The Gamma Option (16 page)

Patty used the joystick to maneuver RUSS closer to and over the vessel that was still gaining shape.

“What is it?” she asked Blaine.

“Some sort of warship,” McCracken confirmed to himself. “Heavy cruiser class, I think. Had their heyday in World War II and haven’t seen much of the seas since. Time passed them by.”

“Well, it looks pretty much intact. Wait, spoke too soon. Take a look at this,” Patty said, and slowed RUSS over the starboard side forward beneath a huge gun turret. She maneuvered the joystick to drop RUSS low and back him away from the ship’s hull to provide a more complete view of what they had uncovered through the front-mounted camera.

“Christ, what the hell did that?”

McCracken saw the jagged holes in the ship’s starboard hull but didn’t reply. He felt a growing realization of what they had found here but pushed it back, terrified of the consequences it might imply.

“Wake up, McCracken! I asked you what the hell did that?”

“Torpedoes,” he said finally. “You can tell by the angle of entry and blast radius. Those babies carried a rather precise signature.”

“This ship was sunk in World War II?”

McCracken’s response was to move closer to the monitor screen. “Take RUSS forward to her bow. Let’s see if we can read her name.”

She turned back toward him before maneuvering the joystick. “You know what this ship is, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything. Not yet.”

She shrugged him off and started to work the red, ball-topped handle to bring RUSS forward along the length of the dead cruiser.

“My God, could any bodies still be inside?”

“Judging by the position of the holes that sunk her, I’d say the great majority of those on board got off alive.”

“To be rescued?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not telling me everything you know!”

“I don’t want to distract you from your driving.”

RUSS had almost reached the boat’s front section. They could see she was wedged in the silt of the upward slope of a rise in the ocean floor. She was keeling over to starboard and seemed on the verge of tumbling over onto the submersible that had invaded her world of death.

“She’s remarkably well preserved,” McCracken noted.

“You find lots of weird stuff in the Marianas, and everyone’s got a different interpretation for it. Hold on, I think we’ve got something… .”

Patty slowed RUSS to a stop and McCracken was certain he could make out a sequence of letters on the screen before him. There was some sort of pattern; though the paint had been lost years before, the stenciled border was still intact. Patty brought the submersible backward and held it in place over the boldest letters left.

U S,
then a blank space followed by a splotch of shapes that were unreadable.

“I’m going to infrared,” Patty told him, and flipped another switch. “Now let’s add magnification and see what we come up with… . There we go. That does it… . What the hell?”

McCracken saw the letters and felt the same kind of cold dread those on the ship must have felt forty-five years ago when she was hit. His breath tasted drier than salt. Up until the last he had hoped his initial suspicions were wrong. But the corpse ship’s name running across the screen eliminated any chance of that:

USS
Indianapolis

Chapter 13

“I KNOW THAT NAME,”
Patty was saying. “I know it from somewhere …”

“The
Indianapolis
was the ship that delivered the atom bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It dropped them at Tinian, then stopped briefly at Guam en route to Leyte, where it was sunk by a Japanese submarine.”

“Of course! Those holes we found farther back on starboard. It fits! It fits!” She sounded genuinely excited. “We’re looking at one of the great finds in salvage history.”

“Except we can’t legitimately claim it,” Blaine told her. “Because someone else got here first.”

“Slide RUSS back along the hull to around the midpoint,” Blaine told her.

“Why?”

“Because I thought I noticed something on the screen before when he moved by. His camera wasn’t angled right for proper viewing, so it was only a glimpse.”

“Whatever you say …”

Patty maneuvered RUSS so he was actually gliding sideways, which slowed him because of the increased resistance, but provided an excellent view of the long stretch of hull in the process.

“There!” McCracken said suddenly. “Stop!”

Patty pulled the small joystick toward her and the submersible’s eye locked on a large hole a third of the way down the exposed reaches of the
Indianapolis
’s
hull.

“Doesn’t look like a torpedo did that,” she commented. “It’s a perfect circle.”

“More likely cutting tools.”

She went to magnification again and the screen filled with a close-up of the hole. “On the money, McCracken. The edges are sliced evenly. Somebody made an entrance for themselves into that ship right here, and not too long ago either.” She looked up at him as he continued to lean over her shoulder. “The salvage team that preceded us here?”

“That would be my guess. But it seems a little deep for divers.”

“They could have ridden down in a manned submersible and emerged into the water only after the hole was made. You should see what some of the big salvage boys carry for equipment. High tech to the max. Strictly state of the art.”

“Bring RUSS up.”

“But he could fit through that hole. They left us a doorway inside that ship to see what they might have made off with. Don’t you want to—”

“Bring him up. We’ve got to get out of here.”

She sensed nervousness in his voice and went to work on the transistorized console immediately. An instant later RUSS had begun his rise and the
Indianapolis
had disappeared from view, returned to the isolation it had lived in for over forty-five years.

“You spoke of a weapon the salvage team came here to recover,” Patty said. “What you’re telling me is that this is the ship they pulled it off of.”

“At least tried to.”

“They were successful, all right, and if you let me send RUSS inside, I can—”

“Just keep bringing him up.”

“You’re scared. I can hear it in your voice. But what does this have to do with the weapon you’re searching for now? You said it yourself. The
Indianapolis
dropped its cargo off at Tinian. Her storage holds were empty when she was sunk.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that we’re not going to find out here in the middle of the—”

“Go on. Finish what you were saying.”

But McCracken wasn’t listening to her. His ears had detected a faint hum approaching in the distance.

“Get on your radio and call the naval station.”

“What?”

“Signal a Mayday! Give them our position!” Blaine commanded, because by then the hum had given way to a louder whirl, and his eyes picked up a dim speck on the open skyline—the shape of a plane slowly gaining size and substance as it soared toward them.

“Jesus Christ,” Patty Hunsecker muttered, already heading for the radio inside the cabin.

Blaine followed her inside. The plane was now only seconds away.

“What have you got for weapons on board this tub?”

“Saving the oceans is a pacifistic mission.”

“I was afraid of that… .”

“Some spear guns, a flare pistol. That’s about it, I’m afraid.” Patty searched the band for the proper sending frequency with the mike pressed to her lips. “Guam Station, this is
Runaway.
This is a Mayday call. Repeat, this is a Mayday call. Our position is …”

The rest of her message was drowned out by the screech of the aircraft zooming over them and the explosion of water as a grenade dropped from it exploded just behind the
Runaway
’s
stern.

“They’re trying to kill us!” Patty shrieked in the midst of her repeat message to Guam Station. In the small portal window before them, they saw the twin-engined plane bank for another pass.

“Very observant. Just keep sending … after you hand me those spear guns.”

Patty Hunsecker didn’t bother to protest, just rushed to a supply closet at the foot of the cabin stairs and yanked out a trio of state-of-the-art spear guns. They were plenty dangerous if wielded properly, but were meant to be used underwater and thus limited for this purpose.

“Runaway,
we read you
,”
a voice squawked over the radio. “
This is Guam Station, please come in. I say again, please come in. Over.
…”

The attacking plane swirled in from the bow, and the portal exploded into flying shards of glass behind the bullets rupturing it. McCracken flung himself on Patty, discarding the spear guns long enough to tackle her to the floor. Above them the radio smoked and fizzled.

“Damn,” she moaned.

“Did you give them our coordinates?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean they heard anything.”

Blaine’s ears picked up the quickening of the plane’s engine as it came at them yet again, over the stern this time. Staying low, he pulled the spear guns toward him and was moving toward the cabin door when the next explosion rocked him. The
Runaway
shook like a ship struck by a great wave, then listed sharply to starboard. He slid toward the steps to the deck and just managed to avoid the ruined radio as it came flying down from its perch. He tried to grab hold of Patty, but she slipped away from him. He saw her head ram hard into the wall. She slumped over and Blaine propped her up against the bulkhead nearest the door to keep her safe from the water that would be rushing in momentarily.

McCracken was moving for the deck, spear guns in hand, when the plane swooped down again. The next blast took them on the stern, and the dread smell of smoke and loose oil flooded his nostrils. He knocked the cabin door open with his shoulders, and thick, black smoke flooded down into the cabin. The stern of the
Runaway
was taking on water, and the rearmost section of gunwale was even with the sea. All of RUSS’s hydraulic lift was now under the surface.

The plane was coming in again, from the side this time, and Blaine got his first clear look at what he was facing. It was a twin-engined job all right, a red and white Cessna 310, something any fool could rent at any flying outlet. An expanded fuel capacity and a stopover at the nearest island to fill it would have made this attack mission logistically simple. Though it was only a regular plane, the grenades and gunfire were coming from an open side window that was much too small to bother considering as a target.

But what else did he have?

The plane whirled closer, and Blaine grabbed one of the spear guns and rose to a kneeling position amidst the noxious smoke, which grew even blacker. He wanted to make sure the gunman saw him, so he would have the pilot drop even farther, which would make it easier for Blaine’s intended shot to find the mark.

The bullets pierced the gunwale and Blaine held his ground as shards of wood sprayed around him. He waited until the plane’s call letters were close enough to read before taking final aim with the spear gun. He never felt himself pull the spear gun’s trigger, and he knew he had done so only when the mechanism kicked briefly. The spent spear was still hurtling upward when the plane flew past with barely thirty feet separating it from the sea. But the spear missed the open window and clanged harmlessly against the Cessna’s frame.

Blaine watched helplessly as the plane banked round for another run. Seconds later it plunged for the
Runaway
again, machine gunner clacking off a burst that effectively pinned Blaine when he started to move to another area of the deck. A misthrown grenade exploded in the water and showered him. A few seconds were now his and he seized them, knowing what he had to do.

It was imperative to knock out the pilot, instead of trying for the gunman. He could never manage the task with a spear alone, though, especially fired at so difficult an angle. He needed something more, but where to find it? He pushed himself through the deepening pool in the stern and reached into the woodstrewn muck. His hand closed on a long, thick shard that had wedged in the remnants of the deck, a piece of RUSS’s titanium hydraulic mechanism. He held his breath and went under to achieve the purchase he needed to pull it free.

When he came back up with the shard in hand, the Cessna was diving directly for him again. The grenade was right on target this time, blowing out the top of the cabin and sending the top section collapsing inward along with the canopy housing Patty’s equipment. He smelled ruined wood and found himself clawing through water as the
Runaway
began to drop farther and faster beneath the surface. He passed the engine opening and could smell the hot stench of an oil fire struggling to burn under the floods of seawater pouring through the hatch.

Blaine reached his two remaining spear guns as the plane flew well beyond him and banked around for another attack run. He wrenched free the steel line from one of the spear guns and used it to fasten the six-inch shard of titantium steel from RUSS’s lift onto the point of the second spear.

Work, damn you! Work!

As the Cessna came in fast, the gunman misjudged Blaine’s position and his bullets plunged into the sea. Again the plane soared and its engine sputtered as the pilot brought it around again too steeply. Blaine made sure the steel shard was wedged tight to the spear as the Cessna came straight for him. This time he rose to meet it. No calculation of the physics was involved in the shot he was about to attempt, just a reliance on the feeling of when and at what angle he should pull the trigger.

The plane’s attack run brought it directly into the sun. The pilot would have to squint, at least some portion of his vision obscured by the blinding light off the Pacific. It was the final edge Blaine needed.

McCracken rose to a full standing position, the water now stretching all the way up to his thighs and rising farther by the second. He wanted this to appear to be a futile last stand. He wanted them to think he was resigned to death so they would descend all the way to finish him.