Panic Switch полностью

She was turning the ship back to the north, hoping she could find Belgorod before the boat’s low fuel status turned them to dead cold iron. A minute into the northern run, Captain Kovalov came awake with a tremor, sputtered, coughed, shook his head, winced, and looked over at Trusov.

“What happened?” he said.

Trusov was concentrating too hard to give him much of an answer. “We took a hit from Belgorod’s Gigantskiy going off too soon. They sent a message on secure Bolshoi-Feniks asking for rescue. I’m trying to find them now.”

“Did you reply?”

“Our set is out-of-commission. They don’t know we’re coming for them.”

Kovalov would normally have pelted her with questions, orders, and demands. But today he seemed twenty years older than his biological age, weak, and seemingly resigned. Trusov didn’t have time to worry about his feelings.

“I’ve got something,” she said.

“Energize your bow lamps and camera,” Kovalov said. “We may pick them up that way better than side scan.”

“Hitting the bow lights and camera. Can you put your display on the readout? I’m still on side scan.”

“Bringing it up now,” Kovalov said, trying to concentrate on the camera’s murky field of view forward.

For several tense minutes, Trusov drove the boat toward the Belgorod, its signature getting more distinct on side scan sonar.

“I’ve got Belgorod on visual,” Kovalov said.

“Switching to visual,” Trusov said.

“Energize your lower hatch lamps and camera,” Kovalov said.

“Lower hatch lamps and cam coming on.”

Trusov watched as the colossal hull of Belgorod appeared slowly out of the darkness of the ocean, the vessel seeming intact, but it lay at a ten-degree list on the bottom. If she hadn’t received the Bolshoi-Feniks message, she would be convinced that it was a sunken wreck.

“Can you find the hatch of their escape chamber?”

“Nothing on the lower hatch cam yet,” she said. “Wait, I have the forward edge of the conning tower. I have mast opening hatches visible.”

“A little more aft,” Kovalov said. “Just a few more meters.”

“I think I have it,” Trusov said.

The sound of a banging, clanging noise came through the hull from below.

“They’re pounding on the hull for rescue,” Kovalov said.

“They didn’t get a response to their message,” Trusov said. “Lowering the skirt to their hatch.” She reached into the overhead and hit a toggle switch. “Energizing vacuum pump. Skirt pump-down progressing. Opening high-pressure air to the skirt. Skirt draining, and I have a dry skirt.”

Kovalov unbuckled. “I’ll go to the lower hatch and organize getting the survivors onboard.”

“Phone me with progress, Captain,” Trusov said, glancing at her watch.

It was urgent they got the personnel off the wreck of the Belgorod and made their way to open water before the reactor breathed its last.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev hoisted the sledgehammer and took a hard swing at the hull at a spot where he’d had the insulation removed. A reverberating clang slammed the eardrums of the survivors in the escape chamber. He hit the hull a second time, then a third, handing the heavy tool to Communications Officer Vilen Shvets, who took over and started banging on the hull.

Alexeyev looked around the escape chamber and counted heads. He had the crew from the central command post and most of the engineering personnel. Two of the test wives had been found and brought to the upper level to climb into the escape chamber, but their commander and first officer, Svetlana Anna and Selena Laura, hadn’t been found — probably dead from the atmospheric control machinery room’s explosion, he thought. The machinery room’s destruction had taken out the entire emergency assistance team that had their action stations in the crew’s messroom, waiting there to be directed to whatever damage control emergency needed them, and then the emergency ended up killing them all, some three dozen crewmen. Alexeyev counted twenty-five survivors including himself, out of a crew of seventy. Forty-one of the crew were confirmed dead, with nine missing. The lead test wife was one of the missing. Other than those nine, they’d identified the dead, with Lebedev noting the names for later, assuming they lived to tell the tale. Alexeyev shook his head. It had been a bad day, he thought, and it would get worse if Losharik didn’t hear them banging on the hull.

Captain Lieutenant Shvets had grown exhausted after a dozen hard slams of the sledgehammer, and he’d sat, sweating, the tool between his knees, when the sound of a banging noise came through the hull at the upper hatch. Alexeyev looked at Lebedev.

“Did you hear that?” he said. “Or am I dreaming?”

Shvets vaulted back to his feet and smacked the hull again with the sledgehammer. He was answered with a bang from outside.

“Open the upper hatch,” Alexeyev said, looking again at Lebedev. “If there’s no one there, he won’t be able to get the hatch opened because of the sea pressure. If the hatch opens? We’re rescued.”