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“Guilty conscience?” He had a weird look on his face, twitchy and uncomfortable.

“No, Nav, not at all. Just looking for this message…” Jabo realized suddenly that he was in the wrong, that he had no business digging through the nav’s stateroom like that. He saw the navigator glance toward his other hand, which held
Rig for Dive
. He tossed it back on the rack.

“You’re the communicator, shouldn’t you have access to all this in radio?”

“There’s a message missing…”

“How come no one’s told me about it?”

“I guess I’m telling you now. And it’s not missing anymore.” He held up the clipboard.

There was a sudden shift between them. Jabo realized how small a man the navigator was. Jabo had been defensive at first, caught doing something he shouldn’t. But the nav, who’d looked absolutely haunted for days, suddenly looked off balance, almost frightened.

The navigator gathered himself, trying to recapture the initiative. “Lieutenant Jabo, I really don’t appreciate you tearing through my stateroom. And I don’t appreciate the way you’ve decided to tell me about this lapse in radio. I think I’d like you to meet me in the captain’s stateroom in about ten minutes, after I’ve had chance to brief him about your work. Your attitude.”

“Fine,” said Jabo. He welcomed the chance; wanted to put all the pieces of the puzzle in front of the captain and see what he could make out of it. The navigator’s face twitched again, and then he turned around, walking toward the captain’s stateroom.

Jabo stood there, the thin clipboard still in his hand. He checked his watch, intending to the give the nav exactly his requested ten minutes. He tried to think of a legitimate reason the nav might have that message, by itself, hidden in his stateroom, while no one else in communications could find a copy. There were possibilities; perhaps the he had been tasked with his own investigation. Perhaps the Nav had pulled the message on the night of the incident, and just never returned it.

But that kind of fuck up seemed unlikely in the nav’s ruthlessly ordered, organized world. Jabo had heard that at the academy, visitors weren’t allowed to see a midshipman’s dormitory room. Instead, they had a “model” room complete with neatly made racks and ownerless uniforms hung in the wardrobe. That’s what the nav’s stateroom seemed like, right down to his polished oxfords awaiting the return to port sticking out from his bed, right next to a pair of unblemished Nike running shoes that looked right out of the box.

A slight buzz went through Jabo’s mind. He checked his watch; he still had eight minutes before he was supposed to meet with the navigator and the captain. He left the stateroom, clipboard still in his hand, and began walking aft.

•   •   •

The navigator stormed out of his stateroom, disappointed that he couldn’t actually drag Jabo before the captain. Jabo was long overdue for a humbling, and the nav was more than willing to deliver it. He knew the captain and the XO loved the guy, but there’s no way even they would abide him digging through his stateroom, looking at his personal belongings. Jabo should be disciplined; he could have insisted upon it. It was flagrant disrespect, insubordination. But there was no time.

As he rounded the corner from the staterooms, he saw a flash of khaki going down into Machinery One. It was something that got your attention at this point in patrol; everyone, officer, chief, and enlisted, were all wearing identical blue poopies. It didn’t surprise him; he was overdue for a briefing with the dark commander. He glanced around to see if anyone else had seen him. The only other person around was a young sailor reading the plan of the day, trying to avoid eye contact. The nav hurried down the ladder.

•   •   •

The commander was waiting for him in machinery one, sitting on a stool at the foot of the diesel engine. He had his legs crossed in a strange way; the nav thought maybe his posture was the result of an injury, some earlier encounter with the enemy. He was smoking an odd, wrinkled looking cigarette, one the nav thought was perhaps hand-rolled, or a product of wartime austerity.

“Is your plan in motion?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” said the navigator. “It’s too late to do anything now.”

“You seem upset by that. Are you having second thoughts?”

“No,” said the nav. “This has to be done.”

“That’s right. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. Things other people may condemn. But they still have to be done.”

“Yes sir.”

“So, your plan is adequate this time? No more half-ass measures?”

“No sir. It’s adequate. The ship won’t survive.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive,” said the navigator. “It will all be over soon. In minutes.”

The commander nodded and smiled at that. He shut his eyes and took a deep drag from his cheap-looking cigarette, the tip glowing bright red. “
No one
knows?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“It’s too late to do anything about it anyway,” said the Nav.

The commander eyes flew open and he looked at him sharply. “Does anyone know?”

“No one knows.”

“I think you’re mistaken.”

“No one knows!”

“One person knows. And we know from past experience that he is weak. You need to get rid of him before that weakness betrays us, and ruins the plan.”

The navigator was at first confused. But then he realized that the commander was

talking about him.

•   •   •

Hallorann sat on the edge of his rack and looked through his qualification book for the millionth time. Like most new men, when a page was full, with every signature block signed, he laminated it with a sheet of plastic, a necessity for a book that was carried next to your body for hour after sweaty hour. It was also a measure of progress, and Hallorann’s book only had two un-laminated pages remaining. He had everything about the book memorized, every signature, every question he’d answered to get the signature. He knew which signatures he’d really earned, the areas and systems on the boat that he really understood: sonar and the main ballast system were his best. And he knew which ones were harder for him to understand: the reactor, which still seemed like some kind of black magic to him, a perpetual motion machine that really worked.

But most of all, he knew which signatures he had left to get. He’d made amazing, rapid progress, and it had been noticed. But that also meant that his questioners were less apt to give him a pass on anything. He was supposed to be hot shit, and they all wanted to see it for themselves. And one of the biggest blocks that was left was the diesel.

His confidence was high as he approached the ladder that would take him down into the torpedo room and Machinery One, home of both the diesel and the battery. As he rounded the corner, however, the navigator was hustling toward the same ladder, a grim look on his face. Hallorann hesitated and let the navigator pass, turning to pretend to read the posted Plan of the Day.

He’d hoped to wander down there and find some beneficent A Ganger, bored and looking for something to do, like perhaps spending twenty or thirty minutes talking to Hallorann and signing his qualification book. He knew it was a long shot, especially with A Gang being short handed and always busy. His second choice, if there was no one down there, would be to spend a few minutes alone with the machine, walking through the procedures, getting that much more prepared for his qualification.

But he had no desire to be down there alone with the navigator. The crew liked to make fun of the eccentricities of the other officers, like Hein’s dweebishness, Jabo’s goofy country charm, and Kincaid’s constant reminders to everyone that he had been enlisted once, too. But the feelings about the nav were different, an almost superstitious kind of discomfort. He was weird, and nobody wanted even to talk about him, other than an occasional word of pity for those enlisted men like Flather who worked directly for him. Which is why Hallorann hesitated, deciding to wait a few minutes to see if the nav might come back up quickly before he descended into Machinery One.

After a few minutes he began to feel uncomfortable loitering in the heart of Officers’ Country. He was standing near the CO’s and XO’s staterooms, the Officers’ Study, and the wardroom. Plus, he was ready, eager to get down the ladder, to the diesel and that much closer to his dolphins. He had no reason to be afraid of the nav…did he? He hesitated one more moment in front of the officer’s bulletin board, pretending again to read the plan of the day and the watchbill. Then he turned and climbed down the ladder.

There was a watchstander in the torpedo room, laughing at something on his computer screen, waiting for his watch to end. Hallorann took a few steps forward into Machinery One.

He saw the nav’s feet first. The soles of his back oxfords dangled a few inches off the deck. Hallorann’s eyes went up. The navigator had hung himself from an overhead pipe with his khaki belt. The navigator seemed to have oriented the belt with deliberate precision, centering the
Alabama
belt buckle right below his Adam’s apple. His face was turning bright purple and his eyes were bulging, looking directly at him. Then the nav blinked and emitted a small croak, and Hallorann knew that, for the moment, he was still alive.

•   •   •

Duggan got permission from Lieutenant (jg) Brian Morgan, his best friend on board, to enter maneuvering. He’d just completed perhaps the most thorough pre-watch tour in submarine history. He lifted the chain and went inside, aware that for the first time, he was doing so alone, without Morrissey watching over him.

“Gosh!” said Morgan. “I can’t believe it! You’re actually going to start contributing around here.” Morgan was a Mormon, and the fact that he could get through a submarine patrol avoiding both caffeine and profanity was one of the most impressive displays of religious devotion Duggan had ever witnessed.

Duggan nodded and smiled. “I guess so.” He’d spent hundreds of hours in maneuvering on the boat. He’d stood every enlisted watchstation and performed every job in the engine room, from turbidity tests in lower level to analyzing samples of radioactive reactor coolant in the small chemistry lab. And before that, he’d done the exact same thing on a working, land-based reactor in Charleston, South Carolina, as part of his training. And before that…the meat grinder of nuclear power school. But it felt undeniably different, getting ready to take the watch over an operating nuclear reactor on a warship at sea. Nothing could match the terror of actually being the man in charge.

He took note of the maneuvering watchsection, all three men with their backs to him as they dutifully concentrated on their indications: EM1 Patterson at his far right on the electrical plant, ET1 Barnes in the center as reactor operator, and MM2 Tremain on the left, the throttleman. Out in the spaces, he’d seen during his tour, MMC Fissel was the Engineering Watch Supervisor. It was a very experienced, senior group of enlisted men that he was ostensibly supervising on his first watch—Duggan was sure that was not an accident. The XO had probably orchestrated it that way when he scheduled his board, putting the newest EOOW with the saltiest enlisted team. Duggan wasn’t insulted; he was deeply grateful. He started scanning the logs from the previous six, uneventful hours.

“How was your board?” Morgan asked. “Who sat it?”

“The eng, the XO, and Lieutenant Kincaid.”

The reactor operator, Barnes, turned around slightly. “I heard he used to be enlisted, is that true?” They all laughed.

“Kincaid was the hardest,” he said. “He made me go through the complete electrical system, one bus at a time.”

“Every bus?”

“Everything…even the 400 hertz stuff. Really drilled me on it, made me draw it all out. I think that’s when they decided to qualify me, because I actually knew all that shit.”

“Now you can start working on OOD,” said Morgan. “And then…your dolphins. You are definitely on track. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” said Duggan, a little embarrassed at the praise.

He looked up at the three panels, a final check before taking the watch from Morgan. Everything was pegged…they were still at ahead flank and you could almost sense the engine room, and the reactor, begging for mercy. There were a few yellow warning lights scattered across the panels, bearings that were hot, water levels that were low. One red light caught his attention. “The alarm?”

“Engine room upper level ambient. It’s a hundred and ten degrees up there, hotter than heck.”

“From the main engines?”

“The main engines and those high pressure drains. All that steam is really heating things up, the refrigeration units can’t keep up. Especially since we’re down to two, with all that Freon we lost.”

“And water?”

“Everything is going into the reserve feed tanks. We’re probably going to have to suspend showers on your watch. Hope you took one.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well let me get mine in before you shut the valve.”

Duggan looked behind Morgan, at the primary system status board, wondering if there was anything else he should ask.

“You’re ready,” said Morgan. He said it as a friend, not as someone just trying to get out of the box and to dinner.

“You think so?” Duggan laughed. “The watch qual book says I am, so I guess I am.”

“You know something is going to happen right?”

“I’ve heard.” It was an old superstition, one he’d heard many times in the days leading up to his board.

“It always does. Something always happens on your first qualified watch.”

“What happened on yours?”

“I remember,” said Barnes, without turning around. “That was my first watch too. Thought we had carry over. Almost shut the whole thing down.”

“That’s right!” said Morgan. “I forgot you were in here with me. They’d done SGWL maintenance on the previous watch.” He referred to the system that controlled steam generator water levels, pronouncing it as ‘squiggle.’

“They fried one of the flip flops,” said Barnett. “But we didn’t know because it was high range. Didn’t pick up till we increased power on our watch.”

“That’s right. So we get over fifty-percent reactor power, and in here, it just looks like level is going up. In both generators.”