George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

He decided to go in closer and try to determine what might have happened. He would see if they might be of some assistance if anyone was left out there to help.

He glanced around the control room. All eyes were on him. Once again, the awesome pressures of leadership washed over Brad Crawford like a deluge of cold water. These men had no idea how to interpret what had just happened. Or any concept of what to do next. That was up to him, their skipper.

So now it was time to let them in on his plan. Trouble was, even as he opened his mouth, Crawford had no idea what that plan might be.

“Okay, so it looks like we lost contact with the Akula at the same time we heard that explosion. They were both on the same bearing. It is very possible the Akula suffered some kind of accident.” He swallowed hard. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to close the last position we had on her and see if we can find out anything. Everyone on your toes. We don’t have any idea what we might be running into.”

Sergei Andropoyov picked himself up off the deck and spat out what appeared to be tiny bits of tooth. He blinked twice and struggled to get his balance.

Gepard had stopped moving at last. The depth gauge read three hundred and thirty meters. The inclinometers showed a twenty-degree list to port and a ten-degree up angle.

No doubt about it. His beautiful new submarine was resting on the bottom of the sea.

The control room was deathly quiet. The humming noise of an underway sub was gone.

The lights were still on, though. They still had power.

Andropoyov looked around the control room. Dimitriy Pishkovski sat in the corner, holding a bloody cloth to his head wound and moaning. Some of the other watchstanders around the control room were picking themselves up, staring around in dazed disbelief, trying to assimilate what had happened.

Andropoyov walked around the control room, trying to assess what was working and what wasn’t. Reports were starting to come in from the other compartments in the boat. He listened to them as he continued his visual check.

All over the sub, crewmen reported in. Except for the after compartment. There was nothing from there.

The captain checked the pressurization meters and was not surprised to find the after compartment was at sea pressure. After all, they had sunk backward to the bottom. There had to be a rupture to the outside sea somewhere in the after compartment.

Someone had managed to shut the hatch and seal off the inflow of water. Otherwise, the next compartment forward, the one that housed the steam-driven engines and turbines, would be flooded, too.

The reactor was shut down. That wasn’t surprising, considering the shock of the explosion. The battery appeared to be working all right. Fully charged, too. That should last awhile. Several days if they were careful.

So there was hope. They should have enough time for Igor Serebnitskiv and the K-461 to show up for the rendezvous, learn of their distress, and summon help.

The Volk might even be close enough by now to hear them. It would have heard the explosion, too. They needed to be signaling already so the old boat would know where they were and what had happened.

“First Officer, get up. I need you,” Andropoyov barked at Pishkovski. “Station a watch at the underwater telephone. Signal Volk so she will know we are down here and so she can find us.”

Pishkovski pulled himself erect. He still held the blood-soaked rag to the jagged gash on his forehead. He nodded and stepped unsteadily over to the underwater telephone. After flipping the toggle switch to turn it on, he picked up the microphone to talk. Before he could key the microphone, though, Andropoyov reached over and flipped another switch.

“Dimitriy, better use the topside hydrophone. The keel one is buried in the mud.”

Pishkovski nodded and sat down hard, still holding the microphone. He began to speak weakly into its mouthpiece. “ Volk , Volk , this is Gepard . Help us. We are sunk.”

He repeated the plea over and over again.

The michman who had been taking the reports from the crew gave a wrap-up. “Captain, all compartments except the after compartment have reported. Fifteen dead, ten seriously injured, one missing. Compartment seven is reporting some leakage through the stuffing tubes from the aft compartment. They are attempting to tighten the tubes, but the bilges are full. No other flooding reported.”

Andropoyov nodded. They were better off than he had any right to expect. Flooding controlled, damage apparently confined to the sub’s rear end, resting reasonably upright and stable on the bottom. Deep, but not too deep for rescue. Thankfully, a comrade would be along shortly to get that process started.

At least they weren’t out here all alone.

Meanwhile, there were fifteen killed and ten injured from his crew of sixty. That left thirty-five crewmen to work.

Trouble was, just now he had no idea what they should be working on.

Miami steamed toward the last known position for the mystery sub. Brad Crawford was torn between rushing in as quickly as possible to see how he could help and easing in cautiously until he could determine what in hell had happened.

He decided to err on the side of caution. Miami was coming in carefully and quietly.

Aaron Miller first heard the voice in his headphones. He couldn’t understand what the man was saying. It was a foreign language, maybe Russian, but a weak, strained human voice saying the same thing over and over in a tired singsong. The frequency was the same 4.7 kilohertz as the newest Russian long-range underwater telephone.

Someone out there was alive and talking. Given the range of a typical underwater telephone, he was within a couple of miles.

“Conn, sonar. Hearing underwater telephone. Best bearing three-two-one. I think it’s Russian, but I can’t tell.”

Crawford looked hard at the plot. The bearing pointed pretty close to where they believed the last position of the mystery sub had been. The Russian underwater telephone communications could be a plea for help. The problem was Crawford didn’t know of anyone on board who spoke Russian.

A thought hit him. Maybe one of the Woods Hole scientists. Hell, they spoke “whale.” Maybe they could manage a little Russian. Crawford sent for Dr. Croley.

The tall, gangly scientist arrived in the control room with a puzzled look on his face. Ever since the Miami had gone sub hunting, the crew seemed to lose all interest in narwhals and his research. He and his colleagues had busied themselves transcribing notes and listening to whale songs on tape.

Crawford looked up from the navigation charts. “Dr. Croley, thanks for joining us. We need some help. Does anyone on your team speak Russian?”

Croley smiled. “Captain, it’s hard to do research on Arctic whales without speaking and reading some margin of conversational Russian. Most of us are fluent.”

“Excellent! I need someone to translate for us.” Crawford ushered the scientist into the sonar room and handed him a set of headphones. “What is this guy saying?”

Croley listened, pressing the earphones to his head and concentrating on the feeble, scratchy sound of the voice. He nodded as he listened. He snatched a pad of paper and began to write: “Wolf, Wolf, this is Leopard. Help us. We are sunk.”

Croley looked up at Crawford, his eyes wide and his face going ashen as he realized the implications of what he was hearing.

“These are the words,” Croley said, pointing to the pad. “He is saying it over and over again.”

Crawford nodded. It was what he had expected.