“What is our depth?”
“We have more than one hundred meters beneath us, sir.”
“Distance to shallow water?”
“Ten, possibly eleven kilometers to shore, sir. Another five to six to fifty meters depth.”
“Turn the Whale toward shore.” He’d beach the Whale before he would allow this to set back the Soviet Navy in achieving atomic power.
Shouting came from below the XO. Gesny bent below the hatch. Anton caught some of the words, and a chill went up his spine.
“Captain, the damage control team is unable to reach the forward torpedo room. They are running hose from where the waters are reaching to here. The forward torpedo room is flooded. The watertight hatch leading from the torpedo room to the passageway running alongside the reactor was never closed.” Gesny paused, then said again, “It was never closed.”
Looking aft, Anton saw the stern of the Whale dip beneath the calm waters of the bay. Water was slowly covering the aft portion of the Whale.
“Blow the safety ballast!” Anton ordered. The safety ballast was filled with seawater along the bottom of the submarine. The safety ballast tank worked much like a keel on a surface ship. It helped to offset the clumsiness of a surfaced submarine against the wind, wave, and current actions of the sea. It also provided immediate weight for submerging.
Blowing the safety ballast may compensate for a time against the flooding, but it would make the Whale less maneuverable.
The sound of hydraulics and pressurized air blowing out the seawater vibrated through the boat.
“Turn to course zero niner zero; all ahead full!” he shouted. Would they make it?
“XO, use the low-pressure air blower and make sure we have every bit of water emptied from our ballast tanks.”
“Aye, sir.”
Seconds later, Anton heard the whine of the air blower pumping freezing air from the Arctic into the ballasts, blasting out the last of the water from the tanks. For a moment he worried that the air might actually freeze the water, but he quickly pushed it from his thoughts. The decision was too late to reverse.
The Whale started to turn. Atomic power providing the push needed to overcome the pull of the freezing water filling the forward end of the submarine. Would they make it? What would happen when the water reached the reactor? He imagined a mushroom cloud over Severomorsk. What would Elena say to that?
“Speed? What is our speed?”
Gesny’s head disappeared below. “We are making twelve knots, Captain!”
“I want all ahead full!” Surely atomic power can provide more than twelve knots, he thought.
“We are all ahead full, Captain. We are angled down by the stern. The atomic power is also fighting to keep us above the water, sir.”
“The safety ballast?”
“Nearly empty, but not much difference in angle, sir.”
Anton grabbed the microphone and passed along the bad news to Katshora. Katshora ordered the Soznatelnyy all ahead flank, intending to tow the Whale if needed.
Bleecker held the end of a copper wire in one hand while he stripped the insulation from it with his knife. He needed sixty copper lines to bypass the bad cells. Standing above him, Gled-hill watched.
Two electrician mates, Morgan and Garcia, worked their way opposite Bleecker, checking each cell along the starboard battery, reading the charge and pass-through before going to the next one methodically and professionally, as they had done so many times during their short careers.
Finished with this wire, Bleecker laid it on the deck alongside the others. He pulled another strip of wire off the roll, doing a rough measurement with his arms, and then cut it. He quickly shaved away the insulation on each end of the wire, did a quick look to ensure he was satisfied, then laid it alongside the others.
As he worked, Bleecker listened, but his concentration was on the wires and the next necessary steps to bypass the four damaged cells. If Fromley didn’t die, he may kill him himself.
One of the cells might be all right, but it held 25 percent less charge than the cells ahead of it. From the damaged cells to the aft bulkhead, every cell was barely charged. The electric shock to Fromley had discharged all the cells connected along this series. A dead cell took longer to recharge than one with some charge. Bleecker did not understand the physics of the matter, but any type of charge seemed to jump-start the process.
“Anything I can do, Lieutenant?” Gledhill asked.
“You’re already doing it, Petty Officer Gledhill. Keep answering the questions from the bridge. I hope to have the wires needed ready in the next ten minutes.”
“Will it work?”
“If it doesn’t, then let’s hope Russian is an easy language to learn.” He snapped the knife shut. “Check the air. What is the hydrogen level?”
He was bypassing the bad cells. If this worked, they should be able to reach a 90 to 95 percent charge quickly. That was as long as he could keep two of the diesels dedicated to charging. No way would they achieve 100 percent.
Gledhill checked the gauge. “Still high, Lieutenant. A little bit below four percent.”
“That’s a little better.” Bleecker looked at the hatch leading to the forward torpedo room.
He laid this latest wire along with the others on the deck. He stood and hurried toward the intercom, bumping Morgan on the way. Hitting the button, Bleecker called the control room.
When he finished explaining what he wanted to do, he returned to the wires lying on the deck. He picked up one and began connecting it to the plus terminal on the charged side of the damaged cells. The other end he connected to the negative terminal of a good cell. He glanced at the master safety switch. It was still off.
He could not start recharging until the hydrogen level was lower, even if the safety manual said anything below 4 percent was acceptable. Too many times those safety manuals were written by ass-sitting sailors whose sea time could be counted in days instead of years.
No, there was nothing he could do until the hydrogen level was down to about 1 percent. Nothing, that is, unless the skipper wanted to take a chance on an explosion. His head snapped up. There was one thing, but it was up to the skipper, and it wasn’t something submarines usually did in hostile waters. Especially when they were bolting for open ocean.
“Skipper!” Arneau shouted from the conning tower. “Bleecker wants to open the forward main hatch, sir. He has a reading of slightly under four percent hydrogen in the forward battery compartment and has to clear it.”
“Four percent!” Jesus Christ, the good news just keeps rolling in, Shipley thought.
Shipley looked at the forward main hatch. With this speed on, he had wakes coming up nearly level with the deck. He needed those batteries, but he needed to get through the narrows before the Soviets blocked the egress points. If water hit the batteries, he ran a risk of not only ruining the batteries but also filling the Squallfish with sulfur dioxide, which could kill everyone.
Anton shouted down the sound tube, “What is our depth reading?”
“Depth now showing eighty meters.”
That was twenty meters less, but still too deep. If the Whale was going to sink, he had to be in shallow water, where it could be recovered.
“Damage report?”
“Sir, we have rigged deflooding for the aft portion of the Whale, but it does not seem to be working. They are still rigging the hose toward us. They are going to have to run them up through the conning tower to the bridge and over the side.”