1"Breaking news…The U.S.S. Pilgrim, a U.S. Navy Destroyer commissioned and active in our fight on terror, has sank off of the coast of Virginia Beach," the reporter announced on the news, "Coast Guard officials are releasing limited details about the sinking, only that it was mechanical malfunction and not an act of terrorism that caused the boat to go down. We'll bring you more information as it comes in. Live, from Virginia Beach, I'm Pa…" He clicked off the television.
"Shit," he said. "Shit, Shit, SHIT!" He kicked over the wastebasket and flung his notebook from his desk with the swipe of a flailing arm. Professor Peter Goldstein was one of the most acknowledged and recognized scientist professors in the country, and he taught at the finest engineering college in New England.
The US Government also hired him for his expertise in nuclear fission, though few people new that.
He got on the phone right away. "What the hell is going on?"
"Sir, we need you to come in. The Admiral has some important questions to ask you," the voice on the other end of the line said.
"I bet he does," said. "Send me a chopper and I'll be right along."
He arrived at the Naval base in Virginia about an hour and a half later. Admiral McHugh was waiting for him in his office. A half dozen people, all frantically trying to get him to answer questions, surrounded the admiral.
"The media," Peter said condescendingly to the soldier escorting him.
"No sir," the guard interrupted, "those are military people."
Peter swallowed hard. Real fear struck him for the first time.
Behind the closed doors, the admiral filled him in on what happened, to the extent that he knew.
There was only one casualty. Every motorized or mechanical piece of equipment involved in the non-weaponry systems of the boat malfunctioned. The pumps worked against the engines and essentially filled the ship's hull up with water, taking it down.
They can't explain how it happened yet.
The real concerns were those missiles.
"We need the ship's log and computers to see exactly what happened on that boat," the professor said.
"Already on it," the admiral replied.
Doug Hamilton was sitting on the edge of his small boat as they were coming into the harbor off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts.
"Does anyone have any questions for me?" He asked his diving students.
"Don't be shy, there's no such thing as a stupid question. And before we go down again, I want to make sure that everyone understands the experience completely before we go. Now you know what to expect."
He had just taken them in very shallow water and taught them how to use their equipment. Their next lesson would be down a little deeper.
The six students, ranging from 16 to 58 years old, all smiled and said no. They had that look in their eyes, a look all too familiar to Doug these days, the look of fiery excitement for actually going and staying underwater for so long. It is like another world for new divers. Unfortunately for Doug, though he enjoyed what he did, it was like business as usual for him.
As they came into the docking area of the harbor, two full dressed military guardsmen were waiting for him.
"Doug Hamilton?" One of the soldiers asked.
"Yes, sir," he replied. "What can I do for you?"
"Sir, you need to come with us…" the other replied.
The students fidgeted a little, and one of the soldiers noticed their reaction to the situation.
"Folks, he's not in trouble. He's a former guardsman, and we have a need for his expertise," he said.
The tension released like air from a balloon.
"I will be with you in a minute," Doug said to the class.
He climbed off the boat and quietly got the general information from the guardsmen, and returned to his boat. "I want to apologize, but I am going to have to cancel our class for next week. It seems that I will be diving for the Navy and Coast Guard for a little bit," he said. "I will call everyone when I return…it shouldn't be more than a week."
They all agreed to that, climbed off the boat and went back to the school to gather their things.
"I am going to have to clear my schedule," Doug said to Sgt. Paquin, one of the guy's uniform jackets told him.
"Quickly," Sgt. Harvey said. "We need to get on the chopper within the hour."
Doug called his part time instructor to come in and handle the school's administrative work, with calling to reschedule classes and ordering supplies while he was gone. He grabbed a duffle bag from one of the lockers in the changing room.
"Let's go," he said. Paquin and Harvey looked at each other.
"What? I'm a soldier and a sailor…you didn't expect me to have a travel bag ready to go at a moment's notice?" They smiled.
They landed in Norfolk, Virginia two hours later, and met up with five other professional divers slash former soldiers a few minutes after that.
As the divers sat in the conference room, they listened intently to the commander while he told them about the situation.
"So, what we need you all to do is to get down there and retrieve the black boxes located here, here and here…" the commander pointed to the projection screen, identifying the spots where these boxes were located. "We also need you to retrieve any technology that is portable. Basically, anything that can be removed from the bridge with nothing more than a screwdriver, we need you divers to get it."
Doug looked around the room. Five guys and one girl, all appeared in their 30's, and he wondered if they shared the same adrenaline rush that he was on.
The commander did not go into details about the how's and why's on how the ship went down, and they usually didn't. These people were professionals on a mission. They would only tell you what you needed to know to accomplish exactly what they wanted you to do. And that was fine with Doug, though he was quite curious.
They especially didn't tell the divers about the hydrogen-hybrid nuclear ballistic missiles that the destroyer was armed with.
Only to focus on non-weaponry items, and to stay away from weapon controls. Clear enough for them.
Merely a few moments later, they found themselves suiting up and prepping for the trip.
Back in the Base Control Center, Peter and Admiral McHugh continued the discussion about the underwater boat. "The missiles and all weapon controls have not been affected so far," the admiral said, "and we are monitoring all systems via radar and what still works on the boat for surveillance. We also have some minis down there non-stop, monitoring the externals."
"We need to get those bombs," Peter said. "If something caused the controls of the ship to go haywire, we are in a very precarious position of vulnerability with the biggest nuclear warheads in the world on board of an uncontrollable, no…OUT of control, ship."
"Which is exactly why you are here," the admiral said. "You made this…abomination," the admiral said with tremendous distaste, the first indicator to Peter that the admiral hated the idea of owning those bombs. "We need you to keep tabs on them, and potentially be prepared to neutralize them."
Peter was taken aback by the admiral's forwardness, and a little offended. He understood how the admiral felt, though. He had hoped that there would never be a day where the President would find a need to use the bombs. When he came across the chemical reaction that created these bombs, it was almost accidental. He was studying the properties of nuclear fission for an alternative energy project sponsored by the "Green Earth" initiative to reduce fossil fuel consumption. When he stumbled on the conversion, he was quickly swept up by a bigger government group, and paid handsomely for his study and follow through of his discovery.
He never saw the finished product. His involvement ended after the discovery phase. He last remembers his chemical product in a magnetically sealed containment chamber.
Underwater, the tasks at hand were going better than expected. The six divers were piling pieces of equipment into large nets that were dropped down by other boats to be hoisted up onto their decks, and each boat had more than enough surface support to get the nets back down quickly into the water. They were working together efficiently and dutifully, as they all just wanted to get back to their lives. When on net was being lifted, that team would go to another and help load that one, and when that was complete, they would find another empty net waiting. At this rate, they'd be done in an hour.
They all stopped what they were doing and acknowledged to each other that they'd heard it. Doug stopped with a black box in his hands, as he felt the rumble under his feet like a piece of machinery moving. The sound was distinct. Nothing like the sounds of the surface pulleys 100 feet above raising and lowering the nets. Doug held his breath for a moment as he envisioned what was going on.
The jolt of the ship almost knocked him over the edge, and he saw the missile sail from the underbelly of the sleeping beast, float for a hundred yards or so, and settle gently on the ocean floor in a cloud of stirred-up sea dust.
Doug almost vomited in his diver gear as he saw the large missile, and braced for the bomb's explosion and his doomed ending, but after a moment or two of sheer terror, the missile still lay there, the cloud around it starting to dissipate.
He immediately swam back to the bridge, and noticed the wide-eyed divers shared the same fear. Using signals, they all verified that none of them had touched any weapon controls, which were clearly visible, separate and identified with their own control board.
They immediately swam to the surface to find out what happened.
On one of the retrieving boats, they were listening to the communications with the Control Center. They could hear the panic over the speakers as the boats made their way for the base.
Back in the Control Center, utter chaos had taken over.
An emergency debriefing was called as soon as the divers entered the compound.
"What the hell did you guys DO down there?" the admiral asked.
"Sir, we didn't touch anything related to weapon systems. We were constantly monitoring each other carefully…"
"Horseshit!" Peter stormed in. "One of those control boxes discharged the missile!"
"Hold it!" Doug said. "We didn't touch anything that we were ordered not to touch. Investigations are still going on as to how the ship went down in the first place. You said controls went haywire…don't you think that it's plausible for this to be chalked up to that same phenomenon?"
Peter lowered his voice. "You don't understand what just happened."
"The boat spit out a torpedo, it didn't hit anything, and now it's just sitting there," one of the divers said.
"And the most powerful nuclear warhead's internal clock ticks down to detonation."
No one said a word.
"The nuke on that thing will have enough active energy to wipe out the east coast, and by east coast, I'm talking Maine to Florida," the admiral said.
"Shit," Doug said softly, more of a whisper.
"We have a warhead specialist on his way, sir," a soldier from the communications room poked his head in the door and said to the admiral.
"Well, here's the updated order," the admiral said. "When this specialist gets here, he's going down there to disarm this thing. One problem…he's never been diving before. Your team will have 30 minutes to train him on how to dive properly, and Sgt. Hamilton," he acknowledged Doug, "you saw exactly where this thing landed in respect to the boat location, so I need you to take him down there."
His first reaction was NO WAY. The admiral saw it.
"What difference is it going to make if you are up here or down there, ultimately?" he asked.
He had a valid point. "Yes, sir," came the reply.
When the weapons specialist arrived, they took him into the gear room and began the review of how to properly dive. What Doug had done a hundred times this year in a classroom now had to be taught in 25 minutes…and counting.
The specialist, Lt. Maroney of the US Marine Corps, was very attentive to what they were telling him, though he had a crazy look in his eyes. Doug supposed the military needed a guy like this to do exactly the task that they were undertaking. No sane person would ever take this job.
Doug and Maroney were wired with communications in their diver suits similar to astronauts, the other divers gave their well wishes, and they were off to undertake the most important responsibility of their lives.
Back at the Control Center, they made some discoveries in the cause of the ship going down. There was another whole team of experts working on this aspect of the mission, and they had some new information.
In the same conference room that the divers were in an hour ago, the leaders all stood around listening to the audio from the boxes. Everything sounded normal until the voices sounded like scrambled robotic communication. It was broken, and no word was really distinguishable.
"What does it mean?" the admiral asked.
"Sir, we have come to the conclusion that the USS Pilgrim went down as a result of an intense magnetic surge. We are still working on the cause of the surge." Said one of the scientific investigators.
"Can you give us any hypothesis?" the admiral asked, "the President is anxiously awaiting an update."
"Well, sir, as ludicrous as this sounds, we have three, and we are exhausting every angle," the scientist said.
"We have terrorism, extraterrestrial signals, or the earth itself."
Puzzled looks went across the room.
"The terrorism theory is being investigated to see if there is any unknown weapon that can create that much of a magnetic surge that caused the ship to completely malfunction.
The 'mother earth' theory is being investigated by seismologists to see if there has been any movement or action by the planet that may have caused such a surge. The extraterrestrial theory, well…we are focusing on the first two first, but we don't rule anything out…"
"Thank you, keep at it," the admiral said, and dismissed the investigators so they could get back to work.
"Any update from the boat yet?"
"Not yet, we're just arriving at the sink point," came a surprising boom of the speakers in the room. The admiral looked to his second in command.
"Sorry about that sir, I figured you'd want live contact with them."
"No that's great," Admiral McHugh said.
"We are going down now, so give us a couple of minutes to descend and establish ourselves…just so you don't panic when you don't hear us," Doug said, "we can still hear everything, we just need to adjust."
"Got it," said the admiral.
They all waited patiently as the divers dropped. They could hear the sound of running water for a moment or two.
"Okay, there it is," Doug said. He was stricken with terror the whole ride out, and now you could hear the trembling in his voice.
"Maroney is taking the tools out of his bag as we're making our way to the torpedo," Doug said, feeling the need to narrate the whole thing for everyone.
"Great, keep talking us through it," the admiral said. He knew everyone felt the exact same way that Doug did, and for everyone to know second by second what was happening sort of took the edge off of the fear.
"You okay, Maroney?" Doug asked.
He nodded. "They can't hear you nod, Maroney…" Doug said.
That brought a couple of chuckles from the meeting room. They also heard laughter from the control room, which meant that everyone on base could hear the divers.
"I'm good," Maroney finally responded through heavy puffs of breath.
"Slow your breathing down," Doug said, "remember, you'll pass out unless you control it."
"Okay, we're here. He's unscrewing the plate on the warhead."
Doug winced. He was having a hard time breathing, too, but not because of his inexperience in diving.
Maroney started mumbling something and realized that everyone could hear him.
"Sorry, I am just prepping myself," he said. "Don't pay any mind to it…"
Everyone hung on every word, however, just hoping that whatever he was doing between huffs and puffs was working.
Maroney reached into the warhead hull, and Doug made the announcement that he had begun the disarming. People bowed their heads and prayed, people closed their eyes, and some cried.
Professor Peter held his hand over his mouth, symbolically keeping himself from getting sick. The admiral held his forehead in his hand while looking at the speakerphone.
A very tense moment went by, and Maroney whispered, "yes!"
He took his hands out of the warhead, and everyone snapped out of their waiting trance.
He turned to Doug and gave the 'thumbs up'.
"Two thumbs up," Doug said, and you could hear his smile in his words.
The whole base erupted in cheer. The admiral stared solemnly at the speakerphone, a smile forming.
Doug reached over and clasped Maroney's hand.
The giant flash of light of the warhead detonating was the last thing that Doug saw.