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For several decades the submarine force relied on a fleet of submarine rescue ships, each with the hull designator ASR. These vessels were of World War II vintage, and were in effect modified salvage ships who could hover over a sunken boat and release divers. Submarine rescue theory of that era was startlingly crude, and revolved around “free ascent”—the process of having men egress a sunken boat and swim to the surface, arms crossed, and exhaling in concentrated, forced gasps to minimize the effects of decompression and the formation of lethal nitrogen bubbles in the blood. Every old submarine base had as its central landmark a tall, cylindrical “dive tower” where recruits could practice this procedure, a rite of passage for generations of submariners. It was officially estimated, and universally doubted, that a man might actually survive free ascent from a depth of up to 300 feet.

The Navy lost two nuclear-powered submarines in the 1960s. First was Thresher, lost at sea in 1963, followed by Scorpion, lost in 1968. This led the Navy to seriously reevaluate its rescue capabilities, given the depths at which modern nuclear submarines operated, and the DSRV, or Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, was born. The Navy built two of these ships, Mystic (commissioned in 1970) and Avalon (1971), and positioned them both at the North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego. They were, in effect, deep-diving miniature submarines that could fit inside the belly of an Air Force C-5 cargo plane, to be flown within hours of a submarine disaster to its last reported location. Once on the scene, they had to operate with a mother vessel, either an ASR, or another submarine. They were not perfect, but their capabilities vastly exceeded that of the old ASRs operating by themselves. The DSRVs could operate at depths up to 5,000 feet, and rescue up to 24 men at a time.

The DSRV program lasted until Mystic was decommissioned in 2008. The program was officially replaced by the SRDRS program, Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System. The very title of the program addressed one of the DSRV program’s greatest weakness: the fact that another vessel was needed to rescue submariners at pressure. The main vehicle of the SRDRS program, named Falcon, was self-contained, and not reliant on another vessel. But in some ways the program was a step backwards. Falcon could only conduct rescue operations in water up to 2,000 feet. And it could only rescue 16 men at a time. Finally, the old DSRV program was abolished before the cornerstone of the SRDRS program was even completed: the decompression system. For years, during the Cold War, some had believed deep water submarine rescue to be so unlikely that they deemed the DSRV program a cover operation, and claimed that Mystic and Avalon were actually spy ships. With the last hope of a sunken submarine being the Falcon and its half-complete support systems, it seemed the Navy had almost given up on the concept as well.

But with the message launched from Alabama’s BST buoys, Falcon was hurriedly loaded aboard the USNS Navajo, a seagoing tug, and raced westward, toward the location of Alabama. The water at their destination was far deeper than 2,000 feet, they already knew, and they would be approximately twenty-four hours to the scene. Getting Falcon to the site of the bleating BST buoys seemed almost a hopeless gesture. But the Navy had to do something, and deploying Falcon was all they could do.

• • •

Captain Soldato was the fifth person notified about the BST buoys, forty-six minutes after they were launched, at 5:30 in the morning. He’d been dreaming of his grandson when the phone rang, dreaming about the first time they’d fished together, off a pier in Groton Long Point, Connecticut. His grandson was tiny then, small even for the six year old that he was, and was fishing with his line barely off the pier. But he’d hauled in a massive Tautog, a fat, glistening black fish that weighed at least eight pounds. His grandson had literally jumped up and down with excitement when they landed the gasping fish on the pier. The dream was free from any psychedelic or odd associations like dreams often have: the tautog didn’t start talking, or flying. It was more like an exact replay of an exceedingly pleasant moment, a home movie that his memory had wished to replay.

He was so groggy that the Group Nine duty officer had to ask him twice to switch to a secure phone. As Soldato stumbled out of the bedroom, Cindy stirred and frowned, alert on some level that bad news had arrived.

In his study, he picked up the antiquated-looking secure phone that the Navy had provided him and connected with the duty officer. They both turned plastic keys simultaneously, switching the phone to secure mode.

“Captain, we have flash traffic from a BST buoy in the western pacific.”

Soldato was now fully awake. “Which boat?” he asked. But he already knew.