“While the reactor is critical and leaking coolant?” Alex said. She looked stunned, as though what Scott had been saying had finally sunk in. “That’s suicidal.”
The K-480’s reactor was located midships on the lower level of Compartment Seven. The compartment had heavy shielding around it to protect the crew from radiation emitted when the reactor, a huge, domed container loaded with enriched uranium fuel, went critical. A shielded tunnel provided safe passage for the crew through Compartment Seven to the machinery spaces aft in Compartment Eight.
Midway through the tunnel an airlock, like that in a spacecraft, allowed access to the reactor compartment.
Though radiation levels inside the compartment reached high levels during operation, a man wearing a steam suit and equipped with breathing apparatus could enter the compartment for a short period—
under five minutes—and not receive a fatal exposure. Scott knew that it would take more than five minutes to manually drop the plates and quench the nuclear fire.
“It’s the only way,” the chief engineer said to Alex.
“Jake, you can’t allow anyone to go in there,” Alex said. “It’s a death sentence.”
“Someone has to,” Scott said. “If we don’t SCRAM the reactor we’ll all be dead—and so might a lot of innocent people.”
“Then surface the boat and flood the compartment. Surrender to the Norwegians.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do. The hell with Zakayev.”
“You wouldn’t risk one life to save the ship so we can head off a terrorist attack?”
Scott stared at Alex, waiting for her answer.
“I’ll do it,” Abakov said. “Show me how.”
They all turned to the FSB officer. “The risk is worth taking,” he said.
“No, Yuri, you can’t go in there,” Alex said. She turned on Scott. “Jake, don’t let him.”
“I am the chief engineer,” said Leonid. “I will go.” He picked a steam suit and OBA up off the deck.
Botkin stepped away from the control console and took the suit and OBA away from Leonid. “No. It’s my responsibility. I’m the commanding officer of this ship. I know how to drop the plates.”
Alex started to say something to protest, but Scott trapped her arm in an iron grip.
Botkin stepped one leg at a time into the steam suit and shrugged it over his shoulders. “Chief, assemble a work party. After I drop the quench plates they can follow me in, find the leak, and repair it.”
“Aye, Kapitan,” said the chief engineer.
Scott said, “Kapitan, you’ll need an air pack, not that OBA. It’s only good for ten minutes on canister.
“We have no air packs.”
Scott didn’t show surprise. “Then take along a spare canister.”
“I’ll be done in there before I need a spare,” Botkin said. “At least, I’d better be, or it will be all over.”
Botkin pulled the OBA over his head and face and adjusted the suspension straps. After testing it his breath came in short bursts. “Have a decontamination team stationed outside the airlock when I come out,” he said, his voice muffled behind the mask, “so I don’t contaminate the whole ship.”
Leonid helped Botkin get his arms into the shiny suit and zip up. He fit the rubberized material tight around the OBA mask, then hooked up a two-way throat mike for Botkin to communicate with Reactor Control. Finally, Leonid dropped the baglike hood with its rectangular window like a welder’s mask over Botkin’s head, threading the throat mike lead to the outside through a sealed port. Fully outfitted, Botkin looked like an astronaut. Leonid stepped back and gave him a thumbs-up.
Botkin, disoriented by the bulky gear and the limited vision it provided, waddled toward the open door, which led to the shielded tunnel and airlock. Scott put a hand on Botkin’s shoulder and stopped him.
Somehow the young skipper had found the inner reserves of strength he needed to enter the possible death trap waiting for him in the reactor compartment.
Scott sketched a salute. “Everything is in your hands now, Kapitan. Everything.”
Botkin lifted a gloved hand, then entered the tunnel.
Part Three
The Battle
14
Over the North Atlantic
A ir Force One streaked east at forty thousand feet. The president, shoes off, dozed in a comfortable armchair. A formidable pile of briefing folders lay untouched on the table beside him. The first lady, engrossed in a paperback novel, sat opposite her husband. She had fine features, hair like a helmet of tight curls, and skin the color of polished rosewood.
The curtain drawn across the doorway of the private stateroom fluttered. The president’s wife looked up and saw Paul Friedman’s face poking around the curtain.
“Sorry, Mim,” Friedman said, using her nickname.
“Can’t it wait?” she asked, annoyed.
Friedman shook his head
The first lady shook her head too. “Lord, there’s not a moment’s peace.” She marked her place in the book with a finger, then gently roused the president.
He opened an eye. “We there yet?”
“No, dear, St. Petersburg is still three thousand miles away.”
The president yawned, saw Friedman. “What’s up, Paul?” He glanced at the binder with a red cover in the national security advisor’s hand. “Trouble?”
“Maybe. We just received a flash from Karl.” He glanced at the first lady.
“Well, if you’ll both excuse me,” she said, “I’m going to the galley.”
Alone with the president, Friedman said, “Karl’s not available for a face-to-face. His verbal report says Grishkov confirmed that the Russians have been trying to raise the K-480 and can’t, and that they’ve been waiting for her return to Olenya Bay.”
Friedman quickly sketched the conversation between Radford and Grishkov, emphasizing for the president the Russian’s suspicion that the K-363 was headed for the Baltic Sea. “Also, Grishkov faces being relieved of command over his failure to find the K-363 in the Barents. Be that as it may, Karl denied Grishkov’s accusations. And he also denied we had information that the K-363 was headed for the Baltic.”
The president digested this information, after which he said, “Did Grishkov believe him?”
“Don’t know. Grishkov’s an old fox. I can’t imagine that Karl telling him there’s no truth to his accusations would convince him that he’s wrong. But you have to ask if, after talking to Karl, Grishkov is still convinced the K-363 is heading for the Baltic, wouldn’t he try to save his neck by telling Stashinsky about it?”
“In which case…”
“Stashinsky, assuming he believes Grishkov, will throw everything they have at the Baltic before Scott can take a shot at Zakayev.”
The president got up to stretch his legs. The private stateroom he and his wife occupied was outfitted like a fine hotel suite with plush carpeting, leather-trimmed furniture, a bar, and entertainment center. It was also soundproofed, the noise of the Boeing’s big turbofans only a low rumble.
“Drink, Paul?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
The president poured Scotch over crackling ice and, with his back to Friedman, said, “What do the Russians have in the Baltic?”
Friedman opened the red-covered folder and found the page he wanted. “Not much since the Soviet collapse and especially after Putin’s departure. Funding for deployment and new construction has all but dried up, so it’s a make-do situation. Baltic Headquarters is at Kaliningrad and there’s a base at Baltiysk in the Kaliningrad Oblast. Kronshtadt has a few laid-up surface combatants and a handful of elderly diesel submarines, most of which are not considered seaworthy. Also a few naval auxiliaries and coastal patrol craft, but that’s about it.”
The president faced Friedman. “No ASW capabilities?”
“None to speak of, other than a few PCs armed with depth charges and obsolete antiship missiles.
Nothing that would bother a skipper like Litvanov.”
“Or Scott?”
“Or Scott.”
“Then, if I understand what you’ve told me, nothing’s changed has it? The Russians are running around in the Barents Sea after their own tails; their Baltic fleet, if you can call it that, is a shambles; they’re unsure of our intentions; and Grishkov’s ass is on the line.”
“Yes, sir, that about covers it.”
“Then we should stay out of Scott’s way and not give it away to the Russians by sending in everything we have until we have to. Karl wanted Ellsworth’s SSNs in there, which is a bad idea, and you can tell him I said so. You’ve got two Russian subs, good guys and bad guys, and I don’t want our people shooting the wrong one.”
Heat. Overwhelming, suffocating heat. And steam. Botkin almost retreated from the reactor compartment back into the airlock. Instead he groped forward and, through the narrow view port in his hood, saw the over heated stainless-steel reactor vessel. It looked like a huge cauldron with a rounded lid surrounded by a forest of shiny pipes and valves. His view of it was partially obscured by clouds of radioactive steam rising through the open steel grates that formed the deck on which Botkin was standing. He looked down into a virtual snake pit of tangled pipes, risers, and fittings but couldn’t see which pipe had sprung a leak.
The closer Botkin got to the reactor, the hotter it felt. Sweat poured from his body, drenching his coveralls, coating the inside of the rubber-lined steam suit. The OBA mask felt glued to his face. He wiped fog from the hood’s view port with a gloved hand and only then realized that almost all of the thermal insulation on the reactor vessel and piping had, for some reason, been removed or, more likely, stripped off and stolen.
He shuffled forward against the heat and found the fixed-function control panel mounted on the reactor’s starboard side. He searched for the automatic coolant feed flow indicators. Almost zero flow!
His heart leaped when he saw the reactor core temperature readings: 500 degrees Celsius and climbing!
A blinking red light on the cooling system’s schematic warned of a low-pressure zone in the water-purification trap. Another blinking red light warned of a blowout in the main coolant loop at the booster inlet. The repair gang would have to rig a backup cooling system, then cut the seal-welded valves to bypass the blowout and repressurize the system.
Botkin’s ears rang. From radiation poisoning? He tried to remember what he’d learned about radiation sickness at nuclear power school. Something about gamma radiation. And alpha particles. And rems.
How many rems was he taking now? Over a hundred? Two hundred? How many were fatal? He couldn’t remember anything. Except that it was forbidden under any circumstances to enter the compartment while the reactor was critical.
Botkin’s ears rang because someone was talking to him on his two-way mike. He couldn’t hear what they were saying over the roar of escaping steam. “Repeat!” he said under his mask. “Repeat!”
“Quench plates…”
The mike was strangling him. He wanted to rip it off. The hood too. The bulky suit restricted his movements. He wondered if he was dying.
“Blowout in main cooling loop at booster inlet,” Botkin bawled into the mike.
“Copy.” It was Scott.
He pictured the repair gang outside the compartment assembling tools and parts to make the repair. He heard “Quench plates” hiss in his ear and wanted to scream, “Yes, I know I’ve only got minutes left to SCRAM the reactor!”
Botkin forced himself to move.
He found the special tool needed to manually release the quench plates stowed inside a yellow locker beside the control panel. The tool, a long, nickel-plated breaker bar, had a large socket attached at one end. He hefted the tool and, half blinded by clouds of steam and with sweat pouring into his eyes, inched around the reactor vessel until he found welded rungs and handholds that gave access to the reactor’s dome and the jammed quench plate release mechanism. But heat from the uninsulated reactor drove him back. His skin under the suit felt scorched; patches had stuck to the suit’s heavy rubber lining.
Botkin remembered something from the training he’d undergone in a reactor compartment mockup at nuclear power school. There were few safety devices built into the reactor compartments aboard Russian submarines, but he’d seen one put to use as a practical joke to scare green officers undergoing training.
He spotted what he was looking for almost directly overhead: an emergency decontamination bathwater nozzle. But it was missing the chain pull necessary to activate the valve. Either it had never been installed or it had been “appropriated” like the reactor vessel’s insulation.
If he could somehow turn the valve on and direct the water spray over himself and also onto the reactor vessel, it might cool the surface just enough to allow him to reach the quench plate mechanism without being cooked like a chicken. It would also help condense steam from the leak and facilitate repair.
Botkin, his movements severely restricted by the bulky steam suit, held on to the socket and on tiptoe swung the other end of the tool at the valve, aiming to knock the shutoff arm off its seat to release a torrent of water. He barely had enough strength to wield the heavy wrench one-handed while he clung to a welded handhold on the reactor vessel. He hoped the valve hadn’t been disconnected or installed in a dry line. If it had, it was all over.
The tool clanged against the shutoff arm and bounced off. Botkin feared it was frozen. Few systems aboard the K-480 had ever been tested much less maintained. He tried again and this time missed and almost tumbled off the rungs. When he grabbed the handhold to keep from falling, he pitched against the reactor vessel. He sprang back, leaving a huge gob of smoking silvered rubber from his suit stuck to the vessel.
Botkin felt searing pain and knew he’d been badly burned. He thought about rems, whole-body doses, bloody stools. He thought about Scott and the others waiting for him to SCRAM the reactor.
Someone was hailing him over the two-way mike, but he ignored it.
He took a firm grip on the tool and collected himself. He knew he had only a small reserve of strength left. Breathing had gotten harder, the OBA canister nearing depletion.
“You bastard!” he shouted, and swung the tool.
A torrent of water shot from the valve and over Botkin and the reactor vessel. Surprised, Botkin almost dropped the tool into the snake pit below the grates but held on and, fighting through billowing clouds of steam, threw himself on top of the water-slickened reactor dome.