Breakthrough (17 page)

“Oh my god,” said Caesare looking out the side window.  “It’s a sperm whale!”

“Here?  Are you kidding?”

“Not kidding,” Caesare said with a pause.  “And there are two of them!”

Clay practically leaned on the stick, now trying to get every last ounce of speed from the sub’s motors. 

“They’re coming at us!” yelled Caesare.

Suddenly, the K-955 was slammed sideways causing it to roll completely over.  Clay tried to counter the movement but realized that the roll had too much momentum.  He instead moved the stick back, allowing them to roll with the impact.  As they came around, he compensated again and managed to keep them on an upward course. 

“Clay,” Caesare said quietly.

“You don’t have to whisper Steve
, they’re not going to hear you,” Clay replied, looking at their depth gauge.  They were still almost eighty feet from the surface.

“Clay,
” Caesare said again.

Clay looked at Caesare who was staring at him.  He turned to show Clay the side window.  Clay’s eyes opened wide when he saw the huge dent in the side of the hu
ll.  What was far more critical however, was the giant crack in the window, with water streaming down the inside wall.  It was a major leak that would scare anyone even at a shallow depth.  The strength of the hull was seriously compromised, and the thick Plexiglas window was ruptured.  If it collapsed entirely, their inside pressure would be lost and the torrent of incoming sea water would drown them within seconds.  Clay and Caesare both knew their only hope was in that tiny window holding together.  They also knew that they would not survive another impact.

Clay looked back at Caesare.
“Blow the tanks.”

Caesare flipped up a clear cover and slammed his fist against the large emergency butt
on labeled ‘Emergency Discharge’.  The sub shook violently as four charges exploded, and the large buoyancy tanks instantly jettisoned from the hull and fell outward.  Losing the extra weight of the tanks, along with the upward force of the charges, accelerated the sub’s ascent again and they rose toward the surface.  The explosion caused the leak in the window to open wider, sending in a much larger flood of water which was quickly inching up past their shins.   Caesare looked down and quickly switched hands to maintain his grip on the Triton.  “We’d better hurry.”

Clay was glancing back and forth between their depth
gauge and the bright blue water above.  The large shadow of Emerson’s Pathfinder could be seen overhead.  The sub quickly passed fifty feet and continued to race toward the surface. 

Caesare looked
repeatedly through the remaining windows.  “I can’t see them!”  He tried to look through the broken window but could not make out anything through the distortion.  “No idea where they are.”

Clay stared at the gauge and noticed their ascent beginning to slow.  

Caesare saw something was wrong.  “What is it?”

“We’re slowing,
” Clay said.  “The incoming water is increasing our weight again.”

Caesare unbuckled himself and slid out of his seat, still maintaining a grip on the handle in front of him.  He twisted past Clay and reached into the rear of the cockpit.  He felt back and forth below the water.  “No oxygen tanks.”  He knew they could not open the top hatch until they reached the surface since the ocean water would make it far too heavy to push up.  Hell even if they could they would drown under the massive deluge of water which would make the cracked window look like a trickle.

The sub’s upward momentum continued to slow as it passed 40 feet and the incoming water reached their laps.

Above them in the communications room of the Pathfinder, Captain Emerson and several of his crew were huddled around a large sonar display.  The speakerphone was on transmitting everything Clay and Caesare were saying.

“They’re slowing,
” Tay said.  He was sitting in the chair in front of Emerson.

“How fast are they moving?”

“About 10 feet per minute but slowing fast.”

“Anything else they can jettison?” Emerson asked.

Tay shook his head.  “Not from the inside.”

Another crewmember stood to the side, urgently searching through the K-955’s giant manual.

Emerson stood up and turned to Lightfoot who was standing just behind him.  “We have to do something.”

Lightfoot stared at the captain who motioned outside.  “Yes sir!”  With that, they both quickly darted out of the room and ran toward the back of the ship.

The water inside the sub was at chest level and rising fast
, as the increasing amount of water filled the ever shrinking space in the cockpit. 

Tay’s voice crackled over the speaker.  “Guys, it looks like there should be spare breathers built into a side panel of your seats!”  Tay leaned over and looked at the manual being held by his crewmember.  “On the right side.”

Caesare switched hands again on the large handle and reached around to examine his seat.  Only able to feel the tip, he slid his hand up and down beneath the water feeling for a clasp.  He found a lip in the metal and quickly pulled it up.  The panel flipped only partially open due to the volume of the water around it.  Caesare reached back, yanked it off, and felt inside.  He gripped the small metal canister and wiggled it out.  The small pony tank was approximately twelve inches long and had a green rubber mouthpiece on top.  Caesare handed it to Clay and quickly extracted the second bottle from Clay’s seat.

“Where are the whales?”

Caesare looked out through the two windows still above the waterline.  “Can’t see them over here.”  He looked at Clay.  “What’s the plan?”

Clay frowned.  He desperately pushed a few times on the stick.  There was nothing left.  The twin motors were at maximum propulsion trying to push them forward against the increasing weight of the sub.  “We’re barely moving.  This is as far as we’re going to get.”  He looked at the gauge.  “Twenty-one feet.”  Clay looked up through the top window.  The huge shadow of the Pathfinder loomed over them.  He looked at Caesare and held up his tiny oxygen tank.
  “Well, these should give us,” he shrugged, “ten minutes?  If we wait for the water to fill the cockpit and equalize the pressure, we should be able to get the hatch open and make a swim for it.”

Caesare’s chin dipped into the water when he nodded.  “That was the only thing I could think of.  You go out
firs-” he suddenly stopped talking when he noticed Clay staring at something over his shoulder.  He turned and looked out what was left of the side window.  Two large shapes were approaching.  At that moment they felt a sensation and looked up at the depth gauge.  The weight of the sub had overcome the strength of the propellers.  The K-955 began sliding back down.  The gauge increased to twenty-two feet, then twenty-three, and twenty-four.  It was quickly falling downward.

Caesare looked back out the window.  The whales were getting closer.  “What in the hell is their problem?!” 

They both knew that they could not open the hatch unless the entire cockpit was filled with water.  With the water rising quickly, that would not take long, but the whales would reach them first.  Even if they could survive another impact the sub was now descending fast enough that by the time they were able to get outside they would be too far down to make it to the surface; that is unless they wanted a fatal case of the bends.

Clay looked at his friend.  “This may be it.”

Caesare gave a silent nod.  They both tilted their faces up and away from the rising water then reached out to the sides to get a strong hold, readying for the impact.

Both of the men turned unexpectedly when they heard a sound from outside, a loud clunk and the sound of metal dragging against the front of the hull.

“What was that?”  First Clay then Caesare dunked their heads beneath the water and pressed their faces to the large bubble window.  A blurry shadow could be seen through the glass, a human figure.

Emerson, Tay and two other crewmen stood on the large flat platform of the Pathfinder’s stern.  With two on each side of the platform, they tried to maintain their balance over the ship’s rocking while each fed a large cable into the blue water.  End over end, their hands moved deftly to keep the cables from becoming taut.  On one side, Emerson and Tay fed a thick black oxygen line while the men across the platform fed a large steel cable from a giant wheel behind them.

Beneath the water, Lightfoot was dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts, a mask, and fins, holding onto the front of the K-955 sub which he could feel sinking beneath him.  Lightfoot worked to attach the thick cable to the sub without getting his oxygen line wrapped up in it.  He wore a full mask which covered his entire face and gave him excellent visibility, but as he desperately tried to pull himself up and over the top of the sub, his heavy breathing was beginning to fog the glass.  The benefit of the full face mask was that it provided an undistorted view and allowed the person to speak while working, but Lightfoot was putting out a great deal of carbon dioxide and overwhelming the gentle flow of oxygen which kept it clear.

As Lightfoot scampered on top, he saw the large steel loops used by the winch to lower it from the ship.  He grabbed one and pulled himself closer, careful not to lose his grip on the cable.  He pulled hard on the cable and managed to get it a foot closer.  It was getting tighter as the sub continued to fall back into the depths faster than Emerson and his team could feed it down.  Lightfoot pulled himself closer and passed over the small window on top of the sub.  Glancing down, Lightfoot could make out the interior lights which were very dim and now completely submerged below the water inside.  The silhouettes of Clay and Caesare were both staring back at him, each breathing through a small air canister.

Inside Clay raised his head and grabbed the controls again. 
He needs some slack!
  He pulled the stick all the way back, tilting the craft up with what little power they still had.

As the K-955 inched higher, Lightfoot pulled hard again on the cable and got just enough slack to run through one of the giant loops.  He grimaced as he struggled to push the end through, but with one last effort he managed to clip the large hook up and back onto itself.  He pressed his mask closer to verify it was secure, then pushed a large button on the side of his mask.

“She’s hooked!” he yelled. 

His voice was broadcast up and over the ship’s external speakers.  When Tay heard Lightfoot’s voice he ran across the platform and wrapped his hand around a chromed colored lever.  He forced it up several notches to engage the motor at full power.  The giant platform on the stern suddenly dipped deeply into the water as it counteracted the inertia of the sub’s descent.  They all stumbled and turned when the motor let out a terrible screech before eventually beginning to turn, pulling in the cable.

Below them, Lightfoot was sliding off the top when the sub jerked upward.  He quickly grabbed hold of the thick rubber oxygen line.  Above him on deck, Emerson’s two extra crewmen jumped to the other side of the platform to help pull the oxygen line back in hand over hand.

They ignored the churning of the motor as it continued to reel in the cable, turning faster and faster.

As they pulled him up, Lightfoot kicked his feet hard to try to catch the sub.  Once on the surface, he needed to get the sub’s hatch open as quickly as possible.  Clay and Caesare had been completely submerged inside for several minutes which meant their canisters would soon be out of usable air.  Lightfoot got close enough to grasp the hatch handle and hang on, riding the sub as it rose to the surface.

“Fifteen feet,
” said Harris over the loud speakers.

Emerson looked up at the announcement then back to his men.  “Okay, get to the edge and hold on.  She’s coming up hard!”

The four men held onto something near the end of the platform to steady themselves.  The wheel behind them was turning now at top speed.  This was going to be rough as there was no chance to bleed off any momentum before the sub breached the surface which meant it was going to overshoot.  And since the cable was fed directly over the side of the stern rather than from the large extended winch, the sub was most likely going to come up hard
under
the Pathfinder.

“Ten feet!”
called Harris’ voice.

Moments later the sub smashed into the underside of the Pathfinder’s stern platform.  All four men were lifted completely off the deck and into the air along with everything else that was not nailed down.  Equipment and tools flew everywhere, and they all came down hard together.  One of Emerson’s junior crewmen lost his grip and slipped overboard, hitting the K-955’s n
ow exposed tail and disappeared into the waves.

“Man Overboard!” yelled Emerson.  The other junior crewman nodded and searched for his shipmate.  Once spotted, he grabbed a float ring
and jumped in after him, barely avoiding the sub as it pitched and rolled out from under the Pathfinder.  A deafening shriek of metal on metal filled the air as the port side of the sub scraped along the bottom of the platform before finally freeing itself.  As it rotated freely, Lightfoot popped up out of the white swell still holding onto the hatch.  He ripped off his mask and turned toward the circular door, straddling his legs across the top.  He shook the water out of his face and gripped the handle hard turning it with everything he had.  The wheel relented and slowly began to turn.  Lightfoot kept working it and then, with a heave, pulled it open.  Instantly, hundreds of gallons of water came flooding out along with two large dark figures.