He looked at the wires on the deck and then at the battery. “Should take about another forty minutes to finish,” he said. “Want me to pass that along?” Gledhill asked.
Bleecker shook his head. He had told them an hour. If he finished in forty minutes, then everyone would be happy. He squatted back down alongside the damaged cells. They would be outside Kola Bay on the surface with another twenty to thirty minutes to go before the forward battery room would be fully charged. The skipper was going to want to submerge as soon as they passed the narrows. Damn, he wanted to submerge now. What’s the purpose of a submarine if you couldn’t submerge? “Okay, everyone out of here but me.”
“I’m staying,” Gledhill said.
“You heard me, LPO; get your butt out of here.”
“Lieutenant, you are going to have to throw me out.”
“Me, too,” Morgan said.
“And me,” Garcia added with a Spanish accent.
“You’re nuts if you don’t.”
“We’re dead if we don’t get this back online. Right, Lieutenant?”
“Not necessarily,” Bleecker said, squatting back down on the deck. He lifted the first of the wires. “The Soviets could send us somewhere where it is really cold.”
“That’s argument enough to convince me I ain’t leaving,” Gledhill said.
“Us either,” Morgan said, slapping Garcia on the chest. “If this is as warm as it gets up here, I don’t want to see something colder.”
“Okay, then it’s your funeral.”
“All of ours,” Garcia answered, laughing. “Where’s the tequila when I need it?”
“Gledhill,” Bleecker said, “this is what we are going to do.” Bleecker outlined the checks they would do. He would connect a wire to a positive or negative terminal on the good cell, then he would trail the wire over the bad cells, handing the wire to Gled-hill. Gledhill would take the wire to the opposite positive or negative terminal and hold it. Then Bleecker would announce the terminal of the wire he had connected, and Gledhill would announce the terminal to which he intended to connect.
The terminals had to be of opposite polarity, or when the charge was restoring, the damage would be even worse than it was now. The wrong terminal would cause a short circuit, which could spark a fire, which would set off any hydrogen content in the atmosphere. The Squallfish could find itself on fire while running from the Soviets.
“Morgan, Garcia: you two finish up the checks on that side.”
The two electrician mates acknowledged the order. They were starting down the last line of cells and would have to work around Bleecker and Gledhill.
Bleecker picked up the first wire and connected it. “Positive,” he said, handing the end to Gledhill.
Gledhill held the wire above a terminal. He leaned down, looked at it, and then said, “Negative.”
“Connect.”
Bleecker watched for a spark. He held a rag draped across his wrist in one hand, and the tail wrapped around the cut on his finger. If a spark happened, maybe he could cover it before the hydrogen blew.
When nothing happened, Bleecker started with the second wire, and as they progressed with no explosion or spark, their pace quickened. But it was tedious. A careful job, but in the race to restore the cells to a configuration that would work, careful was as important as speed.
Behind him, Garcia and Morgan continued their cell checks. Bleecker glanced at the fuse box and the down handle. He was almost fanatical about watching it, as if it would flip up on its own. Once that handle was pushed forward, DC power would rush into the forward battery room and start charging the batteries. The sooner he and Gledhill finished, the sooner Shipley would have the battery power to submerge and disappear to the battlefield that belonged to the submarines.
“Lieutenant, we got two cells here that are below charge,” Morgan said.
Holding a wire in his hand and without standing, Bleecker turned to look at the cells Morgan was indicating. The meter showed less than 50 percent charge. What is wrong with those cells? Bleecker thought.
Bleecker turned back to the repair work, connected the wire, and then trailed it across the damaged cells to the hands of Gled-hill. “Take a quick look and tell me what the next cell reads,” he said over his shoulder to Garcia.
“Negative,” Bleecker said.
“Positive,” Gledhill answered.
Bleecker watched Gledhill connect the wire to the correct terminal.
“Fifty percent,” Garcia said.
“And the next one?”
“Forty- five percent.”
“And—”
“Sixty percent.”
“Good. Do the others show about sixty percent, or better?”
“The next one shows nearly seventy percent.”
“Okay, the fifty percent cells are low as well as those past those cells, but they have some charge. So just log them, then move on down the line and keep checking them. A partial charge is better than no charge.” He looked at the Navy clock on the wall. It read 0830 hours.
“Done,” Gledhill said, leaning back.
Bleecker started on the next one.
EIGHTEEN
Ahead, the outline of the dark, cavernous opening to the facility shaded the heavier fog caused by colliding temperatures off the sea and shore. At the same time, the entrance to the short channel leading into it appeared ahead of the Whale.
“Time?” Anton shouted into the sound-powered tube.
“It is zero eight three two, sir!” someone in the control room replied.
“Speed?”
“Ten knots.”
They had lost two knots of forward motion in the past thirty minutes. Noise from the hatch drew his attention.
Chief Ship Starshina Bersi Mamadov emerged, tugging a dingy yellow hose behind him. Anton stepped aside as the chief of the boat pulled himself onto the bridge. Mamadov looked at Anton and said, “Hose.”
Behind the chief of the boat came Lieutenant Kalugin, helping pull the hose up from two decks below.
Anton was surprised to see the deputy chief engineer up here.
Mamadov looked at Anton. “The bilge pumps are shit, sir.” He nodded at the hose. “We have the portable pumps ready to start, and this is the nearest opening to pump water out.”
“Very well.” He kept staring at Kalugin, who was bending over the hatch, pulling the hose up onto the small bridge area.
“We are attempting to run a third hose to the forward main hatch,” Mamadov continued.
“Keep me appraised, Chief Ship Starshina.”
Mamadov lifted a leg over the railing, found footing on the small ladder, and then hoisted himself over the side. Kalugin handed the end of the hose to Mamadov. Standing on the ladder, the chief of the boat kept playing out the hose until it hit the deck; then he scrambled as fast as a heavy foul-weather jacket allowed back onto the bridge.
“That should do it,” the chief ship starshina said with a shiver. “There is wind whipping around the tower,” he explained.
Mamadov reached into a side pocket and pulled some line out. He quickly tied the hose to the railing. “That should hold it.”
Anton glanced over the side. The Arctic wind was pushing the hose forward and against the tower.
The two men turned to leave. Anton put his hand out and touched Kalugin on the shoulder. “Is there anyone in the reactor compartment, Lieutenant?”
Kalugin shook his head. “No, sir. I am helping out the damage control team.”
“Where is the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Tumanov?”
Kalugin glanced at Mamadov, then back at Anton. “I do not know, sir. He may be. .” Kalugin started to say. Instead he shrugged, and added, “Sorry, Captain; I do not know.”