100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER THREE

Fully stocked, Roanoke’s torpedo room held 24 torpedoes, 20 of which were housed in the storage racks. The other four currently rested on a set of skids along the bulkheads—trays that were used to load live torpedoes into the tubes. The space was long and narrow, no more than eight feet across from bulkhead to bulkhead, but with the skids taking up two feet on either side, that left only four feet of width for Warren Stubic and the other sailors manning the torpedo room.

They moved about the space, double-checking that the torpedoes had been properly secured for the launch. If one came loose, it could roll out of the racks or off the trays when the submarine dived. It wouldn’t explode when it hit the floor—this wasn’t a Road-Runner cartoon—but the fall could damage it enough to render it useless as a weapon, and one dud torpedo during an exchange with a Soviet sub could mean Roanoke’s number was up. And that wasn’t even taking into account the injuries it could cause if it fell on a sailor. Torpedoes were long, heavy, and made of steel. If one got loose, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Stubic knew the routine. This wasn’t his first time helping secure a torpedo room, but he found it hard to concentrate. He was sluggish, groggy, and deeply worried because he couldn’t remember what happened last night in Waikiki. A dull, throbbing headache had developed behind his eyes this morning, and it showed no signs of leaving.

“Look alive, pal.” One of the other torpedomen grinned at him. “Plenty of time to deal with the hangover later.”

Stubic smiled back weakly, blinking in the bright, painful light. If only this were a hangover. Then he would have an explanation for at least some of what was happening to him. But not for everything. Even if he’d had too much to drink last night, which he damn well hadn’t, it wouldn’t explain the marks he found this morning on the side of his neck. Two small welts like bug bites. The tropical climate made Hawaii a welcoming environment for all sorts of insects, especially the nocturnal ones. Something had bitten him, and he wondered whether his symptoms were an infection brought on by the bite. Oh, God, was this malaria? He took a deep breath and tried not to think about it.

His head throbbed as if it were being jackhammered from the inside. The waves were getting worse with each one that crashed over him. Maybe he should go see Matson, the hospital corpsman, and get himself checked out. Except that he couldn’t, could he? Matson would want to know where he’d been, and Stubic couldn’t tell him. If anyone knew he’d gone to a brothel, he could lose pay or get bumped down in rank. Matson would also want to know everything that had happened, and Stubic wouldn’t be able to answer that, either, because there were things he simply couldn’t remember.

Why couldn’t he?

After he entered that dark hallway, everything was a blank until he woke up in his barracks at the naval station, feeling like shit. He couldn’t remember driving home from Waikiki. He couldn’t remember anything. Something had happened to him in that hallway…

The sharp klaxon of the dive alarm jolted Stubic from his thoughts and made his head flare with pain.

Another torpedoman shouted, “Grab hold of something, Stubic. We’re about to dive!”

He held on to the steel support of the torpedo rack. A moment later, the deck tipped dizzyingly downward. He closed his eyes. This must be what it would be like to be awake when they lowered you into the grave.