Gold’s mind was running through the system, combining all the various factors and scenarios. The alarm circuit was rigged to warn that the oil reservoir for the main termination box was running low, yet he himself had made sure it was topped up when the vehicle left the surface. Scorpio had already been down for an hour and a half. There hadn’t been any hard impacts on the machine while it had been submerged, so he couldn’t imagine it was down to recent trauma. Assuming it was a constant loss and not a recent breach, that meant it was losing oil at a fairly slow rate. If so, it would be another hour before enough oil had leaked away to allow the first drops of seawater inside. There was always the chance that something else was wrong – especially given his experiences in the last eight hours on the ship – but Gold decided to trust the instincts that had evolved over 12 years’ working with the vehicle.
‘Ignore it for the moment, Pete. Let’s keep cutting.’ Gold’s voice was pure Scottish calm, but inside his stomach was turning knots.
With the red light pulsing like an opened artery, Nuttall and Gold moved in on the fourth rope and at 13.25 they made the cut. Two more lines remained, though neither was as accessible as those that had gone before.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h
The last pieces of Commander Kent Van Horn’s gear were finally completing the tortuous two-stage loading process on to the American ship of opportunity, the Georgy Kozmin. Once they’d all been loaded, he expected that the Kozmin would cast off and leave in short order. But nothing happened. When he approached Captain Novikov with the attaché alongside him, he was informed that they were still ‘waiting for permission’.
Five hours before, the Americans had got personal confirmation from Vice-Admiral Avdoshin of the Russian main Navy staff that the Kozmin was cleared to leave as soon as loading was complete, but for at least half an hour they waited on the dockside. Van Horn was sitting in one of the staterooms of the Kozmin discussing technical issues with the Russian officers and obliquely trying to break the deadlock that was preventing them from leaving. The impression of those on board that the authorities were trying to restrain Novikov seemed increasingly likely; it wouldn’t be until 15.00 local time that the ship was finally allowed to cast off from the dockside. With the site at least four hours away, the chances that they would reach the trapped sailors while they were still alive were fading.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h
Standing on the bridge of KIL-27 with her beige raincoat wrapped tightly around her against the cold breeze, Tatiana Lepetyukha scanned the scene on the stern deck for clues as to what was happening. With her blonde hair and city clothes, she felt out of place, suddenly self-conscious about forcing herself on to the rescue ship. She’d been true to her word about not interfering, although she had not been able to restrain herself from putting a hand on one of the British sailors’ shoulders to say thank you for his work. He might not have been able to understand her, but that didn’t matter. She just needed to say it.
It was hard to tell what was happening from the postures of the foreigners as they crowded around the yellow cable that led to their machine, or from the faces of those going in and out of the control cabin. She badly wanted to get the latest news of the situation, but didn’t want to make more trouble by asking. The translator inside the robot’s control container was a friend of hers, but there was no way he could come out and give her a report at a time like this.
More transparent than the hard-to-read faces of the outsiders were those of the Russian Oxygen Rescue Team. They were preparing to treat her husband and the other sailors when – Tatiana’s inner voice promised her that it was when, not if – they were brought back to the surface. But the expressions of these medics were painful to watch, for every minute that passed they changed. It was just nerves, Tatiana told herself. The official Navy estimates of the remaining air supply were the ones that should be regarded, not the expressions of mere doctors.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h 15 mins
Nuttall was trying hard to work Scorpio into a position where he could get to the second-last line, but the filaments always somehow evaded the cutter’s jaws. Both remaining lines were pressed between AS-28 and the buoyancy chamber of the array, making them much harder to get at. They didn’t seem to be holding her too tightly, yet the submersible wasn’t moving. The air that had been blown into her ballast tanks in an effort to break free from the fishing nets before they had arrived had clearly leaked away.
With another attempt failed, Gold, Nuttall and Riches discussed their options. None of them liked the look of the ropes still apparently holding her, but there was insufficient room to manoeuvre Scorpio to get at them properly. With the oil level light still blinking insistently, Gold suggested that they should take a look around the stern of the submarine to try to get a better idea of what was still holding her.
Nuttall backed away from AS-28, and gently span Scorpio towards the stern.
‘Something’s definitely up with the thrusters, Stuart,’ he said. ‘It’s feeling very sloppy. Just not sure it’s the voltage.’ By now he was familiar with how the tugging of the umbilical from their loose platform felt, and it wasn’t that. He was getting a bad feeling about this.
As Scorpio drew level with the propeller housing, Nuttall applied some differential thrust to rotate back around to face towards the fin. Just at that moment, KIL-27 heaved on a passing swell and tugged Scorpio’s umbilical. Nuttall jammed on full opposite power, but it wasn’t enough, and the vehicle was tugged in towards the array. The submersible’s solid steel rudder frame had been clear by a good few feet, but they were suddenly careering towards it. The cutter arm, protruding from the front of the robot, took the impact. The image on the screen jolted, hard.
‘Oh shit,’ said Nuttall, still holding on the power to try to get some distance between Scorpio and the submersible. ‘Deck give me a full turn of slack!’
Gold disengaged the manipulator master arm and sprang forward to take a close look at the monitor. The V-shaped guide that protruded above the cutter’s jaw was made of two wide, flat pieces of aluminium. The one closest to the camera had bent forwards and now ran parallel with the other, rather than at ninety degrees. The cutter’s gape into which the cables had to be fed was now more like a tight-lipped grimace.
‘Not looking good, Pete,’ said Gold. ‘It’s bent right over. Not sure we’ll get anything in there now.’ He paused for a second, looking at the screen. Then he turned to Riches.
‘We’re going to have to recover Scorpio and sort this out. We’re useless otherwise. It’s a simple job to fix that, and it means we can take a look at the oil problem too. But it means we’re going to have to get ourselves back on deck. I reckon we can be back on site in about thirty minutes.’