Seawolf Mask of Command (26 page)

But even with this added precaution, she soon had to send Darby below when he got so cold he could no longer hold a mallet. With just Gameroz left, the two of them removed the last pole securing the topside runner. They were now both working without the safety line, and she kept a firm grip on Gameroz’s harness and a second hand hold onto the forward hatch.

This proved fortuitous when Gameroz, struggling to hammer a tile in place, shifted and slipped on some black ice. A combination of his flailing and her firm grip were the only things preventing him from going for a swim.

“Thanks,” he shouted to be heard over the whipping wind.

“Forget it,” she answered, her teeth chattering. “Let’s just get this last tile in place and get below.”

“I heard that,” he answered with a strained grin.

The
Seawolf
had already passed through Admiralty Inlet and entered the Juan de Fuca Strait, running directly into the wind and heading for open water. Kristen glanced up as Gameroz struggled with the final deck fitting. She saw the Coast Guard cutter still out ahead of the
Seawolf
and then she saw Hodges. Anxious to get below, he’d left the relative safety of the sail and had moved aft toward the open forward escape hatch.

“Dammit Hodges,” she cursed. She cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted, “Stay right there!”

But the wind was too strong, and he couldn’t hear her. She tried again as he kept coming. Kristen and Gameroz had been working where Hodges was currently walking, and the deck there was completely iced over. But before she could stop the unsuspecting crewman, he slipped.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, even as she was shouting for him to stop. He lost his footing, tried to catch his balance, and then his feet came out from under him. Hodges’ head whipped back hard onto the rubber deck tiles. Then, like in a nightmare, she watched his limp form slip on the icy deck over the side and into the frigid water.

“Man overboard!” she shouted to be heard over the howling wind.

The only person with any chance of hearing her was Gameroz, and he reacted by looking up. But there was nothing he could do. Kristen glanced toward the bridge, not knowing if they’d seen Hodges go in. She briefly thought of her handheld radio and grabbed the microphone. But ice had completely encrusted it, and she couldn’t depress the talk switch.

Without realizing she’d moved, she was on her feet. In less time than it took her to stand, her analytical mind considered the multiple courses of action open to her, and she decided on the best option before she took her next step. She took three quick steps and, using the towed array housing for leverage, leapt forward and dove headfirst into the frigid water.

USS Seawolf, The Juan de Fuca Strait

O
n the bridge, Brodie stood on the starboard side where he had the best view of the crewmen working on the deck. A railing was set up around the bridge to protect those men working aloft with him. But as the weather grew worse, so did his level of discomfort. The Coast Guard cutter had taken up a position less than a mile ahead of them, and if anything went wrong with the cutter and she lost power, Brodie would have a hard time stopping the
Seawolf
before they collided. Not to mention his lookouts were grating on his nerves. He’d hoped to inspire a sense of purpose in Ensign Martin by assigning him to the bridge crew along with Brodie’s chosen communications team. But twice that evening Brodie had been forced to correct Martin, who kept ducking his head down to avoid the wind instead of keeping his eyes on the surrounding waters as well as the hands working on the icy deck below.

Because of the deteriorating conditions, Brodie had brought COB up to the bridge to act as another pair of eyes he could count on besides his own. COB was leaning over the port side of the bridge, his parka hood down so his vision wouldn’t be obstructed. Brodie, despite the cold, had been going without a hood all night simply so he could see and hear better.

He’d just finished scanning the area to the front of the
Seawolf
and was turning his head to starboard when he caught a brief flash of movement to the rear of the submarine. He snapped his head around in time to see something floating in the water along the starboard side of the boat, moving along the hull. No sooner had he spotted this than he saw an orange clad shape leap into the water.

“Man overboard! All stop! Emergency!” he barked the orders without a moment’s thought.

In front of him, positioned in the bridge itself, were two handpicked communications men. Brodie had selected them from the ship’s radio room for one simple reason: they wouldn’t think. No sooner had he shouted the man overboard alert, he heard both men speaking into their sound-powered phones, repeating his commands without asking for clarification. Without thinking, they’d simply repeated his emergency stop command.

“Who is it?” COB asked as he appeared beside him, looking ready to dive in himself.

Brodie ignored him. “Away the small boat team!” Brodie barked to the two communications men.

Each dutifully passed the order along.

“Con reports, all stop, sir!” the radioman named Reynolds reported after sending the latest command.

The icy water hit Kristen like an electric jolt. Instantly, she felt a thousand tiny knives pricking her skin. There was no slow decrease in temperature. Instead, it was as if she’d been suddenly struck naked and hit by bone-stabbing cold at the same time. But she breached the surface swimming. Hodges had hit hard. She’d seen the way his head had struck the deck. He’d been unconscious when he slipped into the water, and if she didn’t get to him fast, he could very well drown in seconds.

The realization she would likely die from hypothermia was secondary to reaching Hodges and pulling him clear of the
Seawolf
before either of them were sucked into the churning pump-jet driving the nine-thousand-ton submarine through the water. Hopefully someone on the bridge was alert and able to get an all-stop order down to the engine room before they were sucked in and turned into chopped meat.

Kristen reached Hodges barely three seconds after hitting the water and immediately positioned herself under him, supporting his body with her own, and at the same time holding his head up out of the water as she’d been instructed years earlier. She then began swimming, kicking with all the power her years of training in the pool could give. But the heavy parka and overalls were now acting like anchors. Every move was made ten times more difficult as her protective clothing, now water-logged, felt like it weighed a ton.

Kristen then felt the suction of the pump-jet pulling her and Hodges aft as the sleek hull of the
Seawolf
struck her foot. She pushed away as best she could, knowing she had seconds before they were sucked in. Kristen struggled, kicking with all her strength against the suction produced by the fifty-two thousand horsepower created by the
Seawolf’s
steam turbines.

Despite her years of swimming competitively, there was nothing she could do against the pull of the submarine’s pump-jet. But just as she felt they would be sucked in, the suction stopped, and she moved away from the hull as it silently slipped passed her. Someone had seen her and Hodges, and they’d managed to stop the propeller in time.

But this was only the first hurdle she had to face.

The submarine had been moving at ten knots when the pump-jet propulsor stopped. At that speed it would take well over a mile for the
Seawolf
to stop. By then Kristen would be dead from hypothermia.

One thing at a time!

She stopped struggling to swim, inflated their buoyancy compensators and turned on the strobe lights attached to each of their safety harnesses, but Hodge’s marker beacon wasn’t working. She again took note of the frigid temperatures, and she felt her body trembling. Kristen did her best to ignore the impending doom looming large in her near future. She’d been a varsity swimmer in high school, and then at the Naval Academy. She’d swum competitively since the age of nine. Over the years, she’d taken several water survival courses and knew she had just minutes before hypothermia would overwhelm her.

Hodges’ heart was still beating but he’d stopped breathing. During a lifeguard training course in Southern California, she’d seen a demonstration of open water mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She’d practiced it a few times, never expecting she might actually need it. Of course, that training had been in an indoor heated pool with instructors, safety swimmers and in the bright light of day, not in frigid water, at night, in high seas, and with a shipmate dying in her arms.

“Come on, Hodges,” she whispered, fighting the numbing cold rapidly taking control of her body. “Help me out here!” She positioned herself over him and began CPR, only to have him vomit a lungful of seawater in her face.

Kristen coughed, spitting out seawater as a wave crashed into her. The brutal northern wind whipped up the sea state in the Sound and made it even harder to keep Hodges’ head above water. She estimated she’d already entered stage two of hypothermia, her body core temperature dropping fast. She was shaking uncontrollably, and it was all she could do to keep a grip on Hodges. With his strobe light not working, if they got separated, no rescue team would find him until it was too late.

He coughed up more water.

“Come on, Hodges!” she mumbled as she kept working on him, trying to revive him. The bone-numbing cold she’d experienced on the deck of the
Seawolf
was now just a warm memory as her extremities and torso trembled uncontrollably. She glanced about, hoping to see the rescue craft. A wave crashed into her face, and she gagged on the foul tasting water. She hadn’t realized her hood had come off when she dove into the water, and now the chill wind froze the water clinging to her, creating chunks of ice in her hair. She struggled to resume mouth-to-mouth, her hands resisting her mental commands, and she knew she was running out of time. She cursed her perfect memory that could recall every second of her class on hypothermia, wishing she didn’t know what was soon to befall her.

Hodges jerked suddenly in her arms and started breathing. Kristen would have cheered, or offered words of encouragement, but she’d passed through stage two of hypothermia and was entering the third and final stage. Her mind was growing cloudy as she fought for consciousness. Hodges should live, she knew. He was breathing and his life vest would keep his head above water. Her strobe would still be working long after she died, and the rescuers would be able to get Hodges if she could just hold onto him.

Pure and simple logic dictated her last conscious act.

She forced her numb arms under his life vest, wrapping them around him so they would stay together as another wave washed over her. She coughed up water as her muscles stopped responding to her commands. The shivering became more violent. Every muscle in her body was contracting at an incredible rate, trying to generate heat. Unfortunately, she knew exactly what was happening to her.

Her temperature was spiraling downward. Her body was fighting to conserve heat. Blood vessels were constricting to prevent excessive blood flow to the limbs which were now going limp. Her disciplined mind told her what would soon happen. As her heart beat ever faster, fighting for life, she would experience extreme ventricle tachycardia or atrial fibrillation—a heart attack.

Kristen looked up at the night sky. She’d made it onto a submarine, only to die a few days later. She might have laughed at the bitter irony if she’d had the conscious capacity left. She couldn’t feel Hodges next to her. Where there had been bone-stabbing cold, now she felt warmth spreading through her.

Her eyes closed as her thoughts drifted from the present misery, to something pleasant.

Her next thought was of powerful arms carrying her and lifting her gently into a bunk, then covering her with a blanket. There was something written on one of the arms… something in Latin.

“Over there!” Graves barked at the coxswain of the small inflatable rubber boat. Graves had been in the control center when he heard the alarm from the bridge and had immediately sent the all-stop order as the Chief of the Watch had sounded the alarm claxon. Graves had then headed aft and joined the small boat crew, deploying the inflatable rubber boat from the forward escape hatch and joining the recue party.

They could see the flashing strobe in the distance and raced across the waves toward it. He and his men held on tight as the waves crashed over the rubber sides and soaked them in freezing water.

“XO, this is Brodie,”
he heard over his radio.

“Send it, Skipper!” Graves shouted into his handheld radio.

“We’ve got two personnel in the water. I’ve a medivac chopper en route, plus the Coast Guard has a Search and Rescue bird spinning up, over.”

“Roger that. We’ve spotted one strobe but can’t see a second, over.” Graves had to shout to be heard. Plus the hammering waves were threatening to toss him and his men into the sea.

“Roger, we see only one strobe also, over,”
Brodie replied.