"Drownproofing was never like this," he said aloud, and he released the bunk frame and started following the sound of O'Brien's voice. Then a new thought occurred to him, and he almost burst out laughing. "I wonder if water is still my friend?… "
"It sounds like the Russian boat is on the surface alongside the Kresta," Rodriguez informed him. "Both vessels at all stop. Can't hear Mike Two, though. He's on the far side, masked by the hull noises."
"What hull noises?"
"Sir, I don't know how bad it is over there, but it sounds like a mess. I'm hearing some minor flooding, and I'm hearing something… I think it's on the Kresta, that might be some hull plating partly torn open and banging on the hull."
Damage-control efforts would be under way on both of the Soviet vessels, as they were proceeding on board the Pittsburgh. Like him, their skippers would be concentrating on saving their ships.
But before long, they would be thinking about getting the damaged vessels back to port, and that gave Gordon an idea, if they could stop the Pittsburgh's flooding….
O'Brien fell again. "I can't make it! The water's too strong!"
"Here, kid!" It was Randall, yelling above the roar from just behind him. He felt strong hands grab his boondocker work shoes, levering him forward on the slippery deck. "I've got you braced!"
Unsteadily, he pushed against the SEAL's hands, and moved forward, assisted by Randall's steady shove. Almost two feet of water covered the deck, and movement was more like swimming than crawling.
As water surged and pounded over his head, threatening with each breath to strangle him, he reached all the way forward and grasped the thick, cold vertical cylinder of Feed Line One. "I've got the pipe!" he shouted, gasping through the flood. "Help me push up on it!"
The pressure against the soles of his shoes increased, and he was able to work his way up, hauling himself erect against the pipe. Hand over hand, he pulled his way up the pipe. The split joint where the water was coming in was impossible even to approach; the water pressure was so high it was like trying to pierce a solid steel barrier, and the pounding stream threatened at any moment to break a bone or wrench him free of his handhold and slam him back across the pitch-black compartment.
"O'Brien!" Allison yelled. "Where are you?"
"I'm at Feed One! I've got it! I've got it!"
With Randall bracing his unsteady feet, he walked his hands up past the incoming stream, found by touch alone through numbed fingers the shape of the cutoff valve, grabbed the wheel, and started turning it.
And the water pressure died away, falling to a hard stream, then a fine mist… and then the water flow was stopped.
O'Brien clung there to the valve for a moment, gasping hard with each breath. He was also shivering, but that didn't matter. He'd managed to get to the valve.
"Great job, kid!" Randall's voice said.
Then there was a bang and clang from forward, and light spilled into the torpedo room as the main passageway hatch opened up. Scobey was there, leading a damage-control party armed with spanners, pry bars, and breathing gear. Water spilled out over the doorway's combing, but it was already starting to drain away.
"You're too late, big C!" O'Brien called.
"Looks like. Geeze, you guys made a mess of things!"
Reaching out, O'Brien leaned his hand against a bare patch on the bulkhead, trying to hold himself up on shaking knees.
He felt the faint, far-off quiver of Pittsburgh's engine, and her movement through the water.
He wondered where they were heading next.
"We're almost home free, skipper," Latham said. His face was drawn, and blue rings emphasized the hollow, worn-out look to his eyes, but he was grinning.
"Thanks to our escort," Gordon said, jerking a thumb at the overhead. He looked at the chart. Pittsburgh was now about halfway through La Perouse Strait. Mys Kril'on, the southernmost tip of Sakhalin Island, lay fifteen miles to the north. The Japanese island of Hokkaido, the point at Soya Misaki and the port city of Wakkanai lay twenty-five miles to the south.
Overhead, the dull, monotonous throb of a surface ship's screw accompanied the Pittsburgh like a sheltering blanket, as it had for the past three days.
The tactical problem off Mys Yelizavety had been a serious one. The collision between the Sierra II and the Kresta would be bringing in Soviet ships from every quarter, and the second Russian submarine, the Mike, was only a few miles away and closing fast. Pittsburgh had been in no position to run. There'd been considerable damage to her torpedo room and the flood lines connected with it, and repairs would take a day or two at least… a day or two when they couldn't be moving more than a few knots.
With two damaged vessels to care for, the approaching Russian ASW vessels would be blanketing the entire area, banging away with their sonar, searching for the American sub… which might have gotten away, or which just possibly had sunk. They wouldn't know for sure, and they'd be damned certain to do their best to find out.
And so, Gordon had taken a chance… but it had given him a better hope of escaping from Okhotsk than simply turning and running, a move that would have had him cornered, caught, and pinned within a few hours. Carefully, quietly, he'd worked the Pittsburgh in close to the stricken Kresta II. While the Sierra II had ridden clumsily on the surface off the Kresta's starboard beam, the Pittsburgh had ridden just beneath the surface off her port. Before long, the Soviet Mike had entered the area, banging away with sonar, searching for the missing American.
And found nothing. From any one direction's vantage point, Pittsburgh's sonar shadow would appear to blend with those of the Kresta and the Sierra, and those two vessels were making a hell of a lot of noise besides.
In another hour, the Soviet escort vessels had begun to arrive, and the Kresta had fired up her port shaft. Apparently, her starboard screw had been damaged in the collision, possibly by biting into the Sierra's sail, and was being left offline. At a steady, sometimes faltering ten knots, the Kresta began steaming south.
Gordon had been gambling that the Kresta's port was Vladivostok, but it had been an educated gamble, and one that had paid off. The only ports inside the Sea of Okhotsk large enough to accommodate something as big as a Kresta class cruiser were Magadan — primarily a submarine base— and Nikolayevsk-na-Amure, at the northern end of the Tatar Strait. Vladivostok was the major Soviet Pacific port, headquarters of their Red Banner Pacific Fleet, with the largest and best-equipped anchorage and port facilities.
Vladivostok was almost certainly her home port. Even if not, the city was the best place around for the Kresta to receive repairs. From the sound of the water banging and clanking over loose hull plates and a badly gashed keel, she was going to need to be dry-docked for a long time to come.
And Vladivostok was on the Sea of Japan, on the far side of La Perouse Strait.
The trip had taken three days at a painful, ten-knot crawl, with several stops along the way. Pittsburgh had dogged the Kresta every step of the voyage. The ASW escort had ringed the two stricken vessels in and were pinging noisily, searching for any lurking American subs, but they simply could not see the Pittsburgh in her comfortable tucked-in hiding place beneath and behind the Kresta. The Kresta herself might have spotted the unwanted guest on that voyage, but either her sonar had been knocked out by the collision, or her captain was relying on the flotilla's screening escorts. She wasn't pinging, and if her sonar watch was listening, all they could hear were the sounds of their own damaged hull as it plowed slowly south through roughening seas.