The challenge was getting just the right amount. That glam rock group from the 1970s had it right with the hit song “Love Is Like Oxygen.”
If DJ’s initial impression of the Vermont dive crew reunion was pure joy, it didn’t take long for the old tensions between Tap and Kozlowski to resurface. Here were two guys he respected and liked, yet something about their personalities just refused to mesh. Part of it seemed to be a perception problem. When they’d last worked together, Tap had been the untrained rookie and Kozlowski the seasoned pro. Kozlowski had faulted Tap for being insufficiently deferential to the veteran divers and yet too deferential to the Kiewit bosses. Tap, meanwhile, had found Kozlowski to be overly boastful and intent on chipping away at management for every possible perk. Now, five years later, Kozlowski found himself working for Tap, who was once again working for Kiewit. When DJ asked why Tap had hired Kozlowski, given their past sniping, Tap explained that the union hall had recommended him. Because Tap knew nothing about the kind of mixed-gas systems underpinning Harald’s plan, he wanted to make sure there were experienced guys representing Black Dog who did.
The new friction between Kozlowski and Tap began over money. Divers were typically given an extra stipend for something called penetration pay. That differential kicked in if they were required to enter an environment like a pipe or tunnel, where their overhead was obstructed in a way that prevented them from making a clear ascent to the surface of the water. On those jobs, they would typically be paid a few dollars on top of their normal wage for every foot of penetration. Since these divers were being asked to enter an underwater tunnel, Kozlowski naturally assumed they would be getting penetration pay.
But during this training session, Tap informed him that full penetration pay was not possible. After all, the tunnel was nearly fifty thousand feet long. Did Kozlowski seriously think each diver was going to be paid a bonus of $50,000 or more? Tap stressed that Black Dog was merely a subcontractor to Norwesco on this job, so his influence was limited. Still, he said, he had negotiated as forcefully as he could with Norwesco owner Roger Rouleau. He felt he’d secured the divers a good deal, with a minimum day rate of $742122 and several hundred more on the days when they were actually working in the tunnel. They’d get time-and-a-half pay after eight hours, double-time after twelve hours, and even a small form of penetration pay. When a diver got to the point where he was crawling into one of the thirty-inch-wide “off-take” connector pipes to remove a safety plug, he would see his pay goosed, based on however long that pipe happened to be.
Kozlowski countered that the so-called penetration pay that Tap had negotiated was chump change, since those off-take pipes averaged just twenty feet in length, and there would be only one diver at a time crawling into them. Yet all the divers would be taking an enormous risk, traveling into this 9.5-mile, unventilated, unlit tunnel. Wet or dry, this was the very definition of penetration, and they should be paid accordingly. Kozlowski wanted to make sure that Tap, now that he was in management, hadn’t forgotten about the guys like him and DJ who would be on the front lines.
Trying without success to shut Kozlowski down, Tap found his mind flashing back to that Vermont job, only now he was the employer that Kozlowski seemed determined to chip away at. Tap told him he’d done the best he could for the divers. If Kozlowski had further complaints about the job, he said, “take it up with the union hall.”
Once again DJ felt trapped in the middle. He agreed with Kozlowski that the divers should be paid more for this unprecedented assignment. But he also knew Tap well enough to trust that he had done everything he could to advocate for his guys, and beating up on him would do little good. DJ was relieved when Kozlowski seemed to drop the matter.
Throughout the training sessions, Kozlowski repeatedly pressed for details on the mission. To Kozlowski, this was simply the prudent way to prepare for a job and try to minimize risk. But Tap seemed to see a different motivation at work. Given their history together, he had to wonder if Kozlowski was more interested in showing everyone how intelligent and experienced he was. When Tap hit his breaking point, he pulled Kozlowski aside. “What are you asking all these questions for?” Tap snapped. “It looks like we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Kozlowski countered that he’d been a diver for thirty years now, in jobs all over the world, and he’d never once had to take a mine rescue class. “Tap, no one’s ever done this before,” he said. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”
The divers had gained some knowledge during the training, consisting of a total of three days of classroom time, to be followed at some point by a week of equipment testing in Tap’s backyard. But it was hardly the kind of rigorous, NASA-style preparation you might expect for such a high-risk, first-of-its-kind mission. After the Drager and mine rescue sessions, a safety officer for Kiewit gave the divers a short presentation, offering more specifics about the tunnel. The officer explained how the tunnel choked down in size as it moved east, and how, in its final mile, it connected with fifty-five vertical risers. While most of this was new information to DJ and the other guys in the room, no one had to tell Kozlowski about this setup. Back in the early 1990s, back before he’d met DJ and Tap, Kozlowski had helped install those riser pipes and the mushroomshaped diffuser heads resting on the ocean floor. While he had been working off the jack-up barge, nine miles out into Massachusetts Bay, he had seen lots of big ships and tankers traveling along the shipping lane above the tunnel. Now he mentioned the same nightmare scenario that the tunnel’s designer and construction manager had invoked when they insisted that Kiewit keep the safety plugs in place for as long as the sandhogs were down there.
Citing Murphy’s Law, Kozlowski asked the safety officer, “What happens if Captain Wrongway Peachfuzz comes flying into the harbor and hits the wrong lever and the anchor comes down and hits one of these diffuser heads?”
“Well,” the safety officer replied, “there’s going to be a tidal wave going through that tunnel.”
The comment produced some nervous laughter in the room, but not from Kozlowski.
At the end of the last day of training, he pulled DJ aside. With nothing but seriousness in his blue eyes, Kozlowski told DJ that after a lot of soul-searching, he had decided to back out of the job. He suggested DJ do the same. Despite all the concerns Kozlowski had been raising, DJ was nonetheless stunned. He knew his friend was such a pro that he would never walk off a job unless he had a damn good reason. After all, the guy was an ex-Navy SEAL who had survived firefights in Vietnam. Combat had also given him firsthand experience with how human nature takes over in life-or-death situations. He told DJ the whole operation didn’t feel right to him. The way he saw it, the divers were being asked to remove the safety plugs that had protected the sandhogs from a tidal wave tearing through the tunnel. Just what would be there to protect the divers?
“The only way I’d go in is with a boogie board and a.45,” Kozlowski said.
DJ flashed a perplexed look.
Kozlowski explained, “I’d use the boogie board to ride the wave out.”
“What do you need the.45 for?” DJ asked.
“To keep you guys off my boogie board.”
6. Mobilization
122 (Chapter 5, note 22)
a minimum day rate of $742: Black Dog Divers subcontract to Norwesco, June 23, 1999, Attachment A.