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I got a call late Friday morning, August 5th. I was correcting page proofs of VERTICAL DIVE with the computer off and the internet shut down. The phone rang and a young female voice explained that she needed me in a New York studio for a five o’clock segment of Fox News Channel. I figured it was one of my female friends playing a joke on me, and I was a tenth of a second from making a joke, but something stopped me. She’d asked if I were THE Michael DiMercurio, submarine expert. Now, whenever someone asks if I’m THE Michael DiMercurio, something very good is about to happen.

Five in the afternoon, I thought. I have my four year old daughter Meghan to get from daycare, my second ex Patti is in the city with our old friends the Merchants, my first ex is at the second ex’s house hanging with my teenage daughter, and my teenage son is upstairs in his room of our bachelor pad townhouse snoring away.

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll be there.” I didn’t want to say, “um, why am I going in?” I figured it was another maritime disaster. It seemed to take forever for the computer to boot up, but there it was, a Russian rescue submarine, the AS-28, on the bottom, fouled in a cable, with Russian sailors stranded.

“The damned Russians,” I said to the producer. “They dialed 911 late again!” She emphatically said that wasn’t true. I shook my head. I know the Russians. They’d rather lose their kids in an undersea accident than tell the world about it. As it turned out, my first impression was correct.

We talked for a bit, and she said they’d offered the interview to Tom Clancy, but he’d refused. Again I shook my head. I’ve spent more time on the “shitter” at test depth than Clancy has on a submarine.

I made it into the studio with seconds to spare, clipped on the microphone, and words flowed out of my mouth about what was happening.

So they ask me what it’s like down there, and I describe a crowded elevator at noon rush hour with the power shut off. The air is immediately stale and uncomfortable. Add in a wrinkle – it’s freezing. The poor crew is in bad shape.

Then I get the easy lob question: “So, what does the crew do when they’re trapped in a helpless submarine?”

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“Panic,” I said with a straight face. Then I answered honestly. If survival is important, they’ll try to slow their heartbeats and respiration and exert minimal energy, and probably gather together to conserve body heat.

It was eerily like the ending of my novel TERMINAL RUN.

The interview went so well that I got asked back for Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends. Fox flashed the cover of EMERGENCY DEEP on the screen. I was on a short segment, and while shooting the bull afterward with anchors Mike Jerrick and Julian Phillips, they got so interested in what I was telling them that they pulled me into a longer, cooler segment, then invited me back again for Sunday.

Sunday, August 7, the Fox News Channel anchors grilled me about my doom-and-gloom predictions about the probability of losing the Russian submariners on the bottom. We got lucky, I said. Had anything gone wrong on the bottom-operation, we would have been very close to losing the crew. As it turned out, the American Super Scorpios were too late to be deployed in time, and the British ROV was fortunately able to clear the netting and piping and cables that had trapped the AS-28 in time to rescue the crew. But they opened the hatch themselves, one anchor said. Certainly that means it was not the ordeal you described. I nodded. The last half mile of a marathon is much different than the 18th. Hope means everything in survival. With fresh air on the other side of a titanium coffin’s hatch, even someone near death can find the strength to get it open.

My prayers were with the stranded crew, my curses went out to the Russian leadership who wasted 36 hours before calling us for help. Those hours ruthlessly risked the lives of the AS-28 crew. All’s well that ends well, but when will the Russians learn?

Michael DiMercurio
Princeton, NJ