“We’re troubleshooting a problem,” Ahmadi said, trying to make his voice sound calm and controlled.
“What problem?”
Ahmadi pushed the periscope away from his face and glared at the Russian reactor physics engineer. “There’s a problem with the screw. We are sending divers out to investigate.”
Ten minutes later, Lieutenant Commander Ahmad Kazemi, the chief engineer, and Chief Petty Officer Mehdi Bakeri gathered at the forward escape trunk’s lower hatch in the torpedo room, both clad in wetsuits, weight belts, scuba tanks, regulators and masks, their fins in their hands ready for the climb up the ladder. First Officer Hossein Kharrazi could barely tell them apart. They both looked like frightening phantoms.
Kharrazi picked up the microphone to the inter-ship communications circuit. “Central Command, First Compartment, request permission to enter the forward escape trunk, flood the trunk and open the outer hatch for diver operations.”
The word came through the circuit from the captain’s voice. “Enter the forward escape trunk, flood the trunk and open the outer hatch for diver ops.”
When the upper hatch came open, chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Ahmad Kazemi pulled himself through the hatchway into the clear blue warm water of the Gulf of Oman and immediately felt himself stung by what seemed a huge wasp, but it wasn’t a wasp, it was another diver. His body went completely limp and he could barely breathe. He felt himself floating. A second diver grabbed his inert body and lashed it to a cable at the conning tower leading edge. Kazemi, though he could no longer move, could definitely still feel emotions, and the emotion of the moment was stark panic and fear for his life. He should have been thrashing in the water or fighting these other divers, but nothing worked but his lungs. He felt a moment of gratitude that whatever they’d hit him with hadn’t paralyzed his diaphragm and his chest muscles, at least not yet, but that and his eye muscles were the only parts of him that were still functional.
Kazemi watched as the second Panther diver, Chief Bakeri, emerged from the hatch, and whatever these alien divers had stung him with, they used on Bakeri, who went immediately limp. They moved him back to the conning tower and secured him to it.
One of the divers came over to him and lashed his wrists together behind his back with cable ties, then his ankles, then did the same to Chief Bakeri. Kazemi watched as the divers unlatched him and Bakeri from the conning tower and pulled them to the forward escape trunk hatch. He and Bakeri were maneuvered into the airlock. The divers shut the upper hatch. If only there were a way to alert central command, he thought, but whatever they’d injected him with seemed to be getting stronger rather than weaker, and within another minute, Kazemi found himself fighting to stay awake, and it was a losing battle. He shut his eyes and the world faded away.
The four SEALs crowded into the forward escape trunk of the Iranian Navy’s submarine Panther along with the two paralyzed divers. It was unknown how long it would take the SEALs to secure the Kilo submarine, and if it took too long, the Iranian divers would drown. Fishman had no problem with the Panther crew meeting their ends, but only if it were necessary. Letting a diver drown when his air bottles ran out was not a death Fishman would wish on anyone. He wondered if this were one of those major decisions that would bifurcate his reality and send him down the branch of the universe where he let the divers live, and what that other universe would be like.
Consciously trying to be more present in the moment, Fishman reached up, pulled the upper hatch down and shut it, spinning the hatch wheel that dogged the hatch shut. He searched for a drain valve and a vent valve, found two valves nestled side-by-side in the overhead, and made the assumption that they were the drain and vent valves. He opened the valve in the smaller pipe first, probably the vent valve, then the one in the larger pipe, which had to be the drain valve, and immediately the water level in the chamber fell down from over their heads to their chests, then lower to their knees, until all the water drained from the trunk. Fishman leaned down to the wheel of the lower hatch and spun it, watching as the hatch dogs came off the seating surface. He pulled the hatch open and found himself face to face with someone looking up at him expectantly. The person at the bottom of the ladder apparently thought he was one of the ship’s divers, not a commando invading the ship. The man said something in Farsi.
In response, Fishman hit him with a blast from the Mark 6, and the Iranian went down hard, collapsing to the deck. Fishman reached for cable ties and tied the man’s hands behind his back, then tied his ankles together. He looked up as a second Iranian sailor approached, and hit him with a shot from the Mark 6. The other SEALs handed down the Iranian divers, took the regulators out of their mouths, and piled them by the other two paralyzed members of the Panther crew while Fishman tightened the zip ties on the interior Iranians’ wrists and ankles.
A communication circuit in the crowded overhead rasped with an Iranian voice, undoubtedly inquiring about what was happening. Aquatong pulled the Iranian divers and the two men who’d been at the bottom of the trunk ladder farther into the torpedo room, checking their zip ties, then reached up and shut the lower escape trunk hatch, nodding seriously at Fishman.
The band of commandos made their way aft to the control room, their weapons leveled for the next Iranians they’d encounter.
Dankleff shook Pacino awake.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up! Let’s go, AOIC. Time to get to work.”
Pacino yawned, not sure how long he’d dozed. His entire body ached from lying against the hard deck and bulkhead of the lockout trunk. Pacino stood and strapped on his gear, preparing to lock out of the trunk once the Panther surfaced. The trunk was still flooded with the outer door open, in case one or all of the SEALs needed to return. When Panther surfaced, the plan was shut the upper hatch, drain down the trunk, then the Vermont crew would enter the trunk and lock out for the short swim to the surface, where the SEALs would help them climb onto the hull of the Panther. The hardest part of the operation would be moving all the cargo they needed — the raft that would house the survivors of the crew, the radio and navigation equipment, canisters of clothes and food. The only thing they were relying on the Panther for was oxygen and water. And, he supposed, watertight integrity.
For the tenth time today Pacino wondered about whether the Panther were loaded with weapons, and if so, what were they? And would Chief Kim be able to figure out the firecontrol systems to allow Pacino and Dankleff to shoot at submerged targets, assuming Chief Albanese could find them on what had to be a primitive sonar system?
“So far, glitch-free,” Grip Aquatong said to Tiny Tim Fishman.
“Don’t jinx it, Grip,” Fishman ordered. They stood in the cramped control room of the modified Kilo-class submarine Panther. There were two older men in the room with three younger ones. The older men had to be the officers, the younger ones enlisted watchstanders or perhaps junior officers, all of them immobilized. “Figure out a way to surface this tub.”