Riches turned to Podkapayev and relayed the news. He didn’t like it. Riches tried to explain that there was no other option, but Podkapayev was shaking his head vigorously before he’d finished. He began jabbering in Russian and chopping with his hands. The interpreter reported that he was saying that under no circumstances could Scorpio be recovered now and that it had to stay down to finish the job.
Gold, Nuttall and the deck crew were doing their job with calm professionalism. Riches felt the need to give them the space to continue. Podkapayev was evidently caught in a tricky position, with the nation’s Defence Minister only a few dozen metres away from him expecting him to control the situation. But there was too much at stake here – the time it would take for the Minister to rubber-stamp the recovery of the ROV could be the difference between the mission’s success or failure, between life and death.
There was one more thing they could do before bringing her up. ‘Stuart, we’ve cut four lines now,’ Riches said. ‘Why don’t we give her a nudge and see if there’s anything still holding her?’
Gold shrugged. ‘Right you are, Commander,’ he said. ‘Get yourself off the starboard side of that prop housing there, Pete, give her a shove.’
Nuttall nodded, and carefully approached the stern of AS-28 until Scorpio’s skids were rubbing against the submarine’s casing. Then, applying a burst of full power, he tried to push the trapped vehicle away from the array. To his surprise the submarine began to shift, swinging away from the steel float. But after only a metre or so it stopped, and swung back in, pivoting on the bow. One or more of those lines were still holding her in place.
Gold, Nuttall and Riches looked at one another. It was clear what was needed.
‘It’s no good, Dmitriy,’ Gold said. ‘We are going to have to recover.’
Once more Podkapayev began protesting, but after only the briefest of confirmatory glances between Gold and Riches, Nuttall was already pulling up and away from AS-28 and instructing the deck crew to take in a wrap of umbilical and prepare for recovery. Podkapayev frantically started calling on his radio to the command ship, his face reddening.
Outside on deck, Captain Jonathan Holloway sensed the change in mood before he heard what had happened. When he saw the winch begin to start reeling in the umbilical, he began to notice movements among the Russian crew members on board both KIL-27 and the nearby Alagez. The lady he’d seen watching the proceedings from the bridge had buried her face in her hands. It never occurred to him that this might be the wife of one of the stricken crew, let alone the Captain’s.
Once he’d heard the cause of the disturbance, Holloway’s knowledge of the Russian mindset began to burrow into his thoughts. If the repair took too long, it was possible that they would lose confidence in the foreign equipment, and suddenly decide to try something else instead. That would not only be a disaster for the UK team, but also possibly for the seven men stuck 200 metres below them.
Meanwhile the American divers and doctor were agitating for a role. They were feeling as disconnected as Holloway, only they had the tools and training to be feeling the need for practical involvement. They changed from their camouflage slacks and big dark jackets into diving dry-suits. The depth of the submersible was too great for them to reach without special gas mixes and a decompression chamber at the very least, but they wanted to be in the rescue launch and be ready to get in the water as soon as it surfaced. Holloway relayed the messages, but with predictable results. The Russians said they had their own divers. Reading between the lines, they weren’t keen to have another piece of the rescue taken from their hands, and especially not by the Americans. With the Defence Minister, Ivanov, watching their every move, the more they could do themselves, the better.
A subtle mistiness in the air was beginning to solidify into a distant fog, and the sea was starting to stir. The long, low swell had grown imperceptibly and the previously oily surface was now ruffled with occasional flecks of white. The low-pressure system that had been forecast looked like it was finally arriving.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h 30 mins
When the news came through the underwater telephone that the British robot was damaged, a cold feeling took root in Sergei Belozerov’s stomach. The controller’s voice said that the estimated repair time was only 30 minutes, but his long experience of working with machinery and the sea told him different. If it was such a simple thing, why didn’t they just continue and fix it afterwards. There wasn’t much that could be fixed in 30 minutes. And, anyway, the same controller had told them that the Venom ROV had only had a small problem and yet it never came back. There was no reason to believe that this would be any different.
All of them were now slipping in and out of consciousness. Sleep was welcome when it came for it brought relief from the sodden grip of the cold, but muffled alarms rang in their minds. Their fuzzy thoughts could hardly remember the warnings about the seductive lure of slipping into the deadly, silken arms of carbon dioxide. All they knew is that it was better than the choking, carbon monoxide-laced smoke that would accompany fire in the compartments.
It was not just the crew of the Kursk that had suffered this agony. Back in 1989, the Komsomolets – an experimental submarine with a titanium hull strong enough to take her to a depth of 1,500 metres – was hit by an electrical fire after a short circuit in the aft compartment. The submarine surfaced during the battle to contain the blaze, and its reactor scrammed and shut down. Fifty-nine men managed to abandon ship, but many of these drowned because there were too few lifeboats to take them all. The Commanding Officer and four others were still on board when the submarine slipped back beneath the surface and began plummeting to the seabed 1,680 metres below. The five men climbed inside an escape pod mounted in the fin and ejected, but the pod had already filled with toxic gases from the fire, and all but one died inside.
Gasping for air – but thankfully not choking on it – Milachevesky raised the spanner and slowly tapped three times against the hull, signalling that they’d received the message that the robot was leaving them. Although they were still receiving communications on the underwater telephone, they’d stopped using it for replies. Transmitting used too much power, and they had little to report that couldn’t be answered with a yes or a no. Hammering on the hull was exhausting, but it was better than draining the batteries.
Before the last clang had finished reverberating through the hull, the comforting murmur of the foreign robot had already begun to recede. The sailors were left in silence again, more conscious than ever of the clock that was ticking, entirely beyond their control.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h 30 mins
Guzel Latypova was exhausted. She’d been up all night following the arrival of the international rescue teams, standing in the rain with her camera crew waiting for the aircraft to unload, then again down on the docks as the Americans were methodically loading their gear. Now everything had gone quiet, but it wasn’t an easy calm. The key drama of this whole story was being played out, but she wasn’t there to witness it. Despite all her efforts, only a television crew from the federal TV news agency had been allowed to join the fleet at the accident site.