“Akula is the NATO designation, Russian for shark. Kazbek is named after the highest mountain in the central Caucasus.” Katya walked over to the console, handing Jack a coffee with a smile. “The Soviet designation was Project 971.”
“How can you possibly know all this?”
The question came from a scientist named Lanowski who had joined Seaquest in Trabzon, a lank-haired man with pebble glasses who was eyeing Katya with evident disdain.
“Before studying for my doctorate I completed my national service as an analyst in the submarine warfare division of the Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Navy.”
The scientist fiddled with his glasses and was silent.
“We considered these the best all-purpose attack submarines, the equivalent of the American Los Angeles class,” she added. “Kazbek was laid down at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1988 and commissioned in early 1991. Only one reactor, contrary to western intelligence assessments. Four 650 millimetre and six 533 millimetre launch tubes for multiple weapons, including cruise missiles.”
“But it has no nuclear warheads,” York said firmly. “This is not an SSBN, a ballistic missile boat. What puzzles me is why the Russians were so fanatical about keeping the loss a secret. Most of the technology had been familiar to us since the type first appeared in the mid-eighties. Just before I left the Royal Navy I participated in a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty visit to the Northern Fleet sub base at Yagel’naya near Murmansk where we were given a guided tour of the latest Akula. We saw everything except the reactor room and the tactical operations centre.”
“An IMU team decommissioned an Akula I during the Vladivostok clean-up two years ago,” Costas added. “I personally dismembered it bit by bit.”
One of the crew spoke up. “What happened to Kazbek? Reactor malfunction?”
“That’s what we feared at the time.” Mustafa Alközen stepped out to address the group. “A meltdown would have precipitated a massive radiation leak, killing the crew and irradiating the sea for miles around. Yet the Turkish early-warning monitors detected no abnormal radiation in territorial waters.”
“A reactor failure anyway rarely results in meltdown,” York said. “More often it actually reduces radiation emission. And it’s not the end of the road. If the core can’t be reactivated there are always the auxiliary diesels as back-up.”
“What we’re about to see may answer the question.” Costas directed their attention to the video monitor above the console, where images taken from his Aquapod on the seabed had been downloaded. He aimed a remote control and fast-forwarded through a series of extraordinary scenes of the bull-sphinx and the pyramids until the shapes became less distinct. He stilled the video at a mass of tangled metal, the wreckage outlined in a halo of yellow where the floodlights reflected off sediment suspended in the water.
“The stern,” Costas said simply. “The propeller, or what’s left of it. The seven blades are intact but it’s sheared off at the shaft. That mess in the foreground is the lower stabilizer fin, and the distinctive high aft fin of the Akula class is visible above it.”
“Must have been a hell of an impact,” a crewman said.
“We checked out the eastern pyramid just before we surfaced,” Costas continued. “There’s extensive damage to the masonry at the corner opposite the volcano. Our guess is the sub was making south-west at its maximum speed of over thirty knots and detected these structures too late for evasive action. They avoided a head-on collision by swerving to port but in doing so crashed the stern into the pyramid, with the results you can see. The sub carried on for another hundred metres until its bow jammed into a cleft just ahead of the ancient stairway. It sank upright between the pyramid and the volcano.”
“Incredible,” York said. “It would have been sheer madness to travel at speed so close to an island so poorly charted.”
“Something went badly wrong,” Costas agreed.
“As far as we can tell there were no survivors,” York continued. “Yet even at a hundred metres the crew would have stood a chance using the Soviet version of the Steinke-hood life jacket and breathing apparatus. Even a single floating corpse would have been detected by satellite monitors from the miniature radio transmitter incorporated in the hood. Why didn’t they eject a SLOT buoy, a submarine-launched one-way transmitter? The hull’s even more baffling. You say the damage is external and there’s no evidence the casing was breached. Why didn’t they blow the ballast tanks? The Akula is double-hulled, with three times the reserve buoyancy of a single-hulled boat.”
“All good questions.” Jack moved out of the shadows where he had been quietly listening. “And we may well find answers. But we must stick to our objective. Time is running out fast.”
He moved in front of the group beside Costas and scanned the faces intently.
“We’re here to find the heart of Atlantis, not to restart the Cold War. We believe the text is leading us inside that volcano, up the processional way from the bull-sphinx towards some kind of sanctuary. The stairway continues under the submarine but not beyond it. We checked.”
He put his hands on his hips.
“Our objective lies beneath a metal cylinder one hundred and eight metres long, weighing nine thousand tons. We have to assume the ballast tanks can’t be vented. Even if we had the equipment to shift the submarine, our activities would be obvious on the surface and the Russians would be onto us like a shot. Any attempt to get outside help and we’d lose the initiative. Atlantis would become a free-for-all for Aslan and his band of looters. The images of the site you’ve just seen would be our last.”
He paused and spoke slowly.
“We have only one option. We’re going to have to get inside and cut our way through to the rock face.”
“Depth seventy-five metres and dropping. We should be entering visible range now.”
Katya peered through the Plexiglas porthole to her left. What at first seemed impenetrable gloom gradually revealed itself as a seascape of massive shapes and shadows. The dark hull of the sunken submarine suddenly loomed ahead in all its awesome magnitude.
Costas pulled back on the steering column and turned to his co-pilot. “Jack, get ready with the landing gear. Prepare for a jolt.”
Katya was sitting beside two crewmen and a mass of equipment in the central fuselage of the DSRV-4, the deep submergence rescue vehicle which was standard on all IMU Sea-class vessels. The floor in front held a universal coupling which could be mated with the escape hatch of virtually any submarine, allowing trapped sailors to be removed in batches of eight or ten. The crewmen had been making final adjustments to the generic docking collar to fit the Russian SSN.
Twenty minutes earlier they had glimpsed their last of Seaquest as her wavering silhouette receded in the turbulent waters above.
“Coming about 180 degrees due south. Making my depth 95 metres.”
There was a dull thump as they came to rest on the submarine’s forward casing. Ahead of them rose the bulk of the conning tower, the periscope and antenna array just visible in the floodlight above the dark portholes of the bridge. For the first time they could appreciate the immense size of the submarine, almost twice the tonnage of Seaquest and as long as a football pitch.