Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 263
damage reports started coming in. By that time, the Damage Control
Assistant would have shown up and taken control of the investigation and
repair efforts.
Sebring keyed his headset mike again. “Messenger—CCS. Continue
your walk down of the shaft, but skip over AMR #3. The Flying Squad
will handle that space.”
“CCS—Messenger. Continue my walk-down of the shaft, but skip
over AMR #3, aye.”
Sebring looked at the readouts from the vibration sensors. The
vibrations were getting worse. This didn’t look much like a runaway mop
bucket.
He heard it in the distance at first—a low, slow groaning sound that
reminded him vaguely of whale songs. But this sound didn’t taper off to
silence the way that whale songs did. It grew continually louder until
Sebring could feel it resonating through the very deck plates. And then it
grew louder still, loud enough to rattle the glass faceplates of the dials on
his console. And he began to realize what the sound must mean.
Sebring looked at his watch. Where in the hell was the Damage
Control Assistant? The DCA should have been running this show. Where
was he?
“CCS—Flying Squad. Four SCBAs lit off, time two-two-one-eight.
Door checks are complete. We are entering the space.”
Sebring nodded unconsciously. “CCS, aye.”
The second report came almost immediately, at a near shout as the
Flying Squad leader struggled to be heard over the noise of the strange
groaning vibration. “CCS—Flying Squad. We have heavy smoke in
AMR #3. We are preparing to scan with Nifty.”
Nifty, or NFTI, was the Naval Firefighting Thermal Imager: a handheld
infrared viewer that could spot sources of heat even in total darkness.
“CCS, aye.” Sebring was only half-listening to the reports of the
Flying Squad. The groaning was still growing louder, and its
accompanying vibration was beginning to rattle the entire ship. He was
picturing AMR #3 in his mind now, and he knew what the Flying Squad
was going to find.
The door behind him rattled as the dogging lever came up. Lieutenant
(junior grade) Mark Wu, the ship’s Damage Control Assistant, came
through, dogging the door behind himself. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I
shouldn’t have had that damned chili. It’s killing my stomach. I can’t
seem to get more than fifty feet from the head.”
He walked up behind EN1 Sebring. “Give me a pass-down.”