George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

Dmitri Ustinov was on his own.

Sergei Andropoyov shivered and pulled his coat even more tightly against his body as he made his way from one of the crippled submarine’s compartments to another. It was cold in here already, even with a few of Gepard ’s heaters still left on. They couldn’t afford to use any more of them. They drained far too much from the limited battery supply.

Andropoyov could see his frosty breath in the eerie half-light as he fought to keep his true thoughts from showing on his face. He knew it was important that he make an appearance. The surviving crew needed to be reassured that everything was all right. Most of them were lying in their bunks, curled beneath their blankets, trying to stay warm while they heeded his admonition to avoid movement and conserve oxygen.

Oxygen wasn’t the real problem. They had enough for a month or more, stored in the big flasks out in the ballast tanks, and there were enough sodium chlorate candles to give them breathable air for another week after that.

The problem was carbon dioxide. Each crew member breathed out one hundred and fifty grams of it every day, and without the air being cleansed, it would soon grow to toxic levels. If they had power, the scrubbers would remove it from the air. Without them, the alternative was to let the lithium hydroxide pellets absorb it. If they had power, the pellets would be held in canisters and fans would force the carbon dioxide–laden air through them. Without power, the fans and canisters were useless. The best way to get the lithium hydroxide in contact with the air was to lay a thin layer wherever they could. The pellets were already spread out on most of the horizontal surfaces in the submarine, on tables, empty bunks, even on the deck. The pellets disintegrated so that a cloud of obnoxious dust rose whenever they were disturbed.

Gepard carried enough lithium hydroxide to last for a complete patrol without the scrubbers, but the storage lockers where most of it was kept were all in the flooded after compartment. The ready stores were all they had now. Even if they were careful, there was only enough to keep the air breathable for a few more days.

“Otherwise” was a proposition Sergei Andropoyov did not want to ponder.

He paused in his tour at the reactor hatch. It seemed strange to see the doorway gaping open when they were at sea. Normally it would have been locked shut. If anyone were crazy enough to enter the hatch while the reactor was operating, the radiation would kill him in a few minutes.

Now the reactor was shut down. It presented no danger from radiation.

The captain ducked his head and stepped through. The place was huge, but crammed full with piping, valves, pumps, and wires. He noticed the temperature difference. After the cold in the rest of the sub, it was very warm in here. Even two days after the explosion that had sunk them, the reactor system was still quite hot. Andropoyov took advantage of the heat, removed his coat, and allowed the warmth to soak into his body. His hands tingled as the circulation returned.

Now, where was the first officer?

He found Dimitriy Pishkovski staring forlornly into an open electrical panel.

“Captain, I have found why the rods will not latch,” he announced, the defeat heavy in his voice.

He pointed into the electrical panel. It was filled with charred insulation and melted wiring. All the interior surfaces were blackened with a heavy layer of sticky, oily soot.

“How did that happen?” Andropoyov asked.

“Damn shipyard! The lugs weren’t tight. When the explosion happened, the wires must have gotten crossed. Burnt it all. Nothing we can do here.”

Andropoyov looked over Pishkovski’s shoulder at the confused, blackened mess. Even in a shipyard, it would take weeks to repair damage this extensive, and now there was no way to float this thing to a shipyard.

The captain shook his head in resignation. He squatted down and put an arm around Pishkovski.

“My friend, let us not share this news with the rest of the crew just yet,” he said in a raspy whisper. They crouched there for another moment, the sweat soaking through their garments. It was so deathly quiet. There was no sound but their own breathing and the distant, ghostly chink of dripping water somewhere. Andropoyov stood and took a deep breath of the sultry air. “Come, Dimitriy, there is nothing more to do here. We will go see what we can do for the injured.”

Joe Glass stood on the brow of his submarine and watched as the Mystic DSRV settled down onto the seating ring around Toledo ’s after escape trunk. The workers rushed to check the latch mechanism and to hook up the power umbilicals.

Up forward, a strange-looking device slid down the torpedo-loading skid on its way to the torpedo room deep in the submarine. Glass still didn’t quite know what to make of it. The bright yellow box had arms, propellers, and other spiky protrusions poking out at odd angles.

So that’s what one of those robot subs looks like, he thought. Wonder why we’re loading on one of those things.

There were four green-painted war-shot torpedoes resting on dollies, waiting their turn to be loaded. Why would he need war-shot torpedoes for a submarine rescue?

Crewmen brushed by him as box after box disappeared down Toledo ’s forward escape trunk. The DSRV crew came with quite a load of extra stuff. Add to that the groceries they would need for wherever they were going and the result was a full-fledged stores load.

A couple of patrol boats cruised out on the loch, discouraging anyone foolish enough to be out on the water this late at night from coming any closer. Occasional headlights were visible up on the hill as cars drove by on the A-814 on their way to Dumbarton.

Glass was so intent on watching the flurry of activity around him that the voice of the topside watch startled him when he hollered for him.

“Skipper, XO on the phone for you!”

Glass grabbed the phone. “Captain.”

“Skipper, you’ve got a phone call down here.”

“Damn, XO! I’m busy up here. You handle it.”

With all the activity on his boat, it would be a major chore for Glass just to get down to some place where he could answer the call.

Edwards hesitated for a polite second and then replied, “You’d better take this one, Skipper. It’s Commodore Ward and he wants to talk to you on the secure line.”

“Okay, XO. I’ll fight my way down.”

Glass dropped down through the forward escape trunk, squeezing past the mass of sailors who were standing there, passing boxes down. He nimbly stepped over the accumulated pile of stores that was building up on the mess decks. They would be walking on cans for a week, at least.

He scurried up the ladder to the control room. Perez and Oshley were bent over a pile of charts, planning their eventual track out of the confines of the base and back to open water. He squeezed past them and headed for his stateroom.

The deck of the passageway forward of the control room was missing, as was the deck for the middle-level passageway below. A long ramp angled up from the after end of the middle-level deck to the topside of the open weapons shipping hatch. The strange yellow box Glass had seen topside now dangled from the ramp and traveled down its length. It looked even stranger up close. The clear glass lens of an underwater video camera seemed like the eye of an intelligent alien being staring curiously at him. Was it malevolent or disinterested? He wasn’t sure.

Glass stepped around the corner of the ramp and jumped into his stateroom. He could see all the way down to the torpedo room in the lowest level of the boat from here and he felt cold air spilling down from the open hatch above.