He pulled on his emergency breathing air mask, tugging at the fireproof hood and tightening the straps behind his head. The air was hot and dry, but seemed otherwise normal. The ventilation system suddenly stopped blowing air into the room as the rig for fire was executed, and the room immediately soared in temperature. Pacino could feel himself start to sweat all over, perhaps from the heat in the room or the fear. He shot a hard look at Romanov. With no more information coming over the phones, he’d need an officer to take charge at the scene and report what was happening to the control room.
“Navigator,” Pacino ordered, “get the fuck to the scene and see what the hell is going on.” She waved at him as she unplugged her air hose and dashed forward to the door leading to the combat equipment room and the ladderway to the lower level torpedo room. She’d have to make her way aft through the lower level, link up with the casualty assistance team and help fight the fire. Odds were, the fire was happening in the galley. If they were lucky, it was just a grease fire and would be out in a few minutes, but if it were more serious, fighting the fire could make tremendous noise and alert the Russians.
He glanced at the chart, realizing he’d have to break contact with the Omega and escape the fjord undetected, all the while having to fight a goddamned fire.
“Pilot, all stop! Make your depth one five zero feet and hover!”
As Dankleff acknowledged, Pacino lowered the periscope and stepped to the chart table. As the
Romanov’s voice came over his headset, her voice iron hard, but he knew her well enough to know when she was afraid.
“Conn, Torpedo Room, Navigator, the fire is in the wardroom and is extremely severe and spreading forward to officers country.”
“Nav, did you say the wardroom?” Pacino asked, not believing his ears. Why would a fire break out in the officers’ mess and conference room?
“Conn, it’s an oxygen fire. There is an O2 line running into the wardroom for when it doubles as a surgical suite and it — it must be a double-ended shear and oxygen is blowing into the room and the room is engulfed in flames. We can’t get anywhere close to it!”
“Can you isolate it upstream? Cut off the O2 flow?”
“We’re working on it now but the fire has spread to the crews’ mess where the forward isolation valve is. I’ve got Chief Nygard getting into a steam suit now. He’s going to attempt to get to the valve.”
It was then that the casualty grew far worse. The air feeding Pacino’s mask suddenly cut off, and as he tried to inhale, he just drew a vacuum on the mask. He pulled it off, thinking something must have happened to the EAB manifold. He looked up to find the other control room watchstanders dumping their masks. The air of the control room smelled awful, like burning insulation. And now black smoke was pouring into the room from the aft door, the foul-smelling smoke in mere seconds filling the room.
“Navigator, Control, we’ve lost emergency breathing air up here. What’s your status?”
“Conn, Navigator, Chief Nygard is in the middle level crews’ mess trying to get to the O2 valve now, but we’ve lost emergency breathing air throughout the compartment. We’ve got a few OBAs and a few air-packs, but not enough to go around. OOD, you know what this means.”
The smoke continued filling the room, making it even hotter, while visibility was shrinking. Pacino could barely make out the sonar console from the command console. He stepped aft and shut the aft control room door, but the smoke was still getting worse, pouring in from the aft bulkhead despite the shut door. Vevera stood up from his panel as it went dark. “Loss of battlecontrol,” he said to Pacino.
The sonar consoles on the port side blacked out. “Loss of sonar,” Albanese said.
The smoke had completely filled the room. Visibility was near zero. Pacino coughed desperately, sinking down to his knees, hoping that the air would be breathable near the deck, but it seemed no improvement. He could feel dizziness start to overtake him as the overhead red lights clicked off, leaving the room in the darkness of a coal mine.
