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

Nuttall was trying hard to work Scorpio into a position where he could get to the second-last line, but the filaments always somehow evaded the cutter’s jaws. Both remaining lines were pressed between AS-28 and the buoyancy chamber of the array, making them much harder to get at. They didn’t seem to be holding her too tightly, yet the submersible wasn’t moving. The air that had been blown into her ballast tanks in an effort to break free from the fishing nets before they had arrived had clearly leaked away.

With another attempt failed, Gold, Nuttall and Riches discussed their options. None of them liked the look of the ropes still apparently holding her, but there was insufficient room to manoeuvre Scorpio to get at them properly. With the oil level light still blinking insistently, Gold suggested that they should take a look around the stern of the submarine to try to get a better idea of what was still holding her.

Nuttall backed away from AS-28 , and gently span Scorpio towards the stern.

‘Something’s definitely up with the thrusters, Stuart,’ he said. ‘It’s feeling very sloppy. Just not sure it’s the voltage.’ By now he was familiar with how the tugging of the umbilical from their loose platform felt, and it wasn’t that. He was getting a bad feeling about this.

As Scorpio drew level with the propeller housing, Nuttall applied some differential thrust to rotate back around to face towards the fin. Just at that moment, KIL-27 heaved on a passing swell and tugged Scorpio’s umbilical. Nuttall jammed on full opposite power, but it wasn’t enough, and the vehicle was tugged in towards the array. The submersible’s solid steel rudder frame had been clear by a good few feet, but they were suddenly careering towards it. The cutter arm, protruding from the front of the robot, took the impact. The image on the screen jolted, hard.

‘Oh shit,’ said Nuttall, still holding on the power to try to get some distance between Scorpio and the submersible. ‘Deck give me a full turn of slack!’

Gold disengaged the manipulator master arm and sprang forward to take a close look at the monitor. The V-shaped guide that protruded above the cutter’s jaw was made of two wide, flat pieces of aluminium. The one closest to the camera had bent forwards and now ran parallel with the other, rather than at ninety degrees. The cutter’s gape into which the cables had to be fed was now more like a tight-lipped grimace.

‘Not looking good, Pete,’ said Gold. ‘It’s bent right over. Not sure we’ll get anything in there now.’ He paused for a second, looking at the screen. Then he turned to Riches.

‘We’re going to have to recover Scorpio and sort this out. We’re useless otherwise. It’s a simple job to fix that, and it means we can take a look at the oil problem too. But it means we’re going to have to get ourselves back on deck. I reckon we can be back on site in about thirty minutes.’

Riches turned to Podkapayev and relayed the news. He didn’t like it. Riches tried to explain that there was no other option, but Podkapayev was shaking his head vigorously before he’d finished. He began jabbering in Russian and chopping with his hands. The interpreter reported that he was saying that under no circumstances could Scorpio be recovered now and that it had to stay down to finish the job.

Gold, Nuttall and the deck crew were doing their job with calm professionalism. Riches felt the need to give them the space to continue. Podkapayev was evidently caught in a tricky position, with the nation’s Defence Minister only a few dozen metres away from him expecting him to control the situation. But there was too much at stake here – the time it would take for the Minister to rubber-stamp the recovery of the ROV could be the difference between the mission’s success or failure, between life and death.

There was one more thing they could do before bringing her up. ‘Stuart, we’ve cut four lines now,’ Riches said. ‘Why don’t we give her a nudge and see if there’s anything still holding her?’

Gold shrugged. ‘Right you are, Commander,’ he said. ‘Get yourself off the starboard side of that prop housing there, Pete, give her a shove.’

Nuttall nodded, and carefully approached the stern of AS-28 until Scorpio’s skids were rubbing against the submarine’s casing. Then, applying a burst of full power, he tried to push the trapped vehicle away from the array. To his surprise the submarine began to shift, swinging away from the steel float. But after only a metre or so it stopped, and swung back in, pivoting on the bow. One or more of those lines were still holding her in place.

Gold, Nuttall and Riches looked at one another. It was clear what was needed.

‘It’s no good, Dmitriy,’ Gold said. ‘We are going to have to recover.’

Once more Podkapayev began protesting, but after only the briefest of confirmatory glances between Gold and Riches, Nuttall was already pulling up and away from AS-28 and instructing the deck crew to take in a wrap of umbilical and prepare for recovery. Podkapayev frantically started calling on his radio to the command ship, his face reddening.

Outside on deck, Captain Jonathan Holloway sensed the change in mood before he heard what had happened. When he saw the winch begin to start reeling in the umbilical, he began to notice movements among the Russian crew members on board both KIL-27 and the nearby Alagez. The lady he’d seen watching the proceedings from the bridge had buried her face in her hands. It never occurred to him that this might be the wife of one of the stricken crew, let alone the Captain’s.

Once he’d heard the cause of the disturbance, Holloway’s knowledge of the Russian mindset began to burrow into his thoughts. If the repair took too long, it was possible that they would lose confidence in the foreign equipment, and suddenly decide to try something else instead. That would not only be a disaster for the UK team, but also possibly for the seven men stuck 200 metres below them.

Meanwhile the American divers and doctor were agitating for a role. They were feeling as disconnected as Holloway, only they had the tools and training to be feeling the need for practical involvement. They changed from their camouflage slacks and big dark jackets into diving dry-suits. The depth of the submersible was too great for them to reach without special gas mixes and a decompression chamber at the very least, but they wanted to be in the rescue launch and be ready to get in the water as soon as it surfaced. Holloway relayed the messages, but with predictable results. The Russians said they had their own divers. Reading between the lines, they weren’t keen to have another piece of the rescue taken from their hands, and especially not by the Americans. With the Defence Minister, Ivanov, watching their every move, the more they could do themselves, the better.

A subtle mistiness in the air was beginning to solidify into a distant fog, and the sea was starting to stir. The long, low swell had grown imperceptibly and the previously oily surface was now ruffled with occasional flecks of white. The low-pressure system that had been forecast looked like it was finally arriving.

When the news came through the underwater telephone that the British robot was damaged, a cold feeling took root in Sergei Belozerov’s stomach. The controller’s voice said that the estimated repair time was only 30 minutes, but his long experience of working with machinery and the sea told him different. If it was such a simple thing, why didn’t they just continue and fix it afterwards. There wasn’t much that could be fixed in 30 minutes. And, anyway, the same controller had told them that the Venom ROV had only had a small problem and yet it never came back. There was no reason to believe that this would be any different.