Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific

'Hey, Rog, did you see the news?' he asked.

'No. And I'm not sure I want to see the news, Marc. Who's rioting about what, now?'

'They just showed it on TV. Robert Kennedy was assassinated last night by some slimy character known as Sirhan something-or-other.'

I looked at him in silence. Then, I turned and picked up my seabag. Slamming it against my rack, I started cursing the entire civilized world with genuine passion. I cursed the Honolulu Police Department, the thieves in the night, the banana-smoking druggies, the assassins, the student activists, and I cursed the nonexistent targets at the bottom of the ocean.

When I was finished, Marc congratulated me for my eloquence and mentioned that he wouldn't be around for the next Viperfish patrol. He was finishing his tour in the Navy, he said, and going back to Ohio, a place with fewer disruptions, to sail on Lake Erie where waves did not exceed six inches. Also, he planned to go back to school-to a peaceful institute of higher learning called Kent State University, whose students knew how to behave themselves. He was going to be a civilian, and he hoped that the Viperfish and her crew would have better luck on the next mission.

We both knew that the depleted uranium core of the Viperfish would allow for only one more mission to the distant waters of the Golden Dragon. Soon, she would be taken out of active service to undergo nuclear reactor refueling operations at Mare Island, California. I would have just enough time for my wedding in Los Angeles and a honeymoon in Canada before our final voyage to the North Pacific to continue our search for the mysterious target at twenty thousand feet below the surface of the sea.

12. The final search

No sunlight illuminates the impenetrable black water concealing the secrets at the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean. At a latitude of 35° N, light rarely penetrates the surface of the sea for more than a hundred feet on the clearest days, and it never reaches through the three miles of water separating surface craft from the mud below. At twenty thousand feet below the surface, there is only a somber dark peace far removed from the turmoil of the world above.

Entering the silence with the noise of her own destruction, the submarine PL-751 fell like a freight train to seventeen thousand feet below her crush depth. Breaking up from the forces of the high-pressure water, she spilled her lifeblood of men and equipment as she accelerated to the bottom of the ocean. The larger parts of the submarine crashed into the ocean floor with such force that their retrieval by any surface craft, struggling over the pieces in years to come, might be technically impossible. As the larger central section rolled on its side in a final agonal movement beyond the control of any human being, the sediment stirred by the impact slowly began to settle across the lifeless remnants. The once-powerful Soviet instrument of destruction had been transformed into a collection of broken and silent objects.

In the silence of the months that followed, nothing disturbed the remaining bodies of the. Soviet sailors contained within the hull of the destroyed vessel. More than four tons of pressure compressed every square inch of skin on reaching the bodies through openings in ruptured pipes and destroyed bulkheads that had buckled and caved under such extremes of pressure.

Outside the broken ruins of the PL-751, the outstretched bones of a skeleton, lying on the mud, could not touch a large steel Fish that came from more distant waters and slowly glided past the area. As the Fish moved closer, controlled by men working in another world five miles from the scene of destruction, her brilliant flashing strobe pierced the black shroud covering the ocean floor. With a subtle change in direction, the Fish turned and directly approached the remains of the disaster. Methodically, it searched for the evidence that had been awaiting its arrival with the infinite patience of the dead.

As i prepared to leave the Viperfish for Los Angeles, a new sense of urgency descended on the submarine. After Captain Harris returned from another trip to the Pentagon, activity increased, day and night, on the Viperfish. The captain provided no announcement on his return-no information to clarify the Viperfish's purpose, nothing about the final search looming in her future. Yet, at this time, when we had been hammered by the events of the past two months, when two of our crew were gone from us forever, when antimilitary sentiment was rampant throughout our families and society, there was not a man on board who was not ready to go out and search again.

Stepping up preparations for another voyage gave further support to these feelings and rallied us around the Special Project, with all its secret implications. One more search was all we asked for. Even though Harris divulged nothing about the Pentagon meetings, a whirlwind of activity stirred the air from the wardroom all the way down to the most junior enlisted man on board.

Lieutenant Pintard, in charge of the Reactor Control Division, cracked his whip on Chief Linaweaver-get the equipment ready to go, finish all the necessary preventive maintenance work, and ensure that nothing will shut us down on our next patrol. Linaweaver turned around and cracked the whip on the qualified reactor operators, and we, in turn, blasted the two new operator trainees, whom we called Dickie-Doo and Robbie Too, with stern admonishments to 'get qualified, you non-qual pukes.'

As the result of these actions, a new esprit de corps roared throughout the boat. We yanked open electronic panels, recalibrated gauges and meters, and poked hissing vacuum hoses into electrical drawers holding circuits exposed to microscopic amounts of dust. As the men in the wardroom planned the details of our next patrol, the rest of us worked day and night to make sure that the equipment would get us there and bring us back.

Another matter, thought about by all the nukes but discussed by none, was the matter of our diminishing fuel. No matter how much work we might do in preparation for our next effort to find the mystery target, the Viperfish was running out of 'gas.' The heat from nuclear fission could be produced only by a reactor with enough uranium to sustain the reaction, and Rickover's engineers were about to yank the Viperfish from the pool of operative U.S. nuclear submarines. I had done the calculations before shutting down the plant after our first run, and I knew the allowances necessary for starting up the reactor again. The news was okay but not great. We would have just enough power to get to our previous location in the Pacific and return, if we didn't spend too much time with any significant diversions or emergencies.

Not worrying about such mundane matters as nuclear fuel, the Special Project civilians and officers also worked around the clock to prepare the cable, load the stores, pack replacement parts for the Fish, and get ready for departure, now barely four weeks away. The entire crew of the Viperfish became so optimistic about trying again that I felt almost guilty when I left for California.

On my way to the airport to catch the flight to Los Angeles, I drove a rental car to Tripler Army Hospital to say good-by to Brian Lane. He was in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, the receptionist in the lobby said, in B Wing, with all the others having 'that kind of a problem.' As I hiked up to the third floor, I felt the same sense of anxiety that I had in the engine room at four hundred feet when Lane looked at me with that strange gaze and said, 'You can't get to me.'

After talking with a cluster of psychiatric nurses, I was directed far away from the severely disturbed patients in the B wing to the outside exercise area. Brian was in a fenced courtyard of the hospital grounds, an area that looked like a city park, complete with grass, benches, and trees. The compound was filled with Marines from Vietnam, wandering around under the trees, all wearing Tripler robes, most of them with shaved heads, which gave them a strange guru appearance. There were groups of rigidly calm Marines, with frozen expressions and vacant eyes, and other groups of agitated Marines, who were making rapid random movements with their arms or faces. The jolting thought hit me that some of these men might have been with me on my first flight to Hawaii, the ones I had sat with a thousand years ago before reporting to the Viperfish. I searched their faces as I looked for my shipmate, and I felt more of that same basic fear that I had felt on watch with him during our patrol.

'Hello, Roger.' The familiar voice turned me in my tracks.

Brian's appearance shocked me, and I stepped back a pace. His skin was pale and covered with acne, his head shaved. A two-day beard darkened the lower half of his face. He was staring at me and smiling a half smile, his strange half smile that had been a part of the engine room during our last weeks at sea. Jesus Christ, Brian, I wanted to say, what have they done to you?