A new noise swept over us, a slight mechanical vibration followed by a whoosh, like a snippet from a tiny, gurgling stream. I realized it wasn’t all coming from the speaker.
“Door’s open. He flooded the tube,” Ridder said next to me, his voice unsteady.
I looked over at him. He was now staring at a workstation a few feet aft of the speaker. There were eight sets of lights, three lights each, one red, one yellow and one green. The second set from the right now was green. All the rest were red.
I grabbed Ridder’s left forearm.
“You have to stop it. You have to do something.” I wasn’t even sure what I wanted him to stop. All I knew is that there was horror welling up inside me, a visceral intuition that something unthinkable was about to take place. But he paid no attention.
We were standing like that, him staring at the array of lights, me digging my fingers into his arm, when a different, louder noise echoed through the sub.
It was like a burst of air rushing out into the sea. And then I knew.
“Oh, shit. He… oh, shit,” I said.
Ridder had become aware, on some thoughtless level, of my hand and pried it loose. He spoke in a monotone. Maybe answering me, or maybe just giving voice to his own thoughts.
“Torpedo tube just fired. No fish in the water.” We both saw the green light change back to amber.
My stomach was curled up into itself in fear and nausea. Ridder’s words seemed to be coming from another room.
“He shot him out. Vazquez. Oh, fuck, Vazquez.”
The intercom clicked off.
The silence in the control room was crushing me. Vazquez’s screams still were bouncing around inside my head, and I needed something to make them go away. Something to replace what I had heard in his voice.
“The Serpent’s in the aft torpedo room,” Ridder said. There was resolve in his voice, and I clung to it, trying to keep from drowning in my own hopelessness.
“He’s not getting out. Get in there, guys. Shoot him up. Come on, come on,” he continued, still staring at the torpedo tube indicator lights, if that’s what they were, and sounding like a man rooting for a football team on TV.
There were no echoes of activity from other parts of the sub. But I didn’t trust my ears anymore. I knew what I wanted to hear, and I had no doubt that my brain would supply the correct sounds to comfort me.
Still, those might be running feet. That might be the clatter of armed men climbing a ladder. Shouting voices? Perhaps.
A metallic thud. That wasn’t imagined, was it? A hatch closing, slamming shut. If Ridder heard it, he wasn’t showing any sign. He stood next to me, his arms at his sides.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Ridder said, more dismayed than fearful. “How’d it get him? Why’d it shoot Vazquez out the fucking torpedo tube?”
I had no answers.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“We wait. Goddamn, I hope they’re on their way to killing that thing.”
“Did you… do you hear anything? Like the lower-deck team?”
“No,” he said, his certainty further pummeling my spirits. “A hatch closed, but that’s all.”
I tried to collect myself, to grab the remains of my tattered composure. Our actions now would be our salvation or our doom.
Wait, “salvation or doom”? No, that wasn’t a path I wanted to go down. Come on, Myers, you’re a medical doctor! A pro! What’s more, the SEALs expect you to wilt. You’re supposed to collapse under pressure, be frightened by all the unexpected death. Right? Isn’t that why Larsen arranged the disappearing act earlier?
Was I going to give him that satisfaction now?
So it was my ego, not my training or resolve, that pulled me back into functionality. I didn’t care. I just felt exhilarating relief that I was able to shove my dismay and panic into the background. But a tiny, chattering voice deep in my psyche was telling me that I wouldn’t be able to do this again, no matter how much I needed to.
Ridder still seemed a little lost. His face’s funerary pallor was a white beacon in the compartment’s uncertain lights. Expressionless. Motionless. It was tough to tell whether he still was breathing.
“We got Campbell!” The words, shouted from an unknown distance, still were clear. There was more yelling, an impossible puzzle of simultaneous orders, this time accompanied by bumping and heavy footsteps.
It all was coming from the next compartment aft.
“Get him in! Get him in! Cover!” Closer this time. Was that a moan?
Ridder remained a statue. He jerked, though, when there was a pounding on the forward hatch.
“Who’s in the Super Bowl?” a voice shouted at us.
Ridder turned and stared at the door. Did nothing.
“The Bengals,” I whispered. He directed his stare at me, blinked, then yelled a reply.
“The Bengals!”
A pause. Then, “They’re going all the way!”
The hatch’s wheel began to turn. It struck me that Ridder hadn’t even picked up his rifle.
But the door swung open before either of us could have reached it. Larsen climbed through without looking at us, then turned and reached back into the electrical compartment.
“Here, give me… hey!” He interrupted himself with a yell. “Close that fucking hatch! OK. Now, just lift him up… yeah. Pass him to me. Ridder, get over here.”
As Ridder stumbled into motion, I saw Campbell’s head push through the doorway, his eyes half-open. Larsen cradled his shoulders. With Ridder’s help, they got his upper body through, then his legs. They laid him on the floor.
“Myers!” Larsen said, but I already was on my way to the prone SEAL. His right thigh was soaked with blood. I knelt next to him.
“Dock-er?” Campbell slurred.
“You’re gonna be fine. Ridder, lift up your hands for a sec.” He had been applying pressure to the wound, which, I saw, had been caused by a bullet. “Larsen, get me that first-aid kit.”
The lieutenant gestured through the doorway, and a hand extended through with the olive-green box. I set it on the floor and yanked out a wad of gauze.
The black fabric of his pants had torn a little around the wound, and I tugged the rip wider.
Yeah. A bullet hole. Distended flesh around a perfect, round puncture, the whole site coated in crimson. No powder burns.
Not too much blood on the floor, either, and I didn’t see any bubbling out of the wound. The femoral artery seemed to have survived. I felt around on the back of his leg… yeah. Exit wound.
I rummaged in the kit and found some white antiseptic powder, which I sprinkled into and around the hole. Grabbing more gauze, I packed it against both injuries. Campbell winced, but I noticed his eyes showed a little more presence now.
“Campbell, buddy, you’re going to be OK,” Ridder said.
“Hold this gauze here. Don’t let up the pressure,” I told him, switching my attention to Campbell’s neck.
I took his pulse. Strong, steady, somewhat elevated. So he wasn’t too far into shock. His skin didn’t feel clammy.
His eyes, though, told me something different. And I soon saw why.
The back of his head was a bloody mess. I probed the wound and was relieved to find that it wasn’t mushy. The skull might be fractured, but it had held its shape. His pupils were dilated, though. Worrisome.
“Gimme a flashlight. Someone… thanks,” I said as Larsen handed me the one from his rifle. I waved its beam across Campbell’s eyes. The pupils irised a little bit at the bright light but not as much as they should have.
“He’s concussed. The gunshot wound isn’t bad; nothing life-threatening right now, although he’s a little low on blood. We need to get him lying down after I bandage this. That’s all we can do right now.”
Larsen nodded. There were several SEALs crouching on the other side of the hatch, watching as I worked.