Collapse Depth

The torpedoman stood up and Hallorann replaced him, pumping until his arm felt like it would break. He started to notice, to his excitement, that the noise of rushing water was starting to decrease. The water was up to his waist now. But the sound got higher in pitch and lower in volume as he pumped, like they were pinching off the flow. Finally, the roar stopped.

“It’s shut!” said the torpedoman, pointing to an amber line on to the torpedo console. “It fucking worked…we cleared it, and now its shut!”

The space was filled with a huge, dangerous amount of water, water that sloshed with the slightest motion of the crippled ship. But after twenty-three minutes, they’d plugged the hole.

Hallorann slogged forward and picked up the 4MC, which was just inches above the water.

“This is Seaman Hallorann in the torpedo room,” he said. “The flooding is stopped.”

• • •

“Captain, the flooding is stopped,” said Kincaid, even though everyone in control had heard the report.

The captain said nothing, but continued running it all through his mind, still trying to calculate if the time had come to perform the complete emergency blow. He was convinced now that the front main ballast tanks had been nearly destroyed in the collision, meaning the blow would only get them about half the effective buoyancy that it might if the ship were intact.

Secondly, the flooding had stopped, and they were moving water off the boat. Getting shallow would make it easier to do this — the reduced sea pressure at a shallower depth would make the all the pumps that much more effective.

But the fire — that changed everything. They wouldn’t be able to ventilate until the fire was stopped and overhauled. Any sudden influx of fresh air could inflame the fire, or cause hot spots to reignite, like blowing on a campfire.

As much as it pained the captain to stay at this depth, in this damaged condition, they wouldn’t emergency blow. Not for the moment.

“Captain?” said Kincaid.

“Continue prosecuting that fire,” said the captain. “And get water off the boat.” He looked around control. “Has anybody seen the navigator?”

• • •

Jabo ran forward, squeezed down the ladder to Machinery One past two fire hoses that were heading for the same destination. Almost out of breath, he plugged his EAB into the manifold at the bottom of the ladder. He took in the scene.

The fire raged. Flames licked up the aft bulkhead, orange and blue, and the compartment was filling with thick black smoke. Six men on two hoses crowded the space, aiming water at the base of the flame. The beams of the battle lanterns criss-crossed the darkness randomly, cutting swaths through the smoke. Several crossed in front of the dead pale face of the navigator, the only human face visible in the compartment, as everyone else’s was covered by an EAB. His was covered in water that ran in dirty, sooty tracks down his cheeks. His neck had stretched since Jabo first saw him, it looked almost like he was leaning over to get a better look at the men who were fighting the damage he’d caused. The hose teams had organized themselves, one on each side of the hanging body. Jabo’s feet were freezing, his shoes soaked through. The rest of him cooked, the space was becoming a furnace. Jabo took a deep breath, unplugged, and moved forward, found the XO.

He tapped him hard on the shoulder. The XO looked at him, eyes fierce.

“Good!” he said. “Take over. Can you?”

Jabo nodded, holding up his bandaged hand.

“Lieutenant Jabo is the man in charge!” the XO announced. He unplugged and moved to control.

The hose teams moved in closer. Jabo could not see what was actually on fire, but he assumed that the electricity that had originally fed the fire was gone: hopefully Maneuvering had secured that machine immediately. But the original heat from that ground had been enough to set ablaze all the wiring and insulation inside the motor generator, and some of the insulation on the surrounding walls. A chunk of lagging fell off a pipe over their heads, almost at their feet, trailed by a shower of orange sparks. The hose team next to him quickly doused it with water. The nozzle man stomped on it, breaking it up into ash and embers.

The hose teams were not tiring, Jabo saw, they were fighting the fire with a fury.

“Stop!” said Jabo, tapping each nozzleman in the small of his back with his closed fist. They all threw the bails forward, and the gushing water stopped.

They waited a few minutes, hoping that the fire had stopped. But like a good campfire, a tendril of smoke came from what was left of the machine, the smoke turned dark, there was a pop, a flash, and then more flames.

Without waiting for Jabo’s order, both nozzle men threw open their hoses and doused the fire again. Jabo counted to five, then hit their backs again.