Atlantis

CHAPTER 14

This is a ship of the dead. The sooner we get out of here the better.” Katya snapped shut the diary and led them out of the sonar room past the dangling corpse. She avoided a final glance at the body, its ghastly visage already seared into her mind.

“Headlamps on all the time now,” Costas ordered. “We must assume he rigged this boat to blow.”

After a few steps he held up his hand.

“That’s the weapons loading hatch above us,” he said. “We should be able to take the chute directly down to the torpedo room. It’s an open elevator shaft but has a rung ladder on the inside.”

They moved to the edge of the shaft directly below the hatch. Just as Costas was about to step onto the upper rung, he paused and eyed one of the pipes that led from the sonar room down the chute. He brushed away the encrustation from a slight ridge that ran the length of the pipe, revealing a pair of red-coated wires taped to the metal.

“Wait here.”

He worked his way back towards the sonar room, occasionally stopping to flick away encrustation. He briefly disappeared behind the dangling corpse and then made his way back.

“Just as I suspected,” he said. “The wires lead back to a switch which has been duct-taped to the console. It’s an SPDT switch, a single-pole double-throw device which can actuate a current and control two different circuits. My guess is the wires go down to the torpedo room where our friend has activated a pair of warheads. The explosion would blow this boat into bite-sized chunks, and us with it.”

Costas led the way, tracing the wires down the chute, and the other two cautiously followed. The encrustation softened the reverberations of their feet to a dull echo that thudded ominously through the shaft. Halfway down they paused to peer through a hatch into the officers’ wardroom, their headlamps revealing another scene of disarray with bedding and packages strewn over the floor.

Moments later Costas reached the base of the chute.

“Good. The emergency lighting works here as well.”

The compartment beyond was filled with tightly packed racks, only a narrow aisle allowing access to the far end. It had been designed so that weapons could be lowered down the chute directly into the holding racks and be fed by automated gantry to the launch tubes.

“A normal complement on a Project 971U would be thirty weapons,” Katya said. “Up to twelve SS-N-21 Sampson cruise missiles and an assortment of anti-ship missiles. But the largest warheads will probably be on the torpedoes.”

Costas followed the wires into a tight passageway between the racks to the left of the central aisle. After a few moments on his hands and knees, he stood up with a triumphant gleam in his eye.

“Bingo. It’s those two cradles directly in front of you. A pair of 65–76 Kit torpedoes. The largest torpedoes ever built, almost eleven metres long. Each packs 450 kilograms of HE, enough to punch through a titanium-armoured pressure hull. But it should be a simple matter to deactivate the warheads and remove the wires.”

“Since when have you been an expert on defusing Russian torpedoes?” Jack asked doubtfully.

“Every time I try something new it seems to work. You should know that by now.” Costas’ demeanour suddenly turned serious. “We have no choice. The fuses are electromagnetic, and there’s going to be decay in the circuitry after so many years in this environment. They’re probably dangerously unstable as they are, and our equipment will disturb the electromagnetic field. It’s a problem we can’t bypass.”

“OK, you win.” Jack looked at Katya, who nodded in agreement. “We’ve come this far. Let’s do it.”

Costas lay on his back in the confined space between the racks and pushed his way in feet first until his head came to rest a quarter of the way down the torpedoes. He lifted his visor for a moment and wrinkled his nose as he took his first breath inside the submarine without the benefit of the SCLS filter.

The other two came up alongside, Jack in the narrow walkway to the left and Katya in the wider central aisle. They could see Costas’ upturned face on the deck between the torpedoes. He wriggled towards the torpedo beside Jack until his head was nearly beneath it.

“We’re in luck. They have a screw-off plug in the outer casing which allows the warheads to be armed manually in the event of electronic failure. The plug on this one has been opened and the wire goes inside. I should be able to reach in and switch off the fuse, and then cut the wire.” Costas rolled over sideways and inspected the other torpedo. “Same on this one.”

“Remember these things are volatile,” Katya cautioned. “They’re not electric like most torpedoes but run on kerosene and hydrogen peroxide. The submarine Kursk was destroyed in the Barents Sea in 2000 by the explosion of leaked hydrogen peroxide from a 65–76 torpedo, one of these.”

Costas grimaced and nodded. He rolled back and lay motionless between the two racks, his headlamp shining directly upwards.

“What’s the delay?” Jack demanded.

“I’m putting myself in our friend’s position. If he and his buddies were so fanatical about protecting this sub they must have had a contingency in case they all died. They must have assumed the wreck would eventually be found. My hunch is he booby-trapped this detonator. It’s too simple as it is.”

“What do you suggest?”

“There’s one obvious possibility.” Costas reached down to his tool belt and pulled out a device the size of a pocket calculator. They could just make out the green glow of a digital LCD screen as he activated the sensor. He raised the device to the wire that ran between the torpedoes just above his head and carefully attached it using a miniature alligator clip.

“Christ. Just as I thought.”

“What is it?”

“This is a volt-amp meter. It’s giving a positive reading of fifteen milliamps. This wire is live.”

“What does that mean?” Jack asked.

“It means the wiring must be hooked up to a battery outlet. The sub’s main lead-acid batteries probably still have enough stored voltage to produce a current at this low amperage. The wiring must be a continuous loop from the positive to the negative poles of the battery, with the switch in the sonar room forming the actuator and the two warhead fuses the link. Setting it up would have been risky but they must have calculated the amperage would be too weak to detonate the warheads. The key is the electrical surge if anyone tries to remove the wires. Disconnect the warhead fuse activator and you have an instantaneous surge. Flip the switch in the sonar room and you get the same thing. There’s no circuit breaker to cut off the current. We’d be atomized before I’d taken my fingers off the wire.”

Jack let out a long exhalation and sat back against the walkway. “So what do we do now?”

“It’s direct current, so the charge flow will be one way. If I cut the negative, there’ll be a surge and we’re gone. If I cut the positive, everything should go dead and we’ll be safe.”

“Which is which?”

Costas rolled his head to the right and looked ruefully through the narrow space at Jack. “Our friend might still have the last laugh. With such low amperage there’s no way of telling.”

Jack lay back on the walkway and closed his eyes. After a moment Costas spoke again.

“To ignite a bomb with an electrical surge, the flashpoint needs to be in direct contact with the explosive materials in the detonator or main charge. They would need to have opened up the warhead to introduce the outflow wire. There’s more room to manoeuvre on Katya’s side so I suggest that’s where it’s attached. That would make the wire to my left the positive one.”

Costas turned towards Katya and pushed as far as he could against the torpedo, extending his left arm under the rack until he touched the wire that emerged from the warhead. He dropped his hand to the deck and began scrabbling around in the encrustation.

“I can feel wire.”

Katya uncovered more and pulled it taut as far back as the weapons loading chute. She hurried over and peered up the ladder before returning.

“It goes back to the switch,” she announced.

“Right. I’m convinced.” Costas withdrew his arm and reached into his belt for a compact multi-tool, pulling it open to form a pair of high-precision wire-cutters. The rubber in his E-suit glove would provide insulation against electric shock, though if that happened he would not live long enough to care.

He tilted his head back towards Jack.

“You’re with me on this one?”

“I’m with you.”

Costas resumed his position of a moment before, his left hand now holding the cutters directly beneath the wire where it hung in a shallow arc from the plughole in the warhead housing.

For a few seconds he lay motionless. The only sound was the steady drip of condensation and the shallow rasp of breathing from their respirators. Katya and Jack stared at each other beneath the torpedo rack.

Costas was sweating behind his mask and snapped it open with his right hand for a clearer view. He pulled off his glove between his knees and wiped his brow before staring determinedly at the wire.

Katya shut her eyes tight in the split second it took Costas to lock the cutter’s blades on the wire. He squeezed hard and there was a loud snap.

Then silence.

All three of them held their breath for what seemed an eternity. Then Costas let out a long sigh and slumped on the deck. After a pause he holstered his multi-tool and reconnected his visor and respirator. He tilted his head towards Jack with a twinkle in his eye.

“See? No problem.”

Jack had the thousand-yard stare of a man who had looked death in the face once too often. He shifted his gaze to Costas and managed a half-smile.

“No problem.”