Larry Bond - Cold Choices

Jerry thought Palmer had waited too long, then he saw the image shift and realized Palmer must have sent the signal a few moments ago. The tube opening moved toward the center of the screen and suddenly a bright, sustained flash of yellow filled the display. Then it went dark.

“Control, torpedo room. I’m revving the motor,” Palmer nearly shouted over the intercom. “Full rpm!”

“Seawolf , this is Petrov. We can hear something in the tube! There is the whine of a motor.”

Rudel answered. “ Severodvinsk , we think it’s in.”

“Control, torpedo room.” Palmer’s excited voice blared over the loudspeaker. “Executing command shut down!”

A long moment passed as the sound traveled to Severodvinsk and Petrov’s reply came back.” Seawolf, the whining has stopped. We are closing the outer door.”

“Control, torpedo room. I’ve lost all contact with Patty.” Palmer’s hopeful tone contrasted with what would normally be very bad news. Moments later, he was in control, waiting for word from the Russians.

Once the outer door was closed, the water would have to be removed from the tube. Normally it would be blown down with air, but with most of the high-pressure air already spent, the Russians could afford to use only the slightest burst to get the tube to start draining into the water round the torpedo tank. If Patty was filling most of the tube, there wouldn’t be much sea-water to drain. Then the inner door would have to be opened. Again, that normally used hydraulics. But it could be done manually, by cold, exhausted men breathing poor air. Finally, the vehicle would have to be pulled from the tube on a boat with a significant list, and it weighed nearly twenty-eight hundred pounds.

Jerry had been torpedo officer on Memphis. He knew how he would have done it on that boat, or even Seawolf. How did the Russian mechanisms differ? Whatever the difference, he was going to have to wait a few minutes to find out if they were successful. Considering how long the Russians had waited, he couldn’t complain.

Severodvinsk

Petrov leaned heavily against the bulkhead, the microphone in his hand temporarily forgotten in relief and sudden fatigue. They’d done it, he told himself. The Americans had just saved their lives. He hoped.

Rodionov’s excited voice came over the intercom. “Request permission to open the breech door.”

“Granted,” Petrov replied.

“Door’s open and the vehicle is inside the tube. My men are rigging a block and tackle. Without power and with this pitch and list, we’ll be hauling the damn thing uphill, the wrong way out.”

“Understood. I’ll have the Starpom send down more men to help with the work.” With all of them tired and cold, hauling out the heavy vehicle would be exhausting work.

Kalinin overheard the conversation, and barked orders, sending a half-dozen uninjured men to the starboard torpedo bay. They almost hurried, and he saw several smiling. It was understandable, Petrov realized. There was now a chance they would not die.

He remembered the microphone, and knew Rudel was still waiting for word from him. There was nothing to say until he got word from the torpedo officer. If Rodionov and his people couldn’t get that thing out of the tube, they were still dead men. But the American had done his part. Petrov owed him an update. He picked up the microphone and reported, ‘‘“Seawolf, this is Petrov. We have the vehicle. My men are working to remove it from the torpedo tube. This will take a few minutes.”

Rudel’s voice answered. “ Seawolf is standing by.”

Petrov stood by as well, for about twenty seconds. He’d planned to wait for word from Rodionov. There was nothing he could contribute, and he didn’t want to jiggle Rodionov’s elbow, but he had to see.

It seemed like more than half a dozen men had arrived to help the torpedomen retrieve the American device, but they made a passage for Petrov as soon as he entered. The senior torpedo michman was organizing the detail around a block and tackle while another examined the front of the American device.

There was no clearance between the American remote and the sides of the tube. It had never been designed to be hauled out nose-first. The smooth, flat nose was slightly rounded near the edges, but there were no attachment points or access panels. They hadn’t expected any.

The michman looked at Rodionov, then Petrov, and shrugged. Petrov nodded wordlessy, then added, “Go ahead.”

Using a wrench, the torpedoman tapped different parts of the nose. “There’s a sonar transducer here, but the metal below it might be part of the frame.” He picked up a drill and made several exploratory holes. Two seemed to mark a bar that supported the transducer. The michman widened the holes, then tapped them for a pair of lifting eyes.

Petrov watched the surgery with mixed feelings. It offended him to have to ruin this expensive device, but it would keep his men alive. For all their complexity and cost, all machines — his submarine, the American remote— served men’s purposes.

Rodionov had them pull gently at first, but it moved smoothly, and they took a strain, pulling uphill against the port list and bow-down pitch. With only a few more pulls it was almost halfway out.

Now a loading tray was jury-rigged under it, manually, and by the time that was done, some of the men were clearly winded and had to be replaced. Eager volunteers stepped in and picked up the lines, but when they pulled, it only moved a few inches.

They shrugged, then tried again. It would not move. At Rodionov’s direction, they pushed it back, then pulled again. It stuck at the same place.

There was no way to see where the thing was stuck. Ten feet of the vehicle was hidden, and the clearance was too narrow for flashlights to reveal the obstruction.

The inside of the tube was not completely smooth. Low rails held and guided a weapon, ports let water and air in or helped them escape. Others locked a weapon in place in case of sudden maneuvers by the boat.

“Rotate the thing,” Petrov ordered. “The obstruction is probably small, and the only things it can catch on are a centimeter across. Turn it and it might not get hung up.”

Rodionov nodded and they paid out the lines slightly, letting it fall back into the tube a few inches. Then, with three or four men on a side, they embraced the vehicle, twenty-one inches in diameter, and tried to roll it in place. It weighed hundreds of kilograms. It was wet, and cold, and didn’t want to turn.

“Try the other way,” Rodionov ordered, and the exhausted men shifted their stance. Coughing, trying to find strength in the stale air, they gripped and pulled. This time it moved, a little, and Rodionov urged them on until they’d turned the vehicle almost ninety degrees.

Rodionov stopped them, and exhausted, they dropped to their knees. Panting, gasping, they waited while the other team took a strain on the line and began pulling.

It moved, and they all cheered when it came out farther, almost three-quarters of the way. Then it stopped, hung up on another protrusion. “Switch the groups,” Petrov ordered, and the pullers changed places with the turners. Now they knew what was needed, and moved the vehicle back a fraction and began twisting it in the tube.

They repeated the process twice more before the American vehicle finally slid clear. More men had to be brought down to help with the work, and others had to take over the job of actually opening the thing up. What had started with just the torpedo crew turned into an all-hands evolution.

Rudel had told them how to quickly open the vehicle, and the men set to work. Petrov watched them, more than aware of the irony. he’d done his best to take this thing away from the Americans. Its later recovery would have been a minor win for the Russian Navy and personal triumph for his new command.