Operation Ice Breaker, page 24
I don’t have any problems clearing my ears, so Bill was able to press me down quickly. Our protocol required a minimum of ten minutes for 500 feet, but I had already told Ham to get me down in five.
Once I hit bottom, the guys in the Main Lock pushed the door into the Entrance Lock and welcomed me with high-fives. I checked my neck and wrist seals, and Jimmy pulled each three-fingered glove securely over the seals. Except for the Kirby-Morgan helmet, I was ready to go. Jer helped me with my headgear and did a quick check of my complete rig. The last thing I did before entering the water was to check my oxygen percentage. Jake strapped a bandola of darts around my right thigh and handed me two gas-powered guns as I entered the water.
I took a moment to orient myself and turn in the direction I wanted to go. As I did so, Harry and Whitey arrived with their prisoner. I assisted them in pushing the Russian diver through the hatch. They followed. On the through-water comm system, I checked with Jimmy and Sergyi at the Alfa and briefly noted the presence of a curious narwhal. Then, I struck out for the Alfa. Two minutes later, the four of us were exchanging high-fives, although, in the Unisuit with its three-fingered gloves, I guess it really was high-threes.
“Mac, Dive Control, state your condition.”
“Fine. We’re moving the drums to the Carp.”
The drums were virtually weightless. Ski and Jimmy lifted them off the bottom a foot or so where they floated. Then they pushed them toward the Carp while I pulled the electrical cable along behind them, all the while Sergyi was keeping watch for other divers. The Basketball remained above and ahead of us looking for unwanted guests.
We had about 700 feet to go. I estimated our progress at about 1.5 feet per second; thus, eight minutes or so lay between us and the Carp. You have no idea how long eight minutes can be. Following several hours of subjective inching along the bottom toward the Carp, we finally saw the looming shadow of the bulbous nose materializing ahead of us. I checked my watch. Surprisingly, it said eight minutes had passed.
As we moved down the Carp’s starboard side, a thought popped into my mind. This sucker was a hundred feet longer than the Alfa. If the behemoth beside us were the Alfa, the scoop we were seeking would lie well beyond the Alfa’s screw. Finally, we found it. Ski and Jimmy wrestled the two drums directly below the intake that was at head level while I pulled the remaining power cable to our feet.
Ski and Jimmy each grabbed a hose and held them to the scoop. I flooded my BC until I was firmly pressed onto the bottom. Then I grabbed a pump handle in each hand and commenced pumping with all the energy I could muster. Wally illuminated the scoop, and I could clearly see a large volume of liquid paraffin flow into the opening and get sucked up inside.
For five minutes, I pumped furiously. Suddenly and simultaneously, Sergyi shouted, “DUCK!” and I experienced a deep, excruciating pain in my left shoulder. I turned to my right as I ducked and saw a diver between the seafloor and the upward curve of the keel with a dart piercing the side of his head, pinning him to the bottom.
“Ski, behind you!” Sergyi shouted.
Ski twisted while drawing his knife with his right hand. A diver lunged at him, plunging his knife through Ski’s Unisuit into his right shoulder.
Although my pain was pretty intense, I simply had to help Ski. He was injured, and his suit was filling with freezing water. So was mine, but I hadn’t figured it out yet, and besides, my leak was a lot smaller. I pulled my knife and propelled myself into the attacking diver. I keep my knife razor-sharp with a needle point. I pierced the airbag on his chest and swept my blade upward through whatever fittings and electronics might have been there and sliced open the bottom part of his full facemask. I watched his eyes through his faceplate fill with fright as he tried to disengage. Perhaps he thought he could make it to the hatch located on the underside of the bow. That wasn’t going to happen!
With my left hand, I ripped his faceplate out of its damaged frame and pulled off his nose and mouth cup. Then, with every remaining ounce of strength I could muster, I punched him in the stomach. His eyes opened wide in total surprise and his mouth opened to release a stream of bubbles as he sank to the seafloor, lungs filled with ice-cold seawater.
While all this was happening, Jimmy kept pumping paraffin into the scoop until both drums were empty.
“We got to get the hell out of here,” I squeaked, beginning to feel a bit faint from pain, the blood loss, and the icy water that was percolating throughout my suit. “Ski won’t last if we don’t get him inside.”
I grabbed Ski’s harness with my left hand, ignoring the pain, and started pulling both of us along the cable that had powered the drum heaters. Sergyi came up to my right, and Jimmy grabbed Ski’s harness from the left. As Sergyi grabbed my harness, I began to fade.
“Stay with me, Mac!” Sergyi squeaked. “Keep kicking!”
“The paraffin,” I mumbled. Then I gasped as a wave of pain swept through my body. “Hold on, Ski,” I whispered as Jimmy and Sergyi wrestled us through the water, our path illuminated by the Basketball.
That’s the last thing I remember until I opened my eyes in the DDC Main Lock. My Unisuit was gone, and Jimmy was wrapping my left shoulder with a white bandage. Lying at my side was another bandage, soaked red.
“Ski,” I muttered.
“Just fine, Mac,” Ski’s voice floated across the aisle from his bunk to mine. “A prick is all. I’m just fine.” I tried to give him a thumbs-up, but instead, I drifted off again.
USS TEUTHIS—BOTTOMED AT THE ALFA
Several things happened while I was out, as recorded by Sonar. The Carp reactor scrammed, as we expected it to do. About an hour later, the Carp emergency blew its main ballast tanks and shot to the surface, breaking through the ice easily, just outside U.S. territorial waters. What took place during that hour is anybody’s guess, but it’s fun to speculate.
Soviet subs have had a history of reactor problems, with more than one having to surface because of internal radiation. I have to believe that the typical Soviet sub crew was jumpy at best. An unexplained reactor scram accompanied by an inability to bring the reactor back online would probably freak out a crew. I’m not suggesting a mutiny, but the captain would be under a lot of pressure to bring the sub to the surface and replace all the air in the interior. I’m not sure they would want to submerge again.
When they surfaced, two things would have happened. Fighters would have scrambled from Eielson Air Force Base to investigate the surfaced Soviet sub, and the Carp would have signaled Petropavlovsk. But what then? I became fully conscious with four more days of decompression ahead of us. I remembered Wyatt saying earlier that the Carp would “have to limp home—probably to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.” I knew it was a 1,700 nautical mile trip. What would they do?
I called Sonar. King had the watch. “How’s your shoulder?” he asked.
“I’ll live,” I said. “Got any details for me?”
“We recorded all of it,” King said. “Don’t speak Russian, but it was pretty obvious what was happening.”
He walked me through the events I had missed. After the Carp’s reactor scrammed, its crew spent about a half-hour trying to communicate with their four missing divers. This was accompanied by a lot of mechanical sounds that probably were the engineers trying to get their plant up and running again. Then there was a lot of shouting—a lot of anger that came right through the Carp hull. Things quieted down for a while, and then suddenly they blew their main ballast tanks—no lifting off the bottom first, no alarm sounds, just the sudden rapid evacuation of their ballast tanks that resulted in the Carp heading rapidly to the surface.
Fifteen minutes later, King called me back. “They’re starting up, Sir. Their reactor is working this time.”
I heard King call Control on the sound-powered phone. “They’re starting their plant. Sounds like they’re getting ready to get underway.”
“Can you keep an open mike for me, King?” I asked.
Zeb had the watch with the XO because I was officially still off the watchbill. He called the skipper, who joined them in Control to see what transpired.
The Carp emitted various sounds that were really difficult to interpret. Then I heard the distinctive sounds of the main ballast tank vents venting.
“She’s diving,” King said. “She’s drawing left…picking up speed. She’s doing turns for ten knots.”
King did some calculations. “Conn, Sonar,” he said on the sound-powered phone, “the Carp is on course of two-three-two, doing ten knots, range three miles and opening.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sonar called again. “Conn, Sonar, the Carp has commenced active pinging, and he increased his speed to fifteen knots. He’s in a hurry, Sir. He’s ranging ahead of himself to detect possible obstacles.”
I thanked King for bringing me along and disconnected.
ON THE SEAFLOOR—NEAR THE ALFA
We had just returned to the seafloor near the Alfa from a brief time at periscope depth to send a burst message.
I called the skipper on the regular handset. “I have a serious concern that’s been on my mind as I sit here slowly returning to surface pressure.” I paused, not entirely sure it was my place to bring it up. “The Carp has gone to the barn, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the end of the matter. They had plenty of time on the surface to let their bosses know what happened.”
“Do you believe they knew about our presence?”
“Probably not, but their first two divers definitely saw the Alfa and had plenty of time to report that they sighted it. Remember, the Carp was communicating with its divers over something like our Gertrude—unreliable and spotty. The divers likely would withhold a full report until they returned to the sub. They would have reported our divers the moment they spied them, but I think we got them before they could make the report. We simply can’t know for sure. I think they sent out the second pair of divers to look for the first pair. We got a lot done before they found us. They probably went to the Alfa because the first pair would, at a minimum, have reported they found it. Did they see our lash-down of the escape module? If so, the divers knew about us. Even if not, they probably found our power cable and followed it back to the Carp. Did they report our presence then or when they reached the Carp? If then, they know about us. If not, at the Carp, it all happened so fast. Sergyi nailed the diver who got me almost immediately. Did he report before he shot? I would have shot first. Plenty of time after to tell you what happened. Same with the second diver. If he was in an attack-first-tell-later-mode, then I stopped his report, too.
“The bottom line is, Sir, we can surmise that they know about the Alfa, but not us…but do we stake our lives on this?”
“I agree with your logic, Mac, but where does that leave us? We told the DevGroup that we would try to bring the Alfa back with us. We got the DIA team. You are as qualified as anyone to drive the Alfa. You take Bert, Dokey, Pots, and Sergyi with you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Skipper. I agree we could do it. But I keep thinking about Ivan. Worst case scenario, they know we fucked them, and they’re hungry for revenge. One rung up, they suspect us. One more rung, they really don’t know about us, but they know we know where the Alfa is, and they want it back really badly.
“Their Alfa is in our waters, and they want it back, no matter the scenario. They want it back. If you were the Ruskies, Sir, what would you do?”
“I definitely have my thoughts on that, but first, I want to hear the rest of your proposal,” the skipper replied.
“Okay…Well, whether we were there or not, they know we will be. They know about the DSRV. I think they believe we will try to bring the Alfa to a secure American port—make that Anchorage, Puget Sound, or Mare Island. If I’m the Soviet high command, there’s no way the Americans will get one of my Alfas. I would spread my subs south of Bering Strait and a couple north of it. I then bring my icebreakers into the Bering Sea to open things up for every surface combatant I’ve got. I plug the Bering so tight not even a cod could get through. My orders are to sink the Alfa, and I’ll push right to the brink of war to make this happen.”
I paused to let my comments sink in. The skipper folded his arms and then put his chin in his left hand.
I added, “There’s no way on earth we will make it through the Bering Strait. Based on whatever report the Carp probably sent, the Soviets already have subs moving in. If we’re going to pull that one off, we go back the way we came.”
“Well, Mac,” the skipper said, “I reached the same conclusion several hours ago. That burst message we just sent laid out virtually everything you just told me. I informed Dev Group that we would be returning to Kodiak to reprovision, including the oxygen and helium you requested, and drop off our prisoner. I recommended that we should then return to the Alfa and transport her through the Arctic to a secure east coast port of their choosing. I also recommended that they send another sub up here to fend off any Soviet sub until we return.”
__________
11 See chapter 22 of the first book in the Mac McDowell Mission series, Operation Ivy Bells for the details.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Transit to Kodiak
USS TEUTHIS—BOTTOMED AT THE ALFA
Ham collected the DIA and Spec Ops guys in Dive Control for a briefing. Sergyi and I, with the rest of the divers, joined the meeting from the DDC, where we were slowly decompressing.
I spoke to the group. “The skipper has just sent a message to the Dev Group that lays out our current situation and his recommendations moving forward. What’s important from our perspective is that we really don’t know whether or not the Ruskies know the Teuthis was here.” I repeated my conversation with the skipper. “Here’s the thing. If they come back and find the divers’ bodies or other evidence of our activities, they will be operating from an entirely different perspective. They will know we were here.
“So…we’re going out there to police up the entire bottom—no bodies, no drums, no cables, no lines, no anything.”
The guys murmured among themselves. Then Long raised his hand. “What about the escape pod?”
“That’s the critical question, isn’t it?” I responded. “Right now, it’s lashed to the sail.” I looked around the group but saw no sudden inspiration. “If they know about us, this entire discussion is moot. If they don’t, however, we want to maintain the illusion.”
The skipper had decided to flood the escape pod and leave it attached to the Alfa but lying on its side on the seafloor. That way, it would appear that the rescuers of the Alfa crew had flooded the pod before they left the ice. I explained this to the guys.
“Our job will be flooding the pod and unlashing it from the Alfa. This will be our last dive for a while. Do any of you DIA guys want to get in the water?”
Edwards and Long volunteered.
“Jer and Jake will join them,” I said, giving my two most junior divers a chance for one more dive. “Ham, press down the DIA guys to our current depth in the Entrance Lock, and then take us all back down to the bottom.”
Ham put Edwards with Jer and Long with Jake. The divers followed the power cable to where the Carp had sat on the bottom. The Carp’s emergency blow had tipped over both drums. Watched over by Derrick with the Basketball, they located the bodies of the two Soviet divers Sergyi and I had dispatched. The ocean floor critters had already started to do their thing with the bodies. Several curious narwhals and beluga whales joined them. They seemed interested in the bodies but didn’t bother the divers, other than the belugas nudging them and the narwhals stroking them with their tusks.
While they brought the bodies back, accompanied by their cetaceous friends, Ham got three body bags from the corpsman and locked them into the DDC.
When they arrived, I told them, “While still in the water, strip the dive gear off the bodies and shove the gear into the third body bag. Then put each body into a bag and drain the water from the three bags as they are lifted from the water. Try to keep any of the contamination from the bodies out of the lock.”
They complied, and then the inside guys used a hose to wash down the entire Egress Lock.
The four divers followed the cable back to the drums, where they disconnected the power cord and then attempted to lift them.
“Divers, Dive Control,” I told them, “the empty drums weigh forty pounds, and they each carry an extra twenty-one pounds of garbage weights. Try rolling them.”
That worked well, although the pump handles kept getting in the way. That turned out to be more of an annoyance than anything else. They had the drums upside down under the Egress hatch fifteen minutes later.
Whitey placed the tip of his knife in the middle of the first drum bottom and struck it with a hammer. Then he and Jimmy lifted it into the Egress Lock and placed it along the bulkhead in the space it had originally occupied. They did the same with the second.
While Whitey and Jimmy were hauling the drums into the Egress Lock, the four divers returned to the site. They checked the area carefully. Long found two gas-powered guns, and Edwards found several darts. Otherwise, the site appeared clean. Jer picked up the power cable bitter end, and they swam back to Teuthis.
Harry, with an umbilical, joined the four divers as they approached the Alfa. He brought along a forty-foot long two inch hose. Long swam up under the pod and located the locking wheel for the hatch.
To ensure he knew what he was doing, I asked, “Ken, what will happen when you unseal that hatch?”
“External water pressure will push it open, and the pod will flood until internal pressure equals outside.”
“And what happens to you if you are anywhere near the hatch?”
“Shit! Glad you asked. We’ll be sure to do it right.”
Harry swam back to the Teuthis and grabbed some heavy-duty line. He dragged it to the Alfa. The divers secured one end of the line through the pod hatch handle and tied it off to a large titanium stanchion in the sail. They used a deck cleat to gain as much leverage as possible as they tightened the line.
