“We think it’s three-fifty meters, sir. Eleven hundred fifty feet. Give or take.”
“Vertical dive the ship and keep up with it, OOD,” Seagraves ordered, “so we can check its depth.”
“Aye sir. Pilot, insert negative depth rate, ten feet per second. Shifting scope to IR,” she said, shifting the periscope optics to infrared.
“Negative depth rate ten, Pilot, aye, and negative rate increasing, three, five, seven, nine and ten feet per second, OOD, depth three one zero feet.”
“Very well, Pilot, call out depth every fifty feet.”
Romanov concentrated on the periscope display. The Panther was deeper than Vermont. And from its bowplanes and horizontal stabilizers, it had started to glide forward, the range opening.
“Pilot, secure hovering, all ahead one third, turns for three knots. Take the bubble to a twenty degree down angle.”
The deck in the room dramatically tilted downward. Everyone standing had grabbed a hand-hold, including Romanov. She stared at the IR periscope display. The Panther kept sinking deeper, its down-angle steeper.
“Pilot, take the bubble to thirty degrees.”
“Down angle to three zero degrees, Pilot, aye. Present depth five five zero feet.”
“Dammit, Captain, Panther’s angle is steep, she’s going down at thirty degrees now, maybe more.”
Seagraves shot a look at Quinnivan. This mission might be over five minutes from now.
Ending in mission failure.
Ending in the death of their subordinates and friends, Lieutenants Dankleff and Pacino. And the SEAL commandos.
Seagraves clamped his jaw shut, fighting hard to keep the emotions from showing on his face.
“Depth seven hundred.”
“Master One’s angle’s increased to thirty-five, maybe forty degrees.”
“Depth seven five zero. Depth eight hundred feet. Eight fifty. OOD, you got a depth order for me?”
“Pilot, pull out at twelve hundred feet.”
“Nine fifty feet. One thousand feet. Eleven hundred. Eleven hundred fifty, feet, Officer of the Deck, and pulling out. Depth twelve hundred feet. Test depth, ma’am.”
Romanov looked up at Seagraves. “Fuck, Captain.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
Pacino’s last words suddenly filled Romanov’s mind. I treasured our friendship. I was hoping we could be friends again. I wanted to tell you now because, well, I feel like I may be running out of time. My life may be out of days. So. You know. I just wanted to leave you with that.
Oh my God, she thought, and a hot tear leaked out of her right eye and ran down her cheek.
“Hurry up!” Pacino screamed. He pushed Captain Ahmadi up the steep stairs to the upper level. With the steep down angle the ship had taken on, the stairway had become more horizontal, the rungs at odds with gravity. They both slipped twice on the ascent. “You’ve got to blow ballast. Emergency blow!”
“We have to shut the vent valves first,” Ahmadi said. “Or the air in the ballast tanks will just float away.”
“Why the fuck,” Pacino said, gasping for breath as he reached the top of the ladder, “would you sail around with the goddamned ballast tank vents open?”
“Otherwise, they rust shut and you could never submerge,” Ahmadi said, as if it were obvious. Dankleff was holding onto the middle console they’d named “pos two.”
“Well, dammit, shut the damned vents!” Pacino shouted, thinking the Russian designers hadn’t yet gotten a grip on the metallurgy that could keep main ballast tank vents shut without rusting shut. Their design ignorance was about to get him, Dankleff and the SEALs killed.
The down angle was getting worse. Pacino shot a glance at an inclinometer, a simple bubble level device he’d seen on the port bulkhead above the command chair, and it read 30 degrees down. He scanned for depth and found a gauge that said 400. Was that meters? And what was test depth? For that matter, what was crush depth?
Ahmadi lunged to the overhead forward portion of the Million Valve Manifold and rotated a bar handle on a hydraulic valve, the handle marked with bold Farsi lettering, then rotated a second handle farther aft of the first valve. He skidded to the middle console, pos two, and looked at eight annunciators, which changed from red to green.
“Vent valves are shut,” he gasped. He pulled himself back to the manifold and found two more bar handles on massive ball valves set into six-inch piping and rotated the first ninety degrees.
Immediately a blasting noise slammed Pacino’s eardrums and the room filled up with condensation, a fog so thick he could barely make out Dankleff at pos two.
“That’s the forward group emergency blow.” Ahmadi operated the second valve handle. The noise in the room got even louder and the fog from the piping in the manifold grew even thicker. “Aft group.”
“U-Boat, mark our depth. Pressure gauge is at that ship control station.”
“There’s one at pos two,” Dankleff called. “It reads four hundred twenty-five.” He looked at Ahmadi, whose face had turned white, but perhaps that was just the effect of the fog. “Is that meters?”
“Dear Allah,” Ahmadi breathed. “Three hundred and fifty meters is crush depth.”
Pacino vaulted back to the port side so he could see the inclinometer. The deck had stopped inclining madly downward. He had to put his face a foot away from it to read the bubble indication, the fog in the room from the blow system still thick. “Angle has eased to ten degrees dive,” he shouted above the roar of the high-pressure air flow.
The flow noise in the room gradually died down, the fog began to clear and the angle came off. The inclinometer read five degrees rise. Ahmadi reached up and shut the handles of the two large ball valves.
“What’s depth?” Pacino barked at Dankleff.
“Three hundred meters and rising!”
“Thank the Sevmash design engineers,” Pacino said. “They may be stupid about ballast tank vent valves and placement of emergency blow valve actuators, but at least their hull took us to design crush depth and beyond.”
“Two fifty,” Dankleff said, a note of hope creeping into his voice. “Two hundred meters.”
The deck angle climbed. The inclinometer read ten degrees, then fifteen, then twenty. Pacino grabbed a handhold at pos three to steady himself and looked at Ahmadi. “Thanks. I didn’t want to spend eternity at the bottom of two miles of ocean.”
“You and me, both,” Ahmadi said.
“When this is all over, I’m buying you a stiff drink at the Grafton Street Pub and Grill, Captain,” Pacino said.
“And despite my faith’s prohibition of alcohol consumption, Lieutenant, I shall drink it. What is ‘all this,’ anyway? What are you doing here? What’s your mission?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Pacino asked. “We’re stealing your submarine.”
“Why?”
Pacino shrugged. “The nuclear reactor, well, it interests us.”
“Are you going to kill me and my crew?”
“Hell no,” Pacino said, the deck suddenly leveling off and starting to rock from port to starboard in the surface waves.
“We’ve surfaced,” Dankleff said.
The SEAL commander ran into the room and looked around. “Nice recovery, boys,” Fishman said. “We’re going back to Vermont to get our stuff.”
Pacino wiped sweat from his forehead, realizing it would be nice to get out of the hot wetsuit and get a shower.
“So,” Ahmadi said, “you’re not killing us?”
“We brought a big-ass raft to put you guys in,” Dankleff said. “You can even take your personal effects, framed pictures of your kids or wifey or whatever. We’ll set you adrift with rations and an emergency beacon. You’ll be home in no time.”