Schwartz played with the joystick for a few seconds and Sea Scan moved back up the length of the hull. The large round engine room hatch came into view. It looked to be normal. He steered the sub a little more until the forward hatch was visible.

Nichols nodded. He was satisfied. “Thank God they both look all right. The boat is lying over a little to port. It looks to be a thirty-degree list, but that shouldn’t be any problem for Mystic. Hatch size looks like it’s compatible with our mating skirt, too.”

“Let’s make contact now. Let them know we are out here,” Perkins said. “Bill, put Sea Scan down on the deck aft of the sail and we’ll tell them ‘hello.’”

With Schwartz using a steady hand on the controls, the spidery little robot sub settled onto the rounded steel deck of the Russian boat, a few feet aft of the curved sail. They had no idea how many men might have survived such a catastrophic sinking, but they were about to give them some very good news.

*   *   *

Sergei Andropoyov listened, still in disbelief. After all the pain, cold and suffering, it appeared that someone was here at last! They might all be rescued! It was a miracle!

He realized then that he had already conceded defeat in his own mind. He had kept up the front for the men. He must never allow them to see that he had surrendered.

He crawled through the inky darkness and grabbed the hammer from the seaman in midswing. The exhausted sailor collapsed to the deck, his breath rasping in his chest. Andropoyov tapped out his message in English, just in case it was the Americans who had come to help.

“Thirty-five alive…out of air…no power…hurry.”

He listened with rapt attention as the taps were answered by something pounding back on the hull of his submarine.

“Understand thirty-five alive. Have DSRV. Can take seventeen each trip. Which hatch?”

Andropoyov paused for a second, having trouble thinking clearly now. The engine room hatch was closer, but no one had been back there since they had sunk. He didn’t know what they might face there. He chose the forward hatch. That meant the crew would have to make their way through the operations compartment to the number-three compartment to get to it. It would be very difficult in the dark, particularly for the injured. What little instincts he had still intact told him it would offer their best hope.

He tapped out, “Forward hatch…air poisoned…using breathing masks…need more air.”

The answering message penetrated the steel hull.

“On our way. Have seventeen ready under hatch. Will signal when seated and ready. Need you to open hatch.”

Andropoyov summoned all the strength he could muster and hammered out the acknowledgment. He turned to Pishkovski to tell him to get the first seventeen men ready. He heard the faithful first officer already at work.