The Iceman

by P. T. Deutermann

  His ears popped. He knew what that meant: the sea was slowly but inexorably seeping into the remains of his boat. The air pressure was rising. He sniffed the air and detected the first swimming pool taste of chlorine gas. He looked around and saw that the atmosphere was filling with a dangerous mist of carbon dioxide, chlorine, and dust particles. The battle lanterns were burning deep yellow now instead of white. His eyes were starting to sting.

  And so it ends, he thought. Sunk by a submarine. A certain justice there. Had to hand it to the Japs: they had to know that the balance of power in the Pacific was shifting against them. And yet a sub skipper had snuck into Australian home waters and done what a small legion of escorts and Kawanishi hadn’t been able to accomplish. Their warrior code was called Bushido. He had no idea what that meant, but he now felt that code’s sharp, unwavering discipline.

  A sudden clang penetrated his thoughts. He opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he’d closed. He was having trouble breathing. The light from the battle lanterns was dimming rapidly and starting to go green. There was now water up to his waist.

  Tired, he thought. I’m beyond tired. The sea will soon take care of that, and maybe this was the final punishment for what he’d done, way back in Kentucky, on that horrible night. Kensie had told him he was not to blame, that his father had essentially killed himself. Well, not quite. There was still the matter of that rock maple chair leg.

  Kensie. He’d promised her father he wouldn’t hurt her.

  Don’t let your mouth make promises your body can’t keep, old son. He smiled in the gloom of the dying submarine. An older coal miner had told him that just before clocking him unconscious down in the pit after an argument over … what? He couldn’t remember. He could remember that fist of iron introducing him to a sheet of stars. Kensie, I’m so sorry.

  Another loud clang jerked him back to reality.

  Who was doing that? Why was somebody doing that? Making noise. He lifted his head and looked at the bottom of the escape trunk.

  Wait, he thought. I’m supposed to do something. Like get in the trunk. But I don’t have a lung. A free ascent from this depth and my own lungs will explode. Wait. No. That’s not true, not true at all.

  He lifted himself off the pile of lifejackets and climbed into the escape trunk. Then he closed the lower hatch and cracked the fill valve open. Water began streaming in. The battle lantern in the trunk was at the end of its rope. The air was bad, making it hard to get a real breath. His ears popped several times as the pressure increased. Then the water stopped coming in, even as his chest began to swell.

  Gotta go, he thought. Last chance. Gotta go and gotta blow, all the way up. He had a sudden vision of his lungs popping out of his mouth, two pink balloons expanding to a ridiculous size before they exploded. He cranked the hatch wheel with what was left of his strength and then pushed the hatch open. Before he was even ready, his body lifted out of the trunk, bruising his shoulders and his hip as he shot for the surface. An agonizing pain hit him in the chest, and then he remembered. He began to blow and blow and blow. After what seemed like an eternity he shot up out of the water into bright sunlight, still blowing, his jaws aching from the effort to keep his mouth wide open.

  There were hands on him almost immediately. He opened his eyes but it was hard to focus. Too much light. Noise. He focused and saw a crowd of boats around him. Fishing boats, harbor tugs, a submarine.

  A submarine? Jesus wept, had the Jap come back?

  His ears were filled with the sound of crackling paper. He caught quick glimpses of faces, men trying to talk to him, but the crackling overwhelmed everything. He tried to speak but could only blow, trying desperately to ease the swelling in his lungs. He fainted.

  When he came to, he was in familiar surroundings. A torpedo room. Six tubes, right in front of him. A forward torpedo room. He was back in Firefish. But that couldn’t be: Firefish was gone, broken in half by a type-93 Jap torpedo. A real torpedo: huge warhead, big fish. A carrier killer, unlike the American’s own pathetic Mark 14.

  A face appeared in front of him. It was Jay Carney. He tried to speak but there was something wrong with his voice. One side of his face seemed to be paralyzed.

  “Malachi,” Jay said. “You’re gonna hate this. We’re gonna load you into a torpedo tube and then pressurize it. It’s your only chance. It’s gonna be tight, but this is the only way we can beat the bends. Understand?”

  Malachi tried to say no, he didn’t understand anything at all, except that his lungs were killing him. Jay called for the corpsman.

  Another figure appeared from behind Jay. Malachi felt a small sting, and then he was being pushed into a heavily greased torpedo tube. Tight did not describe it. His legs went in just fine, but his hips and shoulders did not. He felt a sharp pain in his neck as they forced his body into the 21-inch tube.

  “It’s okay,” he told them. “I’m not claustrophobic.”

  A warm cloud came over him as the sedative took effect. They had thoughtfully placed a fresh battle lantern in the tube with him. He heard the steel door close behind him. Then his ears started popping as they raised the pressure back to 80 psi, the equivalent of 180 feet of depth. He opened his eyes and then quickly closed them. The stainless-steel cylinder gripped his arms and his upper body in a greasy vise. He couldn’t move a muscle, but his chest had stopped hurting, and his hips and legs were relatively free. He was in a torpedo tube. Well, I’m a submariner. What’s wrong with being locked into an empty torpedo tube? Must have done something really bad.

  He vaguely understood what they were doing to save his life. He was determined to stay awake as they slowly, slowly, began to reduce the pressure one pound at a time to simulate a diver’s proper ascent from depth: go up six feet, grab a knot in the line, and then hang for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then do it again, stage by stage, allowing the diver’s body to expel the dissolved nitrogen in his bloodstream that was trying to kill him.

  His eyelids were heavy. He didn’t seem to have control of the left one. I probably should stay awake, he thought. Or, why not just go to sleep for a while? The one thing he remembered about a decompression chamber was that it took a long time to get back to normal. Suddenly he heard three metallic clanks somewhere behind him. He opened his one good eye. What did that mean? He was groggy now, but then understood. They were checking on him. He was supposed to sound out three beats of his own, but he really couldn’t move his arms. And it wasn’t like he had a wrench handy. He looked around and saw the arming wire clip at the top of the tube. He got his left arm out over his chest and then reached for the spring-loaded clip. He pulled it out of its recess and then let it go. It made a click. He did it two more times. A single clank came back through the firing flask. Okay. We heard that.

  He left his arms lying across his waist. He looked down the length of his body. He could see his hands and beyond that, the greasy expanse of the torpedo tube, illuminated by the battle lantern. He tried to take a deep breath but his lungs instantly informed him that they weren’t ready for that yet, so knock that shit off, there, Captain.

  He grimaced in the dim light from the battle lantern. Captain. Not anymore. You needed a boat to be a captain. He felt a familiar vibration in the hull around him. The sub was under way, probably headed back into the harbor. He hoped they were watching, because the Japs were fully capable of coming back to work over that gaggle of small, unarmed craft surrounding Firefish’s lone buoy. He wondered how they’d found out about her sinking. An image of the admiral’s face swam into view in his mind’s eye. Hi, Admiral, he tried to say, but then realized that perhaps that wasn’t the properly respectful way to say hello. The admiral was wagging his finger at him. You said you could do a fourth patrol, there, Captain. Guess what? Then he slipped away into the competent hands of the sedative.

  THIRTY-TWO

  He woke up to a brightly lighted compartment. All that sunlight was streaming in through a single porthole in the bulkhead to his left. His left
wrist hurt. He focused on it to discover an IV line taped there. His mouth was incredibly dry and he tried to speak. The resulting croak brought a hospital corpsman to his bedside. The corpsman placed a metal straw between his lips, and Malachi greedily sucked in some ice water and then promptly choked. The corpsman waited for the choking to subside and then offered the straw again, advising him to take little sips this time. When Malachi had finished, he asked where he was.

  “Sick bay on the Otus,” the corpsman said. “They brought you in last night after you finished decompression. How you feeling, Captain?”

  “Groggy, but no pain,” Malachi said. “Except for this.” He pointed with his jaw to the IV.

  The corpsman grinned. “Everyone says that, sir, but we’ll take it out today. Lemme go get a doc. Sir, you need a bedpan?”

  Malachi was about to shake his head when he realized, hell, yes, I need a bedpan.

  An hour later, having been seen by the Otus’s doctor and declared back among the living, Malachi was sitting up in the bed, still sipping on ice water, when the commodore showed up.

  “Oh, shit,” Malachi said without thinking. The commodore grinned at him.

  “And a good morning to you, too, there, Captain,” he said. He pulled a metal chair over to the bed and sat down. “You feeling a little better?”

  “How many of my people made it out, Commodore?” Malachi asked, ignoring the question.

  “Everybody who survived the original torpedo hit made it to the surface,” the commodore said. “For once, all our gear worked. They said they ran out of SEAs and that you stayed behind.”

  “Lost my boat,” Malachi replied. “Got careless because we were so close to home port. At the time, staying down there seemed like an appropriate thing to do. Plus, there were no more lungs.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Malachi,” the commodore scoffed. “Yes, there’s gonna be an investigation, but I wanted to let you know that politics are already intruding. The Aussie Navy is highly embarrassed by what’s happened. They’ve been patrolling the approaches to Perth for months, and they’ve repeatedly assured us that there were no Jap subs out there, certainly not that close to the harbor.”

  “Only took one,” Malachi said, suddenly feeling weak. “And unlike us, their torpedoes work.”

  The commodore nodded. “Yes, they do,” he said. “Look, you get some rest. You had a close call with the bends, coming up like that. Let me take care of the admin tidal wave that’s coming. Your surviving people are being well looked after. My squadron doctor will take over supervising your recovery. Once they determine that your lungs are okay, we’ll get you moved to the main hospital in Perth.”

  “If my lungs are okay, I won’t need any more hospital care,” Malachi said.

  “Except,” the commodore said with a smile, “there’s a certain doctor there who’s insisting that she take over your convalescence. Of course, you can always say no.”

  To his surprise, Malachi began to weep. Kensie was going to “save” him, but no one had saved all those boys in the back half of the Firefish, especially him. He recalled the images of the after torpedo room following the fire. Now almost a third of his crew was floating around in lightless flooded compartments aft of the control room. The commodore reached over the bed and covered Malachi’s right hand.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  Ten minutes later the submarine squadron doctor showed up. He made a cursory check of Malachi’s vitals. While he was doing so he managed to attach something new to the IV, and soon Malachi was sound asleep.

  The next morning he was transferred by ambulance to the main hospital in downtown Perth. The squadron doc had explained that the bends could often reappear hours or even days after a free ascent from 180 feet, and that his arterial blood gases would need to be monitored for at least the next five days. Plus, he explained, the hospital had a decompression chamber.

  He was installed in a private room to reduce his exposure to infection. Kensie showed up an hour after he’d arrived. She was still dressed in bloodstained surgical scrubs, and wouldn’t come in any farther than the doorway to talk to him.

  “Oh, Malachi,” she said. “I’m so very bloody sorry. You look absolutely terrible. Where’s your IV?”

  “I’m not in any pain, at least not physically,” he said. “This is supposed to be a period of observation. Mentally, now, I’m not so good. Lost my boat and a lot of my people.”

  “I can’t come in,” she said, indicating her contaminated scrubs. “And I’m scheduled in surgery in thirty minutes. But I’ll be back as soon as I can. You keep a stiff upper lip, now.”

  He suddenly realized she was holding back tears. “Kensie, I’m okay, despite how I may look. I’ve got enough coal dust in my lungs to keep all those bends at bay. But, please, do come back. I need to see you.”

  She hurried away, more to keep her emotions in check than for any urgent medical reasons, he suspected.

  He lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes. Getting out of the sunken boat had been the easy part. By now, the admiral would have directed the commodore to conduct a formal investigation into the loss of Firefish. He, as captain, would be named an “interested party,” the Navy’s quaint term for someone who stood to be blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t as if he was suspected of a crime. This was worse: he’d lost his ship. And under a tradition far more ironclad than any secular law, he was responsible for that loss, simply by being the captain. Even though he’d been one of the highest scoring submarine skippers in terms of tonnage sunk, if the submarine service declared him responsible for the loss of Firefish, he would be finished as a career naval officer and a submariner.

  He had accepted submarine command knowing full well that these were the rules. Few submarine captains found themselves in this situation, because when a sub went down, everyone usually went with it. Submarine losses were the ultimate wartime mystery. A boat left port for a war patrol and was never heard from again. Among themselves, submariners referred to a missing boat as being on eternal patrol, and no one criticized the captain. Maybe, he thought, it would have been easier on everyone if he’d just stayed down there with his drowned shipmates.

  “Commander Stormes?” a voice asked from the doorway. He looked up. A four-striper in dress khakis was standing there, a briefcase in one hand. Malachi didn’t recognize him.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I’m Captain Thomas John Byng, ComSubRon Six, based in Brisbane. I’ve been assigned by SubPac to conduct the investigation into the loss of Firefish. May I come in, please? And are you recovered enough to begin the process?”

  “Yes, sir, I think I am,” Malachi said. This commodore looked older than his own squadron commander, Captain VanBuren. “If I fall asleep on you, please don’t take it personally.”

  “Promise I won’t,” Byng said. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to Malachi’s bed.

  “I’m here to conduct what’s called a preliminary investigation into what happened to Firefish,” he began. “I’m going to interview several people, including surviving members of your crew and wardroom, Commodore VanBuren, Admiral Marsten, and some of your fellow skippers. These interviews don’t constitute legal proceedings. My objective is to establish, as best I can, what sank your boat. I know the common understanding is that a Jap sub ambushed you right outside Fremantle Habour. It is also possible that you had a massive battery explosion.”

  Malachi started to speak but Byng put up a hand.

  “I realize that’s not what you think, but if, for instance, in the course of my interviews I find that Firefish had become notorious on the tender for having leaky batteries, or if there had been several instances of hydrogen alarms in the boat, or a series of work requests involving the batteries, then that possibility becomes increasingly real.”

  “You won’t find any of that,” Malachi said. “Our batteries were tight. Besides, Sound reported hearing a single ping just before we got hit. It surely wasn’t ours. Yo
u’ll need to speak to the ship’s boatswain, McReedie. He was on the bridge with me when that report came up.”

  “McReedie,” Byng said. “Okay, I will. But right now I’d like to ask you where you were and what the boat was actually doing at the time of the explosion. Were you at sea detail yet, or still in a wartime transit watch condition? What were the sea conditions and the visibility? Were there lookouts posted and how many? Things like that. I want to get your perspective, your recollections. What you did after the boat got hit. Basically, your version of events.”

  Malachi lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “I can come back,” Byng said. “They told me you were on surveillance for latent blood gas problems, and that your free ascent was not kind to your innards. And, by the way, I won’t take notes. I simply want to hear your side of events.”

  Before I have to be sworn and then tell my tale in front of a court reporter and a formal Board of Inquiry, Malachi thought. He knew what was happening here. The commodore would talk to everybody and then build a picture of the boat, its captain and crew, its readiness, its professionalism. If he came away with an impression of a sloppy command or any indications of dereliction of duty, he’d recommend that the legal process begin. That would lead to entirely different kinds of interviews.

  “Okay,” Malachi said. “We were coming back from Peleliu after an aviator recovery mission.”

  Malachi told his story while the commodore sat back and listened, occasionally asking a question. True to his word, he took no notes. After almost an hour a nurse came in to draw blood. Byng took that opportunity to end the interview, saying that he was going to find the exec and then work his way down the chain of command for the next few days. Malachi nodded and then closed his eyes for a moment. When he woke up it was almost evening and Kensie was now sitting in the chair where Captain Byng had been, just a moment ago, he thought.