Operation White Out, page 3
I fingered Kate’s ivory cylinder in my pocket and pasted a smile on my face. “Thanks, Bob. We’ll have a lot of time to catch up later. Welcome aboard.”
The previous time I took Teuthis on sea trials from EB, I was the Maneuvering Watch Officer-of-the-Deck (OOD)—I got to drive the sub into the Thames River and through Block Island Sound into the open ocean where we dove at the fifty fathom curve—basically thirty miles of rocks and shoals and pay-attention-to-what-you’re-doing.
This time, I was relegated to Maneuvering (not to be confused with Maneuvering Watch), answering speed bells, and otherwise paying close attention to the reactor and steam plant. When things were going according to plan, the EOOW really had little to do. Machines being what they are, however, things inevitably came up. This is especially true following a period of stand-down where the reactor was actually shut down along with all the associated equipment. We ironed out most wrinkles during fast cruise, but during sea trials it was still important to pay closer attention to the plant than normal.
I would like to tell you about an emergency that put my knowledge and skills on trial, but that didn’t happen. Doug ran a tight ship back aft, so nothing went wrong, nothing at all.
After about an hour on Maneuvering Watch, the skipper set the underway watch. I had the second shift, so the next six hours were mine. All that meant was that I wasn’t standing watch back in Maneuvering. I needed to talk with the COB about the crew, with Lt. Cmdr. Waverly Denver, Weaps and Senior Watch Officer, about the officer watch bill, and with Ham and Lt. Cmdr. Franklin James, who was in charge of Special Operations, about the forthcoming dive ops in Hudson Canyon.
Upon our return from the Arctic, a Soviet trawler that was always stationed just inside international waters off Groton went to the bottom through an unfortunate accident that involved my divers. Since then, she had been replaced with one that could have been her twin. We passed within several miles of that trawler on our way out. I am certain that she radioed our position and direction to Soviet Atlantic headquarters.
USS TEUTHIS—HUDSON CANYON
Hudson Canyon is a deep, forty-mile-long underwater slash in the continental margin, lying eighty-six nautical miles southeast of the tip of Manhattan. We conducted our angles and dangles8 there on our last sea trials out of EB and tested our saturation dive system for the first time. It is also the same location where the Cameroceras attacked my divers. A Cameroceras is a giant orthocone that supposedly went extinct over 400 million years ago. The one we encountered looked like a giant squid, living inside a 10-foot-long, cone-shaped shell.
Professor Maximilian Hedgepeth, who headed the zoology department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was our guest for sea trials. He had first identified the orthocone when Franklin showed him the videos we had taken during that event that I reported in Operation Ice Breaker. Since then, the professor had mounted two expeditions to the canyon to find the critter or another like it, but without success. As part of our sea trials this time, we would do our best to arouse another Cameroceras.
As we did the first time we were here, we conducted angles and dangles about forty nautical miles along the canyon where the bottom dropped off far below our test depth. Even though I’ve seen it many times, it never failed to surprise me that so many cups got broken and so much equipment ended up on the deck during these excursions. I spent most of our angles and dangles time in Maneuvering, demonstrating that I was a competent nuclear power plant operator.
Ham told me that Professor Hedgepeth spent most of his time in Dive Control. “He didn’t much care for the angles and dangles, but he handled them okay,” Ham said. “He played our tapes of the orthocone over and over. Never did say why. I guess he wanted to find something he had missed in the thousands of times he had already seen them.”
Finally, Teuthis came to a hover a hundred feet above Hudson Canyon floor at 850 feet. Every instinct I had wanted me to be in Dive Control directing what would happen next. Instead, once again, I found myself in Maneuvering accumulating the hours I needed for full qualification as EOOW.
Hudson Canyon, where we were, had virtually no current. Seth Beaumont was OOD. After placing Teuthis in hover mode, he extended the outboards, activating them occasionally to maintain our position. In Maneuvering, we had the plant in idle with propulsion shifted to the Emergency Propulsion Motor allowing us to keep the main engines warm with the occasional puff of steam, ready on a moment’s notice to jump to any speed, even flank, if that was what Conn wanted. Maneuvering had a monitor tuned to Dive Control that would shift to in water when the action shifted. Although I focused on my duties as EOOW, I kept one eye on that monitor. The first order of business, however, was Fish9 ops, surveying a swath of canyon bottom, looking for the orthocone’s characteristic lump.
As I was finishing the last few minutes of my watch, commotion on the Dive Control monitor picked up. My relief arrived, and I split for Dive Control. I called Seth in Control.
“Seth, it’s Mac. I’m stopping in Dive Control on my way to relieve you. I’ll be a few minutes late.”
USS TEUTHIS—ENCOUNTER WITH CAMEROCERAS—HUDSON CANYON
The skipper arrived about the same time I did. Dive Control was pretty crowded, but Ham had things under control. Franklin showed the sidescan printout to the skipper.
“It looks like the Fish identified a lump on the bottom that might be our elusive Cameroceras,” Franklin said to the skipper. “Spook, note the spot and pull the Fish out of there,” he said to Master Chief Ocean Tech Morris Jones, who ran Special Operations under Lt. Cmdr. James.
James nodded to Chief Ocean Tech Francis Oberst, who had been with Teuthis from the beginning. Oberst began retrieving the Fish.
“Launch the Basketball,” Jones told Ocean Tech First-class Wally Dubbs.
Dubbs launched the basketball-size tethered camera vehicle with its high-resolution monochrome camera and spot and floodlights. He controlled it with a joystick on the Basketball Console. As Oberst reeled in the Fish, Dubbs paid out the Basketball, approaching the lump from above and what appeared to be the backside, where it tapered into the bottom.
The skipper called Seth in Control. “Seth, drop down to fifty feet from the bottom and move starboard until you are about fifty feet to the right of the lump. Make these moves with stealth.”
The skipper looked at me, his eyes twinkling. “Don’t you have the incoming watch?”
“I do. I told Seth I’d be a few minutes late so I could drop by Dive Control to see how things were going.” I grinned. “I’m on my way there now.”
When I arrived in Control, Lt. j.g. Wilbur O’Hara was busy carrying out the skipper’s orders under Seth’s supervision. Seth nodded as I stepped onto the periscope stand.
“The first real excitement on my watch, and you have to show up.” He grinned. “Will’s got a handle on things.”
I took a couple of minutes to get the complete picture. Seth didn’t have to tell me anything. They were obvious, and as Seth had said, Will was doing fine.
“I relieve you, Sir,” I said.
“Commander McDowell has the Deck,” Seth said. “I’ll be in Sonar.”
“I have the Deck. Mr. O’Hara has the Conn,” I said for the record and to be sure there was no ambiguity in Control.
I glanced at the monitor, displaying what the Basketball saw. The floodlight illuminated sandy bottom a few feet below the Basketball that was nearly featureless, no little critters, no current swirls, a featureless, desert-like surface, black as midnight except in the circular light beam. To the Basketball’s left, barely visible on the monitor, was the edge of the lump. Wally edged forward, slowly and carefully, not knowing what to expect. He pulled back and up when he reached what we thought was the front of the lump, where it rose five feet or so from the bottom.
I could imagine Prof. Hedgepeth’s excitement as he watched the monitors in Dive Control. With a sudden tumbling motion, the monitor display went crazy. The light and camera continued to function. Several large suckers passed in front of the lens, and then a large, open beak appeared, filling the screen.
The sound-powered handset trilled. It was the skipper.
“Mac, move Teuthis down and around, so Wally has a straight purchase on the Basketball.”
Teuthis was fifty feet to the right of and above the Cameroceras. I rotated to the left and back while dropping slowly until Dive Control told me the Basketball tether projected straight out from the Basketball bay to the orthocone’s front end. I did this by feel because there was nothing to see. The Basketball, although still functioning, was solidly in the maw of the giant creature. Wally and the Cameroceras were in a tug-of-war. All I could see on the monitor, however, was part of the creature’s beak and its gullet, or whatever zoologists called that part of its anatomy.
We stayed in this configuration for about fifteen minutes, the orthocone trying to swim away with the Basketball. Then, suddenly, the beak disappeared on the monitor, and for a moment, through a cloud of silt, I saw twisting, squirming tentacles harshly illuminated by the close-up light. I pulled Teuthis up and away from the giant orthocone as Wally swooped the Basketball out of its reach while still keeping his flood and camera focused on the creature.
The silt settled, leaving a clear image on the monitor of the Cameroceras floating a few feet above the bottom, its cone taking up about twelve feet of its length, and its head and squirming tentacles taking up another twelve feet or so. A thick proboscis extended from the center of its tentacles that it used for jet propulsion, as we had learned during our last encounter. The Cameroceras darted toward the Basketball, but Wally kept just far enough away to avoid its tentacles.
I could not tell if the creature could see Teuthis. We were on the backside of Wally’s light. There was nothing the creature could do to harm Teuthis, but I maneuvered to give Wally all the space he needed to record as much of the Cameroceras as possible. Out of the surrounding darkness, suddenly, a starkly black and white Orca flashed across the monitor. It was fully one-third longer than the orthocone. It turned, made a high-speed run at the giant, but in an astounding burst of speed and maneuverability, the orthocone whipped out of the Orca’s path and grabbed its dorsal fin with its tentacles. This obviously was not the Cameroceras’ first encounter with an Orca. Wally zoomed in on the action, I clearly saw a piece missing from the top rear of the Orca’s dorsal fin. It was Borysko. Somehow, he had found us and, as in past encounters, made it his duty to protect us. Only this time he was in trouble.
The orthocone’s razor-sharp sucker teeth dug firmly into Borysko’s dorsal fin. He shook his mighty body several times without success, and there was absolutely nothing we inside Teuthis could do about. I was beginning to fear for Borysko’s life, when he flipped his tail and drove at high speed directly toward Teuthis. Wally and his Basketball could barely keep up. Just before Borysko’s snout struck Teuthis, he flipped over so that his back along with the giant orthocone smacked into the steel hull. The sound of six tons of angry Orca carrying a ton of hard-shell orthocone on its back colliding with 7,000 tons of submarine reverberated throughout the sub. Several crew members swore they heard a distinct cracking sound as the giant orthocone shell split.
On the monitor, Borysko backed off and then approached the still floating Cameroceras, his six-foot jaws open wide. He took off most of its head and half its tentacles with one bite.
With a split open shell and only half its head and appendages, the Cameroceras settled to the bottom without moving except for some tentacle twitching that slowly subsided. Borysko darted to the surface a thousand feet above for a gulp of air.
I picked up the sound-powered handset and trilled Dive Control.
“Cap’n.”
“Skipper, it’s Mac. That’s Borysko out there.”
“Yeah, the divers made sure I knew.”
“Sir, we need to wring out the dive system, and the divers are already at pressure. I recommend you put the divers out, let them interact with Borysko, and take samples of the Cameroceras for the professor. He can work with Wally or Derrick to point the divers to exactly what samples he wants.”
“I agree, Mac. I’ll instruct Ham.” He paused. “Do you want to lock out to greet the Orca?”
“I’d love to, Skipper, but it would take me a while to press down, and then I would need to decompress. That would take me off-line for too long.”
Monitoring the dive from Control was not exactly a new experience, but it seemed that way. The divers outside the hull were no longer my specific responsibility. As the Officer of the Deck, I was responsible for them in a general way, but Ham carried the load. Watching Borysko cavorting with the divers, it was impossible to believe that the six-ton Orca was anything but overjoyed at seeing his friends again. I think he looked for me, but when he didn’t find me, he gave his full attention to the other divers.
I still had the watch when José and Gil, Ham’s two new divers fresh out of Saturation Diving School, met Borysko. It takes a level of courage not possessed by everybody to place your hand on a thirty-foot Orca’s tongue and scratch. Sure, they saw the other guys do it, but that’s a lot different from doing it yourself. José slowly moved his gloved hand into Borysko’s mouth and scratched. Gil seemed reluctant.
“What taking so long?” Sergyi squeaked, his Russian accent coming through the descrambler. He grabbed Gill’s hand and shoved it into Borysko’s mouth, moving it in and out against the Orca’s tongue. When Sergyi let Gill’s hand go, Gill continued scratching. It was an experience I’m sure they will never forget.
Under close scrutiny from Prof. Hedgepeth, the divers carved samples from every exposed part of the giant orthocone, from what remained of its head and tentacles to its elongated body that normally resided inside the twelve-foot cone. Harry Blackwell, who probably kept his knife sharper than the other divers, worked his way to the Cameroceras’ beak through the mess Borysko had left.
“How much flesh around the beak do you want?” he asked. I had linked the diver comms to Control so I could follow what was happening.
“A couple of inches, if possible,” the professor answered. “If you find significant muscle mass that looks like it might control the beak, try to bring it along as well.”
“Hey, Professor,” Harry said, his voice squeaking from helium and pressure even following electronic descrambling, “this is a fucking mess! It’s not like a biology book drawing. I’ll try to get what you want.”
Borysko returned from his surface excursion and moved in close to see what Harry was doing. When he tried to nip a wayward tentacle, Harry put a gloved hand on his snout and pushed. Harry wasn’t going to push the six-ton cetacean anywhere, but Borysko got the idea and backed off.
As my watch was winding up, Prof. Hedgepeth said he had all he needed, short of going out himself to investigate.
“Not going to happen,” Ham told him, and the professor backed down.
The skipper wanted to conduct Mystic ops where there was zero chance of encountering another Cameroceras. Prof. Hedgepeth assured him that the giant orthocones would not ascend to the bottom depth at the head of Hudson Canyon. I had the Deck watch again. I eased Teuthis up over the canyon’s lip, slipped fifty feet over the bottom for about a hundred yards, lowered the skids,10 and then settled to the bottom.
“Launch the Basketball,” I told Dive Control.
When my monitor image stabilized with a dusky view of Teuthis on the bottom with Mystic firmly clamped to her back, I announced over the 1MC, “Commence DSRV ops,” following the protocol in the loose-leaf binder on the Conn desk.
Lt. Taggert and his people had been preparing for a couple of hours already, so within just a few minutes, Mystic unclamped from her cradle and floated free.
“Talk to me,” I said over the Secure Gertrude.
“Mystic, aye,” Taggert said, his voice crystal clear through the spread-spectrum technology of the Secure Gertrude. We had installed this technology before our Arctic operations, as detailed in my mission reports for those operations.11
“Teuthis, this is Mystic. We’ve got company. It looks like Borysko decided to join us on our excursion. He’s familiar with our operations, so I am unconcerned.”
The monitor view pivoted from Mystic to Borysko and then back to Mystic. The DSRV started to move toward the canyon and soon was out of the Basketball’s range. The last thing I saw in Wally’s light beam was Borysko’s swishing tail.
The protocol had Mystic drop 100 feet into the canyon, approach the canyon wall, rise back above the lip, and return to Teuthis. While we sat on the bottom and Mystic did her thing, I recalled my piloting the little sub under the ice off Akpatok Island in Ungava Bay. I had impressed Bob with my piloting skill when I settled Mystic into her cradle on Teuthis, but that was more luck than skill, and we both knew it. On the monitor, I watched Bob slide Mystic into the cradle and lock it down—perfect the first time. I really enjoyed working with professionals.
We surfaced and made our way back to EB. Since the water was 300 feet deep or less all the way back, the skipper opted to remain surfaced. Down in Dive Control, the divers relaxed in the DDC—the Deck Decompression Chamber, making the best of their week-long decompression.
We conducted drills appropriate for a surfaced sub, even a couple of man-overboard drills for Will and Seth. Borysko followed us all the way. When I took the bridge, he recognized me, leaping entirely out of the water, squealing with delight.
Borysko paced us right up to the EB dock where we moored—almost like coming home. Ham was the first off the sub, going right to the concrete bulkhead along the river. Borysko came to the edge and hung out with him, but clearly was looking for the other divers who were still decompressing. Once I cleared my desk, I joined Ham.
Borysko was overjoyed when I showed up. He bounced up and down and then swam into the river to do two flips—all six tons of him. Then he rested his chin on the bulkhead and opened his mouth. I stretched out my hand and laid it flat against his tongue for more than thirty seconds. When I removed my hand, the Orca went through his joyous antics again, hardly able to contain his excitement.
