Arabian Sea
B-902 Panther
Tuesday, June 28; 0925 UTC, 1325 local time
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino had been standing watch in the central command post when the detonation rocked the boat. The shock rolled cups off consoles, the sound of glass breaking sounding in the room, the more distant sound of dishes breaking in the pantry coming from below.
“What the hell was that?” Dankleff half-shouted, skidding to a halt in front of the position one starboard console.
“That was either conventional and close or it was nuclear and distant,” Pacino said. “I have an idea. Come with me.” He led Dankleff to the sonar room, where Chief Albanese was training Chief Kim on standing sonar watch. Kim was doubled over, her hands clasped to her ears, tears running down her cheeks.
“She had on the headset when the explosion hit,” Albanese said. “It broke the headset and I imagine she’ll be functionally deaf for a day or two. Assuming the best.”
Pacino motioned in Chief Goreliki to take care of Kim, who stood her up to take her to her bunk.
“What do you think, Chief?” Pacino asked Albanese.
“I think somebody dropped a nuke. We should put in a couple of legs to get the range. If it’s distant, it was friendly fire from Vermont. If it’s close, probably one of the bad guys.”
“You can’t do TMA on a blue-out,” Pacino said. Doing target-motion-analysis on a cloud of bubbles that took up a quarter of the azimuth was a waste of time. “What do you think about hitting it with an active sonar ping?” Pacino asked.
“That pretty much goes against everything we’ve been doing on this mission. You know, stealth and all,” Dankleff said, frowning. “And going against every order we have on this mission.”
“True. But if this is the result of Vermont firing a nuke, we’ll get an immediate range on the detonation radius, and maybe a surviving Russian submarine, assuming Whale here can interpret the return ping—”
“I can interpret it,” Albanese said, matter-of-factly.
“You sure?”
“No. I was trying to give myself confidence. And change my universe’s reality.”
“You’ve been talking to Fishman again, right?” Pacino continued. “If there were submarines that survived the blast, we need to know where they are.”
“Say there are?” Dankleff asked. “What’s our next move?”
“Obvious,” Pacino said. “We drive out that way and sink them.”
“Dammit, Patch, that’s not our directive!” Dankleff’s face had turned red as he shouted. “We’re supposed to hide and sneak out of the Arabian Sea, not turn our guns on some opposing force, spoiling for a fight. Is this your version of, ‘the best defense is a good offense,’ for fuck’s sake?”
“I wish I’d thought of that to say, actually, U-Boat,” Pacino said. “Look at it this way. Any submerged contact out that way has a room full of torpedoes. If he’s damaged and recovers, those torpedoes will be in the mail to our position. And to Vermont’s position. How big is your catcher’s mitt, U-Boat? Big enough to catch an inbound Futlyar torpedo? Or a baker’s dozen of them?”
Dankleff sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Why, oh why, didn’t I select Lobabes for AOIC?”
Pacino clapped Dankleff on the shoulder. “Good man. So, Chief Albanese, you ready to line up and try this?”
“Let’s turn to face the bearing to the detonation, zero-four-five, and hover. That’ll remove any own-ship noise from the sonar equation.”
Pacino stepped back to the command post. “Grip, left twenty degrees rudder, steady zero-four-five.”
“Northeast? Are you high?”
“Just do it, ya damned non-qual SEAL.”
“Fine, my rudder is left twenty, coming around to course zero-four-five.”
Pacino reached for a phone and called the wardroom. “Get Captain Ahmadi up to central command,” he said to Fishman. While he waited, he watched the dinner-plate sized compass spin slowly in the center of Aquatong’s console. Finally he steadied up on course 045.
“Grip, all stop. I’ll set up to hover.”
Ahmadi showed up, Fishman behind him. “Yes, Mr. Patch. Can I help?”
“Help me hover the boat,” Pacino said. Ahmadi took the position two console seat and stared at the displays, then pumped water from aft to forward and from the depth control tank to sea, waiting to see how the boat responded, then flooding depth control slightly. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he concentrated. After several minutes of operating the trim system, Ahmadi looked up at Pacino. “We’re hovering at one hundred meters, Mr. Patch.”
“Keep watching it, Captain,” Pacino said. He hurried back to sonar.
“We’re steady on zero-four-five and hovering. You ready?”
“Yes, sir,” Albanese said. “The MGK-400 is lined up.” He looked up at Dankleff. “OIC, permission to ping active?”
Pacino looked at Dankleff, who bit his lip, then said, “I’m gonna regret this, but, Chief, ping active.”
Arabian Sea
USS Vermont
Tuesday, June 7; 0937 UTC, 1337 local time
The loud active sonar ping could be heard with the naked ear in the hull of Vermont, the sound loud and long. It seemed to be coming from the south. And it seemed close.
Captain Seagraves looked at Officer of the Deck Romanov, his face startled. “What the hell is going on?”
“That was from Panther,” Petty Officer Mercer said from the Q-10 stack seat. “Bearing one-seven-eight.”
“Can you tell if there’s a return ping?” Romanov asked.
“We’re not set up for that,” Mercer said. “We’d have to ping out with the Q-10 ourselves to interpret actual distance to the blueout and see if there are any surviving submerged contacts.”
Seagraves, Romanov and Quinnivan gathered at the command console. “What the hell are they doing?” Seagraves said, his frown deepening.
“Approach Officer, we have a zig on the Panther,” Mercer announced. “Aspect change. He’s turning to his left. Northwest.”
“Goddammit,” Seagraves cursed. “Dankleff is supposed to get Panther out of here, no matter what happens.”
“Transients from Panther,” Mercer said. “Sounds are consistent with him starting up his fast reactor.”
“I’m going to kill those guys,” Seagraves muttered to himself.
“Panther is speeding up, sir. Sounds like he’s putting on maximum turns.”
“He’s heading toward the blueout, Captain,” Romanov said, flipping the command console to the chart. She’d drawn blood red circles around the impact points of the SubRocs. The bearing to the point in between the circles was 049. Before Panther started acting up, they’d done three legs of target motion analysis, TMA, to determine the range to the blueout, and it was sloppy, but generally correlated with the range they’d set into the SubRocs, 180 and 190 miles from the Vermont. “I think. Let’s get some TMA done on Panther to get his solution. Maybe he detected something.”
“We don’t have time for that, Nav,” Quinnivan said, cupping his hand over his boom microphone, giving an illusion of the three of them having privacy in the crowded battlestations-manned control room. “Panther pinged active, so if there is someone out there, now they know we’re here, and they know Panther didn’t steal herself. Our presence as an escort sub has to have been guessed by an opposition force. And all I can say is, ‘duh.’ It’s fookin’ obvious. So let’s see what Panther detected. We need to line up active sonar and ping the hell out of that blueout. See what Panther’s got her nose into.”
“XO makes a good point, Captain,” Romanov said, as if she sensed Seagraves’ doubts.
Seagraves looked at Quinnivan, then Romanov. “Any downside to going active?”
Quinnivan made a sour face. “Sure, Skipper. Whoever’s out there would have our exact bearing. If he’s good, he could do a couple passive TMA legs on us and nail down our exact solution.”
“But he can’t put a warhead on us,” Romanov said, “we’re way outside torpedo range, if a contact is near the blueout.”
“Pilot,” Seagraves ordered, “left twenty degrees rudder, steady zero-four-nine. All ahead flank.” He looked at Romanov. “We should at least get going in that direction.”
“The blueout is five or six hours out, Captain,” Romanov said. “And we’re definitely outside torpedo range of an opponent, but not if he has anything equivalent to the SubRoc. Like a Kalibr missile.”
“Most of the Kalibr cruise missiles,” Quinnivan said, “are set up for surface ship assault. All it could do to us is make a big bang overhead.”
“Unless it’s a nuke,” Seagraves said. “Or one of the Kalibr variants designed for antisubmarine warfare.”
“We’re worrying about ghosts, Skipper,” Quinnivan said. “Let’s get a few active pulses out there and nail down whatever object or contact is out there, and then let’s drive towards that.”
“Sonar, line up to ping active,” Seagraves ordered. “Three pulses. Low freq, long range detection parameters. Center of pulses at bearing zero-four-nine.”
“Aye, sir, lining up Q-10 sphere for active,” Mercer reported. “Ready, Captain.”
“Sonar, ping active, three pulses.”
An earsplitting roaring shriek sounded in the room, coming from forward, the pulse rising like a siren from a deep bass roar, rising in pitch until it ended in a tenor hum. The comparative quiet after the pulse seemed surreal. Seagraves’ ears ached from the noise that seemed to drill into his skull. After ten seconds, a second pulse went out, and a second time Seagraves’ eardrums were hammered. Finally, ten seconds after that, the third pulse went out.
Romanov had selected the active sonar screen on the command console display, but Seagraves stepped over to Snowman Mercer’s Q-10 stack, not just to see the results on the screen, but Mercer’s expression as he analyzed any return pings.
“Anything?”
Mercer nodded, his reply loud in the room. “Captain, Officer of the Deck, I hold a new sonar contact, Sierra Seventeen, bearing zero-three-eight, range, two hundred sixty thousand yards.”
“Sweet jumpin’ Jaysus,” Quinnivan said. “Are ya sure, lad? A hundred and thirty fookin’ nautical miles? That’s awfully far out to be a strong detect.”
“Sir,” Mercer said, turning in his seat, “It’s strong enough. Whatever it is, it’s big and solid and submerged. The nuclear detonations must have blown off his anechoic tiles and exposed his steel to our ping.”
“Okay, then,” Seagraves said, inhaling deeply, wishing he could smoke a cigarette, or better, one of Quinnivan’s Cuban cigars. “Sonar and firecontrol party, designate Sierra Seventeen as Master One. Pilot, steer course zero-three-eight and make your depth twelve hundred feet.”
The deck inclined downward as Vermont made for the northeast at flank speed, her deck trembling from the power of the flank bell.
“I hope to hell we’ll still have Panther on passive sonar at this speed,” Romanov said.
“No need to worry about that,” Mercer said. “Panther is as loud as a proverbial train wreck.”
“Great,” Seagraves said, shaking his head. “Navigator, prepare a situation report for a slot buoy transmission. Tell the brass we’re chasing after whatever contact is near the blueout.”
“Should I mention that Panther forced our hand, sir?”
Seagraves drilled his gaze into Romanov’s eyes. “Captain John Paul Jones once said, ‘discretion is the better part of valor,’ Navigator. Let’s just leave that detail out.”
Atlantic Ocean
Point S-Prime: 200 miles west of Oued Eddahab, Western Sahara, Africa
K-561 Kazan
Tuesday, June 7; 0945 UTC, 1145 Moscow time
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev read the radio dispatch from Voronezh with dismay. The submarine’s fire had killed the entire crew. And now the AI system, the second captain, was attempting to continue the mission? It was lunacy. The AI onboard the Yasen-M-class was primitive. There was no way it could out-think a motivated enemy. Alexeyev and his battlestations crew had tangled with the AI version in battle simulators, and ten times out of ten he’d defeated them. Admiral Zhigunov insisted that was just because Alexeyev and his crew were exemplary, but Alexeyev doubted that. It wasn’t that he was a superstar at submarine vs. submarine combat. It was that the AI was dumb.
Alexeyev left his sea cabin and stepped into the central command post. The on-watch crew greeted him, coming to attention. He waved at them to relax. At the port aft navigation chart console, he leaned over the display and calculated how long it would be before the Kazan would be on-station, then cursed. This was taking entirely too long.
Odds were, if the Panther and her escort submarine were making for the western hemisphere, they’d be there long before Kazan got into position. Zhigunov had called him too late.
Arabian Sea
K-573 Novosibirsk
Tuesday, June 7; 0947 UTC, 11:47 am Moscow time
Weapons Officer Irina Trusov stood up from her position three console at the captain’s order. He was on the phone to nuclear control.
“Engineer, get a watch relief so you can walk down the ship with us. This damage inspection will determine whether we continue the mission or head home, and for that matter, whether we will even be able to continue on submerged.” Captain First Rank Yuri Orlov listened for a moment. “We can discuss that when we arrive at nuclear control,” he said sternly, cutting off what sounded like a panic-stricken chief engineer. “The weapons officer, navigator and I are walking the ship down for a damage inspection, and you’re coming with us. Be ready when we get there.” Orlov hung up despite Chernobrovin still speaking on the other end.
“Well, something’s very wrong back aft,” Orlov commented to Trusov. She nodded, not knowing what else to say. First Officer Vlasenko showed up in central command with Communicator Sukolov with him, to take over senior supervisory central command watch and the watch officer duty. Trusov spent a moment whispering to Sukolov to tell him the status of things so he could take on the duty.
“Have you tried to raise the radio mast?” he asked.
“No,” Trusov said. “I verified the induction mast and number two periscope work. Presumably the MFHG antenna works as well. You can test it next periscope depth.”
“We need to get a situation report out to Pac Fleet,” Sukolov said, his eyes wide, his cheeks hollow. He was badly frightened, Trusov thought.
“Write up a draft for the captain to look at for when we return from touring the ship,” she said. Sukolov nodded.
“Weapons Officer, are you ready?” Orlov said impatiently. Navigator Misha Dobryvnik stood by the captain, a frown on his worried face. Trusov found herself thinking that it was a good thing that she wasn’t the only one who was frightened and worried. Goddamned Americans, she thought for the dozenth time since the explosion.
“Ready now, sir.”
“Let’s go. We’ll start aft. The engineer was complaining.”
Orlov walked so fast on the way to nuclear control that Trusov broke into a jog to keep up with him. Out the aft door, he flew, down the passageway past the officers’ staterooms to the steep stairs to the middle level, emerging into the crew’s messroom, and aft of that, to an alcove housing the large round hatch that led through the shielded tunnel through the third compartment that housed the 200 megawatt nuclear reactor, the shielding designed to minimize exposure to the neutron and gamma radiation from the reactor. Trusov couldn’t help notice the sign flashing in the space, the yellow and magenta sign lit from behind:
HIGH RADIATION LEVEL ALARM
Great, Trusov thought. All the wicked casualties happening to the submarine, now it had to have a radiation casualty?
The tunnel led aft to the fourth compartment where the turbines, generators and motors were housed, with the nuclear control room placed just aft of the bulkhead to the third compartment. Farther aft of the door to nuclear control, Trusov could see a steam leak—no, several steam leaks. The compartment was hot and humid, and she felt herself sweat through her coveralls, the choking steam filling the air in the crowded machinery space. Now she was beginning to think the ship couldn’t be saved.
“Status of the reactor?” Orlov said through the doorway to nuclear control.
Inside, Captain Third Rank Kiril Chernobrovin stood behind the reactor control panel and steam plant control panel, his coveralls soaked in sweat, a cut to his scalp having bled down his face, the streak of blood making Trusov’s suppressed fear somehow bloom stronger.
“The rod we dropped when we entered the Arabian Sea, Captain? We’ve dropped it again. I’ve maintained the reactor critical, but the neighboring fuel modules have had to pick up the load from the rod drop and they are overpowered, and their fuel elements are melting, and the third compartment is now a high radiation area. Add to that, we now have a primary-to-secondary leak, and the fourth compartment’s radiation levels are skyrocketing. The occupancy time—the safe occupancy time—for this room is shrinking down to less than an hour, Captain. Beyond that, we’re all getting far more than our allowable lifetime doses. If we have to sail all the way back to base, we’ll have enough radiation dosage that, well, sir, we’d be lucky to live for another year, and that will be one miserable year.”
Orlov cursed. “Dammit, Engineer, you keep this beast critical and maintain propulsion, I don’t care if the damned thing fucking explodes. Now come with us for this inspection.”
Trusov caught a glance from the engineer and there was no mistaking his thoughts. We have to abandon ship. But Yuri Orlov would die before he’d abandon a mission, much less his beloved submarine.
They walked quickly forward to the shielded tunnel.
“You ran the blower, right, Weapons Officer? It wasn’t my imagination?”
“You were still pretty out of it, Captain,” Trusov said. “But yes.”
Orlov hurried to the lower level, where the emergency diesel lived.
“The diesel could go either way, I suppose,” Orlov said, touching the side of the massive diesel engine. “I hope to hell it’s okay. It may need to get us home.” Orlov glanced quickly at Chernobrovin, then led them back up the stairway to the middle level, then forward through the crew’s messroom. Dobryvnik paused near the large door to refrigerated storage, noticing the breaker providing power to the room had tripped. Without thinking about it, Dobryvnik reached for the red handle to the breaker, which was indeed in the tripped position, took it to the “open” position, then pulled it up to the “shut” position. It immediately exploded in a breadbox-sized ball of flames, Dobryvnik falling to the deck, grasping his hand.
“You okay?” Trusov said, bending over him and pulling him up by his good hand. He looked at the burn, wincing.
“Navigator, get up to the wardroom and get the first aid kit out and see to that burn,” Orlov said, his jaw clenching.
“Yessir,” Dobryvnik said, cradling his burned hand as he made his way forward.
“So much for our food supply,” Orlov said.
“This mission just keeps getting better,” Chernobrovin muttered.
The three of them left the crew’s messroom and hurried past the crew recreation room, farther forward past crew berthing, to the radio room. “Weapons Officer? Do you know the combination?”
“Hull number twice, Captain,” Trusov said. “Unless the navigator changed it since the last time I used it.”
Orlov punched in the code, “5-7-3-5-7-3” and tried the knob, but it was frozen. “You try,” he said to Trusov, who entered the code on the button pad, but nothing helped.
“Engineer, go fetch a goddamned pry bar from machinery one.”
“Right away, Captain,” Chernobrovin said, glad to have an errand to take his mind off their situation. While they waited, Orlov pounded on the radio room door, but the radiomen weren’t answering. Trusov realized she was breathing heavily, perhaps the effect of the exertion in the contaminated atmosphere. She should have checked the atmospheric readings in machinery one, she thought. They needed to know when they’d have to come up to periscope depth and ventilate.
Chernobrovin appeared, winded, with a crowbar. He took it to the radio room door, and he and Orlov pushed until the lock broke and the radio room door burst open. The scene was one from Hell itself, complete devastation. Scorched and burned equipment. Smoke pouring out of the room into the passageway. The horrible stench of burned human flesh. The smoke cleared, revealing the black wreckage of the radio equipment and the two radiomen who had been unfortunate enough to be in the space when the fire broke out. Orlov’s eyes narrowed and he cursed under his breath.
“There goes any chance of communicating to Pac Fleet or the Admiralty,” he said.
“What about a radio buoy launched from the countermeasure ejection tube, sir?” Chernobrovin asked.
“They were all stored in here,” Orlov said. “Along with the computer to load a message into them.”
“No other emergency transmitters?”
Orlov shook his head. “The escape chamber has an emergency beacon, but it’s just a dumb attention-getter.”
Trusov traded another glance with Chernobrovin. This was getting untenable. “I guess it no longer matters if the MFHG antenna is functional,” she said.
“Captain,” Chernobrovin said to Orlov, “I should get back to nuclear control. Make sure we’re staying critical and in the power range. Maybe minimize the fuel melting.”
“Go,” Orlov said, waving the engineer aft. “Trusov, let’s get to the torpedo room,” Orlov said, walking rapidly forward to the large hatch to the first compartment.
Torpedo Officer Vasiliy Naumov looked up as Captain Orlov and Weapons Officer Trusov came into the first compartment and stood looking at the wreckage of what had once been an orderly torpedo room.
“What’s your status, Naumov?” Orlov asked.
Senior Lieutenant Naumov wiped his forehead. Trusov stared at him, realizing he was barely more than a child, lanky and pimply, his hair a mess, his coveralls torn, his hand trembling.
“Three weapons came off their racks, Captain. I called it up to central, to Mr. First. I can’t get them back on their racks alone, sir, the rigging gear is trapped under one of the loose weapons.”
Orlov took a deep breath. “What is that smell, Naumov?”
“I can’t smell anything, Captain. I guess I’ve been in the compartment too long—”
“Dammit, that’s self-oxidizing weapon fuel,” Orlov said harshly. “One of your torpedoes is leaking.”
“If we can find which one is leaking, we can put an emergency patch on it,” Naumov offered.
“Trusov, help your torpedo officer get this space squared away,” Orlov ordered, his expression turning even more dark than before.
Trusov, though, had wandered a few meters farther forward to the torpedo tube doors, her gaze fixed on tube 5, which had been loaded with a Shkval supercavitating torpedo. She sniffed the air close to the door and put her fingers under a pet-cock, a few drops emerging. She rubbed her fingers together under her nose as she turned back to the captain. The hydrogen peroxide fuel had an ingredient added to it to make a distinctive odor, allowing leaks to be more easily detected.
“Sir, we have a bigger problem. I’ve got a peroxide leak in tube five, the tube-loaded Shkval tube. We’ve got to jettison it before it goes off.”
Orlov hurried to the forward port torpedo control console, finding the local operating station for the tube doors. Trusov joined him at the console.
“At least we have power here,” Orlov said. “That’s a good sign, right?”
Orlov rotated the master selector switch from “CENTRAL COMMAND” to “LOCAL CONTROL” and selected tube 5. He hit the fixed function buttons for the “VENT” and “FLOOD” valves, each one lighting up a red annunciator indicator light. A new annunciator lit up, this one reading “TUBE FLOODED.” He shut the vent valve and found the fixed function button for the valve marked “EQUALIZE.” This valve should open tube 5 to seawater pressure and allow the muzzle door to be opened. He glanced at Trusov.
“Let’s hope the hydraulics for this work.” He punched the fixed function button marked “OUTER DOOR—OPEN” and it flashed white. “So much for hoping.” The status panel of hull openings still showed a green bar over the label marked “TUBE 5 OUTER DOOR.” The muzzle door remained shut. The Shkval torpedo was trapped in the tube.
“Can we do a manual hand-crank to try to open the muzzle door, Trusov?”
Trusov nodded. “The emergency hydraulic system pressurization hand crank is centerline forward. Naumov, follow me.”
As Trusov turned from Orlov to find the hydraulic hand crank station, the Shkval torpedo in tube number five exploded into fiery incandescence, its pressurized fuel fire causing the three-hundred-kilogram high explosives to detonate inside the tube. The white-hot fireball blew Trusov and Naumov backwards into Orlov, and all three collapsed on the deck.
Orlov had been knocked unconscious by the blast and Naumov was stunned, looking like he barely knew where he was. Trusov sat half up and saw her worst twin nightmares—a huge blowtorch fire blowing into the room from forward at the same time as a tremendous roaring, pressurized jet of water was screaming into the room.
In a quiet part of her mind, where time had slowed down to a crawl, she was reminded of the old Russian submariner’s joke—Good news, Captain, the flooding put out the fire. A weak joke, since both fire and flooding were two of the gods of the sea’s evil henchmen, intent on killing any sailor bold enough or foolish enough to attempt to sail beneath the waves.
She could feel the deck incline downward as the mighty stream of floodwater filled the bilges, what must be double digit tons of water filling the first compartment. And unlike the submariner’s joke, no amount of water would put out a self-oxidizing weapon fuel fire. It would burn underwater.
There was no fighting this, Trusov thought. It was over. The mission of Novosibirsk had come to this moment. Either the remaining surviving crew went down with the crippled submarine, or she got the order out to abandon ship. With a struggle, she grabbed Orlov, who was still unconscious.
“Naumov! Help me get the captain out of the compartment!”
“We have to fight the fire! And the flooding!”
“It’s over, Naumov, now get the captain’s arm,” she hissed at the young torpedo officer.
Trusov and Naumov muscled Orlov through the latched-open hatch to the second compartment and pulled the hatch off the latch. With the angle of the ship downward, the hatch slammed shut hard against the seating surface. Trusov threw the lever to latch the hatch and stepped forward five meters to the communication station. She found a phone and punched the button for the central command post.
“First Officer,” Vlasenko’s voice said, over some severe background noise. There was shouting in the room.
Trusov looked at Naumov. “Mr. First, from the captain, emergency blow to the surface and prepare to abandon ship.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“We have massive flooding and a fire in the torpedo room and a weapon fuel fire. The first compartment is going to explode any minute. Unless you want Novosibirsk to be a second Kursk, you’ll follow the captain’s orders!” It would have been better if Orlov himself could have barked into the phone to Vlasenko, but it couldn’t be helped. There was no other choice, Trusov thought. If Orlov were awake, he’d give the same order.
The shipwide announcing circuit blasted through the ship with Vlasenko’s trembling voice. “This is central command. All personnel, prepare to abandon ship. I repeat, all personnel, prepare to abandon ship.”
As the speakers clicked off, Trusov could hear the sound of roaring coming from overhead. Hopefully that was high pressure air blowing the water out of the ballast tanks, she thought, and not more flooding. She struggled again to get Orlov to the stairs to the upper level, fighting against the down angle of the ship. Was it her imagination, or had the down angle eased?
It seemed to take endless minutes to get Orlov to the top of the stairs, and Trusov was soaked in sweat and hyperventilating at the top of the stairs. She looked at her coveralls and hoped the wetness represented sweat and not torpedo fuel. The coveralls were fire-resistant, but nothing could stop a fire from torpedo fuel. She and Naumov muscled Orlov aft into the forward door of the central command post, which was empty of crew but for Vlasenko. Fortunately, Orlov was returning to consciousness, his hand rising to his face as he looked up at the first officer. Trusov breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that now Vlasenko wouldn’t see that she’d lied about the orders to emergency blow and abandon ship coming from the captain.
“Status, Ivan?” Orlov croaked.
“We’ve emergency blown to the surface, Captain, but we still have a down angle and we must be taking on water in the first compartment. The escape chamber is ready and the crew—what’s left of them—are mustering at the lower hatch.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Orlov croaked. Trusov helped him get to the aft door of the room and into the passageway that led aft past the officers’ berthing rooms and the sonar equipment room to the ladder and lower hatch to the escape chamber, a large sphere faired into the conning tower, one of the reasons the conning tower was so long compared to the conning towers of other navy’s submarines. The chamber was designed to allow the entire crew of 60 to survive a submarine sinking. Vlasenko hit the hydraulic control lever to open the bottom hatch, which opened into the chamber. Trusov looked around, the crew numbering perhaps two dozen.
“Where’s Chernobrovin and the engineering crew?” she asked no one. Vlasenko and Orlov were pushing crewmen up the ladder into the hatch. As the overhead lights flickered, a massive explosion rocked the ship, from forward. The crew in the passageway were all thrown to the deck, a pile of bodies scattered around the lower hatch of the escape chamber. The lights went out, leaving them all in a coal mine blackness, just as the smoke came into the space.
“Trusov! Get into the chamber!” Orlov yelled.
“I can’t sir, I have to find the engineer and his men,” Trusov said, grabbing a battle lantern. She hadn’t anticipated Orlov physically picking her up and half tossing her upward into the chamber, Naumov assisting from below and Sonar Officer Vasilev pulling her up from inside.
But the gods of the sea had taken pity, because Engineer Chernobrovin and three of his men arrived in the smoke-filled passageway, emerging from aft, with visibility shrinking to less than three meters in the smoke. “I had to shut down the reactor, Captain, the control rods drives were shorting out, two were pulling themselves out of the core. We could have gone prompt critical.”
“It’s too late to worry about now, Kiril,” Orlov said, clapping the engineer on his shoulder. “We just need it to hold together long enough to detach the chamber.”
A second explosion sounded from forward and a blast of flames roared into the passageway. Orlov, Chernobrovin and his men barely made it into the hatch before the entire passageway was solid flames. Orlov and Vasilev pushed the hatch down and dogged it shut.
“Detach the chamber!” Orlov ordered. Naumov hit the emergency disconnect, and over a hundred explosive bolts fired, separating the chamber from the submarine.
“Did it work?” Trusov asked Chernobrovin. He looked at her, but it almost seemed that the light was going out of his eyes, but the answer came as Trusov could feel the chamber rocking in the waves on the surface. Someone high above was opening the upper hatch, and as fresh air poured into the ship, Chernobrovin suddenly vomited all over her.