Ultra Deep (19 page)

Brande reached out for a coffeepot and poured a mug full. He asked, “Anything new on the tube?”

“The White House confirmed that the rocket carried a nuclear reactor,” Thomas said. “I think they’re trying to contain all the rumors that are flying around.”

“Did they downplay it?”

“What else?” she said. “Indirectly, anyway. The spokesman offered a comparison between the Topaz’s estimated fifteen megawatts and San Onofre in California at over eleven hundred megawatts”

“Also,” Larry Emry added, “about ten thousand college kids breached the CIS Embassy in Tokyo. The Japanese Defense Forces retrieved the embassy personnel in the nick of time by helicopter. The last we heard, something similar is happening in Seoul.”

“
Ten
thousand?”

“Somebody may be exaggerating. Then again, maybe not. There’s a little hysteria in the air.”

Brande recalled images of the Saigon Embassy in 1975, with choppers lifting off the roof. He could not help but think that the Russians deserved having their turn, too.

“I guess I’m going to worry about only the things over which I might have some control,” he said. “Kim, did you talk to your consulate?”

She nodded, her dark, shining hair reflecting the overhead lights. “Yes, Dane. They were not extremely happy, but they acquiesced.”

‘Valeri? Svetlana?”

Dankelov, as moody, as deep in thought as ever, only bobbed his head in affirmation.

Under the harsh lights of the wardroom, Polodka’s face appeared flushed. She said, “We offered our services, but apparently they were not needed. I was assured that CIS naval forces have everything well in hand.”

Dankelov looked over at her, but quite impassively. Brande wondered what was going on between the two of them now. He knew there had been a short-lived affair, and he had hoped at the time that it would blossom for them. It had not, and it had not affected their work, but he was certain there was some strain between them.

“All right, then. I guess we’re a team again. Larry, you’re in charge of exploration. What are we going to do when we get there?”

Emry wiped a trace of coffee from his mustache, then leaned forward in his chair and put his arms on the table. “I’ve installed our best oceanographic maps of the area back in the lab. Bob and I have been going over what’s known about the depths and the temperatures and calculating our sonar coverage at various depths. We should have final figures in the morning, which we’ll double-check with the Navy, and then I’ll lay out a search grid on top of the map. After we have some consensus, we’ll put it up on the computer.”

“Starting where, Larry?”

“I calculated a trajectory for the rocket, Dane. Knowing that it was at ninety thousand feet when it went over Tokyo helps to define its attitude when it hit the sea. All stages were apparently still attached, including the offset booster rockets. Anything could have happened immediately after it splashed down, and I suspect that it broke up. Still, my best guess is that it was nose down at about one hundred ten degrees from the vertical. It went in at one-seventy-six degrees, ten minutes, twenty-three seconds east, and my first judgment is that it drifted east as it sank. We’ll start there and work our way eastward first. Our north and south legs will get longer as we go east, anticipating that the wreckage could have veered farther north or south the farther east it went. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how far apart our legs will be.”

Brande knew the problems involved. Robert Ballard found the
Titanic
some twelve nautical miles from her last reported position before she went down, and that was in water depths of 13,000 feet. Poorly reported navigational positions, wind and water currents all contributed to the fact that she lay undiscovered for seventy-three years.

“We’ll have to fly sonar from the
DepthFinder,”
Brande said.

“Oh, I think so, with those depths,” Emry agreed.

“I’ll make up crew lists and work shifts,” Brande said. “Let’s all get a good night’s sleep, and crank off in the morning. Okey, Valeri, Svetlana and Kim, your first priority is going to be Gargantua. If we don’t have an operable robot, it won’t much matter whether or not we find the Topaz.”

The team members finished their coffee and stood, drifting from the wardroom. Dokey said, “You lucked out, Chief. You’re rooming with me in Cabin A.”

“I’ll try not to feel honored, Okey.”

Thomas stayed at the table across from him and waited until the others had departed. She had a fresh tinge of sun on her normally pale skin, and her platinum hair was windblown. Despite her long day, she looked as fresh as the sea had felt to Brande when he parachuted into it.

“Bad news,” she said.

“I don’t want to hear it.” He grinned. “You’re the president. You deal with it.”

“You’re chairman. You need to know.”

“Tell me.”

“Jim Word called. They ran out of debris field.”

“Already?”

“Already. He and George Dawson recovered fourteen ingots, one cannon barrel, six goblets, and two plates. That’s it.”

“Damn, Rae. That won’t go far, will it?”

“No.”

“There must be some good news,” he suggested.

“On some of the ingots, they’ve got numbers, and they’ve got the name of a manufacturer on the cannon barrel.”

“So we can check the Spanish archives and maybe determine the ship that carried them.”

“End of the good news,” she said.

“Well, we know the rest of the ship must be in the same area.”

“East, west, north, or south?” she asked.

“One of those.”

“Are we going to waste time looking?” Thomas put her emphasis on wasting time.

“Your decision,” he said. He ached to make it himself, but knew he would opt for wasting time. And money.

“Really?”

“It’s what you wanted. I’m doing my damnedest to stay out of your hair.”

“It hasn’t even been a full day yet,” she said.

“See how good Iʼve been?”

Thomas shook her head from side to side. “I don’t know if this is going to work out.”

“Sure it will.”

“I mean, I don’t know if the company is going to survive, assuming the chief personnel survive this escapade. You’re risking all of the prime principals, you know?”

“I know, Rae. I know. If it looks like we won’t make it, I’ll pull out.”

She studied his face for a very long moment, then asked, “Promise?”

“Cross my heart.” He did, with his forefinger. “My grandma taught me that”

“I’d like to have met your grandma.”

“You’d have loved her”

“I’d have told her about some of the things she missed in rearing you.”

Brande smiled. “What things?”

“Another time, Dane. How much cash will we realize from Dawson?”

“Maybe a million-one.”

“I had hoped for more.”

“In this business, it’s hope that carries you forward, Rae. But you can’t hope for too much, either.”

She gave him a strange look. “Don’t preach, Dane. I’m well aware of that.”

*

1845 HOURS LOCAL, 22° 21' NORTH, 173° 51' WEST

The
Los
Angeles
had been running at a depth of sixty feet, her antennas deployed, so she could exchange messages with CINCPAC and the
Kane
.

As she returned to a hundred feet of depth, Cmdr. Alfred Taylor left the control center and went aft to the sonar room, located on the starboard side of the submarine, off the electronic warfare room.

Neil Garrison, the executive officer, was conferring with the chief sonarman, CPO Jim Tsosie. The sonar expert was a full-blooded Navajo with hearing that could distinguish between a pin or a needle dropped on a linoleum floor, or close to it.

The sonar room was crammed with a sophisticated computer used to analyze sounds and frequencies picked up by the submarine’s sensors. The waterfall display, a video screen mounted on one bulkhead, provided visual evidence — bright lines and dots — of bearings to potential targets.

At the moment, the screen displayed six targets.

“What have we got, Chief?” Taylor asked.

“The
Philadelphia
is closest, Skipper. She’s running parallel to us at five thousand yards, and the blade count says she’s doing thirty-one knots.”

Taylor would never have inquired into Tsosie’s accuracy. If he did not recognize it, the computer’s data banks could match the distinctive propeller signatures of thousands of friendly and hostile craft.

“Farther to the north, and thirty nautical miles behind us, are the
Kane
and the
Bartlett
. With the speed these ships are making, Skipper, no one’s trying to hide a sound. It doesn’t make the reading a lot easier, of course, because of the noise we’re making ourselves.”

“What about the other three targets?”

“I have not identified them specifically, sir. To the south, that one has to be a supertanker. She’s on a heading for Japan. To the west, those are smaller boats, both twin props. They’re probably yachts of some kind, and they’re falling into our track”

“Thanks, Chief. Neil?”

“It looks as if we’re going to have a lot of company on-site, Captain.”

“CINCPAC says there’s some forty private vessels in the area or on the way to it. Chief, one of the first things you’ll need to do, once we get there, is identify the nonessential vessels, so you can squelch them out.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

“Also, Neil, the
Kane
will be the operation commander.”

“Do we know the captain?” Garrison asked.

“John Cartwright. His background is in oceanographic research, so he should be helpful.”

Taylor passed one of his messages to Garrison. “Then, it seems that CINCPAC is gathering a whole bunch of experts. This is the search grid they’ve laid out for us. I want you to plot it so we can get familiar with it.”

“Are the
Philadelphia
and the
Houston
getting the same stuff?”

“They’ll be getting similar instructions as they surface to receive them. At 2400 hours, we’re scheduled to make contact with them to establish coordination.”

Garrison grinned. “Did you ever try to coordinate an orgy, Skipper?”

Taylor grinned back. “It’s getting worse. There’s a CIS patrol ship with a submersible on the way, as well as a Japanese research vessel.”

The executive officer glanced at his watch. “Eighteen hours to go, Skipper. Then it gets confused.”

“The Russians will get there first,” Taylor said. “It may be all over in eighteen hours.”

“You a betting man?” Garrison asked.

*

1920 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 20' 2" NORTH, 176° 9' 59" EAST

“All stop,” Captain Mikhail Gurevenich said. He had decided to surface slowly by pumping out water ballast rather than driving up on the diving planes. There were too many surface vessels present.

“All stop,” echoed the seaman manning the engine room telegraph.

The captain felt the
Winter
Storm
go sluggish as she lost headway. The silence seemed intense after so many hours at top speeds. When the speed log displayed five knots, he ordered, “Come to the surface, Lieutenant Mostovets.”

“Blowing ballast, Captain.”

The lines and tanks hissed as compressed air forced water from the ballast tanks, located between the pressure and outer hulls and in the bow.

“Control Center, Sonar.”

Gurevenich leaned toward the communications panel on the bulkhead next to him and depressed the intercom button. “Control Center.”

“I now have thirty-one contacts within five kilometers, all around us,” Sonarman Paramanov said, “The closest is fifty meters off the port bow.”

“Identifications?”

“I estimate that they are primarily civilian vessels, Captain. The U.S. naval frigate
Bronstein
has been computer-identified. It is at one-one-thousand meters, bearing one-three-seven. There is a gunboat of the Antelope class a thousand meters beyond the frigate.”

“Thank you.” Gurevenich released the button.

He wanted to bring up the periscope and scan the seas around him first, but that would only delay matters.

The deck took on a bow-up slant as the submarine rose toward the surface.

“Twenty meters depth and rising,” the planesman called out in a flat tone.

Gurevenich crossed to the conning tower ladder and began to climb it, Mostovets following behind him. The junior officer aboard, Lieutenant Kazakov, trailed along. He was earnest, but slow to learn, and he always seemed to be underfoot.

As he reached the hatch, the sail broke the surface, and through the twin skins of the submarine, he heard the seawater cascading from the tower, crashing to the sea and the emerging hull.