Frank Pope - 72 Hours - The First-Hand Account of a Royal Navy Mission to Save the Crew of a Trapped Russian Submarine

But Nuttall’s sixth sense could not counter the foot or so of loose movement. Every time the cutter’s mouth rose up towards the cable and a snatch looked certain, everyone in the cabin leaned forward at the screen, willing it in like die-hard – but mute – football supporters whose team were close to a goal. But each time something would shift, and the cable would somehow slip to the side of the cutter’s jaws. Nuttall was having to use a lot of power to move, yet he was sure he’d got enough slack on the winch. Maybe it was the low voltage cutting the power available to his thrusters, he thought.

Watching Nuttall struggling to manoeuvre the entire ROV to get the cable into the cutter’s jaws, Gold had an idea. He pushed backwards past Podkapayev and settled himself against the back wall where the manipulator control was mounted. Everyone bunched up towards the door to give him more room.

With his back against the wall, Gold reached up to a robotic arm that protruded from the wall above his shoulder. Taking the hand grip in his left hand, he adjusted and aligned the various joints to match the orientation of the manipulator arm on Scorpio, 200 metres beneath them.

‘OK, Pete, unfreeze me,’ he said.

Nuttall flicked a switch in front of him that would link Gold’s master arm to the slave below. On the screen in front of them, Scorpio’s arm twitched. Trying to control four joints of the manipulator with levers, buttons or even joysticks made for time-consuming, clumsy work. It was more intuitive to use a master arm whose every motion was replicated by that of the ‘slave’ below on the ROV.

With an easy, practised swing, Gold twisted his fingers and smoothly pulled his arm downwards, and the camera showed Scorpio’s manipulator releasing its grip on a rail and faithfully follow Gold’s movement downwards until it was poised dead ahead of the vehicle.

Gold now extended his arm outwards and opened his fingers, and on the screen the manipulator’s metal claw opened and began reaching out to grab the cable. Able to move independently of Scorpio’s bulk, it was quickly able to capture it. Once in the manipulator’s grasp, Gold could easily pull the cable towards the cutting arm that was fixed to Scorpio’s frame. The ROV was now attached to the cable, giving a little bit of stability.

Nuttall was so focused on controlling the ROV that he was oblivious to all the movement and anxious commentary around him. He was trying not to think of the men trapped inside the steel coffin in front of him, instead concentrating on his task. At last the cable slipped in between the guides and into the jaws – only then did his ears open to the tense murmur of encouragement.

‘We’re in. Cutting now,’ he said and flicked a switch to his right. The cutter arm juddered as the hydraulic blade rotated across the gape of the jaws, and specks of sediment rose like slow-motion dust from the rope, then suddenly the two ends could be seen drifting apart. A big cheer filled the cabin. The time was 12.20 local.

Riches stepped outside for a second. The sea was oily calm, and the scene on the hot, rusting deck was strangely dreamlike. Men were clustered around the crew members who had headphones on, staring in different directions as though imagining the events happening in the darkness somewhere below them.

Stepping back into the control cab, Riches hit a wall of heat and the smell of sweaty men mixed with the stale nicotine coming off Podkapayev and the interpreter. The room was dark to help the operators see the screens, and the aircon had been turned off to preserve the precious voltage. The atmosphere inside was tense again, and looking at the screen Riches could see why. They were already close to catching the second, rubbery line. Gold’s back was up against the wall, his arm protruding into the middle of the cabin beneath the robotic control, snatching as though trying to grab something from mid-air in slow motion.

At last the claws closed around the tube and Gold slowly drew his hand closer to him and across to his right. Deep beneath them Scorpio’s manipulator mirrored the motion and swung across to the jaws of the cutter arm. There were a couple of missed attempts at fitting it inside, then the line was in the jaws.

Nuttall flicked the switch. The cutter arm juddered once more as the hydraulic blade slid forward in its housing, and then suddenly there was a burst of gas and a cloud of bubbles exploded from the cutter and fled for the surface.

Everyone exchanged glances, except for Podkapayev, who remained intently focused on the screen. That was no cable. That was a gas hose of some sort, and not an old one either. Under that kind of pressure the gas – whatever it was – would have found some way to escape if it had been there for any length of time. It seemed to Riches that the Russians had not just been inspecting the hydrophone array as they’d claimed. Perhaps they had been working on it, topping it up with air to keep it buoyant and the antennae taut.

No wonder that Podkapayev was looking uncomfortable. Everyone knew how dangerous it was to use a rescue craft for maintenance work. Their whole design was for short interventions, and they contained no provision for getting in trouble themselves. To operate one without backup was asking for trouble.

Gold and Nuttall remained totally focused on their task, and were already lining up for the third rope. Just over an hour after the very first cut, the third rope was severed. They were working with methodical efficiency, and Riches began projecting forward. At this rate, they should be done within another hour.

Huddled in the damp, frozen chamber of the submersible, Gennady Bolonin was having to fight hard to prevent his body from starting to shiver uncontrollably. Once started it would be difficult to stop and might spread to others. Given that they didn’t know how much longer they’d be down there, an outbreak of shivering could be lethal; it would use up their remaining oxygen three times faster.

Bolonin could see the writing on the wall. The glistening eyes of contained terror had long ago been replaced by dull, blank stares. When the vomiting had started, he’d looked over at Lepetyukha. The captain might have been dead, but suddenly his chest began a heaving, hollow-bellied cough as his damaged lungs tried to find fresh air.

There was none. The acrid smell of vomit was now overlaid with a fug of urine. They were using sealable bottles for their liquid waste, but the weaker the men got, the more frequently they missed or spilled them. The used cans of V-64 could only be imperfectly sealed, and nauseating, acrid tendrils of excrement stink were filling both their nostrils and their subconscious.

At last Lepetyukha glanced back at Bolonin for long enough for the engineer to nod. The significance was not lost on the Captain.

They had used seven of the V-64 emergency air regeneration canisters they’d had on board. They’d eked the chemical out for as long as they possibly could. Now only one remained. Once this was opened, the psychological crutch of having an unopened canister in reserve would be gone. Once the chemicals in this canister were spent, they were on a slow march down the road to death. As the carbon dioxide level rose, the headaches and nausea they were already suffering from would worsen and they would then lapse into unconsciousness followed quickly and unknowingly by the end. But there was no choice. If it wasn’t opened now the crew would start dying anyway, and Lepetyukha’s nod affirmed he saw that too. They hadn’t changed a cylinder for 18 hours – already a Navy record.