stirring his pot as Oran related his story. Gordon listened intently too, but nothing Oran told the lieutenant commander differed from the story he had told Gordon earlier.

  “So you didn’t actually see Bodine yourself?” Jefferson asked.

  “No, suh,” Oran replied, “but Ensign Penwarden did. I heard him say Bodine’s name twice, suh.”

  “And where is Ensign Penwarden now?” Jefferson asked.

  “I don’ know, suh,” Oran said. “He was gone already when I come back up to the galley, suh.”

  “What about you, White?” Jefferson asked. “Have you seen Ensign Penwarden since you left the berthing area?”

  “No, sir,” he replied.

  “Lieutenant Abrams?” Jefferson asked.

  Gordon shook his head. “No, sir. If you like, I can keep an eye out for him during first meal.”

  “Please do,” Jefferson said. “I want to talk to him.”

  “Sir,” Gordon said, “two sightings of Steve Bodine alive and in places where the lights have been purposely broken—it can’t be a coincidence.”