Then the Russian officer demanded the same as he had of the UK team – a complete list of all equipment and its value. The request had caused enough problems with one C17 load of gear – for Van Horn to do the same thing with the contents of a C5 was a huge task. In many cases ascribing a value was also practically impossible – much of the kit that they carried was custom-made in the Navy workshops, or at least customised to such an extent that its worth was very difficult to gauge. Once more van Horn had to swallow his frustration and agree. He took one of the loading manifests and snatched figures out of the air to reach a wild estimate of the total. Once again, the customs man made him sign to guarantee that he would take it all out of the country when they were finished.
Behind him in the plane, frantic calls were being made to try to speed things along. The US Naval Attaché in Moscow eventually got through to Vice-Admiral Avdoshin, and finally, at 22.10, the C5 was cleared.
Saturday, 6 August
SS + 53 h 40 mins
Now the waiting was eating away at everyone. The lack of urgency from the Russians seemed doubly acidic given that seven of their fellow servicemen were enduring a slow, frozen suffocation. The looming crisis seemed to be making them slower and more bureaucratic. The central government was apparently taking this seriously – a few hours earlier the team had heard that Putin had despatched the Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, to Kamchatka – but progress on site was still glacial.
All of the team’s hard-won speed reaching Petropavlovsk had been wasted. It remained to be seen if the entire mission would be wasted too. The thought of facing the television cameras with that news made Riches’ stomach tighten. Beyond that, he could only have imagined how such a failure might feel. He could rationalise it all he liked, deflecting the blame onto others, but deep down he’d feel it had been his responsibility. The only thought that loosened the knot in his belly was that the advance party was down at the ship making preparations there.
The state of the vessel didn’t sound encouraging, but at least they were moving ahead where they could, planning and preparing the decks. All that was needed now was some equipment to put on them.
The team had congregated beneath the wings of the C17, and were drinking cups of tea and coffee to pass the time. Gold had instinctively turned on his phone when he arrived, and to his surprise found that it had picked up a signal. He called Susan and shared his frustration. They were in Russia, but paralysed. He’d been elated at the thought that the UK team was going to be first in line to pull off this rescue, but now their lead had evaporated. After he’d hung up and was back kicking his heels under the wing, he noticed some activity around one of the flatbed trucks. He went over to have a look, only to find several soldiers wrestling to change a flat tyre. Gold could hardly believe the state of the truck. The wooden deck of the flatbed was totally rotten with holes everywhere.
Half an hour later, while still waiting for the USAF C5 to clear customs, the clouds opened once more to reveal another transporter. This time it was a C17 like the RAF’s, looking like a toy compared to the bulk of the C5. The British team all watched with interest where it would be directed to park. It ended up on the same taxiway, but about a mile closer to the terminal buildings. The thinking was baffling. The aircraft was nearer to the British aircraft than their US counterparts in the C5.
It was a full two hours after the C5 had landed that Riches finally managed to persuade the Russian officers guarding them to take him to the American aircraft. With the northern sun finally set and darkness fallen, he walked up the stairs to the cavernous belly of the C5. He’d been preparing his arguments carefully, but after all this waiting he was sure that the US team would be reluctant to allow another delay to their own operation. To his relief the first person he met was Van Horn, but he’d forgotten how huge the American was. He felt like a Jack Russell facing a bull mastiff.
Riches tried to smile casually as Van Horn’s shook his hand in a bone crushing grip. He launched straight in. ‘Kent, we’ve got a problem,’ he said. ‘The Russians promised us they’d have a K-loader here for us. They don’t, and we’re stuck. We’ve already prepped our VOO [Vessel of Opportunity] and we’re all clear to go, but we just need to get our gear off. We’ve only got our single Scorpio and its kit, that’s it – your stuff will take twice as long to unload.’
Riches reminded himself to slow down. His words were coming out in a torrent, having been bottled up for two hours.
‘I need to borrow your K-loader. Half an hour is all I need. The C17 with your K-loader is parked closer to us than you. It can make the trip up towards us and be back with you in no time. We’ll get out to the incident site a few hours ahead. As you know, that might be the difference between life and death. What do you think?’
Van Horn’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. He’d brought along almost 40 people, partly in order to allow him to split his team into three sections who could all work on separate tasks at the same time. But his carefully choreographed plan was already stumbling over Russian inefficiencies and lack of equipment. There weren’t enough trucks to be able to transport their kit down to the docks in parallel with the British – everything had to be done in serial fashion, one after another. The Brits were well ahead with preparing their ship, and it was certainly true that the UK’s single Scorpio was going to be quicker to shift. Besides, he hadn’t even seen his ship yet.
But there was an important factor that was missing.
‘How are weather conditions on site, Ian?’
‘All our reports are that they are holding. It’s looking as good as it gets right now,’ Riches replied.
‘And projections for the next twenty-four hours?’
‘We’re still working on that,’ he said. The low pressure system that had hung over the airport was intensifying, but as yet there was no evidence that things would change out in the bay.
Van Horn nodded. Part of the reason that the US system was so much bulkier than the UK’s was that they had come with a much more heavyweight deployment system. The single Effer crane that the UK had brought to lift Scorpio in and out of the water would quickly be overwhelmed by bad weather. When recovering the ROV in a strong swell, the one-and-a-quarter tonne machine would be supported by a wave one second and left hanging in the air the next. The resulting ‘snatching’ created huge dynamic loads that had the potential to tear the lightweight crane apart and leave them without a way to bring the machine back on board.
The US Deep Submergence Unit had brought along a purpose-built mini-A-frame that was strong enough to deploy their larger Super-Scorpios (at 3.5 tonnes more than twice the weight of Scorpio) in conditions up to Sea State 4, with swells of up to two metres. If bad weather was going to be a factor then this could make the crucial difference, allowing them to launch successfully.
A few seconds later Van Horn nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If the sea’s looking good the right answer is that you take the K-loader first. But listen, we’ve got to run this past the Commodore first.’
Riches’ heart sank. They’d brought along a Commodore. This was presumably to have sufficient authority to match any high-ranking Russian officers – a Commodore was equivalent to a senior Russian Captain or even a junior Admiral. Like a game of chess, if a diplomatic situation arose you needed to be able to match powerful pieces with powerful pieces. The military hierarchy is persistent, and even if two nations are at war the relative superiority of ranks are mostly respected. But if the US had brought a Commodore without a detailed knowledge of submarine rescue he might not realise the benefits of letting the UK use the K-loader first, or even put political interests ahead of practical importance.