The concavity of the hatch focused the bullet like a lens and fired it right back at him. The ricochet went through his left bicep and buried itself in the deck by his feet. For the first instant, the noise inside the tight confines of control was almost as painful as the pain in his arm. He cursed himself for being so stupid, the hatch looked like the single most solid piece of steel on the boat, a primitive, almost medieval holdover from another age. And he thought he could shoot it open? Just like he thought he could shoot the gun into the sky until someone came out to rescue him. What was the expression his dad had used? When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And the only tool he had at the moment was a standard issue .45 caliber pistol. He gripped his arm and watched the blood seep through his fingers.
He climbed the ladder and looked at the shiny spot where his bullet had struck. A mark in the paint was the only visible sign of damage. He pushed his shoulder into that spot, and pushed with all his strength. As he faced downward he watched his blood pool on the deck.
What Winn didn’t realize was that a slight pressure difference had developed between the interior of the
This was an entirely normal circumstance, and the ship was designed for it. Just to the right of the ladder where Winn stood, pushing himself against the hatch, was a small valve that led to the interior of the bridge trunk. Opening this valve allowed pressure in the ship to equalize, as air hissed through it, until the pressure difference decreased enough that the hatch could be opened.
But as with the autopilot, Winn had no idea.
So he spent hours pushing the hatch that three men could not have lifted. Finally exhausted, he slumped to the deck and sat down, tears running down his cheeks and mingling with the pool of his own blood that he sat in. He watched as the knot on his belt slowly came undone and slipped off. The ship patiently drove itself back to 150 feet. He did nothing to stop it. It was as if some invisible, malevolent force, too powerful to fight, wanted the ship to continue its journey, and that force was controlling the sternplanes, keeping the hatch shut, and untying his belt. He felt the gun in the small of his back and was again comforted by the fact that there was at least one piece of machinery on the boat he knew how to operate.
He put the gun in his mouth and shot it.
Every man on the
Later that day, the BST buoys began to alarm, announcing to the dead crew that they had forgotten to reset the timer. After twenty minutes, they both launched with a thud, sending radio beacons to the surface. It was the machinery's only acknowledgement of trouble aboard.
Days passed. When the Chief of the Boat’s alarm clock began bleating at 0600 each morning, the sound echoed through a boat that was beginning to deteriorate from lack of care. While the oxygen generators had been shut down by a diligent watchstander, the oxygen bleed was still in progress: a small valve led to the boat’s pressurized flasks of oxygen, releasing it at a controlled rate to supply air to the crew. But with no one breathing the air, the oxygen level crept slowly upward, in excess of 25 %. This was hazardous because an oxygen-rich atmosphere increased the chances of a fire, and made any fire more intense.
The air conditioners were among the boat’s most fickle machines, and the most critical. They were equipped with numerous automatic shut downs and safety features. An air filter was due to be changed but with no one to change it became dirty and blocked. Air flow through the unit was hampered and eventually the condenser froze up, because of the lack of warm air flowing across it. The unit sensed the low temperature of the Freon and shut itself down.
With a large amount of machinery still running, especially in the engine room, the temperature of the boat began to rise. And it was not just ambient temperatures. Numerous electronic devices, including the computers in control, actually had chilled water flow through them, water that needed to be cooled in return by the air conditioners. These computers, while not in use, remained on, and their temperatures went up rapidly. There were two in control, and one shut itself off as its temperature soared. The breaker on the other computer failed to trip, and it started to get hot.
Temperatures and oxygen levels steadily rose as the
