These last words rang out with a threatening intensity, and as the Neva’s two senior officers shared the briefest of concerned glances, the wardroom’s intercom rang. Without hesitating, Viktor Belenko reached out for the nearby plastic handset.
“Senior Lieutenant, here … Why of course, Chief. You may stand down from flank speed at once. I’ll join you in the engine room to assess the situation.”
No sooner did Viktor hang up the handset than Admiral Kharkov exploded with rage.
“How dare you cut the Neva’s speed! Haven’t you been listening to a single thing I’ve said?”
Barely paying this outburst any attention, Viktor stood and directly addressed Sergei Markova.
“That was Chief Engineer Koslov, Captain. It seems we’ve got a problem in the engine room. The main seal to the propeller shaft is leaking.”
Immediately standing himself, Sergei quickly backed up his subordinate’s decision.
“You acted correctly by allowing the chief to cut our speed, Senior Lieutenant. If this leak is a serious one, and we ignore it, this mission may well be over long before it’s even started. Come on, comrade, let’s get down there and inspect the damages.”
As the two officers rushed off toward the aft portion of the boat. Admiral of the Fleet Mikhail Kharkov vainly tried to control his rising frustration.
Directly meeting the empty look projected from the Political Officer’s beady eyes, the white-haired veteran vented his anger.
“Well don’t just stand there like a complete moron, Comrade Zinyagin! Show me the quickest route to the engine room. And for the Motherland’s sake, don’t tarry! Why, this entire operation could be in jeopardy!”
Thusly motivated, the Zampolit led Mikhail Kharkov through the aft hatchway. The sweat was pouring off his forehead as he tried his best to lengthen his short stride. Yet try as he could to quicken his pace, the seventy-six-year-old veteran remained glued to his heels as Konstantin Zinyagin sprinted down a narrow passageway and began to descend a steep ladder. His palms were so wet that once his grasp faltered, and as the ladder’s steel rung slipped out of his right fingers, he found himself hanging precariously by his left hand only.
“Can’t you do anything right, you uncoordinated idiot!” screamed the Admiral of the Fleet from above.
Desperately flailing out with his free hand to steady himself, the Political Officer’s grasp made contact with a vacant rung, and with his heart pounding away in his chest, he hung to it for a moment to regather his nerve. Yet a furious command all too soon had him resuming his downward climb.
“Move it, you fool! Or so help me, I’ll climb right over you!”
By the time they reached the engine room, Konstantin Zinyagin feared that he might keel over from a coronary. The out-of-shape Zampolit’s wheezing breaths were pained and irregular, while a tight knot had gathered in the left portion of his chest.
Completely oblivious to the Political Officer’s condition, Admiral Kharkov expertly surveyed the chaotic scene before him. All of the action was focused on the extreme aft section of the compartment, where the end of the propeller shaft penetrated the hull. Here a geyser of water shot through the air. A half-dozen soaked seamen were gathered beside the shaft and the excess water was already well over their ankles.
On the catwalk beside these sailors. Captain Markova and his senior lieutenant could be seen. Both of these officers had flashlights in hand, and were angling the narrow beams of their battery-powered torches on the area of the hull where the faulty seal was located.
“Get those bilge pumps working. Chief!” cried Sergei Markova forcefully.
One of the seamen who had been gathered on the deck below the captain waved in response to this command. He was a barrel-chested, giant of a man, with bulging biceps and a short spiky crewcut. Ignoring the soaking that he was getting, the Chief turned around to head for the emergency pump activation switch. Yet as he pivoted, he lost his footing and fell awkwardly to the soaked deck with a splash. When he didn’t immediately pick himself up out of the water, Admiral Kharkov sensed that he could have had the wind knocked out of him. In such a compromising position, lying in the water as the chief was, a common injury could become most serious, yet his shipmates had turned their attention back to the leaking seal and seemed completely ignorant of their comrade’s plight.
It was like a scene from a nightmare: the Admiral of the Fleet screamed out to the sailors, but the constantly spraying water effectively veiled his shouts of warning. Prepared to pull the downed seaman off the deck himself, Kharkov was just about to intervene when the Neva’s captain bolted over the catwalk he had been standing on. With long, fluid strides Sergei Markova sloshed over the wet deck, reached the injured seaman’s side, and bent down to assist him.
The fallen man was soon sitting up on his own, rubbing the side of his head, and coughing up the water he had swallowed. Not stopping to celebrate this fact, the young captain, who was now thoroughly soaked, turned his attention back to the leak.
“Try backing up the shaft, Viktor!” screamed Markova to his senior lieutenant. “Perhaps that will plug the seal.”
The admiral breathlessly watched as the Neva’s second-in-command sprinted over to the annunciator.
Seconds later, the shaft began spinning in reverse, and as the sub’s huge propeller bit into the surrounding seawater, the Neva shook wildly and trembled with such force that Mikhail Kharkov had to reach out to a nearby bulkhead to steady himself.
Cowering at the admiral’s side, the Zampolit looked at the veteran mariner, his eyes filled with horror, and somehow found the words to express his worst fears.
“And to think that all this is happening while we’re under the ice. We’ll never be able to get to surface again!”
Kharkov was all set to slap some sense into the cowardly Political Officer when a torrent of water exploded from the still-spinning shaft. This geyser shot through the air like a tidal wave, and with his own uniform now thoroughly soaked. Admiral Mikhail Kharkov sensed that something was seriously wrong. The roar of the spinning propeller rose to an almost deafening crescendo, and with the hull still wildly vibrating around him, the white-haired veteran found his own gut tightening with fear. For the first time since the closing days of the Great War, when an exploding Nazi depth charge almost sent his command to the bottom, he prepared himself for a painful but quick, watery death.
It was at that exact moment the leak sealed itself.
With the sound of spraying water suddenly absent, Captain Sergei Markova’s voice rang out clear and true.
“Stop the shaft, Viktor!”
As the senior lieutenant faithfully carried out this directive, the mad vibration finally halted. Noting that only a small trickle of water was now seeping through the seal, Kharkov listened as the Neva’s captain cried out forcefully.
“All ahead two-thirds, Viktor. She’ll hold now, I can just feel it!”
Once more the shaft began rotating. Yet this time as it started rapidly spinning, the trickle of leaking water stopped flowing completely. As the young captain had said, the seal had indeed held — the crisis was over!