Operation Ice Breaker, page 19
The skipper followed me down from the Bridge. Sergyi again came to attention with a salute. I caught his eye and shook my head slightly, so Commander Roken did not receive a bear hug. Nevertheless, he welcomed Sergyi warmly. Sergyi stepped back, and the skipper approached the Coast Guard Station commander, who stood with Captain Richardson and the Mystic pilot. They exchanged salutes and handshakes, and the skipper introduced me to the station commander. Lt. Robert Taggert, the Mystic pilot, introduced himself to the skipper and me.
While this was going on, Ham came topside and joined the rest of the Mystic crew dockside. They were Lt. James Deckhart, Senior Chief Sonar Technician Gaspard Abelé, Electronics Technician 1st Class Parker Flanger. From the way Ham and Lt. Deckhart greeted each other, it was clear they were old friends. He brought the three of them aboard and was ready to take them below when the skipper signaled him.
We turned to the other four civilians. A tall, gangly man in his late thirties with close-cropped brown hair stepped forward with outstretched hand. “I’m Wyatt Cook, nominally in charge of these lunkheads,” he said with a wide grin. “I’m the Alfa specialist. This,” he indicated a short, slightly chunky nerd with longish brown hair, “is our Soviet sonar specialist, Matthias Hart.”
Hart, who looked to be in his early thirties, shook our hands but didn’t make eye contact.
Cook continued, “This is Gilbert Edwards. He knows more about Soviet reactors than they do.”
We shook hands with a short, tough naval engineering expert who looked like the “snipe” he was. He had a ready smile and receding brown hair cut short. I put him in his mid-thirties.
Finally, Cook presented Kendrick Long, tall, athletic, full head of auburn hair, late twenties. “Our Soviet submarine hull expert,” Cook said.
After shaking everyone’s hand, the skipper said, “Welcome aboard. You gents are in for an exciting sojourn on Teuthis. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Master Chief Comstock. We,” he indicated the station commander, Capt. Richardson, Lt. Taggert, and me, “have to review some logistics down below.” He turned and beckoned us to follow.
We arranged ourselves in the skipper’s cabin as best we could. Taggert remained standing. Capt. Richards handed the skipper a 9x12 brown envelope. He wore a regulation-length red beard, and his red hair was close-clipped. The skipper opened the envelope and extracted a second envelope labeled TOP SECRET—EYES ONLY. He laid it on his fold-up desk and turned to the station commander.
“Would you please work with Lieutenant Taggert and his people to get the Mystic loaded onboard Teuthis as soon as possible?” The skipper stood as did the station commander.
“Of course, Captain.”
After the station commander and Taggert left, the skipper opened the second envelope, removed two sheets of paper, and slowly read their contents. Then he passed them to me. The orders were utterly remarkable. I had expected something like this, but seeing the words on paper was another level entirely.
“Do you have any questions?” Capt. Richardson asked.
“Well, Dan, you had your Ivy Bells moment, and it looks like I will have an Alfa moment. And you, Mac,” his eyes twinkled at me, “will have been part of both.”
I joined Ham and the five civilians in Dive Control. Sergyi was in the midst of everyone. The divers crowded around with a lot of back pounding and happy chatter. Ham had introduced Sergyi to Jake. The guys were filling Sergyi in on their activities till then.
“Need to know, guys,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the chatter. “Sorry, Sergyi. You guys know what to leave out of your stories. The same goes for these guys.” I indicated the four DIA specialists.
The Mystic had arrived during the night at Kodiak airport in an Air Force C-5A Galaxy complete with her special transport trailer. A Kodiak trucker had towed it to the cargo dock on Woman’s Bay before Teuthis arrived. The station commander sent a large crane to lift Mystic with its cradle from the trailer bed onto Teuthis’ stern, where she would be seated against the after hatch, and the cradle firmly lashed to the deck.
Both the COB and Ham were present. The COB supervised the deck gang, who held steadying lines to keep Mystic from swinging or rotating as the crane lowered her to the hatch seal. The crane operator was used to loading big things onto ships. The deck gang was used to loading torpedoes on the sub. Since Mystic was like an oversize torpedo, the guys had no trouble with what they were doing.
An hour and ten minutes after they started, Mystic and cradle were firmly lashed to Teuthis’ after deck. Lt. Taggert’s crew, Lt. Deckhart, Senior Chief Abelé, and Petty Officer 1st Class Flanger thoroughly checked each fitting and the seal. Then Lt. Taggert checked everything himself again, just to be sure.
I liked what I saw. It gave me confidence in how these guys would do their job on the Alfa.
KODIAK—WOMAN’S BAY—PARAFFIN
Around noon in the foreshortened Alaska day, a truck arrived at the dock with six fifty-five-gallon drums. Lt. Taggert approached me, explaining that the drums were filled with paraffin.
“And why six drums of paraffin?” I asked.
“We have no idea what kind of seal we can make with the Alfa,” he replied. “The paraffin gives us options. We’ve played around with the concept but have not actually used it operationally yet.”
“But six drums?”
“We talked with DIA. They want to cover all options. If we cannot establish a seal, we will not be able to remove any of the Alfa’s equipment. In this case, DIA will try to encapsulate equipment they want with paraffin and swim them to Teuthis.”
“How much do those suckers weigh?”
“Four hundred fifty-three pounds each,” Lt. Taggert said.
“Hey, Bob,” I said, “do you know what you’re asking? We can drop those fuckers into the torpedo room with a crane, no problem. From there, we have to haul them all the way to the Dive Compartment tunnel, and then we’ll have to rig a block and tackle to get them below.” I considered the logistics. I retrieved a small daily diary and reference volume that I routinely kept in my breast pocket. “The density of paraffin is fifty-six-point-one-nine pounds per cubic foot,” I said. “The density of seawater is sixty-four-point-two-four…” I did some quick calculating, checked on the dimensions of a 55-gallon drum—23 inches diameter by 34.5 inches high—and said to Taggert, “Those paraffin-filled drums have just under twenty pounds of positive buoyancy in seawater.” I grinned. “I got a better way to get them aboard and stowed where we need them.”
An hour later, Whitey and Ski in dive gear were on the bottom under Teuthis digging a three-feet-deep, three-feet-wide trench that passed directly below the three DDC hatches. They used a hose with a pressure nozzle fed from an HP water pump. The soft silt bottom blasted away with very little effort.
This was not a diving operation that needed tethered divers with hot-water suits and Basketball supervision. The Basketball would have been pretty useless anyway because Whitey and Ski were kicking up a ferocious cloud of silt.
Ten minutes into blasting, Whitey said on the acoustic comms system, “Dive, Whitey, we’re getting close. Where are the drums?”
In the meantime on the dock, Ham supervised lifting one drum at a time and lowering it into the icy water under my watchful eye—along with Sergyi, who was with me. Each drum had a diver’s weight belt cinched around its middle with twenty-one pounds of weight attached. Jer and Jake were in the water, taking control of the drums as they were lowered. Jake fumbled around for a minute, figuring out how to control the drum’s descent while the crane kept it on the surface.
“Okay,” Jake said, “I got it. Slack it off.”
He unhooked the crane hook from sling and dropped to the bottom with the drum, which with the dive weights attached, now weighed about two pounds.
“Can’t see for shit,” Jake said as he approached the trench. “You guys done kicking the bottom up?”
“Bring it to the outboard side of the trench,” Ski said. “We’ll take it from there.”
Jake slid the drum into the trench, where Whitey removed the dive weights and pushed it to Ski under the Egress Lock. Ski turned it and let it bob up through the hatch. Harry and Jimmy had rigged a block and tackle directly over the hatch. They hooked onto the sling and hoisted the first drum into the Egress Lock, where they secured it to the outer bulkhead with line and tie-downs.
By the time they secured the first drum, the second was poking its head through the hatch. The next two drums went into the Entry Lock and the final two into the Main Lock, where they were secured horizontally to the deck between the bunks.
Immediately following the last drum, Ski felt something bump his back. He turned around. “I’ll be golldamned! Look what we got here,” he said as two narwhals poked down under Teuthis to investigate what all the fuss was about.
The narwhals’ single tusks and large size made close investigation difficult for them with only a foot of clearance beneath the sub. Yet, they poked around and then found the trench. One turned on its side and passed through the trench, stopping to peer through each hatch. The second watched and then duplicated the trick. It accidentally caught its tusk in the Entrance Lock hatch and was having trouble pulling it back out. Jimmy grabbed the tusk and firmly pushed the narwhal back into the trench until the tusk was free of the hatch. The narwhal didn’t swim away but pushed its left eye up against the hatch, possibly trying to identify what had helped with its tusk.
Sergyi and I watched the drum-loading operation first from the dock and then in Dive Control.
“Your Dive Control much better than the Can,” Sergyi said, referring to the fake DSRV that Halibut had carried on her stern7F8. His English was much improved, but he still retained his distinctive Russian accent. He would object to calling it Russian, insisting that it was Ukrainian.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “All we are missing are several more divers.”
“You got me now,” Sergyi said.
“You’re right. At least we won’t have to babysit you like we will with the other four.”
One more thing. Upon our arrival, Dr. Brand had left Teuthis to return to the States. We no longer needed his special services, and he was happy to go home. I think he might have enjoyed what lay ahead of us, but he lived in his own little world. He never said so, but I suspect our antics with the Alfa had terrified him.
Of course, not even I really knew what was coming.
KODIAK—BREAKER’S BAR
The shortened day had long since turned to night by the time we had everyone briefed, all gear stowed, and were ready to hit the beach. The skipper set a port and starboard watch for that night and the next to give every crew member a chance to go ashore. I decided to accompany the divers, at least for a while, on their first night on the town in quite some time.
The divers asked around and quickly discovered the bar they wanted to visit—Breakers. Located in an otherwise empty parking lot, Breakers was an ugly, low building with blocked windows and a sloping flat roof. We pressed through the inward-swinging double doors and were greeted by concrete floors and walls, tables and stools fixed to the floors, and a horseshoe-shaped bar made of polished concrete against the back wall. The beverage glasses were plastic. There was nothing breakable except for shelves of bottles on the wall behind the concrete bar.
As the guys disbursed around two of the immovable tables, the bartender beckoned to me, apparently having surmised that I was the leader.
“You guys don’ wan’ be here after seven-thirty,” he said. “This be the local fishermen’s bar. They don’ take to no strangers, and they fight at the drop of a hat.”
Ham saw us talking and joined me. “We’re not looking for trouble,” I told the barkeep. “We’re deepsea divers from the submarine that just docked in Woman’s Bay.” I handed him a hundred-dollar-bill. “The drinks are on me until this runs out.”
“For everyone?”
“Yeah. As they come in, ask them to join us.”
“This may not last very long,” the barkeep said.
I slid him another fifty. “Let me know if it starts to run low,” I told him as I glanced at my watch.
Ham and I joined the divers, Ham at one table and me at the other. “Listen up, guys,” I said. “This bar belongs to the local commercial fishing boat crowd. They’re the tough guys in this neighborhood. I need you people alive and whole when we depart. I’ve set the stage tonight by setting up the house for drinks until my money runs out. Just remember who these guys are. They earn their living doing the most dangerous job in the world, every day the water is not frozen. Give them the respect they deserve, and once they learn about what you guys do, you’ll get their respect.”
Ham had told the guys to stick to beer to stretch the evening out. We were still on our first round when the initial group of locals arrived.
They barged through the double doors, saw us immediately, and one of them bellowed, “Who the fuck are you guys?”
“Yo, Jack!” the barkeep shouted. “Those deepsea divers bought the bar. Your money’s no good tonight!”
“Deepsea what?” Jack countered.
“Divers. Jackass,” the barkeep said. “Divers. They been diving under the ice north of the Bering for months.” He laughed. “They be havin’ their first drink since tyin’ up in Woman’s Bay.” He laughed even louder. “You got nothin’ on these blokes. They be tough as they come. Divin’ out of a submarine…go figure. You do that, Jack?”
“No shit! Come on guys, let’s meet these crazy fucks.”
A couple more groups swaggered in, got a similar story from the barkeep, and joined us, now scattered around four tables. Two who spoke Russian were deep in conversation with Sergyi, who spoke fluent Russian even though he was Ukrainian.
Jack, who had tossed back several shots by then, jumped onto a table and, raising his glass high, shouted, “Cheers to our crazy new underwater chums!”
The fifteen or so commercial fishermen in the bar shouted their approval.
Jack had latched onto Ham, and they appeared to be swapping sea stories from their lifetimes at sea. I heard Ham say, “Come here, Jack, meet my boss.” They wedged next to me at my table.
“Lieutenant Commander Mac McDowell, meet Master Mariner Jack Petrikoff.”
I was prepared to shake hands and so did not anticipate Jack’s bear hug.
“It’s Mac, right?” he asked with a broad grin. “We alike. You come up from seaman to senior officer, me from Ordinary Seaman to Master.”
I lifted my glass in acknowledgment just as a couple of gals walked into the bar. It took them a minute or so to discover why all the hubbub, and then they moved in on my guys. I saw a couple of locals start to get ruffled. I turned to Jack.
“Yo, Jack,” I said, “you collar your guys, I’ll tame mine.”
“Don’ work like that,” Jack said. “These guys do what they want…always.”
I turned to Ham. “Get the guys under control. We better be thinking about leaving.”
A couple more gals joined the crowd. None of these women would take a prize in a Florida beach contest, but we were in the far north, and every sailor understands any port in a storm. Just then, one of the new gals, somewhat more attractive than the others, walked up to me and gave me a liplock. No introduction, no preliminaries, no nothing but a sloppy liplock.
Immediately, one of the locals shouted, “Hey, diver boy! That’s me girl you’re kissin’!”
While trying to untangle myself from her, I turned to look at the shouter. He was my height and age, twenty pounds heavier, and it wasn’t fat. A Bowie Knife was balanced in his left hand, and he was coming for me. The divers rose in alarm, and Sergyi shouted a Ukrainian curse.
I stepped back, turned to my right, and raised my hands slightly. “I’ve got this,” I said to Ham. “Keep the guys back.”
I watched the fisherman’s movements. He’d been drinking (on my dime), but he wasn’t out of control. He moved toward me, knife in his extended left hand. Without warning, I lifted to the balls of my feet, tilted toward him, and spun on my left foot into a roundhouse kick with my right. From his perspective, my right foot seemed to come out of nowhere as it smacked into his left hand and sent his knife flying. I continued around again, lifting my right foot, so it connected soundly with the right side of his head. He dropped to the floor and remained there.
It was over almost before it had started.
Jack looked at me in astonishment. “Can all you guys do that?”
“Most of us,” I answered. “We train for it.” While thinking to myself, I’m not sure any of my guys could do that.
I looked at the barkeep. “I got any money left?” I asked. He nodded. “Drinks all around,” I said loudly as my guys and the fishermen crowded around me, slapping my shoulders, and pounding me on the back. The gals kept clear, but I was okay with that.
“Yo, Diver Boy!” echoed around the concrete room as everybody drank up.
Two fishermen propped their downed companion against one of the anchored stools. One slapped his face lightly. “Come on, Tony, wake up. You still got some drinkin’ to do.”
Tony opened his eyes groggily and rubbed the side of his face. I walked over to him and squatted. Sergyi joined me. Shit, I thought, I hope I didn’t go too far. Let’s see if he’s alright.
“Hey, Tony,” I said, “you okay?”
He nodded, his eyes still not fully clear. Sergyi reached out and steadied his shoulder.
“You got a nice girl, Tony. She was just greetin’ me. She tol’ me she’s yours. I got no interest, buddy.”
I got to my feet, reached down with my right hand, grabbing his in a lifting grip, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, Buddy, it’s all good,” I said. Sergyi and I walked him to the bar as his head cleared.
“Give Tony his favorite drink—a double,” I said to the barkeep.
