Free Ice Station Nautilus by Rick Campbell

crew. There were fifty-seven personnel in the aft compartments, and forty-five men in Compartment One, which meant Stepanov’s entire crew had evacuated to safety. There was only one serious injury—Stepanov’s First Officer. Pavlov was lying on a makeshift bed on the empty torpedo decoy stow, where Dolgoruky ’s Medical Officer, Captain of the Medical Service Ivan Kovaleski, was tending to him. His head was wrapped in white gauze to stop the bleeding, but a red stain had already seeped through.
    “How is he?” Stepanov asked.
    “Stable, for now,” Kovaleski replied. “However, I cannot determine the extent of his injury. Hopefully it’s only a severe concussion and not a fractured skull with internal bleeding. Time will tell.”
    As Stepanov nodded his understanding, his Chief Ship Starshina, Egor Lukin, joined Stepanov and Kovaleski. “The inventories are complete,” Lukin said. “Food is not an issue and we have enough water for one week.”
    “What about the air regeneration units?” Stepanov asked.
    Lukin replied, “We have enough potassium superoxide cartridges in Compartment One to sustain us for eight days, assuming the battery will power the regeneration units for that long. The men aft have enough cartridges to last ten days, since they have access to the cartridges in Compartments Five and Nine.”
    Stepanov ordered, “Pass the word to secure all unnecessary equipment. We need to ensure the battery can power the air regeneration units until we run out of cartridges. Also, I want every man to minimize his activity to reduce the amount of oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide produced.”
    “There is one more issue,” Kovaleski added. “Hypothermia. The water temperature under the polar ice cap is minus two degrees Centigrade, below zero because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than pure water. It won’t be long before temperature in the compartment drops below freezing.”
    “We can don our survival suits,” Lukin replied. “They’re designed to protect us during an escape into frigid waters. We have one hundred and sixty-five suits split evenly between the compartments with escape hatches. There should be fifty-five suits in Compartment One, which means we have enough for everyone here.”
    “Good idea, Chief Ship.”
    They had enough air regeneration cartridges to last eight days, assuming they didn’t freeze to death in the meantime. However, no one would miss Dolgoruky until they failed to report in at the end of patrol. It would be two months before the Fleet realized disaster had befallen them. They would be dead by then.
    “What do we do now, Captain?” Lukin asked.
    “We wait,” Stepanov answered, “and pray the American submarine also sank and their Navy comes looking for it.”
    “If the Americans reach us first, what then? We cannot abandon Dolgoruky and let them board her.”
    Stepanov contemplated Lukin’s assertion, then replied, “We will deal with it when the time comes.”

 
    13
    SUITLAND PARK, MARYLAND
    Established in 1882, the Office of Naval Intelligence is the United States’ oldest intelligence agency. Tasked with maintaining a decisive information advantage over America’s potential adversaries, ONI’s focus on naval weapons and technology was why Christine O’Connor, along with Captain Steve Brackman in the passenger seat of her car, were entering the forty-two-acre compound of the National Maritime Intelligence Center, only a short drive from the White House. Christine stopped in visitor parking, and after retrieving a notepad from her briefcase on the backseat, she and Brackman approached the four-story building.
    Waiting inside the lobby was Pam Bruce, a supervisor in the three-thousand-member organization. After introducing herself, she said, “We have the appropriate experts waiting upstairs.”
    Pam escorted Christine and Brackman to a third-floor conference room occupied by two men in their fifties. “Greg Hartfield”—Pam pointed to