Jack and Costas had arrived back in the Aquapods less than an hour before and had gone straight into conference with York and Howe. The storm that had been brewing up in the northern sky all morning was now making its presence felt, and Howe had activated the water ballast trimming system to keep the ship stable. It was an ominous development that heightened Jack’s anxiety about getting back underwater with maximum urgency, and all available hands were now huddled round the console as they attempted to troubleshoot the sinister presence that was blocking their way on the seabed.
“Akula is the NATO designation, Russian for shark. Kazbek is named after the highest mountain in the central Caucasus.” Katya walked over to the console, handing Jack a coffee with a smile. “The Soviet designation was Project 971.”
“How can you possibly know all this?”
The question came from a scientist named Lanowski who had joined Seaquest in Trabzon, a lank-haired man with pebble glasses who was eyeing Katya with evident disdain.
“Before studying for my doctorate I completed my national service as an analyst in the submarine warfare division of the Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Navy.”
The scientist fiddled with his glasses and was silent.
“We considered these the best all-purpose attack submarines, the equivalent of the American Los Angeles class,” she added. “Kazbek was laid down at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1988 and commissioned in early 1991. Only one reactor, contrary to western intelligence assessments. Four 650 millimetre and six 533 millimetre launch tubes for multiple weapons, including cruise missiles.”
“But it has no nuclear warheads,” York said firmly. “This is not an SSBN, a ballistic missile boat. What puzzles me is why the Russians were so fanatical about keeping the loss a secret. Most of the technology had been familiar to us since the type first appeared in the mid-eighties. Just before I left the Royal Navy I participated in a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty visit to the Northern Fleet sub base at Yagel’naya near Murmansk where we were given a guided tour of the latest Akula. We saw everything except the reactor room and the tactical operations centre.”
“An IMU team decommissioned an Akula I during the Vladivostok clean-up two years ago,” Costas added. “I personally dismembered it bit by bit.”
One of the crew spoke up. “What happened to Kazbek? Reactor malfunction?”
“That’s what we feared at the time.” Mustafa Alközen stepped out to address the group. “A meltdown would have precipitated a massive radiation leak, killing the crew and irradiating the sea for miles around. Yet the Turkish early-warning monitors detected no abnormal radiation in territorial waters.”
“A reactor failure anyway rarely results in meltdown,” York said. “More often it actually reduces radiation emission. And it’s not the end of the road. If the core can’t be reactivated there are always the auxiliary diesels as back-up.”
“What we’re about to see may answer the question.” Costas directed their attention to the video monitor above the console, where images taken from his Aquapod on the seabed had been downloaded. He aimed a remote control and fast-forwarded through a series of extraordinary scenes of the bull-sphinx and the pyramids until the shapes became less distinct. He stilled the video at a mass of tangled metal, the wreckage outlined in a halo of yellow where the floodlights reflected off sediment suspended in the water.
“The stern,” Costas said simply. “The propeller, or what’s left of it. The seven blades are intact but it’s sheared off at the shaft. That mess in the foreground is the lower stabilizer fin, and the distinctive high aft fin of the Akula class is visible above it.”
“Must have been a hell of an impact,” a crewman said.
“We checked out the eastern pyramid just before we surfaced,” Costas continued. “There’s extensive damage to the masonry at the corner opposite the volcano. Our guess is the sub was making south-west at its maximum speed of over thirty knots and detected these structures too late for evasive action. They avoided a head-on collision by swerving to port but in doing so crashed the stern into the pyramid, with the results you can see. The sub carried on for another hundred metres until its bow jammed into a cleft just ahead of the ancient stairway. It sank upright between the pyramid and the volcano.”
“Incredible,” York said. “It would have been sheer madness to travel at speed so close to an island so poorly charted.”
“Something went badly wrong,” Costas agreed.
“As far as we can tell there were no survivors,” York continued. “Yet even at a hundred metres the crew would have stood a chance using the Soviet version of the Steinke-hood life jacket and breathing apparatus. Even a single floating corpse would have been detected by satellite monitors from the miniature radio transmitter incorporated in the hood. Why didn’t they eject a SLOT buoy, a submarine-launched one-way transmitter? The hull’s even more baffling. You say the damage is external and there’s no evidence the casing was breached. Why didn’t they blow the ballast tanks? The Akula is double-hulled, with three times the reserve buoyancy of a single-hulled boat.”
“All good questions.” Jack moved out of the shadows where he had been quietly listening. “And we may well find answers. But we must stick to our objective. Time is running out fast.”
He moved in front of the group beside Costas and scanned the faces intently.
“We’re here to find the heart of Atlantis, not to restart the Cold War. We believe the text is leading us inside that volcano, up the processional way from the bull-sphinx towards some kind of sanctuary. The stairway continues under the submarine but not beyond it. We checked.”
He put his hands on his hips.
“Our objective lies beneath a metal cylinder one hundred and eight metres long, weighing nine thousand tons. We have to assume the ballast tanks can’t be vented. Even if we had the equipment to shift the submarine, our activities would be obvious on the surface and the Russians would be onto us like a shot. Any attempt to get outside help and we’d lose the initiative. Atlantis would become a free-for-all for Aslan and his band of looters. The images of the site you’ve just seen would be our last.”
He paused and spoke slowly.
“We have only one option. We’re going to have to get inside and cut our way through to the rock face.”
“Depth seventy-five metres and dropping. We should be entering visible range now.”
Katya peered through the Plexiglas porthole to her left. What at first seemed impenetrable gloom gradually revealed itself as a seascape of massive shapes and shadows. The dark hull of the sunken submarine suddenly loomed ahead in all its awesome magnitude.
Costas pulled back on the steering column and turned to his co-pilot. “Jack, get ready with the landing gear. Prepare for a jolt.”
Katya was sitting beside two crewmen and a mass of equipment in the central fuselage of the DSRV-4, the deep submergence rescue vehicle which was standard on all IMU Sea-class vessels. The floor in front held a universal coupling which could be mated with the escape hatch of virtually any submarine, allowing trapped sailors to be removed in batches of eight or ten. The crewmen had been making final adjustments to the generic docking collar to fit the Russian SSN.
Twenty minutes earlier they had glimpsed their last of Seaquest as her wavering silhouette receded in the turbulent waters above.
“Coming about 180 degrees due south. Making my depth 95 metres.”
There was a dull thump as they came to rest on the submarine’s forward casing. Ahead of them rose the bulk of the conning tower, the periscope and antenna array just visible in the floodlight above the dark portholes of the bridge. For the first time they could appreciate the immense size of the submarine, almost twice the tonnage of Seaquest and as long as a football pitch.
Costas looked over at Jack. “The Akula class was the quietest sub the Soviets ever designed. It’s got an anechoic coating, thin tiles of rubber on the outer casing designed to absorb active sonar pulses. That’s why we didn’t make
a bigger bang when we landed. It also makes it easier to grip the casing using the hydraulic suction cups on our landing gear.”
He eased the control stick forward and the DSRV bounced a few metres closer to the fin. As he dropped down again the entrance to the escape trunk came into view.
“Just as York suspected. The trunk’s closed and sealed. Any attempt at escape and it would have been open.”
Costas had calculated that the ancient stairway would be under the torpedo room near the nose cone, making the forward escape hatch their nearest access point. Katya had explained that even in a low-level emergency the bulkheads would have automatically sealed off the reactor from the forward operational area, leaving no way of accessing the torpedo room from the aft hatch.
“Gently as she goes.”
Costas had been using the digital navigational display to align the DSRV with its objective. A moment later there was a satisfying thud as the docking ring settled over the escape hatch. He switched off the navigational array and flipped up four handles on either side of the joystick, bringing the DSRV down flush with the deck and engaging the stabilizing legs with their suction feet.
“Have soft seal. Docking secured.”
He undid his seatbelt and craned round to address Katya and the two crewmen.
“Let’s rehearse the drill one last time. The deep-penetration sonar on the ROV suggests the forward part of the submarine remains watertight. The rest we’re unsure about because the reactor and other machinery fills much of the internal space, but it could also be dry.”
He crawled towards the coupling array, Jack following closely behind.
“Directly beneath us is the forward escape trunk,” he continued. “In a wet escape crewmen climb into the chamber and don their rebreathers. The lower hatch closes, the trunk fills up and the crewmen escape through the upper hatch.”
“And a dry escape?” Katya asked.
“The DSRV couples directly with the outer escape hatch,” Costas replied. “In the modified Akula I the hatch is set two metres into the hull, creating an additional outer chamber which acts as a safety measure for the rescue crew. With our own hatch shut we can couple with the hull, open the casing hatch, pump the outer chamber dry and open the escape hatch two metres below with a robotic arm. We then use the DSRV’s external sensor array to test the interior environment without actually exposing ourselves to it.”
Costas nodded at the crewmen and they set about securing the seal. After manually locking the ring they crawled to the aft part of the submersible and sat side by side at a small console. With the flick of a switch the covering over the hatch in front of Katya retracted into the DSRV’s hull casing, revealing a concave Plexiglas dome which lit up as a floodlight activated and the crewmen set about decoupling the submarine’s hatch. A few moments later there was a sharp hiss as the seawater inside the chamber was pumped out and replaced with air from one of the DSRV’s external high-pressure cylinders.
“Chamber evacuated and equalized,” one of the crewmen said. “Activating robotic arm now.”
Katya squeezed in between Costas and Jack for a better view. Below them they could see a thin tube terminating in a grapple-like device, its movement controlled by one of the crewmen using a small joystick and navigation screen.
“It works by pressure differential,” Costas explained. “We’ve filled the chamber with air at ambient barometric pressure, the same as inside the DSRV. We hook that arm to the hatch, ratchet it up to exert some pull, then slowly decrease the pressure in the chamber until it’s lower than the submarine. Then bingo, it springs open.”
They watched as the robotic arm disengaged the safety lock and clenched the central handle, the shaft straightening as tension was applied. The crewman at the far end of the console was concentrating on a screen which gave him a close-up view of the casing.
“Pressure one bar. Reducing now.” He cracked open a valve on a pipe above him and activated an extractor pump which drew air out of the chamber.
“Point nine five bar. Point nine zero. Point eight five. Point eight zero. Now!”
As he snapped the valve shut they could see the hatch waft up as if it were riding a wave. The arm automatically retracted and pulled the hatch taut against the side of the chamber. They could see through into the bowels of the submarine, the floodlight dancing off piping and bulkheads in the passageway below.
“Pressure point seven nine five bar.”
“About what I expected.” Costas looked at the crewmen. “Give me full environmental specs before we compensate.”
A sensor array incorporating a gas spectrometer, a Geiger counter and a radiation dosimeter was lowered into view from the external pod.
“Radiation dose zero point six millirems per hour, less than you get in an airliner. General toxicity level moderate, with no indication of significant gas or chemical leakage. High ammonia content probably due to organic decay. Oxygen eight point two per cent, nitrogen seventy per cent, carbon dioxide twenty-two per cent, carbon monoxide zero point eight per cent, a little risky for prolonged exposure. Temperature plus two degrees Celsius.”
“Thanks, Andy.” Costas looked wryly at Jack. “Stepping in there now would be like landing on top of Everest in tropical kit with a mouthful of rotten eggs.”
“Wonderful,” Jack said. “Why is it this kind of thing always happens when you take the lead?”
Costas grinned and looked back at the console. “Andy, compensate to ambient using pure oxygen and engage CO2 scrubbers.”
There was a sharp hiss as the DSRV began to bleed oxygen into the hatch from its external gas cylinders.
“The Akula class has its own scrubbers,” Katya said. “If we could activate them they’d do the job for us. There’s also a unit that breaks down seawater to release oxygen. These subs can stay down for months at a time with air that’s cleaner and better oxygenated than on the surface.”
Costas wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at her. “It would take too long. The battery which powered those systems would have depleted within a few months of the auxiliary diesel shutting down, and I’d prefer to save the DSRV battery for reactivating the emergency lighting. Our own scrubber incorporates carbon monoxide and hydrogen burners as well as a range of chemical filters.”
A voice broke in from the console. “We’ve reached ambient pressure. In ten minutes the scrubbing cycle will be complete.”
“Right,” said Costas. “Time to kit up.”
They wore close-fitting E-suits, all-environment shells of Kevlar-reinforced crushed neoprene which were an amalgam of the latest diving drysuits with US Navy SEALs chemical and biological warfare gear. Wrapped round their calves were flexible silicon fins which could be pulled down over their feet underwater.
Costas quickly briefed them as he clipped on his straps. “We should be able to breathe safely but I suggest we wear full-face masks anyway, as the regulators will moisturize and warm up the air as well as filter out residual impurities. There’s a supplemental oxygen feed which kicks in as soon as the sensor detects atmospheric depletion.”
The mask was a silicon-enriched helmet which conformed closely to the shape of the face. After finalizing his own gear, Jack helped Katya don her self-contained life support system, a streamlined polypropylene backpack which contained a compact oxygen rebreather, a multi-stage regulator and a triple set of titanium-reinforced cylinders pumped up to eight hundred times barometric pressure. The IMU cylinders were ultralight and slimline, weighing less than a single old-fashioned scuba set and ergonomically designed so they were hardly aware of the extra bulk.
On their wrists micro-consoles displayed full environmental data as well as computations for a range of breathing mixtures from the helium, oxygen and nitrogen in the cylinders. The gas was mixed automatically, the computer taking account of depth, dive profile, temperature and even individual physiology.
“The intercom should allow us to communicate with the DSRV,” Costas said. “Switch it on wh
en you activate the SCLS system just before we go in.”
After they had double-checked each other, Jack took down a 9-millimetre Beretta 92FS from a shelf above the hatch. He slammed a fifteen-round magazine into the butt and sealed the pistol in a waterproof holster with a spare magazine on his chest.
“Standard equipment.” He glanced reassuringly at Katya, remembering their conversation the night before about the risks involved. “You can never be too safe in this game.”
“Dr. Howard. Urgent message from Seaquest.”
“Put it on audio.” Jack snapped open his visor and took the mike from the crewman. “This is Howard. Over.”
“Jack, this is Tom.” The voice was crackling with static. “That weather front has finally hit us. Violent electrical storms, visibility down to fifty metres. Storm force ten and rising. Far worse than I feared. I cannot hold present position so close to the island. I repeat, I cannot hold present position. Over.”
The urgency in his voice was absolutely clear despite the disturbance.
Jack clicked the reply button. “What’s the forecast? Over.”
“One of the biggest fronts ever recorded at this time of year. Your chance to abort is now. Over.”
The DSRV was too large to be deployed through Seaquest’s inner berth and instead had been swung out over the stern davits. The experience had given them a sharp appreciation of the perils of returning in rough seas.
“What’s the alternative? Over.”
“You’d be on your own for twenty-four hours. I intend to take Seaquest north twenty nautical miles behind the front and then follow it back south. Over.”
“There’s no way the DSRV could follow Seaquest that far underwater,” Costas muttered. “The battery’s designed for life support during rescue operations and would only power us a couple of miles before draining.”
Jack paused before raising the mike. “Tom, give us a moment. Over.”
In the brief silence Jack looked at the others and received a nod from each of them. Andy and Ben were IMU veterans, Andy a submersibles specialist who was Costas’ chief technician and Ben a former Royal Marine who had served in the Special Boat Section before joining Peter Howe’s security department. Both men would follow Jack anywhere and were deeply committed to the goals of IMU.
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