If the Russians could get to us before we had finished transmitting and dived again, they would sink us.
We would have a minute or two’s warning. When the sonar shack detected an incoming torpedo, the captain would instantly start throwing his big vessel about in an attempt to dodge it. That, Lars and I would feel.
But the huge submarine was steady, swaying a tiny amount in the chop above the surface, as the captain contacted the outside world – probably COMSUBLANT, the headquarters for the Atlantic submarine fleet in Norfolk, Virginia.
Lars stopped pacing. We both stared at the tiny speaker in the stateroom.
At last, it came to life.
‘This is the captain. I have been advised by COMSUBLANT that the previous EAM we received authorizing the use of nuclear weapons was an error. The use of nuclear weapons has not been authorized. The change of readiness to DEFCON 3 was also an error. We remain at DEFCON 5. Stand down from battle stations torpedo.’
‘Thank God!’ I leaped to my feat. Lars punched the air. We embraced.
DEFCON 5 meant no war. No attack by a Soviet submarine. No nuclear holocaust.
Lars stood back. On the other side of the stateroom door we could hear a cheer ripple throughout the vessel.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘That was close.’
‘So close.’
I felt drained as the tension left my body. I could scarcely move my limbs.
I took a deep breath. ‘I sure hope Craig lives.’
I rapped on the door again. Our two guards wouldn’t let us out, even though they were both grinning.
After an hour, a sailor with a sidearm came to escort me to the captain’s stateroom.
I knocked and entered.
Commander Driscoll was sitting at his desk. He seemed ten years older than the last time I saw him. His face, normally so calm under pressure, looked ravaged.
‘Take a seat.’ He indicated the bed.
I sat down.
‘Bill. You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘As did da Silva. Even when he was trying to kill me, he did the right thing.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And I didn’t.’ Driscoll ran his hands through his hair. ‘If we had launched those missiles as I had ordered, the Soviets would definitely have retaliated, especially if the XO is right about them expecting a pre-emptive attack from us. Millions of people would have died, hundreds of millions. And it would have been my fault.’
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I might never have found out it was the Hamilton that had started it, if we had launched. But as it is, I know I would have begun a nuclear war if you hadn’t stopped me. That’s something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.’ He winced. ‘That’s going to be difficult.’
‘You did what your orders told you to do,’ I said. ‘You followed procedure. That’s what you are supposed to do in a crisis.’ And I meant it. I understood what Driscoll had chosen to do; I had been through the same thought process myself.
But Driscoll shook his head. ‘You and da Silva figured it out. The procedures were wrong. There was only one correct alternative. I should have chosen it.’
‘How’s Weps?’
‘He’s come around. We have the combination to his safe. Who knows? We may yet need it.’
I swallowed. ‘Can I see him?’
It took a while. The captain kept Lars and me under armed guard in our stateroom, the JO Jungle. He explained he had to. We had breached Navy regulations in about as serious a way as was possible. And the submarine was still on patrol. She still might be ordered to launch her missiles, in which case the captain decided Lars and I should be kept away from where we could do further damage.
The wardroom steward brought us supper, and then there was a knock at the door. It was the XO, come to take me to the wardroom to speak to Craig.
Like the captain, the XO looked drained. I didn’t know what to say to him.
‘Bill,’ he said, as we walked along the passageway, every passing sailor staring at us. ‘I’m sorry for what I said back there. And I’m sorry for backing the captain to accept the launch order. I was wrong.’ He sucked through his teeth. ‘I was really worried that the Soviets were going to launch a nuclear strike in response to Able Archer. So when we received that EAM, I immediately assumed that’s what had happened. I thought we couldn’t afford to screw around worrying about erroneous messages. I was so wrong.’
What could I say? How could I absolve a man from nearly blowing up the world? I settled on ‘thank you’. It takes some courage for a senior officer to apologize to a junior one.
Craig was in the wardroom, slumped in his usual chair, a thick bandage obscuring the top of his head. He looked rough.
He lifted his head as I came in, his eyes hostile.
‘How is it?’ I asked.
‘It hurts like hell.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Sorry.’
Craig just stared at me. ‘You tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘I was doing my duty and you tried to kill me.’
I had feared that response. It was true, of course, but somehow I had hoped that Craig would forgive me.
‘At least we are still alive.’
‘You didn’t know the launch order was an error,’ Craig said. ‘How could you?’
‘You said yourself that East Berlin was weird.’
‘Yes, but in a real war there will be orders that seem weird. And we will follow them.’
‘Like I said, Craig. I’m sorry.’
Craig looked down at his fingernails. ‘Get out.’
I never saw Craig again. Two days later the XO came into the JO Jungle where Lars and I were still in custody to tell us that Craig had just collapsed. They were watching a movie in the wardroom – not Barbarella – and he had just keeled over.
He died nine hours later. Bleeding in the brain from the initial blow with the wrench.
I had killed him after all.
THIRTY
Saturday 30 November 2019, Norfolk
‘Wow,’ said Megan. ‘So you killed Craig on purpose? I knew Craig had died in an accident on board the submarine, so I assumed from the letter it was your fault somehow, and you had never admitted it to anyone but Mom.’
She took the letter from Toby and read the passage aloud: ‘I still can’t get over what I did to Craig. I’ll never forgive myself. I just try not to think about it.’ She looked up at her father.
‘Well, it wasn’t an accident,’ said Bill. ‘But you can see why I struck him with that wrench?’ Bill’s expression mixed pain and pleading as he faced his daughter.
‘Oh my God, yes,’ said Megan. She got up and flung her arms around him. ‘You had to do it. If you hadn’t done it, we wouldn’t be here. No one would be here.’
Bill’s face broke into a smile over Megan’s shoulder.
‘Craig really was a good friend. He was also a good man. He was just wrong. Following orders right then was a very bad call.’
‘I can see why the Navy wanted to keep it all a secret,’ said Toby.
‘So can I,’ said Megan, breaking away from her father. ‘Who would trust them with a nuclear submarine after that? I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Yes, they did keep it secret,’ said Bill. ‘But they also made changes to the launch protocols so it couldn’t happen again. If a submarine gets a doubtful order now, the captain is required to go to periscope depth and check it.’