He grabbed the 1MC, saw the nav raise an eyebrow at that, as did the captain, who was just entering control. Jabo almost shouted into the microphone.
“Secure the scrubbers!” he said. “All hands throughout the ship don EABs. There may be phosgene in the atmosphere!”
Everyone in control reached for an EAB, as did Jabo.
“Both scrubbers are secured,” said the navigator sourly, getting the report on the phones. He still didn’t have an EAB on, and Jabo fought the urge to snap back at him, order him to put one on. The captain also stared at him a little befuddled, but he pulled an EAB from the overhead and put it on, and the nav then followed suit.
Jabo stepped down to the CODC display, pulling on his own EAB; the trip to PD was suddenly more urgent. He remembered his pre-watch tour: both scrubbers were running for no apparent reason. There was no doubt that Freon had somehow filled Machinery Two, and with two scrubbers running at temp, it was more than enough to create Phosgene gas, just as the message had warned. It sounded like they had unlimited Freon back there and unlimited heat from the scrubbers; it was like they were running a fucking phosgene factory. They had to get up quickly and get clean air onboard. If the sonar screen was clear when they slowed down, Jabo was going to recommend to the captain that they emergency blow to the surface.
But the screen wasn’t clear, not even close. Surface contacts were everywhere. Blowing to the roof might add a collision and flooding to the list of shit going wrong. The captain leaned over his shoulder as he stared at the congested sonar display.
“Phosgene?” His voice sounded distant coming through the built in mouthpiece of the EAB.
“Yes sir, there was just a message about this a few days ago — the new refrigerant can mutate into Phosgene at very high temps, and both scrubbers are running back there.” “Both scrubbers are running?” said the captain with a raised eyebrow.
“Not sure why.”
“Noise isolation exercises last watch,” said the navigator, with his back turned to them. He was somehow eavesdropping even with the headset on and a dozen people jabbering in his ear. “We were determining the TIMS baseline.” TIMS was a system of noise meters on virtually every machine on the boat. Originally designed to aid in sound silencing efforts, they’d learned to use it for maintenance. A baseline for every connected machine was established, and if the noise level went up, it could mean something was going wrong with the machine and someone needed to take a look. They periodically had to run equipment to gather baseline data.
“And that might create phosgene?” asked the captain.
“Yes — we received it in a safety flash last week.”
“I don’t remember that.” Jabo saw him file it away. They both were focused on the grainy green sonar display in front of them, where several bright white bands indicated that they were not alone in their patch of ocean.
From sonar: “Conn, Sonar we have six contacts…”
“We see them,” said the captain. He was touching them on the screen, he stopped on the brightest one. “What do you hear at two-one-zero, the contact designated Sierra Two?”
There was a pause, and then Petty Officer Leer, the sonar supervisor, appeared at the door to control. What would normally be a five second walk took a minute as he unplugged his EAB, walked to them, and replugged in the manifold by the CODC in control, the look of concern evident even through his plastic mask. “These guys just came out of nowhere when we slowed. We’re effectively surrounded by them. Maybe a fishing fleet, maybe squid boats.”
“Distance?”
“I’ll need a TMA maneuver to be sure, but we can hear the screws turning, clear RPM counts — they’re close. Probably within two thousand yards. I thought I could hear chains rattling on one of them.”
“So fishing boats. Very close fishing boats.”
“That’s right.”
“Danny, give them a TMA maneuver.”
“Helm, right full rudder.”
“Right full rudder, aye sir! My rudder is right full.”
“Make your course zero-one-zero.”
“Make my course zero-one-zero, aye sir.” Leer took a deep breath, unplugged his mask, and trotted back to sonar.
The ship began turning immediately, and the white bands shifted radically on the screen. Assuming that the contact’s course and speed remained constant, the ship could change course like this and calculate with a fair degree of accuracy the distance and course of the contacts: it was the art of Target Motion Analysis. Performed skillfully, this would allow them to choose a safe place to arise to periscope depth. But turning also unveiled the section of ocean that had been behind the submarine, its acoustic blind spot, or baffles. As they turned, two more white bands emerged.
“Wonderful,” said the captain.
Leer was back in sonar and on the mike. “Conn Sonar, two new contacts coming out of the baffles. Eight now in all.”
“We see them,” said the captain.
“Sonar, conn, we’ll take two minutes on this leg an then do another maneuver.”
“Aye sir.”
Jabo looked away from the console and saw Lieutenant Maple standing there with a green book of all the ship’s piping diagrams. He was breathing heavy, the mask of his EAB was fogged from perspiration.
“Are you here to solve the mystery of the Freon?” said the captain.
Maple nodded, and opened the book to the page he’d saved. “Right here,” he said. “Freeze seal piping. It’s the only Freon pipe anywhere down there. Yaksic went down there and the valve was wide open. He shut it, but it probably dumped the whole system.”
“Freeze seal,” said Jabo. “Fuck.” He cursed himself for not thinking of it. Whenever maintenance was done on a high pressure water system, the water had to be isolated from the work, lest the workers be sprayed by water that was high pressure, high temperature, or, in some cases, radioactive. Good practice required that the work, and the workers, be protected by at least two closed valves. But sometimes, by virtue of the location or other unusual circumstances, two valves weren’t available. In these cases, flexible tubes of Freon could actually be wrapped around the pipe, and freeze a slug of water in place, a frozen chunk of ice that could seal a system amazingly well — Jabo had seen them perform hydrostatic pressure tests with 1000 psi against freeze seals. So throughout the ship ran purple pipes linked to the central Freon reservoir, in case this kind of work was necessary.
Yaksic had appeared in control at Maple’s side.
“Yaksic, any good reason that valve may have been operated?”
“None sir, not even by accident. It’s out of the way, just above the deck plates in lower level.”
Jabo’s internal clock ticked — enough time had gone by, they needed to make another maneuver, he didn’t want to waste a second getting to periscope depth. “Sonar, conn, turning to port for TMA.”
“Aye sir.”
“Left full rudder, aye sir, my rudder is left full.”
“Make your course two-three-zero.”
“Make my course two-three-zero, aye sir.”
The ship swayed again, and Jabo watched the CODC display. Thankfully, no new contacts appeared, although the eight they had to track now presented a daunting enough challenge. The picture was starting to form in his mind of the ocean over their heads, the relative position and size of the fishing boats. He’d chosen the course two-three-zero because it looked like it might be a safe path to PD, and because it kept them generally on track, although they were so slow he didn’t see how they could ever make it up on their voyage to Taiwan. Jabo started thinking about periscope depth, the preparations to ventilate, calculated how long it might take them to replace the ship’s bad air with good: fast with the blower, faster with the diesel, fastest with both. Petty Officer Hurd, the fire control operator, had appeared at the side of the conn — it would be his job to plug and unplug Jabo’s EAB as he spun around on the scope. There was a lot of chatter in control, rigs being reported, people looking up facts about Freon and Phosgene. Jabo forced himself to focus on the CODC. His job at the moment was to get the ship up to the roof, so they could get the bad air off and the good air on. Everyone else would take care of everything else, but his job was to get the boat up if the course was good.