Endangered Species
Message to Garcia

The next day brought more of the same, and the drifting vessels became more common as we got closer to the coast of Washington. It wasn’t just commercial shipping; the hulks included fishing boats and yachts.

By late afternoon, the Captain wanted to take a closer look. We’d been running at periscope depth for hours; the ESM mast detected no transmissions, and the radio mast still got nothing. It had been three days since their last radio message. Since then, they’d seen no evidence anyone was alive.

It was now late afternoon, and I was on the 1800-2200 watch in Main Control. Since the discussion last night, we’d moved within a hundred miles of the entrance to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the border water leading to Seattle and the USS Maine’s homeport of Bangor. Sunset was still ninety minutes away when Sonar reported another contact dead in the water. “Periscope depth,” the Captain ordered.

I was getting good at this by now. I put the ship at 85 feet on the nose. Once again, we detected no transmissions and received no radio messages as the Captain observed the fishing vessel drifting to our starboard. “Prepare to surface,” he ordered. “Get the rescue diver up here.”

Ten minutes later, I was up in the sail with the Captain, a lookout, and Midshipman Newman. Mike had to qualify on the enlisted watch station, and a boomer didn’t get many opportunities to be a lookout. Petty Officer Turner, the ship’s rescue diver, climbed up in his wet suit, carrying his fins, mask, and snorkel. I noticed the Ops Officer had attached a GoPro camera to his mask. “Swimmer ready, Captain,” he reported.

“I need to know what is going on over there,” the Captain told him. “I can’t send a boat over, so you’re it. We’ll get you as close as possible without risking getting tangled in their nets. You’ll have to climb up the nets to the main deck.”

“We’re close enough now,” he said. “That’s a five-minute swim for me.” Rescue swimmers were in shape and confident; they had to be. More than half of the students entering the school washed out.

“Don’t take any chances,” the Captain said. “Check the main deck and the pilothouse. Gather any information you can. I don’t want you going below decks unless you replace survivors.”

“No radio, sir?”

“If the bad guys are looking for us, I don’t want to tip them off,” he replied.

“Understood, sir.” He went down the rung outside of the sail to the main deck.

The submarine was at all-stop, rocking slowly in the four-foot seas. I watched our swimmer as he got into the water and started swimming to the fishing boat. “Up ladder,” someone said. It was one of our Engineering Laboratory Assistants, a nuclear-qualified mechanic specializing in chemistry and radiation protection. He set a survey instrument and a portable air sampler by our feet before coming up. “The Engineer wants a radiation survey, Captain.”

“Carry on.” He started the air pump on the sampler, leaving it at our feet. He then picked up the handheld radiation detector and turned it on.

It alarmed seconds later. He acknowledged the alarm and adjusted the range to get it on-scale again. “Captain, it’s reading forty-six millirem per hour at chest level. It drops to five millirem per hour in the shade. Only two millirem is beta, sir.” I knew enough about submarines to know that was a high dose rate. In an hour up here, we’d absorb more radiation than the average crewman would get on the entire deployment. Since only a small portion was beta (high-energy electrons), the rest was gamma radiation. How much radiation? A chest x-ray was only two millirem.

“Shine?”

“It has to be solar, sir. If the radiation were airborne, it wouldn’t change that much.” His airborne sampler beeped, and he turned it off. “We should have the results in twenty minutes.” He headed back inside.

“Lookouts, get below,” he ordered. The two sailors headed down the ladder, leaving us alone. “No point in getting a dose when there’s nothing to see.”

“Yes, sir.” The rescue swimmer had just climbed onto the boat. “Why am I still here?”

“I need you to watch Turner, and you might have to go on deck to help him when he returns,” he said. “Do you still think a solar storm did this?”

“I can’t think of another cause of what we’re seeing, sir.” My eyes were watering; I removed my sunglasses and wiped them. “Is the radiation affecting my eyes?”

“Not at that dose rate. It’s more likely the ultraviolet coming from the sun. If we get this much solar radiation just before sunset, the ozone layer isn’t protecting us. Try not to look into the sun, and keep your sunglasses on.”

I pushed my Ray-Bans back into place. Petty Officer Turner came out of the pilothouse and signaled with a throat-cut motion that the crew was dead. He made his way to the side and dropped back into the water. “I guess we know,” the Captain said. “We have high dose rates three days after the event, so imagine what it was like that first day?”

“I’d rather not, sir. I’d rather sleep in the locker room laundry bag than smell this stench.”

Petty Officer Turner made his way back and reached the sail without me having to get him. “They’re all dead, Captain. It looks like they’ve been dead for days.” He handed the Captain his camera.

“Go below and get a shower, Turner. Good job.” He went down first, followed by me, then the Captain. A few minutes later, we were back at periscope depth.

For once, I was glad I was still on watch. The Captain called his senior officers to the Wardroom to watch the video. The crew’s mess would get the story straight from Turner soon enough.

After I was relieved, I walked into the wardroom. The table was half-full of officers discussing what we could do next. The communications blackout was our biggest worry. We were a survivable nuclear asset, and the solar storm had caught the United States with its pants down. If an electromagnetic pulse hit the western hemisphere, would Russia or China be affected? If not, would they take advantage of the situation?

“We should close the coast until we can contact the Trident base on VHF,” the Operations Officer suggested. “Now that the sample results rule out a nuclear attack, it’s the fastest way to establish contact.”

“We’d have to go halfway through the Straits to get within range, and who knows if they are even capable of hearing us? We’ve detected NO VHF radio traffic, radars, satellites, or commercial broadcasts. The whole spectrum has gone dark. Everything’s been knocked out.”

“If we start transmitting, we paint a target on our back,” Commander Potter replied. “It would be like being the only flashlight in the room. We are still on patrol; we can’t risk it.”

“Then how do we get a message to the Navy that we are still here and waiting for orders?”

I had an idea, but I didn’t want to say it. I waited as the others proposed and shot down various ideas. When the Captain called on me, I was shocked enough to blurt it out. “A Message to Garcia,” I said.

“What?”

The XO looked at me, understanding on her face. Not everyone onboard was from the Naval Academy, so she asked me to explain. “’A Message to Garcia’ is taught at the Academy as a lesson about individual initiative when carrying out orders. Usually, we use it to shut down continuous requests for directions on what to do and focus on doing the job. The essay was written in 1899 about the exploits of Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan. President McKinley gave him a letter before the Spanish-American War to deliver to General Garcia, the Cuban insurgent leader. Nobody knew where he was, but the young man took the President’s letter and sealed it in an oilskin pouch. Four days later, he hopped out of a boat and disappeared into the jungle. He reappeared three weeks later on the other side of the island, after replaceing the General and delivering the message.”

“What does that have to do with us,” the Engineer asked.

“You need to establish contact with your chain of command but can’t risk detection. Write the message, Captain. I’ll deliver it for you.”

The reaction to that idea was sudden and negative. The Captain shut it down after a few seconds. “You’ve all thrown out your ideas, and now I want to hear hers,” he said. “How would you do this?”

“I’d bring Midshipman Newman with me. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, so he knows the area. We go in at night when the tide is starting to rise. You get us as far into the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound as is safe. Newman and I get in a life raft and paddle for shore. We go to the base, replace the Admiral, and deliver your message.”

“It’s dangerous out there, Midshipman Summers,” the Ops Officer said. “Those fishermen died in a day, and it wasn’t a pleasant death.”

“We know what the danger is, sir. We can hide underground or out of the sun during the day and move at night. It’s been three days since the initial event. Given what we’ve seen, the loss of life in the area will be catastrophic. We’re young and healthy, and we aren’t integral to the functioning of the Maine.”

“You’re in the ship’s company,” the XO objected.

“We both know we’re here for training and a chance to get our dolphins,” I said. “Right now, that isn’t important. Establishing contact with the National Command Authority is.”

The discussion went on for fifteen more minutes. “Summers, go replace Newman and see if he will volunteer. Nav, set course for the Straits, and get out the tide charts. Ops, to my stateroom. We need to figure out what we’re going to say.”

The XO looked at her boss. “You’re going ahead with this, Captain?”

“Does anyone have a better idea?”

Nope.

“Go. Midshipman Summers, thank you for volunteering. Come see me when you’ve talked to Newman.”

The next night, Mike and I carried a life raft down to the deck of the Maine with our gear bags. We were three miles west of Port Townsend, and the current heading into the Sound was getting stronger. We inflated the raft, put our gear inside, and waved to the Captain on the sail. “GOOD LUCK,” he said.

The message was in a Ziplock bag, pinned to my bra above my heart. The submarine submerged below us; it would return to sea and wait for a reply.

The only light came from the rising moon and the Northern Lights display.

We extended the collapsible paddles and made our way to the shore.