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“Another carrier: the Carl Vinson. I was a chief by then, and this time was a little more dramatic. It was some poor kid, I think he was a third class electrician, just walking on the flight deck. They weren’t even doing flight ops, which is when it is actually dangerous up there, he was probably just grabbing a smoke. I remember it was a beautiful day. Anyhow, he walked by this little forklift that was carrying a big sheet of steel, God only knows what it was for, and the thing hadn’t been lashed down properly. The sheet fell off and just pinned the kid to the deck. But it was so heavy, it just crushed him, suffocated him. They couldn’t move it, they had like ten guys on it but it was just too heavy. Just like with that chief: he was off the boat before the sun went down.”

Jabo thought the chief seemed unaffected by the deaths…he described them in the same mildly regretful way the engineer might talk about a botched scram drill. “What about the one on a submarine?”

With that, the master chief’s whole posture changed, and his face darkened. “That was bad. It was on the Baton Rouge, my second boat. We were pulling out of Norfolk on a really rough day. Everyone topside was wearing a safety harness and was clipped into the track. Those safety tracks were new then, we had just done the mod during our last overhaul. There was an A-Gang chief topside, one of the most experienced guys on the boat: Senior Chief Sellers. We were friends — his wife taught my wife to play golf. The captain had him up there because it was so rough, he wanted somebody with experience topside.

“We were only about an hour away from the dock, but it gets deep out there fast…not like out here, the continental shelf is close. So we were close to submerging already. I wasn’t topside at first, but I had to sign off on the report so I read all about it later. They were really scrambling to get everything buttoned up, rigged for dive, getting everybody below. The ship was just pitching and rolling like crazy, waves were breaking and coming clear up to the sail, water pouring into the control room. And at some point, as he was running around up there helping everyone else, Sellers slipped.”

“But he was clipped in, right?”

“That’s right. But he was wearing a long line, because he’d been in charge and was running the length of the ship. When he slipped, he fell almost to the water line before the line caught.”

“But it held?”

The master chief nodded. “It held him. And it held him above the waterline. Worked just like it was supposed to. He didn’t drown.”

Jabo felt bad for making him dredge up the bad memory. But the master chief continued.

“He just hung there, right above the water. But the waves would hit him, and he kept slamming against the side of the ship. By then they’d called me up there, and you could hear him yelling. At first, it was just like, ‘Shit! Goddamn!’ stuff like that, each time he hit the hull. But after a few minutes, he started screaming, in pain, as his bones started breaking. It was getting rougher but now we couldn’t submerge, not with the chief hanging there. We were all on the line, trying to haul him up, but every time we got him moving, a big wave would come and knock us down, or we’d lose the grip. By the time we finally pulled him up, he hadn’t made a noise for ten minutes. I knew he was dead. The ocean had beaten the shit out of him — broken almost every bone in his body. We put him on a stretcher and then we practically had to pour him into a body bag.” There was a long silence as they stared at the brown plastic that hid Howard from view.

“What happened after?”

The master chief sighed. “We stuck him in the cooler until we got to Roda. And after that, the Navy limited those safety lines to three feet in length.” He paused, and then took three Polaroid photos from his small desk. “Here…you might need these. I took them before we moved the body so there’d be some record of it.”

“Thanks master chief,” said Jabo, taking the pictures. “I guess I better get down there.”

• • •

Machinery Two showed few signs of the casualty. It wasn’t like the fire, which left blackened walls and a smell of smoke that still clung to that part of the missile compartment. The hazards in this casualty had been invisible, and if there were any residual affects, they were invisible too. All the damage control equipment had been stowed, and the place had been restored well by the crew and the watchstanders who didn’t want to be reminded that there were a large number of ways a man might die onboard a submarine.

Machinist Mate Second Class Renfro was on watch, just hanging the oxygen generator logs back on their hook when Jabo walked up.

“You guys port and starboard now?”

Renfro nodded. “Yeah, for now. I guess Padua is getting close to qualifying, but for now it’s me and Schmidt, six on and six off.” While he’d just begun standing port and starboard, Jabo could see that the prospect of it exhausted him.