The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [5]
“Poor bastards probably tried to swim for it when they realized the torpedo room was flooded,” says a voice from the back of the room. Cooper looks around. It’s Davis, somehow still managing to look like a Navy officer even though he’s wearing a civilian suit. “That’s probably what saved the pressure hull—the escape hatch was already open and the boat was fully flooded before it passed through its crush depth.”
Cooper shivers, staring at the screen. “Consider Phlebas,” he thinks, wracking his brain for the rest of the poem.
“Okay, so what about the impact damage?” That’s Duke, typically businesslike: “I need to know if we can make this work.”
More activity. Camera viewpoints swivel crazily, taking in the length of the Golf-II-class submarine. The water at this depth is mostly clear and the barge floodlights illuminate the wreck mercilessly, from the blown hatch in the sail to the great gash in the side of the torpedo room. The submarine lies on its side as if resting, and there’s little obvious damage to Cooper’s untrained eye. A bigger hatch gapes open in front of the sail. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing.
The kid, Steve, follows his finger. “Looks like the number two missile tube is open,” he says. The Golf-II class is a boomer, a ballistic missile submarine—an early one, diesel-electric. It had carried only three nuclear missiles, and had to surface before firing. “Hope they didn’t roll while they were sinking: if they lost the bird it could have landed anywhere.”
“Anywhere—” Cooper blinks.
“Okay, let’s get her lined up!” hollers Duke, evidently completing his assessment of the situation. “We’ve got bad weather coming, so let’s haul!”
For the next half hour the control room is a madhouse, engineers and dive-control officers hunched over their consoles and mumbling into microphones. Nobody’s ever done this before—maneuvered a 3,000-ton grab into position above a sunken submarine three miles below the surface, with a storm coming. The sailors on the Soviet spy trawler on the horizon probably have their controllers back in Moscow convinced that they’ve been drinking the antifreeze again, with their tale of exotic, capitalist hyper-technology stealing their sunken boomer.
The tension in the control room is rising. Cooper watches over Steve’s shoulder as the kid twiddles his joystick, demonstrating an occult ability to swing cameras to bear on the huge mechanical grabs, allowing their operators to extend them and position them close to the hull. Finally it’s time. “Stand by to blow pressure cylinders,” Duke announces. “Blow them now.”
Ten pressure cylinders bolted to the grab vent silvery streams of bubbles: pistons slide home, propelled by a three-mile column of seawater, drawing the huge clamps tight around the hull of the submarine. They bite into the mud, stirring up a gray cloud that obscures everything for a while. Gauges slowly rotate, showing the position of the jaws. “Okay on even two through six, odd one through seven. Got a partial on nine and eight, nothing on ten.”
The atmosphere is electric. Seven clamps have locked tight around the hull of the submarine: two are loose and one appears to have failed. Duke looks at Cooper. “Your call.”
“Can you lift it?” asks Cooper.
“I think so.” Duke’s face is somber. “We’ll see once we’ve got it off the mud.”
“Let’s check upstairs,” Cooper suggests, and Duke nods. The captain can say yes or no and make it stick—it’s his ship they’ll be endangering if they make a wrong call.
Five minutes later they’ve got their answer. “Do it,” says the skipper, in a tone that brooks no argument. “It’s what we’re here for.” He’s on the bridge because the impending bad weather and the proximity of other ships—a second Russian trawler has just shown up—demands his presence, but there’s no mistaking his urgency.
“Okay, you heard the man.”
Five minutes later a faint vibration shakes the surface of the moon pool.