After five days the carbon dioxide concentration was four percent. The crew was breathing at an increased rate, pumping more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The men were weakening and their resistance to infection was crumbling. An outbreak of colds ravaged the engineers.
To vent the sub's noxious atmosphere Federov had to snorkel, had to rise near the surface, push a tube into the ocean air, pump out the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and suck in fresh air, just like an old-fashioned diesel-electric sub. However, by doing so Federov knew he also ran the risk of exposing the snorkel to hostile radar. He had to be certain that he was beyond detection before he raised the metal tube above the surface. Federov cursed his bad luck. The failure of one simple subsystem had reduced Potemkin to a primitive submersible craft. He needed air!
As the fifth day drew to a close, Potemkin was fifty miles off the Libyan coast. The submarine had to snorkel, though Federov was still leery of approaching the surface and exposing Potemkin. In no more than another four hours the CO2 concentration would reach a point of extremely dangerous toxicity and the crew of Potemkin would be subjected to carbon dioxide narcosis. Federov studied his charts. It seemed as safe a place as he would find.
"Prepare to surface," he ordered. "Ready the snorkel. Alexis, take us up to one hundred fifty meters."
Potemkin rose slowly from the depths, circling at five hundred feet to clear baffles.
Only halfway through the circle, Popov intoned, "Contact, subsurface. Two screws, diesel-electric. Range five thousand meters, bearing one five two, course three three one, speed eight knots." He hoped his tone masked his fear.
On the sonar screen the sub was a two-dimensional streak on one quadrant of the screen, above and ahead of Potemkin, going slowly.
Keep going, Federov silently urged the intruder… not even wanting to think on what it would mean if the other sub stopped.
"Identify, please, Popov."
"French, Daphné class. Probably Sirène."
"All ahead, dead slow. Down planes fifteen degrees. Make our depth eight hundred meters."
In the engineering room, four coughing, sneezing men cranked down the stern planes, and Potemkin descended.
Federov spoke quietly into the command intercom. "Torpedo room, load tubes one and two—"
"Nikolai, you can't shoot him, you can't know if—"
"If he's looking for us, Alexis, if the Americans have announced that reports of our death were premature, what choice do I have? If this French captain reports our position, more will come looking, the British will blockade the Strait of Gibraltar. We will have no escape. And we will all die here if we do not snorkel…"
"Range to target, five thousand seven hundred meters."
"Flood tubes."
For a moment aboard Sirène, just a fleeting moment, the sonarman thought he saw a blip on his screen, but it was too slight, too faint, and he well remembered how once before he had been severely reprimanded for sounding a false alarm… and now whatever it was, if it was ever anything, had disappeared. In his experience only whales dove so deep, and in his log he recorded baleine.
Now at eight hundred meters, having gone quickly down from five hundred feet, Potemkin was too deep for discovery by the Frenchman's sonars. But it was not safe, not unless the French ship cleared the area.
"Popov," Federov asked, "what is the depth under our keel?"
"Four thousand six hundred meters. We're over the Tunisian Trench."
"Range to contact."
"Range five thousand nine hundred meters, captain. I've lost an active sonar. I don't think he's stopping… no, he seems to be moving…"
Keep moving, please, Federov silently intoned to himself.
And as he did, a tired and disgruntled Frenchman some eight hundred meters above him and five thousand nine hundred meters distant leaned back from his console, sighing mightily, and made the easy decision not to report what he probably had not seen, thereby allowing the Sirène to proceed. "Captain, still no active sonar. Range now six thousand meters. I'm losing him." And he allowed a bright smile as he said it.
Federov smiled back at him. "All ahead slow, right full rudder," and then to Alexis, "he seems to have missed us, but we can't snorkel with him in the area. Attention all hands, put on oxygen masks" — he knew this was mostly an empty gesture, the masks having long since become all but useless—"there will be a delay before resurfacing." Greeted by mumbling and curses. "Torpedo room, unload torpedoes." Greeted by relief.
Federov and Alexis exchanged glances, each knowing that this was a reprieve only. They could take in some good air now, vent the carbon dioxide, but it would build up, and they could not snorkel all the way back to Murmansk. They were not a ship on display…
An hour later Potemkin rose to a depth of sixty feet. The snorkel and a radar antenna broke the surface for half an hour and then disappeared. A lonely old Tunisian fisherman saw what he thought was a strange blue light in the sea and called his mate, who was asleep. By the time he woke up and arrived on deck, the strange light was gone, and the fisherman, who of late had been accused of seeing things because of failing eyesight, never mentioned it to anyone.
16
Seventy crewmen were transferred to barracks ashore, leaving a skeleton crew of twenty-nine men on Barracuda to supervise the repairs to the bow.
Pisaro called Sorensen and Lopez into his office. "At ease," he said, offering his tin of cigars. "Sit down and light up if you like."
Lopez selected a Havana, and Sorensen stuck a Lucky in his mouth.
Pisaro leaned back in his chair. "We're going to do the work of ten weeks in ten days. So, the word for everybody is 'no slack.' That goes for crew and civilians alike. They've flown in a 'tiger team' from the naval shipyard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. These guys are the best, they know their jobs, but they don't have to live with their work. We do. Lopez, I want you all over the welders. They're going to take off your roof, Chief. You make sure they put it back right."
"Check, Commander."
"Sorensen, you stand over the electricians every minute while they replace the sonars. Anything they touch, you test."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Very well. You'll want some help. Ace."
"Yes, sir. I sent Davic ashore, but I need Willie Joe. I might as well keep Fogarty, too. He'll have a chance to see the system torn apart."
"Very well. Any questions?"
"Yes, sir," said Sorensen. "Will there be a court of inquiry?"
"You bet, but not until we return to Norfolk. Our orders are to get Barracuda back to sea as quickly as possible."
Lopez asked, "What about liberty for the men who are staying on the ship?"
"We'll see how it goes with the repairs, Chief. The men ashore are already going in rotation. Anything else? No? Then that's all. Dismissed."
A Navy tug nudged Barracuda into the well of the floating dry dock. A canopy was stretched over the sail, the gates locked, and the water pumped out. Gently, the sub settled onto the steel braces of the huge repair ship. Naked, with the entire 252 feet of teardrop hull exposed. Barracuda was a beached Leviathan of massive proportions.