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When they were at five hundred feet, a sailor wearing headphones came into the control room ranting hysterically. He grabbed Bradley by the arm and tried to drag him out of the seat. Bradley resisted, shoving the sailor away. His highest priority was putting the KC on the surface.
The sailor was now sobbing. He staggered over to a panel and pulled a switch.
Bradley jumped out of the chair and lunged toward him, thinking he might be doing something to endanger the boat, like attempting to launch a torpedo while its tube door was closed.
But he realized what the sailor was doing when he heard the faint noise of a siren rising and falling. The switch was the collision alarm. Now Bradley understood why the sailor had headphones on. He was a sonar operator.
Bradley couldn’t hear what the sailor was yelling now, but it didn’t matter. He could read the man’s lips.
Brace for impact!
The man continued shrieking and stumbled out of the control room toward the bow while Bradley raced into the sonar room. The first monitor showed what was coming.
There was a huge cliff in their path. They were heading right for the edge of the continental shelf.
He ran back to the diving control and yanked the wheel around. The submarine began to turn, but too slowly.
The Kansas City jerked violently to port as they slammed into the edge of the shelf. Bradley hit his right arm as he was flung against the bulkhead. Searing pain shot up to his shoulder. He didn’t have to hear the snap to know it was broken.
Warning lights flashed throughout the control room. Bradley could feel the sub grinding to a halt as it scraped across the cliff. He couldn’t tell if the engine room was flooding, but it felt like the propeller was no longer turning.
Bradley pushed himself to his feet with his good left arm. By the time he was standing, the Kansas City was at a full stop. The depth gauge, which was at two hundred feet, started to fall. The sub listed to port as it scraped down the side of the cliff.
Bradley readie
d himself for the end, assuming the hull would implode from the rising pressure, but there was a sudden jolt, and the sub stopped, its bow tilted forward. The depth read three hundred twenty-five feet. They must have come to rest on a ledge.
Bradley made his way to the communications station. If he could activate the extremely long frequency radio, he’d be able to communicate the Kansas City’s situation and position to the Navy and request a rescue.
Then he smelled something that chilled him. It was the salty tang of seawater.
He placed his hand on the instrument panel and felt a rumble pulsating through the hull. They were taking on water. Fast.
Bradley turned toward the bow and saw the sea churning in, carrying men and debris with it. It would only be a minute before the entire sub was flooded.
His crewmates were as good as dead. There was nothing he could do for them anymore. His only chance for survival now was the SEAL Delivery Vehicle. If he could get to the dry deck shelter, he could use the mini-sub to propel himself to the surface and avoid drowning.
He raced aft to the midship hatch where the shelter was attached. Before he could reach it, he was blindsided by one of his SEAL teammates, Carlos Jiménez. Jiménez pushed Bradley into the bulkhead and tried to stab him in the eye with a Ka-Bar knife. Bradley moved his head aside at the last second, and the knife hit metal instead of piercing his brain.
As much as he hated to do it, Bradley didn’t hold back and pounded his forehead into Jiménez’s face, breaking the ex-Marine’s nose.
Jiménez teetered backward and slipped in the rising water.
Bradley kept running until he reached the hatch connecting the Kansas City to the dry deck shelter. It was a struggle to hoist himself up with only one arm, but the terrifying thought of being trapped in the doomed sub kept him going.
He spun the hatch open and pushed it up. The transfer trunk, which served as the air lock between the sub and the compartment where the SEAL Delivery Vehicle was stowed, was lit because it was attached to the sub’s electrical system.
Bradley climbed up and closed the transfer trunk’s hatch behind him. He used a strap to lock it closed in case Jiménez tried to follow him. He felt like he was murdering his friend, but he had no choice.
Before he could cycle the air lock to fill it with water and equalize its pressure with the pressure in the storage bay holding the SDV, Bradley had to get one of the air tanks out in the decompression chamber. It would then take a few minutes to move the SDV out of the shelter. At this depth, he wouldn’t be able to hold his breath long enough to do it, especially with one bad arm.
Despite the closed hatch, water began flooding into the transfer trunk. But it wasn’t a leak. Someone in the sub, maybe Jiménez, had remotely activated the dry deck shelter’s air lock to flood it.
In a panic, Bradley rushed into the decompression chamber and pulled the hatch shut behind him. He quickly started to connect the tank, hose, and regulator, then stopped when he realized what a grave mistake he’d made.
He looked through the window in the door and saw that the water level was almost to the top of the air lock.
There was no way to reopen the hatch. The water was pushing against the door with thousands of pounds of pressure.
