by J. S. Law
He pointed behind her. ‘In there is the senior rates’ showers and heads,’ he said. ‘And down there –’ he pointed to a small hatch about the size of a car’s sunroof – ‘is what we affectionately call the bomb-shop or, more traditionally, the weapons stowage compartment, or WSC for short.’ He paused and smiled. ‘This is where you’ll be sleeping.’ He climbed down the short vertical ladder and waited at the bottom.
Dan placed her bags on the deck and climbed halfway down. Then, bracing her back against the hatched entrance, she reached for her bag and lowered it down.
The chief again made no move to help her.
‘Please, chief,’ she said.
He sighed and took the bag, tossing it onto the floor before repeating the step with the black bag of papers.
As soon as Dan was down he began to talk at her again. ‘These are a mixture of Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. One of the bomb-heads will come down and brief you on emergency procedures. They also have to do rounds down here every six hours.’
He gestured to a series of cots that were mounted on what Dan assumed were vacant weapon racks. ‘Choose any pit you like,’ he continued. ‘We’re around six bombs light and can usually fit two pits comfortably on one missile rack, so you got twelve luxury pits to choose from.’
Dan looked around.
The ceiling was low and there were bare pipes bearing multi-coloured markings, like coloured bar codes, running over every wall and surface. Down the centre of the room was a raised area that was stacked to waist height with dry foods and tins. Either side of the centreline were large weapon stowages, and on them were mounted row after row of sixor seven-metre-long weapons. The room was cold and every edge was sharp, metallic and unforgiving; it was light, though, the fake, bright glow of numerous bulbs eliminating shadows everywhere.
‘The lights never go out down here, but you’ll get used to that,’ said the Chief Stoker, barely pausing for breath. He pointed to a small area at the back of the compartment, a space the size of a school gym mat. ‘That’s the only place on board that’s big enough for anyone to do a proper workout. We’ve stowed the weights, though, ’cos no one is allowed down here now, unless it’s a duty requirement.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, ma’am, since you bungled your way on board here, and with us having no proper Wrens’ accommodation and all, you now have your own suite. The lads aren’t allowed down here except for weapon movements and maintenance, so no workouts on this trip.’
‘But I—’
‘And, you see them other eleven pits,’ he pointed to the empty rows. ‘Well, they were going to be filled by trainees, people trying to earn their dolphins, potential submariners; useful folk. But now, seeing as you’re here, all those lads are in the bunk-space that I told you about, the one through twenty-nine bulkhead. They’re hot bunking, working on opposite watches so that when one finishes work, he wakes up his buddy who vacates the lovely hot bunk for him, and so it goes on. That means that twenty-odd extra guys will now have to share a bed and a tiny locker that wouldn’t have had to share if Granger had sailed.’ He made a point of staring straight at her. ‘You won’t know this, but hot bunking fucking sucks.’
He was leaving her in no doubt as to his opinion of her enforced presence on board Tenacity.
‘One submariner gets out of his pit to go to work,’ he repeated, making the fingers of his right hand walk along his left forearm. ‘The other submariner finishes work and gets in.’ His fingers walked back again. ‘No privacy, no stowage space, and the mess-deck forward of twenty-nine gets stinkier and stinkier by the day.’
‘But—’
‘The senior rates’ heads I showed you up top?’ he interrupted, and pointed up and out of the entrance hatch, not letting her speak.
She nodded.
‘They’re yours now, too. So, when you want to take a shower, you put this little sign up.’ He picked up a laminated sign from one of the panels and handed it to her. It read ‘Ladies Only’. ‘And for the duration of your ablutions, you get two showers and two pans all to yourself; the other one hundred and twenty-nine of us living on board Tenacity will share the other four showers and four pans between us. My maths isn’t great, but someone as educated as yourself could probably work out the ratio.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Dan, finally speaking over the top of the Chief Stoker’s monologue.
‘Yes, ma’am, you’re absolutely right, it is.’
Chapter 13
Saturday Afternoon – 27th September 2014
The Coxswain found Dan almost as soon as the Chief Stoker had left her alone in her new sleeping quarters.
He climbed down the ladder and turned to her, smiling in a good-natured way. ‘So what do you think of it then?’ he asked, before he had introduced himself. ‘I wasn’t sure if it was you or big Johnny Boy going to be coming with us, but Lieutenant Commander Coles seemed certain that you’d embark and he was right.’
The Coxswain held out his hand to her. His skin was very tanned, and although he was likely in his early forties, he had the look of a much younger man, someone that spent his time in the outdoors pursuing physical activities whenever he could.
‘Jago Maddock,’ he said. ‘I’m the Coxswain here and I’ll be helping you as much as I can with whatever it is you need.’
‘Nice to meet you …’ Dan paused. ‘Jago?’
He laughed. ‘My parents are old-school Cornish. It means James, but everyone here just calls me Coxswain, or Jay.’
‘Danielle Lewis,’ said Dan, shaking his hand. ‘Most people just call me Dan.’
‘I’ll be sticking to ma’am for the time being,’ he said, his lips pursed. ‘Sets the wrong tone if the lads hear you being called by your first name.’
‘I’d really like to get going on my interviews, to be honest, Coxswain. I wasn’t sure how quickly I might be able to find somewhere to sit and start calling people down.’
The Coxswain was still smiling, but he was also raising his hands as if to slow her down. ‘I know you’ll be chomping at the bit to get going, but you need to hold your horses. Things work at a set pace down here and nothing will be happening until we’re dived. That’s just the way things are. You can let me know if you have anyone that you specifically want to speak with soonest and I’ll try and get them in early; other than that, I’ll put out a list each day of who is down to be interviewed and when, and we’ll just work through it.’
Dan nodded her thanks. ‘Lieutenant McCrae?’ she said hopefully. ‘He was Chief Walker’s section officer. He’s one I’d like to speak with as soon as possible.’
The Coxswain looked very serious. ‘Lieutenant McCrae to the front of the queue it is then. Seems about right that he should be near the front too, the men would follow him anywhere.’
Dan raised her eyebrows, impressed that this officer could garner such obvious respect.
‘Of course, they’d mainly follow him out of curiosity, you know, to see what he might do.’
Dan couldn’t help but laugh.
‘Yup, a proper commissioned officer. He’s like a puppy, that one; runs around all excited and leaves little messes behind him for others to clean up.’ The Coxswain grinned, showing straight white teeth. ‘I’ll be sure to get him into the schedule early on.’
‘And there’s no chance I could see him quite soon? Maybe today?’
‘None,’ said the Coxswain.
‘OK,’ said Dan, sensing that any argument would be futile. ‘Thank you.’
He turned to leave, then stopped. ‘Oh, and as for that little toerag that dropped your stuff down the hatch …’ He watched Dan’s reaction carefully. ‘Yup, I was thinking as much,’ he said, as though her expression had answered some unasked question for him. ‘I’ll be dealing with him, so don’t you be worrying about that. No way to act and he knows it, or at least he will once he’s spent a few watches scrubbing out the bilges.’
It was around an hour
and a half later when Aaron popped his head down through the hatch, his mop of blond hair hanging down as though he were being electrocuted from above. He called her name.
Dan was sitting on one of the bunks nearest to the centreline of the bomb-shop and was looking into space. Quickly, she reached for a piece of paper as though she had only been taking a break.
It hadn’t taken long after the Coxswain had left for the smile to drop from her face and the reality of her situation to kick back in. She had positioned her holdall at the head end of her bed, or ‘rack’ as it was known, so that she could lie on her belly and easily reach down into it for her stuff. The black bag of papers was carefully hidden underneath her rack; it would take at least ten seconds for a determined searcher to find it.
She tried to smile at Aaron, but she’d been replaying the Chief Stoker’s words in her mind again and again.
Aaron’s face changed into an upside-down frown of its own and then disappeared, being replaced with a pair of black ‘steaming bats’, the leather protective boots worn by submariners and sailors alike. His legs followed and with a small jump he was on the deck and walking towards her.
‘You OK?’ he asked, seeming genuinely concerned.
‘You know,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘The Old Man could well be charged with obstructing my investigation over all the little stunts he’s pulling.’
Aaron recoiled at the force of her tone and held up his hands, palms out.
‘I think he’s watertight, Dan,’ he said evenly. ‘We don’t have girls on submarines and so arranging for you to get your own sleeping area was a reasonable step.’
Dan’s eyes narrowed.
‘My exclusive use of the heads, while I’m in them, is reasonable, but I can do everything possible to use them when the crew aren’t. All I need to know is when you guys change over watches and I can stay out of the way and use them when the watchkeepers are sleeping. But he’s deliberately acting to turn the crew against me by displacing twenty-three guys to give me the biggest fucking cabin on the submarine.’
‘Wow, Dan, relax,’ said Aaron.
He was close now, standing over her. Seeming to realise this, he looked around before sitting down on a stack of boxes that were labelled as containing catering-sized tins of baked beans.
‘There must be somewhere else I could sleep?’
Aaron shook his head. ‘Dan, you kicked up a lot of fuss to get on here. You even went outside of the Submarine Squadron and straight to Fleet HQ. The Old Man has to make sure he does things right. And,’ Aaron paused, as though he were about to raise a point he wasn’t sure that he wanted to. ‘Well, you could have just let John Granger sail in your place. He’s a qualified submariner and would have caused minimal disruption. But it was your choice not to do that, and the Old Man said from the beginning that he was certain it’s what you’d do …’
She shook her head and turned away from him. His hand touched her shoulder and she recoiled.
‘Sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘I was just—’
‘It’s fine, really. I’m just jumpy and need to get on with the interviews; I feel like time is just passing and being wasted.’
‘Well, the Coxswain runs a tight ship, so I’m certain he’ll get the interviews started as soon as he can. But first,’ Aaron changed tone as he spoke, making his voice sound cheerful, ‘I need to give you a quick safety brief. One of my guys will give you a full safety walk-around once we’re dived.’
He walked to the back of the compartment and rummaged around in a box, before pulling out a black rubber mask, attached to a very long piece of rubber hose. Holding it up to her, he smiled. ‘EBS,’ he announced. ‘Emergency Breathing System. You need to know how to use this in case there’s a problem with the air; fires aren’t uncommon on boats and the smoke can spread through the whole boat in seconds. We drill this three to four times a week when we heave.’
Dan raised an eyebrow.
‘Heaves are damage control exercises: fires, floods, collision damage and the like. We’ll do a lot of them in the next few days as we get worked up ready for patrol. EBS is a crucial, and constant, part of submarine life and you need to be able to use it.’
His voice had changed. He now sounded formal, authoritative, as though he had stopped trying to be her friend and had started into a mentor role, delivering a lesson that he had given many times before. ‘It’s a totally sealed face mask that allows you to breathe using a stored, pressurised air supply.’
When Dan didn’t take the mask, Aaron demonstrated it himself.
‘You pull the mask over your head, just the same way as you do with a service respirator,’ he said, loosening the straps. ‘Once on, you can only breathe when the hose is properly locked into one of the EBS couplings.’ He pointed up to several small-bore pipes that ran in regular intervals across the deck-head above her. Each tube had a brass connector jutting out at a right angle from it every twelve to eighteen inches. Aaron stood up and forced the connector end of the rubber hose into one of them.
Air began to hiss. ‘It’s positive pressure,’ he said. ‘So, if you get a bad face-seal, the air should push out of the mask, not let smoke or contaminants in.’
He pulled the mask on fully and took a deep breath.
Dan could see his eyes and cheeks bunched up through the clear plastic visor. His breathing sounded heavy and he said, ‘Come to the dark side, Dan. Feel the power of the force.’
Dan laughed despite herself and shook her head.
‘Watch me,’ he said, his voice heavily muffled. ‘Able to breathe,’ he said, then he reached up to where his air hose was plugged in and pulled the end out. ‘Not able to breathe,’ he said. After he spoke, he took a deep breath in and the face mask sucked tight against his face. He reached up and plugged the hose back into the connector, the mask filled out again and his breathing resumed.
‘You see?’ he asked, when he had removed the mask.
Dan nodded, the thought of the mask up tight against her skin already seeding a shiver deep in the pit of her stomach.
‘So, if you’ve been told to “don EBS” and you need to move around, you take a deep breath, hold it and unplug the connector.’ He showed her again how to plug and then unplug the hose. ‘Then hold your breath until you get to where you’re going, or are on the way, then plug it back in again and breathe; we call it fleeting. You’ll see the lads doing it during exercises; it takes a bit of practice but you’ll get there.’
He handed her the mask. ‘Put it on and have a go.’
Dan grimaced. ‘You going to clean that?’
His laughter rang out, echoing around in the small area. ‘You’re on a boat now, Dan. We submariners are not universally known for our proactive approach to hygiene. They get disinfected after each exercise, so you’ll live.’
Dan took it and wiped the inside with her towel to Aaron’s obvious amusement. She felt, as she had so often during her naval service, that she was on the brink of doing something that she really didn’t want to, but had no choice. Whether it was jumping into the pool from the five-metre board during the naval swimming test, or climbing down through the hatch that led her on board Tenacity in the first place, she knew she could do it. Everyone had fears, but you controlled the fear, the fear didn’t control you. She slipped the mask over her head. The rubber straps caught on her hair and she twice had to stop and sweep her fringe back away from the face seal.
Aaron stepped towards her and helped tighten the mask around her face.
‘Now breathe normally,’ he said. ‘It’s already plugged in, but I want you, when you’re comfortable, to fleet over to there.’ He pointed to a spot a few paces away.
The mask felt unbearably tight. Dan could already feel a sheen of sweat forming as the softer parts of it, which formed the seal with her cheeks and chin, were pushed hard against her. The visor was scratched and slightly discoloured too, and Aaron’s face became obscured as though she were looking at him through a lightly frosted bu
t dirty window.
She took a few even breaths and then inhaled deeply and held her breath.
Reaching up, she pushed the connector and pulled out the male end of the rubber hose. It was tricky and it took her a few attempts to do it with one hand as Aaron had shown her. Once it was out she moved across the short distance to the next connector.
Her lungs were well developed from running and she was a competent swimmer, happy to hold her breath and swim a length underwater, but this already felt different, hotter, and more claustrophobic. The pressure on her face was contorting her lips and the straps seemed to be tightening on her scalp and were starting to hurt.
She reached up and tried to push the end of the hose into the new connector. She didn’t push hard enough and as she let go, the pressurised system spat her connector out and the end of her hose fell to the floor.
‘Shit,’ she mouthed, her voice sounding muffled and deep.
She picked it up and tried again.
The rubber touching her face was now wet with sweat, which seemed to be made worse by the heat of the submarine.
Dan let out a small amount of breath to ease the growing pressure on her lungs. She pushed the connector again and felt it come loose. The whole thing wasn’t helped by the fact that she had to stand on tiptoes just to reach the pipework.
‘You have to engage it properly,’ she heard Aaron say. ‘Make sure you push it in hard. You’ll hear a positive click and then the air will flow.’
Dan tried again, also letting out some more breath. As she reached up again, she instinctively tried to breathe in. The mask sucked back onto her face, the rubber caving in as it had with Aaron. She pushed harder on the connector.
‘Don’t panic,’ came Aaron’s voice. He sounded calm, measured. ‘Just push hard until it clicks.’
Dan tried again, but it wouldn’t go. She took another involuntary breath and the black rubber mask sucked tighter onto her face. She tried once again with the connector, but her chest was starting to contract. It felt like someone was sitting on her and pushing down onto her ribcage and abdomen. Her hands were shaking and the sweat between her skin and the rubber seal made it feel as though the mask was a giant leech clinging to her face. All of it was distracting her, ruining her focus. She dropped the hose and reached both hands up towards her mask. She pulled at the rebreather, the lump that the hose was attached to, desperately trying to create a gap to allow some air in; the straps were on too bloody tight. She reached behind her head and tried to loosen them, then felt the surges of blind panic begin to engulf her.
