Riches asked the interpreter – who turned out to have been a student of English recruited from the local university – to explain that they were there to save Russians, military men like them. The translated version of his words seemed hardly to register. The British team were soon back inside the aircraft, the minutes ticking by as the Russian officers leafed through their passports and had long conversations over a handheld radio. Riches could feel his blood rising. There was still so much to do, and every minute mattered. The sailors had already been in their freezing coffin for 60 hours, and his team still had to offload the aircraft, get to the port, set themselves up on the ship and steam out to the site before they even started the business of trying to cut the submersible free.
A quarter of an hour later he was about to escalate the situation and demand to see a senior officer when he caught a glimpse of something familiar outside the aircraft. He turned to see a Royal Naval uniform coming up the ladder. When he looked up he immediately recognised Captain Holloway, Naval Attaché to Moscow.
‘Hello, Ian, fancy meeting you here,’ he said. ‘What seems to be the problem?’
Riches’ scowl eased as Holloway explained the hold-ups. ‘We’ll get this cleared up, we’ve just got to play the game a little,’ said Holloway before turning to his companion, a Liaison Officer from the Pacific fleet.
The customs and immigration staff had their own procedures to follow, and didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. When Holloway had arrived an hour and a half ago he’d been told he would be taken back to his hotel to rest after the flight. He’d refused and insisted on being taken directly to the military side of the airfield to meet the C17 on landing – a process that had taken him the entire time.
After several minutes of discussion, Holloway told Riches that nothing could be done until customs had been cleared. His eyes warned Riches to be patient. Later he recounted the bureaucratic nightmare he’d been through when trying to clear musical instruments for a Royal Marine band into Moscow for a performance. Many tonnes of military grade submersible hardware was a different league entirely.
Eventually the customs officer stepped on board, his face a caricature of an officious, poisonous character. He stepped around the inside of the aircraft, prodding and poking Scorpio and her supporting equipment, before demanding a manifest that listed the value of each item. Although equipment lists existed, they weren’t in one document, and certainly not with a value assigned. Seething, Riches scrawled a list out by hand on a scrap of paper, conferring with Gold to help make estimates of value.
Neither of them knew what it would be used for, but muttered under their breath that the Russians may be calculating the benefit of keeping it for themselves. When Riches handed over the completed – and barely legible – manifest, the customs official began making an announcement. Riches found himself staring incredulously as the interpreter finished the translation. If the team left anything behind on Russian soil once they had finished their business, he said, they would be fined based on the value of the items.
As the customs officer laboriously went through the manifest ticking off the items one by one, Riches called Neil Hopkins, one of his team at Abbey Wood, for an update. It was two thirty in the morning and he answered with a bleary voice, but he was up to date. Nothing much had changed: the submersible had not been rescued, and wildly different estimates of remaining air aboard AS-28 continued to pour out of various parts of the Russian military machine. Finally, he confirmed that the US Rescue Team were on their way and due in at about 20.15 local time, nearly two hours behind them.
While Riches was struggling with the customs officials, the load masters had been anxiously scanning the airfield apron around the airport looking for the lifting equipment they’d been promised by the Russians. To get Scorpio, its umbilical reel and the control cabin out of the C17 they needed a K-loader – a heavyweight version of the Atlas loaders that carry cargo containers at commercial airports. Designed as a flat bed covered with rollers whose height can be precisely adjusted, the K-loader could take the heavy equipment straight from the back of the C17’s cargo hold. Without one there was no easy way to unload without risking severe damage.
All they could see on the apron was one small crane, five flatbed trucks and a forklift. The crane was no good – the plane’s fuselage would prevent it from being able to reach anything inside. James Fisher Rumic kept a database of airports and airstrips with details of what equipment was available where, but in Russia the true state of facilities was hard to ascertain. Russian military transport aircraft like the Antanov 124 come equipped with an internal crane and gantry so that cargo can be offloaded at remote airfields with limited ground-based assistance. With a 1.5-metre drop between the back of the C17’s cargo bay and the concrete below, that suddenly seemed like a very good idea.
By 19.00 local time customs had finally been cleared, but there was still no sign of progress on finding a K-loader. Captain Holloway interrogated the ground crew, who shrugged. They had no K-loaders. There were Atlas-loaders over on the commercial side of the airport, but they are rated to less than a ton and would have collapsed under the weight of the containers. They claimed there was one around four hours away and it might be possible to send it up, but Holloway was doubtful that anything so far off could be achieved so quickly.
Rather than wait doing nothing, Gold suggested making a start by unloading Scorpio. It was closest to the back door and since it weighed only one and a quarter tons, the forklift should be able to get it out. It seemed a good idea, so the loadmasters slid it to the lip of the back door while Gold and the interpreter arranged for the forklift to receive it.
The yellow-and-red forklift was moved into place, its wheels were chocked, and the arms clattered upwards. Gold’s face was taut. As the pallet bearing Scorpio was rolled backwards and on to the arms, the forklift began sagging forwards. Then, just as it seemed to be holding the load, one of the side windows popped out and smashed on the concrete below. The Rumic crew all jumped in shock, but the Russians hardly blinked and Scorpio remained in the air. The drama over, the ROV was slowly lowered to the ground with a juddering motion and then moved close to the crane.
But as fast as they’d started, they stopped. There was nothing more they could do without a K-loader. The loadmasters – their pride at stake – began working up a plan to offload the containers straight on to the flatbed trucks using an improvised system of ropes and pulleys. Riches was in no doubt they’d get every thing out, but any damage to the equipment and the mission would be over. Squadron Leader Hewitt also had reservations: if the cargo door of his plane got damaged they might be stranded in Petropavlovsk until spares arrived, and that might take a very long time.
They’d flown 5,000 miles only to find that they couldn’t unload their equipment. Riches had told his superiors – and the press – that they could pull this off, but their timeline relied on the assumption that they could get hold of the equipment they needed. But they couldn’t and now they were stuck.
Riches called Neil Hopkins again, looking for any solutions to the problem. That’s when he was told that while he’d been in the air the US Navy had escalated its response. It had four aircraft currently inbound. Alongside the enormous C5 with the main crew, one C17 with two Atmospheric Diving Suits had been launched from Phoenix, Arizona, while another had been despatched from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington DC carrying a Deep Drone ROV and a generator in case of electrical issues. Both of these C17s were still several hours away from arrival.