The Last Israelis - an Apocalyptic, Military Thriller about an Israeli Submarine and a Nuclear Iran (19 page)

“Rudder, dive planes, and other steering systems are green, Sir,” Michael said.

“Sonar green, Sir,” Jacob reported.

“All radio transmitters and receivers are green, Sir. Still checking other systems,” Ambesah called out.

“GPS and echo sound are green, Sir. Still checking other navigation systems,” Eitan said, his voice weak from continuing stomach pains.

Through the intercom, Bao gave his status update: “All weapons secured and all weapons systems are green, Sir.”

Samir came back on the intercom: “Oxygen, CO
2
, CO, hydrogen and other gas meters are green, Sir. Fuel, oil, and other meters are green as well, Sir.”

Daniel addressed the entire crew: “There were no reported leaks or fires. I want the entire crew to conduct one last check of all decks and rooms to see if any minor leaks, fires, or other problems were missed.”

Daniel pointed his flashlight at Yisrael, Zvi, and Boutrous and said, “You guys stay here. I want to know what happened.” Daniel was virtually certain that the helmsman had not been the cause of the accident because Zvi had been at the helm and he never strayed. But Daniel still had to investigate thoroughly and fairly. “Yisrael, did the helmsman stray?” he asked.

“No, Sir.”

“So what happened?”

“Boutrous was on navigation duty and he called out 164 meters when we were at 155 meters, which meant that we were nine meters above any hard surfaces, so we continued on course, Sir.”

“Boutrous?” Daniel walked over to him with his flashlight pointing at the map.

“Sir, I was…”

“Show me,” Daniel said, giving him the flashlight.

“Sir, when I was following our position, I thought I saw a 164 on the map,” he said, pointing the light on their exact location, where it said “154.”

“It says 154, Boutrous.”

“I see that, Sir. I’m sorry. I was just so tired after – ”

“Tired?” Daniel asked in angry disbelief. “If you’re on duty, then you’re not tired. You’re focused and that’s all you are. Or you could kill all of us. You understand?!”

“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Daniel turned on the intercom so that the entire crew could hear him. “Listen team, I know you’re tired. It’s been a long voyage. Ten days of drills and then no break before this mission, which is now on day 25. And there’s been a lot of tough news along the way. I understand all of this. I also think about our sub that sank. And I wanted that two-week shore leave as much as you did. But we have to stay focused, or we could get a permanent leave at the bottom of the sea, like the Leviathan. Understood?”

There were some scattered “Yes, Sirs” heard around the submarine. Daniel turned off the intercom and came back to the navigation post.

“Boutrous, go take a break and think about how to ensure this never happens again.”

“Yes, Sir,” Boutrous responded, leaving the area.

“Where was Eitan?”

“He had to finish his shift early after throwing up, Sir,” Yisrael explained. “He looked very sick.”

Daniel turned towards the third navigator, who was standing nearby. “Boutrous needs a rest and Eitan is sick, so you’ll have to handle navigation for now. Prepare to get us past this rock we hit and back on course, once I give the command. And stay alert, for God’s sake. Get some coffee if you have to.”

“Yes, Sir.” He stepped over to the navigation post and began looking over the various instruments and getting himself oriented.

“Zvi, I know this wasn’t your fault, but I want you to take a break anyway.”

“Ye…Yes, Sir.” Zvi got up from the helm and Michael took his place.

For each of the Dolphin’s different compartments and rooms, a submariner reported to Daniel via intercom that there were no leaks, fires, or other problems. Within ten minutes, Daniel gave the navigator and Michael the signal to start moving. A few minutes afterwards, the Dolphin, still without interior lights, slowly began to rise from 155 to 150 meters, more than enough to pass over the hump of rock that it had just struck at 154 meters.

Down in the electricity room on the second floor, Samir diligently tried to eliminate each possible cause of the interior lighting outage until a solution was found. He confirmed that all of the converters were working at the correct output of 115 volts and 50 hertz. Next, he checked that there wasn’t too much current flowing through the converters or the automation system. Finally, when he checked the circuit breakers, he found the source of the problem: three of them were burned out and partially stuck to the base because of the electrical spike that had occurred.

“Samir, what is the status on the lighting?” Daniel asked over the intercom.

“Just need to replace the damaged circuit breakers, Sir. But they are melted down, so I have to pry them out with the back of a hammer and then clean the contacts. Should be another ten minutes and then we’ll have lights, Sir.”

After rising to 150 meters, the Dolphin pushed forward at two knots, before gradually accelerating to five knots. As it advanced on its original course, staying at a depth of 150 meters, the seabed below the boat dropped steeply to a depth of 250 meters, and then to 425 meters. After about ten minutes, the ground below dropped further to 550 meters, at which point the submarine’s interior lighting came back on and the crew turned off their flashlights with a quiet sigh of relief. Five minutes later, the seabed below was 600 meters deep.

About 30 minutes after the accident, it looked as if the Dolphin was back on track. But Daniel’s gut was still tensely braced for a surprise: He knew all too well that there was no way to probe every single link in the extremely long and complicated chain of pipes and wires comprising the guts of his submarine. “If you checked things that thoroughly, you could stay submerged for a month inspecting everything and you’d soon run out of air or get spotted by an enemy,” he thought to himself. “At some point, you just have to operate the sub on faith and a prayer, and hope that you can solve whatever surprise challenges might emerge after that initial, post-accident check.”

But it didn’t take long for his uneasy intuition about the accident to be vindicated.

“Sir, the self-test for the automatic fire extinguishing system in the weapons room now indicates that there’s a problem,” Bao reported over the intercom. “Still investigating, Sir.”

Moments later, a pipe in the weapons room burst, and the flood alarm nearby began to blare its loud siren. Bao, who happened to be nearest to the emergency, began searching for its cause.

“Status report for weapons room?” Daniel asked Bao over the intercom. He could see the general situation on a video monitor as Bao scanned the area, trying to diagnose the problem.

Bao found the source of the leak and gave an update over the general intercom, audible to all: “Sir, a seven-centimeter thick pipe burst. The secondary valve to shut it down is behind some electrical equipment, back by the wall, about two meters from the hull valve. I don’t have any gear on me, and I’m gonna need some help in here.” With the force of the water pressure at 150 meters depth, thousands of liters of water per minute began entering the weapons room through the broken pipe.

“Shut the hull valve,” Daniel ordered, trying to stop the incoming water as quickly as possible by using the more accessible of the two valve options.

“Yes, Sir.”

“I need three more men in the weapons room,” Daniel said over the intercom. He knew how cramped certain parts of the weapons room could be, and if he ordered more than three submariners into the room, they could start getting in each other’s way.

Feeling responsible for the problem at hand, Boutrous – who was so full of adrenaline at that point that he couldn’t have rested anyway – rushed over to the weapons room wearing anti-electrocution boots and gloves, and carrying an extra pair for Bao. He had actually started preparing to enter the danger zone even before Daniel requested more men in the area, and – on his video monitor – Daniel saw Boutrous entering the flooded weapons room with rubber boots and gloves.

In keeping with standard flood-fighting procedure, Boutrous closed the door behind him to provide some protection against the possibility of water damage spreading to other parts of the ship. It was during floods that the door’s awkward placement 35 centimeters above the floor was most appreciated.

Boutrous shut the door to the weapons room and then moved towards Bao, handing him the protective gear. Moments later, the streams of water flying out of the ruptured pipe in the weapons room reached the high-voltage areas of the machines near the hull valve, causing those areas to flare up. The fire alarm sounded.

It fell to the off-duty crew to respond to such an emergency. Zvi and Jacob were next to each other when the fire alarm went off. Despite Daniel’s conclusion as to who was at fault, Zvi still felt at least partly responsible for the accident because he had been at the helm when the collision occurred. Thus, as soon as Daniel requested more men for the flood problem, Zvi began preparing to enter the weapons room. Now that there was also a fire, he felt that much more impelled to volunteer. “I…I’m going in,” Zvi announced.

“Not without me,” Jacob replied. They rushed to put on their oxygen tanks, flame-resistant outfits, and rubber boots and gloves. Fully suited-up, they grabbed fire extinguishers and ran to the sealed door leading to the flooded weapons room. Through the video monitor outside the weapons room, Daniel saw Zvi and Jacob arriving in the area with their paraphernalia.

“Did you shut the hull valve?” Daniel asked over the intercom.

“Sir, I can’t access it because of a fire there now,” Bao replied. At the time that Boutrous entered with the flood-fighting gear, there was no fire, so neither he nor Bao was equipped to fight it.

“You and Boutrous stay focused on the secondary valve. Zvi and Jacob are on their way to deal with the fire.” With flames blocking access to the hull valve, Daniel considered closing the secondary valve as an important backup plan to stop the flooding.

As a crew trying to survive one of the most dangerous submarine situations, they would also need the full power of all pumps to remove the thousands of liters of water that were now dangerously increasing the submarine’s weight and consequently its depth. Yet it appeared that Samir had activated only a few of the pumps.

“Samir, where are all the pumps?”

“I’ve been trying, but most of them aren’t working. Still investigating, Sir.”

Zvi and Jacob stepped into the weapons room, where the water level had risen to above their ankles. While avoiding powerful streams of water flying in various directions, they saw that Bao and Boutrous were disassembling some machines blocking their path to the secondary valve. Zvi and Jacob splashed their way across the mini-lake in the room towards the fire.

“Status of the secondary valve?” Daniel asked.

“Electrical machines are blocking access to it, Sir,” Bao said, between deep breaths, with the sound of water flying everywhere.

“We killed the power…And are trying to take apart some of the machines, Sir,” Boutrous added, between coughs caused by the smoke near him.

Daniel looked at the Dolphin’s current depth. The intense flood in the weapons room had added about seven tons of water, and – in the 120 seconds since the pipe burst – the Dolphin had sunk from 150 meters to 220 meters. Members of the crew had been staring anxiously at the submarine depth gauge, watching it inexorably and ominously increase from their original depth of 150 meters as the time went by: 160, 170, 180, 190, 200, 210, 220.

“Activate Emergency Deballasting System,” Daniel ordered over the intercom, hoping to buy more time with a blast of high-pressure air blown into the forward main ballast tanks that would lift the submarine by blowing out five tons of water. He could use this move only once without having to rise to periscope depth for more air. But rising so close to the surface for more air despite all of the extra water weight was impossible. At best, the maneuver would decrease their depth and thereby give the crew another minute or two in which to solve all problems; but the measure was still worth taking, given that each additional second could mean the difference between life and death.

“Emergency Deballasting System activated, Sir.” The Dolphin suddenly stopped sinking and shot back up to 80 meters, making the crew feel as if it were riding a roller coaster flying up an incline, before the ever-increasing weight of the incoming seawater slowed the ascent and began to pull the vessel back down again.

“Pump status?”

“Still investigating, Sir.”

In a race against time – where losing meant the death of the entire crew – Samir scrambled desperately to solve the problem, eliminating each possible cause one by one. The circuit breaker was fine. In the junction box, everything was connected properly. In the pump control, the right voltage was being used with the correct signal. Finally! He found the culprit.

“Sir, there’s a defective starter card.”

“How long to fix?”

“A few minutes, Sir.”

“What’s the status of the fire?” Daniel urgently asked into the intercom.

“It got bigger – still fighting it,” Jacob shouted over the loud swooshing sound of the extinguishers held by him and Zvi. “No safe path to hull valve yet, Sir.”

Boutrous, who had done much of the heavy lifting of the machines, was coughing even more from smoke but he and Bao were finally able to remove the machines that were obstructing their path to the secondary valve. Bao had managed to get into the cramped space by the wall and behind the disassembled machines, and was strenuously trying to turn the secondary valve despite the powerful water sprays flying in all directions around his arms.

“How long to shut the secondary valve?” Daniel figured that Boutrous and Bao had about three minutes to fix the problem before their boat became insurmountably heavy and they lost all hope of ever being able to rise to the surface again.

“It won’t move from the damn pressure, Sir,” Bao yelled out above the din from the flying water as he strained to budge the valve handle. “I’ll need a wrench…Maybe two minutes, Sir.”