by Peter Sasgen
“Periscope depth, aye,” Veroshilov replied from the diving station. “Rigging ship for hover.”
Litvanov waited until he received confirmation that the K-363 had been properly trimmed and that the submarine, hove to, lay suspended twenty meters beneath the surface of the fjord. “Raise the ESM
mast,” he ordered. “Let’s see if that nosy P-3 is in the area.”
A brief hum of hydraulics sounded in the CCP.
“Contact, Kapitan. Narrowband spectrum. Identify as U.S. Navy type APS-118 search radar. Bearing zero two-zero, moving left. Signal strength Five.”
“Amerikanskis?” Zakayev said.
“Yes, probably out of Keflavík.” Litvanov said. “They’re flying a north-south search leg.”
The girl stood beside Zakayev, her big eyes on Litvanov.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “They’ll soon get bored and go back to their movies and television programs. Then we can head south.”
Karl Radford looked at the haggard face of Rear Admiral Grishkov. The color adjustment on the videoconference screen in Radford’s Crystal City office looked slightly off: As well as looking haggard, Grishkov also looked green.
“Good morning, Mikhail,” said Radford.
“Good morning to you, Karl,” said Grishkov. “Thank you for setting up the conference on such short notice. This won’t take long.”
“Take as much time as you need, Mikhail. I know this isn’t a social call.”
Grishkov, in Severomorsk, where it was three A.M., hunched forward and, puffing on a cigarette while looking into a glass of steaming tea on his desk, said, “No, this is not a social call.”
“What can I do for you, Mikhail?” Radford asked.
“Admiral Stashinsky does not know that I’m talking to you, Karl. Nor will he, I hope.”
Radford didn’t show surprise. “This is a secure network. It can’t be recorded or penetrated.”
“Thank you.”
Radford waited, toying with the Scotch and water he habitually drank at the end of his workday.
Grishkov lifted his gaze from the tea and looked directly into the video camera on his end. “Can you tell me, please, Karl, what you’ve done with Captain Scott and the K-480?”
A brief hesitation and Radford said, “I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t done anything with them. I know that you recalled them. Haven’t they confirmed your order?”
“No. We’ve been trying to raise the K-480 via ZEVS, but they don’t respond. I thought perhaps you might know why.”
“This is news to me, Mikhail. You aren’t suggesting that something has happened to them, are you?”
Smoke from his cigarette made Grishkov squint. “You would know that better than I. You have sources we don’t have.”
“We’ve had no casualty reports. But then, as you know, our SOSUS in that region is on standby only, not active.”
“I was referring to your new laser satellites.”
“They’re not currently deployed in that region.”
“In other words you don’t know why Scott won’t respond to our signals.”
“Perhaps he can’t.”
“Yes, I’ve considered that they may have a communication problem. But it seems a remote possibility.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you, Mikhail. I wish I could help.”
“Let me ask this: Have you been in communication with them?”
Radford took a sip from his drink. His mind raced. He’d anticipated Grishkov’s question because he knew that the Russians monitored but couldn’t break ELF or VHF signals sent to U.S. submarines on patrol around the world. And there was no way the Russians could determine which submarines the messages had been sent to, not even the K-480.
“Yes, we have communicated with them.”
“When was the last time?”
“The day you issued the recall order. We sent Scott an interrogatory to confirm he’d received it, and he had.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Now, Mikhail…”
“I’m not asking that you divulge classified information. I simply want to know: Did he confirm receipt of our recall and say he’d return to Olenya Bay?”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
“That was twenty-four hours ago. The K-480 has not returned to base, nor has Botkin broadcast his position twice daily as ordered. This officer you have aboard, Scott, he’s what you Americans call a loose cannon, yes?”
“Scott wouldn’t disobey a direct order.”
“A direct order from you, you mean.”
Radford kept his iron composure. “What are you implying, Mikhail?”
“Indulge me to think out loud, Karl. What I am thinking is that your Captain Scott received secret orders to move south, into waters around Norway and Sweden.”
“Secret orders from whom?”
Grishkov allowed a mild annoyance to temper his voice. “Someone in your government. Someone high up.”
“What reason would we have to send Scott and the K-480 south to Norway and Sweden?”
Grishkov rubbed out his cigarette. “Because you believe that’s where Zakayev and Litvanov are headed.”
“That’s absurd and you know it. Zakayev and Litvanov are in the Barents. If you’re having trouble finding them, don’t blame us. We offered to help but you refused. If you’ve changed your mind, say so, but don’t come to me with some half-assed theory that we’re telling Scott to ignore your orders. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No? Something seems to have gotten your serious attention, Karl. We’ve detected a sudden increase in P-3 surveillance flights over the Norwegian Sea and as far south as the Skag. There’s also been an increase in Norwegian ASW activity. Perhaps the K-363 is headed south—was headed south all along
—and you’ve told Scott not to obey our recall order, and also that he is to find the K-363 and torpedo it
—torpedo it even in the Baltic if necessary.”
“The Baltic? Where did you come up with that idea? What the hell’s in the Baltic that you think would interest a group of terrorists in a submarine? Surely not Kaliningrad, that old broken-down base you have there. Or do you think Zakayev plans to sneak into the Gulf of Riga and sink one of your old flattops or missile cruisers? Is that it?”
Grishkov lit a fresh cigarette. He waved smoke away from in front of his face and said, “I don’t know if that’s it. That’s why I asked for this conference. I was hoping you would tell me what happened to the K-480 if not the K-363. They’re both missing.”
“What do you mean, the K-363 is missing?”
“She’s not in the Barents Sea.”
“How do you know that?”
“Please, Karl, we poor Russians don’t have half the navy or satellites America has, but we are not totally impotent. And we are not fools. We put what we have to work in the Barents Sea and have come up empty handed. Believe me, if the K-363 were there, we’d have found her by now.”
Radford pushed back in his chair. The iced Scotch had left a ring of water in its coaster and he touched it with a fingertip. Grishkov, grasping at straws, didn’t realize he’d caught one.
“I must tell you, Karl, I have only one more day in which to find the K-363. If I don’t, Stashinsky will relieve me of command.”
Radford almost felt sorry for the Russian but said nothing.
“My gut tells me that the K-363 is not hiding in the Barents,” said Grishkov. “So perhaps you will tell me now the truth. Do you know if Litvanov is making for the Baltic Sea?”
Radford had his answer ready. “No, I don’t.”
“I see. By the way, you know of course that the only way to reach St. Petersburg by sea is through the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Thank you for keeping our conversation confidential. I appreciate it.”
A trip-hammer went off in his chest. He needed air but couldn’t breath. Everything seemed to be mo
ving in slow motion: his ship, his men, the North Korean frigate bearing down. He tried to warn Alex, but it was too late.
“What?”
The starpom’s face floated into view, “Captain Scott, sir, sorry to wake you, but you are needed in the CCP. Sonar contact.”
The hum of machinery. Muted voices. The dank familiar smell of the K-480.
Scott, fully awake now, swung off his bunk and said. “What do you have?”
The starpom rattled off their course, speed, and position south of Vega, Norway. Then: “Sound has picked up two sets of screws, bearing dead ahead.”
“On my way.”
In the CCP, Botkin, looking pale, said, “Two ships. Norwegian frigates. Each has a towed sonar array deployed.”
Tactical plot had already worked a torpedo firing solution on them.
Scott acknowledged Alex and Yuri Abakov’s arrival in the CCP. He glanced at the coastal chart of Norway, its filigree of islands and fjords. “They’re here,” he said for their benefit, “and moving toward us. We can hear them upstairs, their VDS arrays are passive. They’re definitely listening for something.”
“The K-363?” Abakov said.
“Bet on it,” Scott said.
“Then may I make an observation?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m not pretending to be a naval tactician, but from everything I’ve seen so far and feel in my gut, Zakayev and Litvanov are long gone—south. The Norwegians up there are like a couple of cops looking under the bed for a robber who went out the back door. They’re wasting their time looking for them and instead they’re going to find us—”
A wailing APD—Air Particle Detector—alarm cut him off. A split second later a red warning light started flashing on and off.
Botkin, his face a mask of fear, froze at the periscope stand.
A recorded female voice exploded from the SC1: “Condition Red, Compartment Seven! Condition Red, Compartment Seven!”
“Decreasing pressurizer level!” warned the starpom. Without waiting for orders, he rang up slow speed to reduce reactor power.
“What is it?” Alex shouted over the din.
“Reactor coolant leak!” Botkin croaked.
“SCRAM the reactor!” Scott ordered.
The starpom activated the remote and a beat later replied, “Nothing!”
“Reactor Control Compartment!” Scott shouted. “Let’s go!”
Sailors flattened themselves against machinery-lined passageways as Scott and Alex, high-stepping over water tight door coamings, dashed for the Reactor Control Compartment.
At the after end of Compartment Six they found the terrified chief engineer and main propulsion engineer gawking at the reactor control console. Their coveralls were black with sweat and they had already broken out OBAs—oxygen breathing apparatuses—and silver steam suits. Flashing red warning lights and the honking alarm made the darkened compartment look and sound like a scene from hell.
The two engineers prepared to don their old-fashioned OBAs, full-face rubber masks with glass eye ports and corrugated black hoses for plugging into belt mounted breathing canisters or into the ship’s central air system.
“Put those away,” Scott commanded. “There’re no poisonous fumes in here.”
The men hesitated, then did as they were ordered.
“Get control of yourselves,” Scott shouted.
He shouldered the frightened engineers aside. One look at the console’s gauges and instruments confirmed that the APD reading had increased rapidly, that a ten gallon-a-minute leak had erupted somewhere in the reactor’s main coolant loop. The reactor should have SCRAMMED—shut down automatically—but hadn’t. If the reactor wasn’t shut down and the leak repaired quickly, or if the coolant makeup system couldn’t provide enough water, the reactor core would run dry and overheat with catastrophic results. The K-480 was suddenly a potential Chernobyl II.
“Why didn’t the reactor SCRAM?” Scott bellowed over the hammering alarm.
“I don’t know,” said the boyish-looking chief engineer. “The quench plates didn’t drop like they’re supposed to. I-I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Scott knew that Russian naval reactors, like U.S. naval reactors, used hafnium plates or rods to control the reactor’s power output. When the plates retracted, nuclear fission accelerated, producing heat and power. Conversely, plate insertion slowed or “quenched” the reaction by absorbing the neutrons produced during fission.
The acronym SCRAM, for Safety Control Rod Axe Man, had evolved in the early days of reactor development during World War II. Then, a single control rod simply hung from a rope over the reactor.
In an emergency a man wielding an axe would cut the rope, allowing the control rod to drop into the reactor and shut it down. Now the procedure was more complicated.
Scott pointed to a pair of winking red warning lights on the inclined, waist-high section of the console.
“The quench plates are still in their retracted position. The autorelease mechanism must have failed—
like everything else on this ship—and shut that damn alarm off. The Norwegians are probably deaf from it by now too.”
The chief engineer located and threw the switch. The sudden silence was almost overwhelming.
“Jake, core temperature is rising fast,” Alex said, pointing to the large, centrally located temperature gauge set into the control panel with its switch gear and elaborate red and blue diagram of the reactor’s piping system. Some branches of the diagram were flagged with yellow and black labels marked Apasnost!—Danger!
“Chief, initiate a manual drop,” Scott ordered. “And somebody find Botkin! Tell him to get his ass in here!”
“I already tried a manual drop,” said the chief. “It didn’t work.”
“Well, try it again.”
A hand wheel protruding from the center of the console controlled the insertion rate of the plates into the reactor core. The chief twisted the wheel to its stop but the plates refused to release and drop.
“I don’t understand: They should have dropped,” the chief said, a hand to his sweat-matted hair. “If they don’t, the reactor will overheat and melt through the bottom of the ship.”
“Play it back again,” said Captain Bayer.
Bayer, Dass, and the sonar watch officer, Garborg, listened to the high-pitched sound that had been processed by the towed array and recorded on the VDS system’s computer.
Garborg pointed to a green sine wave displayed for analysis on a monitor. “Sir, note the regularity of the wave’s peaks. Strictly mechanical—that is, it’s definitely a man-made sound.”
“Any idea what it is?” Bayer said.
“A signal,” said Dass.
“Indeed, but what kind of signal?”
“An underwater distress signal?”
Bayer seemed to dismiss this possibility by remaining silent. Then, after considering at length, he said,
“Yes, a distress signal from a submarine. A Russian submarine.”
Dass and Garborg said nothing.
“Narvik reported hearing it too,” Bayer said. “Duration?”
Garborg consulted notes. “Five minutes, eight seconds. Range estimate was ten kilometers.”
“Can we get an accurate fix on the source by using Narvik’s and our own computed bearing?”
“We can try, sir,” Garborg said. He stepped away to work on it.
“What do you think, Mr. Dass? A distress signal? Or what?”
“Or an alarm.”
Bayer put a finger to his chin. “A casualty alarm. A casualty serious enough to not only set off an alarm aboard a submarine but perhaps slow her down or even worse.”
“Something that would force her to surface and identify herself.”
“Exactly. Let’s see what Mr. Garborg comes up with. Maybe we can force the issue.”
“Jake, my God, look at the core temperature,” Alex said. The temperature gauge needle had crept out of the Normal ra
nge.
Botkin burst into the reactor control compartment with a wild, terrified look on his face. “The warning signals—a radiation leak—”
“A coolant leak,” Scott corrected Botkin. He saw Abakov ease into the compartment behind Botkin.
“Calm down.”
Botkin, pointing at the temperature gauge, threw himself at the control console. The gauge’s black needle wiggled at the edge of the red zone. “The fuel will melt!” he cried. “We have to surface right now!” Botkin grabbed an SC1 microphone. “We have to emergency blow—”
Scott tore the mike from Botkin’s fist. “Belay that!”
“We’re all going to die—”
Scott grabbed two handfuls of Botkin’s coveralls and threw him against the console. “No one’s going to die!”
He understood what Botkin feared, what every nuclear sub sailor feared: a core meltdown. To prevent it, someone would have to enter the reactor compartment with the reactor critical and in danger of melt down and manually drop the quench plates.
“Chief, break out your schematics of the cooling system,” Scott commanded.
The engineer threw open a locker and pawed through a pile of disorganized ring-bound manuals and folded plans. He found the one Scott wanted and flattened it out on the console.
As Scott and the two engineers conferred, Abakov said to Alex, “What are we facing?”
“If the reactor core melts down, Scandinavia and eastern Europe could face a second Chernobyl,” Alex said. “The radioactivity released could contaminate a wide swath of Russia too.”
Botkin heard this and wailed, “But this is a disaster.”
Alex said, “At Chernobyl the reactor overheated and caused a core meltdown. Two hydrogen explosions blew the top off the reactor building, releasing deadly radioactive material into the atmosphere. Not only did it expose people in Russia to high levels of radioactivity, the radioactivity spread over northern Europe. Millions were affected.”
“I remember,” Abakov said. “People got sick and there were birth defects….”
“Radiation damages human cells and the central nervous system. It also causes cancer and genetic defects. High doses can cause death within days or even hours of exposure. The long-term effects of lower doses are just as bad. That’s why we wear dosimeters to record exposure. No dose is harmless and repeated exposures build up in the body and can have delayed effects.”