Lieutenant Commander Ebenezer Fishman knocked gently on Executive Officer Quinnivan’s stateroom door, then opened it and stood back in the passageway.
“Come on in, Tiny Tim,” Quinnivan said, taking off his half-frame reading glasses. He was stationed as command duty officer while Captain Seagraves slept in the neighboring stateroom. He glanced at Fishman, who was wearing blue latex gloves.
“I’d better keep my distance for the moment, XO,” Fishman said quietly. “We have a problem. A medical problem.”
Fishman was joined by the ship’s hospital corpsman, a senior chief named Thornburg, who was also wearing blue gloves. Thornburg was an odd individual, Quinnivan thought. He never wore submarine coveralls, preferring to wear the more formal working khaki uniform. He was short and stocky, his arms muscular from hours of weightlifting in the torpedo room. He was old for submarine service, perhaps forty-five, and as such the oldest man of ship’s company. His gray hair was cut into a severe-looking flattop haircut. Thornburg interacted minimally with the crew. A serious sailor, he had never been known to smile, not that Quinnivan recalled. The crew had aptly nicknamed him “Grim,” and only the yeomen knew his real first name. He was a board-certified internal medicine physician, but had refused the officer accession program and insisted on enlisting, since, according to him, that would allow him to serve in submarines.
“Doc,” Quinnivan said. “Are you going to stand out there too? What’s going on? And what’s with the rubber gloves?”
“XO, we have an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis,” Senior Chief Thornburg said quietly. “Three of the SEALs are affected. I’ve put them in quarantine in the SEALs’ quarters.”
“Viral what?” Quinnivan narrowed his eyes at the corpsman.
“Stomach flu, XO,” Thornburg said. “Senior Chief Tucker-Santos, the SEALs’ corpsman, called me to their quarters and told me what he believed was the diagnosis. I’ve confirmed it. I have the three running IVs for hydration. They all have fevers over a hundred and four, sir. They barely have the strength to make it to their bathroom.”
“It’s coming out of both ends,” Fishman said. “So far, I seem to be okay, but I should self-quarantine just in case.”
Quinnivan consulted his pad computer. “Mr. Fishman, move your accommodations to the aft half-sixpack berthing. It’s empty. Meanwhile, we’ll have your meals brought to you, until we’re more sure of what we’re facing.” He looked at Thornburg. “Doc, tell me what symptoms they have.”
“As Lieutenant Commander Fishman said, sir, severe diarrhea, complicated by losing blood in the watery stool. Weakness, nausea, vomiting. Cramps. Whole body pain. Inability to keep down any liquids. That’s why they’re on intravenous fluids.”
“It’s bad, XO,” Fishman added.
“This is contagious, right?” Quinnivan frowned. “How contagious? How is it transmitted?”
“Well, sir, by sharing liquids or direct touch on a wet surface touched by one of the infected. It’s not airborne. But the quarantine is a precaution just in case.”
“How did they get it in the first fookin’ place?” Quinnivan asked.
“Contaminated food or water,” Thornburg said.
“For fook’s sake, Doc, are you saying our potable water could be contaminated? Or our food?”
Thornburg looked at Fishman, who nodded and said, “Since no else in the crew is affected, Doc and Tucker-Santos think it’s something brought onboard by my people. We brought protein bars and a case of some of those energy drinks with protein.”
“The cans of that shit that Aquatong is always slamming down?” Quinnivan asked. “What is that stuff, ‘Vulcan Werewolf?’”
“‘Vulcan Vampire,’” Fishman said. “I’ve confiscated the protein bars and cans of energy drinks. We should dispose of them all at the next opportunity to dump trash.”
“Make sure that stuff is wrapped up and taped so no one in the TDU room is tempted to try an energy drink or a protein bar.” The TDU was the trash disposal unit, a vertical torpedo tube to eject trash. With the rig for ultraquiet, the trash compactor was secured, but the trash room was filling up to overflowing and Quinnivan planned to suggest to the captain that they fade back from the Omega and dispose of their trash. Probably the same time they did a steam generator blowdown, an even louder evolution, but without it, the boiler level detectors would eventually go berserk and they could lose the reactor, and a reactor scram under ice would place the entire crew — and mission — in mortal peril. With total ice coverage overhead, there was no way to run the emergency diesel, and the battery could only stay alive for half a day before there would be a total loss of power.
“How long till the boys get over this stomach bug?” Quinnivan asked.
“Three days is the usual duration, XO,” Thornburg said. “But the illness has been known to go on for up to two weeks.”
“Well, Mr. Fishman,” Quinnivan said, “Looks like your men are out of commission for the time being. Fortunately for you, you won’t be called on to do anything.”
Quinnivan’s tactical 1JV phone circuit buzzed. He held up a finger to interrupt the discussion, put the handset to his ear and said, “Command Duty Officer.” He listened for a moment, nodded and said, “Very well, Officer of the Deck.”
“Well lads,” Quinnivan said, “I need to get to the radio room. We’re getting a signal on the VLF loop. Odds are, our overlords are trying to send us a preformatted message. Doc, see to it that Mr. Fishman gets a meal sent to his berthing, and bottles of water.”
“Thank you, XO,” Fishman said, and he and Thornburg left down the passageway.
Quinnivan debated with himself whether to wake the captain. If they were receiving a signal on the VLF loop, it would take two hours to get it onboard, and the stomach flu situation wouldn’t change in that time. But Seagraves was a light sleeper and he’d probably want to know. Quinnivan went to the head between his stateroom and the captain’s and knocked on the door to Seagraves’ stateroom.
Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan stood in the crowded radio room. Seagraves yawned, then frowned at Communications Officer Eisenhart.
“Communicator, what do we have so far?”
“Two letters, Captain,” Lieutenant Don Easy Eisenhart said to Seagraves. He stood behind the console that was occupied by Chief Bernadette Goreliki, the radio chief. “They’re our call sign for today, letters alpha delta.”
“Let me see the codebook,” Quinnivan said, accepting the red binder from Eisenhart. He looked at the column with the date. For today, New Jersey’s call sign was the letters A D. He looked at Seagraves. “They’re talking to us, Captain.”
“Well, nothing to do but wait for the word,” Seagraves said. “Care to join me in the wardroom? Fresh coffee would go down nicely about now.”
The senior officers walked aft to the wardroom, where Navigator Lewinsky, Engineer Kelly, and Weapons Officer Styxx were playing cards. When they saw the captain and the XO, they dropped their cards and stood.
“At ease,” Seagraves said. “We’re just here for coffee and conversation.”
“Something going on, Captain?” Styxx asked.
“We just got a hit from the VLF loop,” Seagraves said. “Pentagon is calling our name.”
“Whoa,” Kelly said. “That could mean we’re in for action.”
“Or orders to break trail and come home,” Lewinsky said. He looked at Styxx and Kelly. “We have time to make a betting pool on what the message will be.”
“That could be bad luck, yeah?” Quinnivan said. “No betting pool.”
On the conn, Ensign Eli Short Hull Cooper stared over Chief Albanese’s shoulder at the number one sonar stack displays, which were crowded with indications of the Omega II. It had a strong trace on broadband, bearing 045, directly ahead of them, with several tonals tracking from its 50 Hz electrical generators. On the transient plot, the Omega’s under-ice sonar high frequency pings showed up on a graph of intensity versus time, the.75 second pulses going up like a square wave, then the sound going to zero, then sounding again, making another rectangular shape on the plot. A second plot, identical to it, showed the low frequency pulses, which alternated in time with the high frequency graph bars.