“We need to jettison that Shkval!” Pacino shouted to Varney and Ahmadi, his voice muffled by the air mask.
“Tube six’s outer door is jammed,” Varney shouted back, his voice strained and difficult to understand from behind his gas mask. “Probably from whatever we hit when we surfaced.”
“Did you flood the tube?”
“Internal tube pressure is too high, Patch! We had to vent the tube to the compartment atmosphere to lower pressure, but the torpedo must be on fire inside and it’s boiling what water is in the tube with a higher pressure than the seawater side.”
“Let’s get a firehose and hook it up to the outlet of the tube drain valve and flush the tube that way. That could cool it down.”
“Patch,” Varney said, exasperated, “there’s no way to flange a firehose into the drain piping!”
“You got duct tape?” Pacino asked. Varney nodded. “Then you got a way. Meanwhile, I’m going to central — I’ll get the boat down to test depth. The pressure will help flood the tube. Just watch the depth gauge and be ready to shut the drain valve, vent valve and turn off the hose when we get to thirty meters. If we get lucky, the outer door might be able to be opened when we’re deep.”
Pacino ran aft to the compartment hatch, and opened it and ducked into the second compartment. Chiefs Goreliki, Albanese and Kim were standing by, all in gas masks, their eyes wide and questioning. “Chiefs,” Pacino ordered, “get in there and get a firehose nozzle duct taped to the tube six drain piping, use an entire goddamned roll of duct tape, I don’t care, and get that hose pressurized and flood that tube! Lieutenant Varney is in charge at the scene.”
The chiefs ducked through the circular hatchway while Pacino ran aft to the ladderway, up the stairs to the upper level, past The Million Valve Manifold into central control. He was puffing hard from the exertion as he plugged his hose into a manifold over pos two.
“OIC, submerge the boat to test depth. We need the pressure to help us flood tube six.”
“Grip, all ahead full, turns for twelve,” Dankleff barked at Aquatong at the ship control station, “right full rudder, steady course three-three-zero, and ten-degree dive on the bowplanes. Patch, open the ballast tank vents.”
Pacino ran to The Million Valve Manifold and operated the valves controlling the ballast tank vents, getting the forward vents open. Pacino could hear the blasting noise of the venting, louder than the dull roar of what had to be the burning of the supertanker. He operated the valves to open the aft vents.
The deck had started to tilt downward, more every second. The deck was inclined downward twenty degrees and getting steeper. He could hear the hull above him and around him groan as the pressure of the deep sea squeezed it. In the central command post, Dankleff stood overlooking Grip Aquatong at the ship control station while holding a phone up to his fireproof hood. He saw Pacino and hung up the phone.
“They’re flooding tube six, or trying to, and that bitch of a Shkval is boiling every ounce of water they’re putting in there. It’s filling the compartment with steam and the pressure is rising. I doubt you could open the hatch to get in there now.”
“We can vent it to the second compartment if we have to. Is there still smoke?”
Dankleff picked up the phone again and dialed the torpedo room. “Varney, do you still have smoke?” Dankleff nodded. “Okay, good.” He looked at Pacino. “No more smoke and the tube’s not red-hot anymore. I think we’re safe to ditch the breathing air. Better save it for some future casualty.”
“God forbid,” Pacino said, removing his hood. The air in central control was hot and stuffy and smelled of smoke.
“Three hundred meters,” Aquatong said, pulling up on the control yoke and flattening the ship’s angle.
Dankleff picked up the shipwide announcing microphone. “All hands, discontinue use of emergency air breathing apparatus with the exception of the torpedo room.”
Pacino grabbed the phone and dialed up the torpedo room.
“Torpedo room, Varney.” His voice was still distorted by the air mask.
“We’re deep, try to open tube six and report,” Pacino said. He waited and found Dankleff looking at him, holding up his hands with his fingers crossed. Pacino nodded and listened to the background noise of the torpedo room, suddenly hearing a cheer in the room.
“Tube six door is open!” Varney yelled. “Trying to eject the Shkval now.”
“Tube door’s open,” Pacino said to Dankleff. Dankleff shot him back a thumbs-up.
The deck jumped as the tube was fired from forward.
“Tube six fired,” Varney said over the phone. As Pacino opened his mouth to congratulate Varney, an explosion sounded from forward and tossed him to the deck. On the way down, Pacino hit his face on the pos two console’s horizontal section and the room went black.
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev’s eye had gotten so bad that pus was starting to leak out from behind the eye patch. First, it caught the attention of First Officer Lebedev, then Navigator Maksimov, both who turned from their consoles to fuss about him, but he’d waved them off, absorbing the stream of foul-smelling liquid with a wadded-up amount of tissue paper from a roll that hung on a special holder in between his console and the center console. But Lebedev had evidently called the medic, because Chief Ship Petty Officer Chaykovsky hurried up to Alexeyev’s station and bent to talk to him.
“Let me see, Captain,” he said quietly, holding up a flashlight. Alexeyev nodded and the doc pulled up the eye patch and shone his light into Alexeyev’s eye. Alexeyev didn’t see the light. “Captain, it’s totally infected. You could lose your eye. You need an immediate medical evacuation.”
“Doc, are you even aware of what’s going on here?” Alexeyev pulled out the soaked gauze under his patch and tossed it into a small garbage kit at his knee under the console, and wadded up more of the tissue paper to stuff under the eye patch. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have ten torpedoes inbound, any one of which ends our day in a very nasty fashion.”
The medic stood erect. “Yes, Captain. Sorry, Captain.” Chaykovsky sniffed the air. “Captain, with you turning off all atmospheric control equipment, we only have hours before the carbon dioxide levels got completely toxic, and not to mention our oxygen levels are down. Do you feel the drowsiness? Drowsiness, in the middle of a fight?”
“Look at the bright side, Doc. If the oxygen level is low, it won’t sustain a fire. And the drowsiness is actually helping us. Otherwise the crew’s level of adrenaline would be causing near-panic right now. Even in me.”
“If you say so, sir. Good luck to you.”
“May God look kindly on us all today, Doc,” Alexeyev said as the medic left. He looked at his console, which showed the output of the high frequency under ice and mine detection sonar, which was showing — or trying to show — what was happening with the incoming torpedoes, but the unit was good at short range, not far distant, and if a torpedo got close, it would be all over anyway.