Silent Waters

by Jan Coffey

  Three years he’d been riding submarines. Electronics was his thing, so he’d trained in sonar tech, working his way up to petty officer second class. Brody knew he was damn good at what he did. His commanding officer, McCann, knew it too. The C.O. told him at his last review that, after this patrol, he wanted to send Brody to school for a new system that was going to be installed on the upgraded 688s and the Seawolf-class boats. That way, McCann said, he’d also be right in line for petty officer first class when he’d put in the requisite time.

  Brody didn’t know how to feel about that. The promotion was nice, but it meant that he’d probably be transferred to some other boat to work with another crew. He hated change. He liked what he had. He liked this C.O.. McCann was a decent guy. He was tough, but he had a solid relationship with this crew. Brody had served under three different skippers, and McCann was the best he’d seen. But everyone knew that the commander wouldn’t be staying long. Two more patrols and McCann would be up for captain. He’d get that fourth gold bar, too. He was on his way up. Before that happened, Brody knew he’d have to think hard about where he wanted to be.

  The sonar man took his dishes to the galley. There were only the three of them in the enlisted mess; nine in total remained aboard for the twenty-four-hour turnaround it would take to fix what was wrong.

  They had left their berth upriver at the sub base yesterday, the tug casting off when they reached the mouth of the Thames River. Everyone on the crew thought they’d be away at least six months. They were being deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. But they hadn’t got much past Groton Long Point when the gyro navigator had shit the bed. Instead of coming about and going back up to the sub base again, the boat waited until the orders had come through to pull into one of the empty berths at the Electric Boat shipyard. These people had built most of USS Hartford. And from what Brody understood, they had a replacement system on hand and everything would be done today.

  It was surprising when the C.O. had granted leave to most of the crew for the duration. The men loved it. Most of them had moved their families to the area when they’d first been stationed here.

  But Brody had been happy to volunteer to stay aboard. The food was better, and he’d already put himself onto his six-hour sleep schedule. He was also looking forward to starting work on a training manual for one of the new systems in his free time. Without the hustle-bustle of the daily duties, he could get a good start.

  He nodded to the other two on his way out of the mess. They were thumbing through some motorcycle magazines.

  “When are the yardbirds supposed to get here?” the new galley man asked. Dunbar had been brought aboard to replace one of the old cooks who’d retired after thirty years. The other, Rivera, worked the torpedo room.

  “They’re supposed to be on the job at 0600,” Brody answered.

  “Who’s gonna babysit them?” Rivera called after him.

  “No one’s been assigned. The yardbirds will stick to the control room, and the officer of the watch will keep an eye on them. Also, I was told last night the X.O. will come back this morning to go over it all with them.” Brody headed for the door.

  “Want to play some poker?” Dunbar called after him.

  “Nah.” Brody shook his head. “I got some work to do.”

  “Shit, man,” Rivera complained. “You got plenty of time for work once we get underway again.”

  Brody waved them off and stepped into the narrow passageway outside the mess deck. He wanted to get into the sonar room and take some notes for the manual. Remembering his notebook, he started toward the NCO’s quarters.

  As he passed the gangway leading down to the torpedo room, a movement below caught his eye. Someone was down there. Brody paused, doing a quick recount of who was on board. Himself. The two in the mess. The deck officer and a radio man in the control room. The reactor technician. In the engine room, the machinist’s mate and one motor monkey. A seaman topside, standing watch.

  Even though there were auxiliary power plant units aft of the torpedo room, the reactor man wouldn’t have been checking them now. He wouldn’t leave his station in Maneuvering where he was monitoring the reactor. Nobody should have been in the torpedo room.

  He peered down through the opening and listened. Two pairs of legs moved into his line of vision. Black stretch pants. Black sneakers. Nothing any of the crew would wear.

  “Who the hell’s down there?” Brody shouted.

  A sharp blow to the back of his head was the only answer he received.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 4

  Electric Boat Shipyard

  4:25 a.m.

  “Would you mind giving me a hand with one of these?”

  McCann turned around and saw the ship super walking toward him. She was trying to juggle her clipboard and two hard-plastic carrying cases. Another large bag hung from her shoulder.

  He fought back any comment about her claim of being able to handle it on her own. “You got saxophones in those cases, Ms. Russell?”

  “How did you know? I thought we could jam a little in our down time.”

  He took one of the cases from her. The thing was damned heavy. “Sax nothing. You’ve got a dead body in here.”

  “Yeah, but the identity of the body, I’m afraid, falls under the category of ‘need to know.’”

  He tried to take the other briefcase, too, but she shook her head and led the way out of the shop.

  Crossing the road, McCann glanced up the alley where the security guards had gone. There was no sign of them. Amy led him through the same door into the Ways. The place was dark, except for a few security lights along the walls of the vast building. They walked along the wall toward the pier that extended out into the river. The fifty-foot high doors at the end of the building were closed, but there was an exit door to the left of them.

  “So, other than a dead body, what else are you hiding in these suitcases?” he asked as the two of them walked out onto the rain-swept pier.

  “Testing equipment that SPAWAR insists on us using before we do an ESGN replacement,” Russell explained. “It runs the diagnostics that tests the lateral systems, too, including the GPS.”

  “We don’t have one of those on board.”

  “Of course. It takes a highly qualified individual to run and handle the data analysis.”

  He shot her a sideways glance. “Come again?”

  “I guess the navy must be too cheap to buy you one,” she deadpanned. She looked over at him and smiled. “Actually, this unit’s brand new. And I’m not complaining that you don’t have it yet. As one of three who went out for the training, it’s job security for me.”

  A squall of rain whipped across the pier, and McCann breathed in the salty smell of the tide.

  “It’s Amy, you said?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said ‘job security’. I thought women engineers are in high demand.”

  “I hear they are, too. But not in Groton, Connecticut. And not anywhere around here, either. At least, not for someone with my specific qualifications.”

  McCann knew all about Electric Boat’s layoffs over the past two decades or so. Only a skeleton of the old workforce remained. He doubted any of the remaining personnel had any feelings of job security. “You could always relocate if there are more cuts.”

  “Easier said than done. I have more than myself to worry about.”

  It was none of his business to ask, but his curiosity won out. “Family?”

  She nodded but didn’t elaborate.

  Amy stopped when they reached the gangway leading out onto Hartford and looked across at the submarine. The curved top of the hull and the sail shone in the rain. McCann looked over at her and was surprised by the expression on her face. It matched the one he used to wear whenever he looked at the boat. Those were the days when he was smitten with his job, his life. He’d been much younger then. The wind and rain swept around them, but she didn’t appear to mind.

 
“She is beautiful.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “That’s a nice thing to hear, coming from someone who builds them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the cabinetmaker is the one who sees all the flaws invisible to everyone else.”

  “True, but a successful cabinetmaker never points them out.”

  “Point taken.”

  “But she’s still a beautiful boat,” she said in a low voice, adjusting her shoulder bag before stepping onto the gangway.

  The sailor standing the topside watch saluted McCann as they boarded the vessel.

  “Nice night. Eh, Barclay?” McCann said. The seaman was from Mississippi and right out of sub school. Hartford was his first submarine after serving on two surface crafts. “Must feel just like home.”

  “I only came on watch at 0300, Captain. I can still feel my toes.”

  “That’s good. We don’t want to amputate anything, if we can help it.”

  Amy put everything down next to the open hatch.

  “After you,” she told him.

  Maneuvering down the ladder was a little tight. McCann knew it was often a challenge for surface types, especially when they were carrying gear. He descended first, pausing on a rung of the ladder to help her find her footing. Instead, she stood waiting to hand the test equipment down to him. He took down the case he was carrying and came back up to find the next case being lowered to him. When the equipment was all down, he didn’t have to go back up because she was right behind him, climbing down the ladder like a seasoned sub rider. She landed on two feet, unzipped her jacket and wiped the rain off her face.

  “I’ll start in the control room.” She pointed in the right direction, picking up all the equipment except the case he’d been carrying.

  McCann followed her lead, heading for the sub’s command center. The passageways were empty. It was quiet on board, the normal human sounds that were part of submarine living not there yet. Still, it was cool and dry, and it felt like coming home for McCann. The pathetic thing was that Hartford was more of a home to him than his small, empty house overlooking the river in Mystic. She stepped into the control room ahead of him.

  “Stop right there. What are you doing on board?”

  When McCann heard his officer of the watch bark at the ship super, he pushed past Russell.

  Paul Cavallaro immediately came to his feet. “Sorry, Skipper, I didn’t see you.” A lieutenant assigned to Navigation, Cav had been left in command of the vessel during the night when McCann had given the X.O. permission to go home.

  McCann looked around and into the adjoining radio room and found his officer was the only one on deck. There should have been a communications man on duty.

  “Lieutenant Cavallaro, this is Amy Russell. She’s the ship super who’ll be running the equipment installation.”

  The two nodded, and the ship superintendent began setting up her testing equipment in front of the GPS system. She was standing on the port side of the control room and didn’t go any farther forward than the unit panels. McCann left her to her work and went to the conn.

  “I didn’t think they’d get started until 0600,” Cav said quietly.

  “I don’t complain when they’re early.” McCann replied absently, peeling off his raincoat. “Where’s your radio man?”

  “I sent Gibbs to the officer’s mess to get me the ESGN spec sheet. I left it on the table when the X.O. called me to take the conn.”

  McCann nodded and watched her take off her navy blue management coat. She was wearing a green flannel shirt under a vest and heavy khaki pants. He couldn’t help but notice that, even in the bulky clothes, she obviously had a nice figure.

  “Where’s the rest of her crew?” Cav asked.

  “She’s the expert. They’ll come aboard once she determines exactly what it is they need.” McCann was about to leave her with Cav and go hang his raincoat.

  “This babe’s going to handle it herself?” Cav asked.

  Change of plan. Maybe these two wouldn’t be best left alone.

  “The ‘babe’ is an electrical engineer, and she’s just finished a training course with SPAWAR,” he said coolly, recalling what she’d said to him earlier about submarine officers and women. McCann wondered if he’d sounded as bad.

  Cav glanced down at his watch.

  “We’re ahead of schedule,” the commander reminded his junior officer.

  “That’s not it,” Cav said. “Gibbs has been gone five minutes. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go find out what happened to him.”

  “I have the conn, mister,” he said officially, mounting the step to the platform at the center of the control room. The twin periscopes were aft of him. As Cav went aft, McCann checked the status of the systems on the LED displays. When he was satisfied that all was correct, he stood on the port side and watched Amy work.

  It was immediately evident that she was competent. She worked quickly and efficiently. The two cases lay open on the floor, displaying an assortment of tools, gadgets, and testing apparatus. The shoulder bag had been unzipped, and a laptop had been connected to the defective unit and to a couple of testing devices in the briefcase. She was on her knees on the deck, her head bent over the equipment. She was in full concentration, monitoring the changing screens on the laptop.

  “Anything?” McCann asked, sitting down on the nearby chief of the boat’s swivel chair. The COB had nearly torn the navigator a new butt hole when the ESGN had begun to malfunction.

  “You’re the impatient sort, aren’t you?” she asked without looking up.

  “No. I’m the hands-on sort.”

  She glanced up at him.

  “I mean, it’s tough for me to watch someone else have all the fun. Or doing all the work.”

  “Well, this is no fun. And so far, it’s no work, either,” she said, darting another quick look at him.

  He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “What do you have so far?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “The preliminary scan tells me that everything is running fine. I don’t see any malfunction in the software. It’s checking the unit hardware now.”

  “Do you have the rejection report handy?” he asked, crouching down next to her.

  She handed him the clipboard. McCann leafed through the documents until he found the initial report.

  “Did you test these parameters?” he held the paper before her.

  She glanced up briefly. “I sure have. Those were the preset values I started with.”

  McCann turned to see if Cav was coming back. He was the one who’d initially signed off the report. It would be good if he were in on this. But there was no sign of him. In fact, there was no sign of anyone. It was too damn quiet. He glanced at his watch.

  “I’m only in a primary phase,” she told him. “A lot more could show up once I run a more detailed diagnosis.”

  “Is that usually the way it works?” he asked.

  She started to say something, then bit her lip and concentrated more on the screen.

  “Spit it out, Russell.”

  “You say that like I’m a Russell Terrier, choking on a bone,” she said, looking at him sharply. “Everyone calls me Amy.”

  McCann couldn’t help but smile. She had a quirky sense of humor.

  “Spit it out, Amy,” he said.

  “It’d be premature to say anything,” she replied, typing in a couple of commands on the laptop. “You’ll hold it against me if I’m wrong.”

  “There’ll be no court martial,” he said lightly. “I’m just looking for your expert opinion.”

  He noticed her eyes were dark blue when she looked up at him.

  “No,” she said, turning her attention back to the screen.

  “No, meaning you’re refusing an order?”

  “No, as in, the answer to your first question is no.”

  She was too clever. McCann had to think back to the exact wording of his question. “No, meaning…”

&nbs
p; “No, that’s not the way it usually works. The system failures should show up with bells and whistles in the primary test phase. We run the more detailed diagnostics after that to pinpoint the specific location, and to make sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed. We want to make sure we’re replacing the right components.”

  McCann looked at the GPS screen. Once the COB had finished lighting into the operator, the navigation man and Cav had been the only ones involved with the unit yesterday. The back-up unit had worked fine.

  McCann should have gotten involved. This was a new system, but he was fairly familiar with it. Not as familiar as he should have been, though. He knew every valve, pipe, panel, cable and piece of electronics inside this fast attack submarine. But he should have been in Cav’s back pocket.

  He’d always been that way. On the wall above the engineering officer’s desk was a large print of the piping and instrumentation systems of the nuclear plant, mapping everything from the core’s main coolant piping to the last condensate pump pressure control valve. As part of one of his EO exams, McCann had to be able to reproduce it from memory, and he still could, he thought, if need be. As C.O., he knew everything about his sub—except some of the minute details of this new system. When they got out to sea, he’d learn the ins and outs of this, too.

  “My men didn’t imagine the system malfunction,” he said, hearing his defenses kicking in.

  “I’m not saying that your men imagined a problem yesterday,” she said calmly. “What I’m saying is that, whatever the problem was, they might not have had the means of diagnosing it correctly.”

  McCann felt a little better about that. It would have been a major problem if he’d curtailed the start of a patrol over a couple of officers and operators misreading navigation screens. “What else could be wrong?”