“Sir, we have a bigger problem. I’ve got a peroxide leak in tube five, the tube-loaded Shkval tube. We’ve got to jettison it before it goes off.”
Orlov hurried to the forward port torpedo control console, finding the local operating station for the tube doors. Trusov joined him at the console.
“At least we have power here,” Orlov said. “That’s a good sign, right?”
Orlov rotated the master selector switch from “CENTRAL COMMAND” to “LOCAL CONTROL” and selected tube 5. He hit the fixed function buttons for the “VENT” and “FLOOD” valves, each one lighting up a red annunciator indicator light. A new annunciator lit up, this one reading “TUBE FLOODED.” He shut the vent valve and found the fixed function button for the valve marked “EQUALIZE.” This valve should open tube 5 to seawater pressure and allow the muzzle door to be opened. He glanced at Trusov.
“Let’s hope the hydraulics for this work.” He punched the fixed function button marked “OUTER DOOR — OPEN” and it flashed white. “So much for hoping.” The status panel of hull openings still showed a green bar over the label marked “TUBE 5 OUTER DOOR.” The muzzle door remained shut. The Shkval torpedo was trapped in the tube.
“Can we do a manual hand-crank to try to open the muzzle door, Trusov?”
Trusov nodded. “The emergency hydraulic system pressurization hand crank is centerline forward. Naumov, follow me.”
As Trusov turned from Orlov to find the hydraulic hand crank station, the Shkval torpedo in tube number five exploded into fiery incandescence, its pressurized fuel fire causing the three-hundred-kilogram high explosives to detonate inside the tube. The white-hot fireball blew Trusov and Naumov backwards into Orlov, and all three collapsed on the deck.
Orlov had been knocked unconscious by the blast and Naumov was stunned, looking like he barely knew where he was. Trusov sat half up and saw her worst twin nightmares — a huge blowtorch fire blowing into the room from forward at the same time as a tremendous roaring, pressurized jet of water was screaming into the room.
In a quiet part of her mind, where time had slowed down to a crawl, she was reminded of the old Russian submariner’s joke—Good news, Captain, the flooding put out the fire. A weak joke, since both fire and flooding were two of the gods of the sea’s evil henchmen, intent on killing any sailor bold enough or foolish enough to attempt to sail beneath the waves.
She could feel the deck incline downward as the mighty stream of floodwater filled the bilges, what must be double digit tons of water filling the first compartment. And unlike the submariner’s joke, no amount of water would put out a self-oxidizing weapon fuel fire. It would burn underwater.
There was no fighting this, Trusov thought. It was over. The mission of Novosibirsk had come to this moment. Either the remaining surviving crew went down with the crippled submarine, or she got the order out to abandon ship. With a struggle, she grabbed Orlov, who was still unconscious.
“Naumov! Help me get the captain out of the compartment!”
“We have to fight the fire! And the flooding!”
“It’s over, Naumov, now get the captain’s arm,” she hissed at the young torpedo officer.
Trusov and Naumov muscled Orlov through the latched-open hatch to the second compartment and pulled the hatch off the latch. With the angle of the ship downward, the hatch slammed shut hard against the seating surface. Trusov threw the lever to latch the hatch and stepped forward five meters to the communication station. She found a phone and punched the button for the central command post.
“First Officer,” Vlasenko’s voice said, over some severe background noise. There was shouting in the room.
Trusov looked at Naumov. “Mr. First, from the captain, emergency blow to the surface and prepare to abandon ship.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“We have massive flooding and a fire in the torpedo room and a weapon fuel fire. The first compartment is going to explode any minute. Unless you want Novosibirsk to be a second Kursk, you’ll follow the captain’s orders!” It would have been better if Orlov himself could have barked into the phone to Vlasenko, but it couldn’t be helped. There was no other choice, Trusov thought. If Orlov were awake, he’d give the same order.
The shipwide announcing circuit blasted through the ship with Vlasenko’s trembling voice. “This is central command. All personnel, prepare to abandon ship. I repeat, all personnel, prepare to abandon ship.”
As the speakers clicked off, Trusov could hear the sound of roaring coming from overhead. Hopefully that was high pressure air blowing the water out of the ballast tanks, she thought, and not more flooding. She struggled again to get Orlov to the stairs to the upper level, fighting against the down angle of the ship. Was it her imagination, or had the down angle eased?
It seemed to take endless minutes to get Orlov to the top of the stairs, and Trusov was soaked in sweat and hyperventilating at the top of the stairs. She looked at her coveralls and hoped the wetness represented sweat and not torpedo fuel. The coveralls were fire-resistant, but nothing could stop a fire from torpedo fuel. She and Naumov muscled Orlov aft into the forward door of the central command post, which was empty of crew but for Vlasenko. Fortunately, Orlov was returning to consciousness, his hand rising to his face as he looked up at the first officer. Trusov breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that now Vlasenko wouldn’t see that she’d lied about the orders to emergency blow and abandon ship coming from the captain.
“Status, Ivan?” Orlov croaked.
“We’ve emergency blown to the surface, Captain, but we still have a down angle and we must be taking on water in the first compartment. The escape chamber is ready and the crew — what’s left of them — are mustering at the lower hatch.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Orlov croaked. Trusov helped him get to the aft door of the room and into the passageway that led aft past the officers’ berthing rooms and the sonar equipment room to the ladder and lower hatch to the escape chamber, a large sphere faired into the conning tower, one of the reasons the conning tower was so long compared to the conning towers of other navy’s submarines. The chamber was designed to allow the entire crew of 60 to survive a submarine sinking. Vlasenko hit the hydraulic control lever to open the bottom hatch, which opened into the chamber. Trusov looked around, the crew numbering perhaps two dozen.
“Where’s Chernobrovin and the engineering crew?” she asked no one. Vlasenko and Orlov were pushing crewmen up the ladder into the hatch. As the overhead lights flickered, a massive explosion rocked the ship, from forward. The crew in the passageway were all thrown to the deck, a pile of bodies scattered around the lower hatch of the escape chamber. The lights went out, leaving them all in a coal mine blackness, just as the smoke came into the space.
“Trusov! Get into the chamber!” Orlov yelled.
“I can’t sir, I have to find the engineer and his men,” Trusov said, grabbing a battle lantern. She hadn’t anticipated Orlov physically picking her up and half tossing her upward into the chamber, Naumov assisting from below and Sonar Officer Vasilev pulling her up from inside.
But the gods of the sea had taken pity, because Engineer Chernobrovin and three of his men arrived in the smoke-filled passageway, emerging from aft, with visibility shrinking to less than three meters in the smoke. “I had to shut down the reactor, Captain, the control rods drives were shorting out, two were pulling themselves out of the core. We could have gone prompt critical.”
“It’s too late to worry about now, Kiril,” Orlov said, clapping the engineer on his shoulder. “We just need it to hold together long enough to detach the chamber.”