Read Online Polaris by Todd Tucker - Free Book Online

difficult, rare metal. The Polaris, made out of strong American steel, had to subject itself to an ancient and clever degaussing range to make itself magnetically invisible. But her titanium boat had been born that way.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    The ship had limited exercise equipment, but Frank Holmes diligently used it all. He bench-pressed every free weight they had, 220 pounds total, and now he could do twenty-five reps at that weight. He would then curl 100 pounds at a time, five sets of ten, and finish by squatting the full 220 pounds. He felt he was capable of squatting maybe twice as much, but those were all the weights they had, so that was that.
    On off days he did bodyweight exercises: push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and hundreds of crunches. He’d run on the ship’s lone treadmill to chisel off the tiny amount of fat left on his body, and punch the heavy bag that he had diligently repaired over time until now it was virtually constructed of duct tape. Most guys got soft on submarines, he knew, but he’d put on fifteen pounds of pure muscle since deploying on the Polaris two years earlier. Two inches on his chest, an inch on his arms. He would be even bigger, he thought, if the ship had any decent food, but the animal protein his body craved was hard to come by. He’d hoarded some beef jerky, but the last of the real chicken and eggs had long since been consumed, and the next trip to the tender could be months away. As often as he once dreamed about sex with the soft, sweet girls he’d grown up with in Katy, Texas, he now dreamed about protein. He was a proficient masturbator after two years at sea, but there was no equivalent way to satisfy his primal need for meat. Visions of ribs, cheeseburgers, and T-bone steaks filled his dreams. Still, he was enormously strong.
    So moving Ramirez’s dead body was easy once he got past a small, initial burst of squeamishness that came with the sight of all the blood.
    The torpedo room was directly below the staterooms, the lower-most, forward-most compartment on the ship. Frank dragged the corpse to the ladder and briefly tried to think of a more dignified option before simply dropping him down the hatch. The body landed with a thud on the steel deck below. Frank climbed down after it, then dragged Ramirez to the front of the torpedo room, past the racks of indexed Mark 50 torpedoes, and caught his breath before proceeding.
    The torpedo room had always been one of his favorite places on the boat. Filled with forest green torpedoes, it seemed more military than any other place on Polaris, full of manly, menacing firepower. There were four firing tubes in all, two port and two starboard, with the control panel between them. It smelled dank, both because of its low position on the ship and because the torpedo tubes were often filled, drained, and filled again with the sea that surrounded them. When he had volunteered for submarine duty, Frank had a picture in his mind of what a submarine would be like. The torpedo room was one of the few places on the boat that somewhat looked like that picture.
    He had fond memories of the torpedo room as well: during his walk-through for his qualifications, the torpedo room was where Captain McCallister had brought him his final task: to line up the system and shoot a water slug—basically a tube full of water, although the actions would be nearly the same if firing an actual torpedo. Captain McCallister had been patient as he plodded through the procedure, and had given him a few key hints along the way when he was stuck. But he had succeeded, finally pushing that red button and ejecting a thousand pounds of seawater back into the sea with a satisfying whoosh . He still recalled the subsequent ratcheting and hissing of valves that returned to a firing position, the popping of the ears as the pressure changed with the expulsion of the compressed firing air. Later that night, after dinner, Captain McCallister had pinned gold