but everything had been thoroughly planned. Even if they hadn’t held evacuation drills before the collision, they’d dreamed of little else since. Petrov had even calculated and recalculated how long it would take them to reach the surface. From their current depth, he figured one minute and forty-nine seconds. That was all it would take.
Now, with few words, and not as quickly as he would have liked, men pulled themselves up, taking care to stay wrapped against the cold.
Senior-Lieutenant Shubin did show some energy as he opened the access hatch, hopefully for the last time, Petrov thought, and then climbed up into the chamber. A moment later, he poked his head out and looked towards Kalinin. After reporting that everything was in order, a weary smile appeared on his tired face. “Why am I looking forward to going somewhere even colder than this place?”
Senior-Lieutenant Kozyrev, waiting for his turn to climb, answered, “I’d take up with a polar bear and live on the ice to get away from your breath.” Several crewmen laughed. Nobody had been able to brush their teeth for several days, and there were worse odors.
“Yours is no better,” Shubin countered. “You can use yours to stun a bear. I now know why it is so hard for you to find dates.” That made everyone laugh, and the pace increased a little.
Once a dozen able-bodied men had climbed into the escape chamber, it was time to send up the wounded. The sixteen injured crewmen all had injuries that prevented them from climbing the ladder into the chamber: sprains, broken bones, wrenched backs. Kalinin was the first to go up. He would supervise the men in the chamber, and he wanted the men to practice with him.
It was a slow process. In drills they’d held before the collision, they’d gotten eighty-five men into the escape chamber in seventeen minutes, beating the navy requirement by three minutes. Now, even with fewer men to load, Petrov guessed it would take an hour.
One by one, the injured were gently lifted and carried to the base of the ladder. Some could stand, but many had to be held upright while a line was passed under their shoulders. Then the men above gently, carefully, brought their disabled shipmate up into the chamber and belted them in place. The exertion made the men on the ropes cough, and it took five or six to do what would normally be the work of two men.
The escape chamber was a cylinder two decks high. Each deck was a circular space with seats lining the bulkhead. The upper deck was open in the middle, and little more than a wide ring, allowing the men to move to and from their seats. It was not the best of accommodations. The injured were all strapped in on the lower deck, with healthy men on either side. Sadilenko was a special case. Dr. Balanov had insisted on keeping him completely sedated, and in a straitjacket as well. He was sent up last, after the injured men, limp as wet paper. A rope harness added to the seat held him upright.
Maybe it was the thought of escape, or the increased activity. Certainly the coughing and moans of the wounded hadn’t helped, but Petrov felt a wave of claustrophobia wash through him. Suddenly he couldn’t draw a full breath. The cold air filled his lungs and refused to sustain him.
The last of the men were climbing now. Lyachin, the senior officer after the starpom, reported to Petrov, “Codes and classified material have been passed up, sir.” He held up the logbook. “I was going to take this up myself. We are the last two.”
The engineer’s report pulled Petrov out of his funk, and he instinctively looked around the command post, as if to make sure nothing had been left behind. Lyachin saw him look, and said, “We’ve had two people count, and they matched. Sixty-five men are in the chamber, comrade Captain. You and I will make it sixty-seven.”
Petrov nodded and walked over to the underwater communications station.
“Understood,
Petrov hung up the mike and reflexively switched off the set, smiling as he realized how ridiculous that was. Tracking the second hand on his watch, he hurried over to join Lyachin at the engineer’s post.
Thirty-five seconds. Petrov looked around the central post again. He tried to take it all in, fixing it in his memory. His first, and very likely last command. Regardless, he’d never be back here again.
Fifteen seconds. “On my count,” Petrov ordered.
Lyachin nodded silently, his hands hovering over the switches but not touching them.
Ten seconds. It was foolish to time things to the second, but Lindstrom was watching his own clock on the surface. Petrov wouldn’t be the one to mess up the timing.
He watched the second hand, and called “Five seconds,” resting his hands on the controls. He counted down the last few seconds, and at “Zero,” both he and Lyachin pushed the valve controls opening the vents on the starboard main ballast tanks. Suddenly, there was a loud roar coming from
Petrov waited for the few seconds it took for the indicators to change, then told Lyachin, “Go.”
The passive sonar on the Norwegian ship wasn’t nearly as sensitive as a military suite, but they were sitting almost directly over the bottomed submarine. The operator reported, “I can hear mechanical noises, and air moving.”
Lindstrom nodded and said “Good,” never taking his eyes from the second hand. He’d conferred with the Russians about how long it would take the water to fill
He turned to the Russian officer. “Tell the tugs to go. Full power.” It would take them some time to come up to full power as well.
“Thirty seconds.”
In spite of his haste, Petrov took extra time to double-check the hatch, then carefully climbed to the seat reserved for him next to the starpom. Kalinin was staring at his watch. Petrov looked again at the inclinometer. It showed thirty-six degrees of port list. They had to get within ten to fifteen degrees of an even keel.
According to the briefings he’d received, the escape chamber should not be released if the submarine was moving too much. He hoped a sideways roll wouldn’t be a problem, because the instant they showed less than twelve degrees, he was pulling the release.
“Ten seconds,” Kalinin announced.
Petrov called out “All hands brace! Remember, I can’t pull on the release until we roll vertical, so stay braced after the explosion. I don’t know how long it will. ”
The shock and noise were as violent as anything he’d ever imagined, almost as bad as the collision itself. A Russian PLAB-250 depth charge held sixty kilograms of high explosive. Dropped close enough to an enemy submarine, it could crack the pressure hull and shake equipment off its mountings. Now, dozens of charges were exploding in a ripple fashion, not a hundred meters away, or fifty, or ten, but directly against the hull. Two rows of gas bubbles abruptly appeared, shoving the water and mud away from the sub’s hull, then collapsed in on themselves.
Like driving fast over a washboard road, or a hailstorm of hammers, Petrov felt each blast, or imagined he could. The seat he was strapped to carried the shock wave right into his body, jarring his spine and giving him an instant headache. The sound seemed to come from the water outside the chamber, from the hull below them, and from inside the chamber itself. Many of the crew yelled in surprise, and the injured men cried out from the pain. It was rough treatment, and Petrov felt their pain, helpless to avoid or forestall it.
In spite of the violent motion of water and gas under the hull, the list remained. He waited for them to roll, or at least shift position, but the inclinometer stayed frozen at thirty-six degrees.
The force of the explosions lasted for only a fraction of a second, but Petrov continued to feel, or imagine that he could feel, the wham-wham-wham vibration they had caused. Then the feeling became a real sensation, and Kalinin remarked on it as well. Still half-deafened by the explosions, Petrov couldn’t distinguish any sound, so he placed his palm against the metal bulkhead of the chamber, listening with his hand.
