Cold Choices

The older woman dabbed at her eyes, “Thank you, Irina.”

Sadilenko added, “And make sure everyone gives Irina a photo and information of your family member. Include as much biographical information as you want.”

Irina, a pale woman with straw-colored hair, nodded emphatically. “There’s plenty of room on the server, and it takes no time to add the text and images. We need photos of every crewman, and also photos from parties and other gatherings while Severodvinsk was under construction.”

As the group acknowledged their instructions, Sadilenko added one more task. “Nadya, make a list of every news organization you can find on the Internet — from every country in the world, if you can. As soon as Irina’s page is ready, I want to send them the link. They have to be hungry for news about our submarine. We’ll give them what we have.” She smiled grimly. “And we’ll tell them why we don’t have any more.”

Severomorsk Naval Base

Mikhail Rudnitskiy

Captain Second Rank Yefim Gradev stood back a fair distance. Even in this obscene weather, sparks flew about wildly, and the language the petty officers were using would certainly be grounds for disciplinary action, if he could actually hear them. They’d rigged a makeshift canvas shelter as a windbreak, but the men welding were sandwiched between fire and ice.

Gradev was captain of Mikhail Rudnitskiy, one of the two submarine rescue vessels assigned to the Northern Fleet. An alert like this was something they planned and trained for, but dreaded at the same time. Nobody wanted submariners to be in danger. Sailors’ lives were at stake, and his ship, neglected and undermanned, was a weak reed.

He’d hardly slept since the alert two days ago. There would have been much to do, even if they were in perfect order. But maintenance had been deferred, supply requests denied. Suddenly they had priority, but the supply system was slow to respond, and repairs took time.

Their sister ship, Georgi Titov, was down with a bad turbine, and Gradev had been given permission to raid her for supplies and spare parts and even crewmen. He knew the entire rescue depended on this one ship.

They needed at least one of the fifty-ton cranes working. The foundations were fatigued, and the only way to strengthen them in time was unsafe, unauthorized and uncomfortable for the men welding the supports in place.

But it would last until Severodvinsk was found. Combined with the motors they’d cannibalized from Titov, the portside crane would be back.

“Captain, we need you to look at AS-34.” Alex Radimov, Rudnitskiy’s starpom, intruded on his thoughts.

“What, are the supports still giving us trouble?”

“No, sir, that work is proceeding. It’s the batteries again.”

Shaking his head, Gradev turned and headed for the forward hold. Rudnitskiy was a timber-carrier design adapted to carry two rescue submersibles in what had been cargo holds. Originally, the after hold had carried a larger rescue vehicle, AS-36 Bester, but that vessel had been taken out of service years ago. With AS-26 out of commission owing to a main thruster motor failure, there was only one rescue sub available, and any problem with AS-34 Priz was a potential showstopper.

She sat in the roofed-over hold, out of the weather, but still surrounded by a storm of activity. Sparks bathed her sides as sailors expanded and reinforced the cradle that held the vessel. Nobody had ever imagined Rudnitskiy venturing out in such heavy weather, and Gradev had ordered extra battens fitted to brace the rescue sub in place. The thought of her breaking loose in seven-meter seas invoked several nightmares.

From the deck of the hold, AS-34 didn’t feel like a “minisub.” It towered over Gradev, with its 13.5-meter-long white-and-orange-banded cylindrical hull taking up half of the storage bay. From afar she resembled a traditional submarine, but she seemed a bit odd, misshapen. The miniature sail that protected the main hatch from the sea was out of proportion to her hull, and her diminutive ducted propulsor aft could only make about three knots at full power.

But she wasn’t built for speed. Rudnitskiy was supposed to lower AS-34 into the water as close to a downed sub as possible. Priz would then use high-frequency sonar to find the victim, maneuver over it and lock on to one of the emergency escape hatches. The trapped submariners could then climb into AS-34 for a ride to the surface. She could hold twenty passengers on each trip.

When she was working. One of the engineers climbed out of the access hatch and threw a tool away in disgust. It clanged loudly on the deck.

Gradev looked at his starpom. “The batteries?”

Radimov nodded. “The batteries. Remember how they wouldn’t hold a charge, and we found those grounds and thought fixing them would solve the problem?” He nodded toward the cursing crewman. “Turov chased down the last of the shorts late last night, and the batteries still won’t hold a full charge. We’ve been running three different generators on them all night. They should glow in the dark.”

Priz’s main thruster motor was a power hog, even though she wasn’t supposed to leave the vicinity of the mother ship, they still had to maneuver to properly land and then mate with an escape hatch. Add to that power for the maneuvering thrusters, sonar, the interior lights, heat and atmosphere control; the energy requirements were far outstripping the batteries’ capacity. With a fresh charge before each trip, the batteries were theoretically supposed to be sufficient for almost six or seven hours.

“Of the thirty-two cells, less than half will hold a decent charge, about eighty percent. Of the rest, most are around fifty percent, and a few are as low as twenty-five percent — essentially useless.”

Gradev absorbed the report, calculated the implications. “Three hours?”

“At best, Captain,” Radimov answered. “We’ve still got those twelve new cells coming from storage, but there’s no guarantee they haven’t exceeded their service lives just sitting on the shelf. What will we tell Northern Fleet?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Nothing,” Gradev answered. His starpom’s expression was filled with surprise and concern. Gradev knew exactly what was going through Radimov’s mind and he attempted to reassure him. “We’re still working on the problem. We may yet find a solution. AS-34’s endurance should improve once the new cells are installed.”

Radimov was not convinced. “They don’t arrive until just before we sail. It takes hours to install a single cell, and we’ll be working in heavy weather.”

“The work can still be done well before we reach Severodvinsk’s location, if they find it at all. And three hours is more than enough for one trip. Priz will just have to have her batteries recharged more often. And let’s see what we can do about improving the individual cells’ capacities, get them back up to their old levels.”

The first officer looked confused. “They’re sealed units. We’re not supposed to tamper with their internal components.”

“Unseal one of the bad ones. They stopped making those batteries ten years ago. If we can’t find a way for them to hold more power, this will be AS-34’s last cruise.”

“And Northern Fleet doesn’t need to know this?” “We’ve had one visit by Vidchenko. We don’t need another.”

8 October 2008

0530/5:30 AM

Petr Velikiy was the fourth and last unit of the Orlan- class, or Kirov-class, as they were known by NATO. A nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser, she was flagship of the Northern Fleet and would lead the rescue force.

On the bridge, Rear Admiral Vidchenko sat in one of the flag chairs and fidgeted. Now that he’d given the order to sortie, there was little to do.

The bridge was huge, especially for a submariner. A full fifteen meters across, the long row of windows in the front made Vidchenko think of a greenhouse more than a warship. The electronic consoles that displayed the ship’s functions didn’t begin to fill it up. Thinking of a submarine’s cramped central command post, Vidchenko had a sudden urge to play racquetball.