She couldn’t sit still, so she decided to go over to see Yelena Milachevskaya again. The pilot’s wife was getting regular updates on the situation from headquarters over the phone. It was such a good information conduit that Latypova had been using it to inform her half-hourly updates to Interfax and her own newsroom at STS-Kamchatka.
Latypova found Yelena sitting in a chair, her hand resting on the telephone receiver. She was drowsy from her drugged sleep, but Latypova could still feel the panic that gripped the woman. The phone had been silent for too long, Yelena fretted. Something had happened that they didn’t want to tell her. Already she could feel Slava was close to the end, she said. The journalist put a hand on her shoulder and tried to calm her. They’re probably just busy, she said. After all, there was no reason to think anything had gone wrong.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 69 h 35 mins
Gold stood on deck, patiently waiting to usher Scorpio back on to the ship. Nuttall had retreated the robot a safe distance from the array then brought it back to the surface, and now was relying on Gold to guide him back in towards the lifting point.
Charlie Sillet was getting himself prepared on the crane, ensuring the boom was perfectly positioned with the catcher unit ready to be lowered. Will Forrester, the umbilical drum operator, was gradually taking in the slack on the winch. He didn’t want it snagging, but he didn’t want to drag the vehicle by its tail either. Damage to the umbilical was the last thing they needed right now. Problems in the 900-metre cable were tough to find at the best of times and even tougher to fix, especially in a hurry.
Nigel Pine had disappeared into the workshop, housed in the other half of the control cabin container, on a hunt for some aluminium plate that could be used to replace the bent cutter guide. He and Alan Hislop had soon set out the tools and materials and cleared a workspace, and now stood out of the way. They all waited like mechanics in a Formula One pitstop. Each of the six engineers would tackle a different task: Pine and Forrester would take the bent cutter guide, Sillet and Hislop would be on the oil problem, and Nuttall would give the vehicle a quick once over looking for other potential problems. Gold would be there, overseeing as the pit boss, while Dave Burke stood by ready to help if anything else came up.
Watching Scorpio close in on the ship to the accompaniment of the umbilical winch’s groan, Gold prayed that there were no unpleasant surprises waiting for him. He guided the robot in beneath the catcher unit, which engaged with a clunk, and Sillet began to lift it clear of the water.
Nuttall cut the power and scrambled out of the control cabin. The Alsatian appeared in front of him, jolting his mind back to the fact that he was on a Russian vessel above a top-secret military installation. He could feel the eyes of the foreign crew on him as he strode over to Scorpio, adding to the pressure.
Sillet lifted Scorpio across to the workspace, and as it swung over the deck six pairs of arms reached out to steady it. Gold was already peering inside at the oil termination box, while the others were shooting glances at the cutter guide, confirming their tasks.
When Scorpio finally hit the rope padded deck, all six engineers sprang into action. Pine began unbolting the bent cutter guide. Replacing it was the only option – bending it back would weaken the aluminium, increasing the risk of it deforming a second time. He’d already cut the replacement plate to size; all that remained was to use the bent one as a template to drill the mounting holes, and it could be refitted.
Sillet released the pressure seal cap of the oil reserve. It was almost at the bottom. He and Hislop began carefully tracing back down the lines, looking for telltale traces of oil. When he got to the main termination box he ran a finger around the edge, his finger tip expertly gauging the gap and feeling for any bulging of the rubber O-ring that sealed it.
Nuttall was checking the thrusters. Although it was probably the low voltage and the motion of the ship causing the bad handling he’d been experiencing, he wanted to rule out any other causes. When he got to the port lateral thruster, he did what he’d done to all the others and took the blades in his palm and tried to spin the propeller, checking for the usual resistance in the hydraulic system. There was none – it span freely. The shear pin had gone. It was that simple. He could pull the propeller straight off. That was lucky, he thought. They could easily have lost it, or, worse, it could have jammed in place. He jogged back to the workshop and fished out a new shear pin. Five minutes later he had slid it into position and crimped it, binding the propeller to its shaft once more. He checked all the thrusters again, and confirmed that propulsion was good to go.
Sillet had found no major leak. The pressure on the seabed – more than 20 tons per square metre – must have forced some of the oil back up the umbilical. It was a fairly common problem, especially if the vehicle hadn’t been deep for a while. He powered the hydraulics up to full pressure and could see no sign of a drip. There would have to be a major leak to empty the newly filled reservoir in the few hours they’d need to remain on the site, so he stepped back from Scorpio, his fix also finished.
Twenty minutes had passed, and Pine and Forrester were making the final twists to the bolts holding the new cutter guide on to the cutter arm. At 14.30 they too stepped away from Scorpio and Nuttall turned on the power once more, flashed the lights and spun the thrusters. Everything worked. Sillet lifted the vehicle back up off the deck and at 14.35 it was back in the water, heading back to the array and to the seven men still trapped against it.
The Russians were smiling again. Unbeknown to the UK rescue team, someone aboard the command ship took Scorpio’s return to the water as evidence that the rescue was now certain, for the Georgy Kozmin carrying the American team and their Super-Scorpios was turned back to port. The online ISMERLO forum of submarine rescue experts erupted in horror, for the safety net of the backup system had just been removed. Admiral Roughead put in an urgent call to Vice-Admiral Avdoshin, but all his calls for the American team to be allowed to continue to the site were refused.
On KIL-27, the team knew only too well that the rescue was not over yet. Scorpio might be back in the water, but they still had a job to finish.
Sunday, 7 August
SS + 70 h 35 mins
Nuttall was more comfortable approaching AS-28 second time around. The bulk of the array on the sonar didn’t unsettle him, but beckoned him instead. He felt refreshed after the break from the screen, ready to finish the cutting. But as Scorpio crested the array and looped over to examine the remaining bonds keeping AS-28 lashed to the apparatus, his heart started to sink. He couldn’t see anything substantial holding the submersible there, yet it was still there, unmoving. Why hadn’t the submersible tried to shift? He was getting a bad feeling about this. Looking at the remaining cables, he wasn’t sure how many more he was going to be able to cut.
He manoeuvred Scorpio in close to the striped hull. The front-camera monitor was now flashing into colour every so often, showing the stripes to be a deep red. The upper surfaces of the craft were now littered with the debris of barnacles scraped off the floatation chamber of the array by Scorpio’s movements.