Ultra Deep (34 page)

Rotating.

Rising.

The bow of the sub came into view on the ROV screen just as the ROV rose into position ahead of
DepthFinder.

“You sweating yet?” Brande asked.

“Thinking about it.”

Brande could imagine the other people sweating over their progress. Thomas and Sorenson and the other team members would be on the bridge of the RV, waiting for word from below. Gurevenich, too, was blind.

And Taylor and his men had the most to sweat about.

Atlas
eased away from them, moving toward the towing bitt on the bow, dragging the fiber-optic cable and the heavy steel cable behind. As the ROV closed on the hull, the extending weight of the steel line caused it to nose down.

“Come with me a little, Dane,” Dokey said, “This son of a bitch is heavy.”

Brande glanced over and saw that Dokey was using full thrust on the robot’s lift motors.

He tapped in forward power and the submersible slid forward, the towing cable draped downward, and the ROV reached the hull of the submarine.

It took almost ten minutes to maneuver the ROV around the bitt, pulling the cable around with it. It slipped off twice, and got hung up on the crossbar once. Finally, the claw worked the hook downward and snapped it on the cable.

“That bastard better not come loose,” Dokey said.

“It will not,” Dankelov said. “There is too much weight on it.”

“Give everyone a progress report, Valeri.”

Dankelov lifted the telephone and said, “
Atlas
has secured one end of the cable to the
Los
Angeles.
”

No one replied, perhaps in fear of interrupting the concentration of the crew in the submersible.

“Dane, I don’t think we want to cut loose all of the coils,” Dokey said. “
Atlas
won’t take all of the weight.ˮ

“All right. Just get one coil and the hook. I’ll carry the weight until we’re done. Valeri, tell Gurevenich we need to have him move in closer.”

“She is down another seven feet, Dane. The
Winter
Storm
also should come in lower.”

He checked the sonar readout, which had been changed to the port-side screen. “Good idea, Valeri. Tell him to lose about three hundred feet and come ahead a hundred yards.”

Brande could not understand much Russian, but he heard where Dankelov converted the measurements to meters.

Valeri Dankelov had never liked the English measurement system.

After Dokey had cut a plastic tie and had the other hook gripped firmly in the ROVʼs claw, Brande advanced toward the sub, then turned ahead of it, toward the west.

The tow cable only allowed him to move fifteen or twenty feet before it slowed him to a stop.

He pumped water ballast aboard, and the submersible began to descend.

The snout of the CIS submarine slowly appeared on the screen.

“Tell him another fifty feet, Valeri.”

Dankelov translated the direction.

The sub moved slowly, but Brande kept a firm grip on his controls, ready to dart sideways if necessary. He did not want any collisions.

Dokey advanced
Atlas
toward the foreign bow even before Gurevenich slowed it to a stop.

The towing bitt appeared on the ROV screen, and this time, Dokey had the cable secured in eight minutes. 

“Getting pretty damned good,” Brande told him.

“I was always good, Chief”

Twelve minutes later, with the rest of the loops cut away from beneath the submersible and the ROV back in its sheath, Brande told Dankelov, ‘Tell Captain Gurevenich that the towline is secure. I would like to have him come slowly up by two hundred feet, as well as move dead slow astern”

Brande backed
DepthFinder
away as the Soviet submarine began to move. He trained the video camera on the space between the two vessels and watched as the towline rose out of the depths then began to tauten.

“Tell him to go easy, Valeri. It may not be the strongest cable in the world.”

Brande rotated the sub until the
Los
Angeles
ʼs bow came into view.

As they watched, the towline straightened, seemed to hum. Brande held his breath, waiting for the cable to snap.

The
Los
Angeles
began to move.

“We feel movement, DepthFinderTaylor reported. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Dankelov said over the transceiver.

“Good work,” Sorenson told them from the RV.

“Valeri, tell Gurevenich we want to hold the tow to less than three knots. Let’s not let speed overcome caution.”

Brande kept pace with the American sub, rising slowly as the forward movement on the diving planes forced it upward.

He took the phone from Dankelov. “Rae, you there?”

“Here, Dane.”

“It’s going to take about an hour. When she surfaces, I want the
Bronstein
to take over the tow. They’re going to have to keep her moving to keep her on the surface until they can get some pumps going.”

“Captain Dewey will probably have to get orders from twelve different places,” she said.

“He’s got an hour to do that. Or when I meet him, I’ll shove his ship up his ass.”

“I’ll be happy to pass that word,” she said.

*

0304 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 20' 38" NORTH, 176° 10' 47" EAST

The seas were rough. Long, deep swells with tall, white-capping waves threatened to wash over the bow of the
Queen
of
Liberty
.

The weather canvas had been installed around the sides and back of the flying bridge, but briny spray occasionally breached a gap in the old canvas, and the deck was wet and sloppy.

A white-faced Donny Edgeworth sat in the helmsman’s seat and tried to keep the bow headed into the oncoming breakers. He was mostly successful.

Dawn Lengren and Julie Mecom had gone below long before and taken to their bunks. Both of them looked green, but Aaron thought that Dawn’s illness was related more to the beer she had been drinking. She was usually pretty seaworthy.

Curtis Aaron stood near the forward windshield, his hand wrapped around a grab bar. He was not particularly worried about the weather. It would probably pass over soon.

The
Queen
and Jacobs’
Arienne
had both caught up with Brande’s research vessel shortly after it had stopped near the Navy ship. At first, when the submersible was lowered into the sea, Aaron had thought they had arrived on the scene of the crashed rocket, but Dawn, who had been checking the navigation positions, said it was probably the submarine that was sinking. Those reports had been on the radio for a couple hours by that time.

The flotilla of Navy ship, research ship,
Queen
and
Arienne
had been drifting westward for over an hour, making just enough headway to keep from broaching in the seas. There was no radio traffic on any of the channels Aaron could monitor, and in the darkness, not much to be seen.

“There!” Edgeworth yelled, pointing with a skinny finger.

“Where?”

Searchlights from the Navy ship suddenly came to life, and the ocean was bathed in bluish white. In the path of one light, Aaron saw a conning tower breaking the surface.

“Damn,” he said, “they got her.”

“I don’t think that’s the right one, Curtis. Look at the red star.”

In fact, there was a red star on the sail. It was bold and clear in the glare of the searchlight. Water sluiced from the hull as more of the submarine emerged from the sea.

“It’s moving backward,” Edgeworth said.

“And so it is, Donny. What the hell’re they doing?”

Three minutes later, he knew.

A second conning tower erupted from the surface.

And then that of a tiny submarine, bobbing like a cork on the rough seas.

The big Navy ship started to close in on the second submarine.

“You want me to follow them, Curtis?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“But they’re kind of messing around with fate, aren’t they? With Mother Nature and Lady Destiny?”

“Maybe not, Donny. Maybe this wasn’t meant to be. They hadn’t gone down yet, anyway.”

Lately, Aaron had begun to concern himself as much with fate as he was with nature.

Sometimes, it was difficult to tell which way nature and destiny were headed. It was a struggle to not get confused.

*

0325 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 20' 38" NORTH, 176° 10' 51" EAST

“It’s past nine o’clock here,” Ned Nelson said. “You’re screwing up my whole timetable.”

“This is hot, Ned,” Overton said. Hot enough that he had forgotten about his roiling stomach. “I’m on the scene.”

“Scene of what?”

“This research ship showed up out of the blue and saved the crew of the
Los
Angeles
.ˮ

“Oh, shit! You sure?”

“We’re towing it now, and we’ve taken most of the sailors off the sub. I’ve got interviews. Oh, babe, I’ve got interviews!”

“Let me get somebody from rewrite over here.”

“Hey, Ned! You picking up the tab on my charters?”

“Ah, hell. Did you get good receipts?”

*

0543 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 20' 37" NORTH, 176° 10' 41" EAST

It took over an hour to get
DepthFinder
aboard and snugged down. While the
Orion
was stable enough on her cycloidals, she still surged up and down, and the submersible had to make several tries before she successfully approached between the hulls and captured the lift cable.

Thomas was on the fantail, ordering those who were not wearing one into life jackets when Brande, Dokey and Dankelov slid down the ladder of the scaffold.

She felt like throwing her arms around Brande, she was so glad to see him. In addition to the rescue of the submarine crew, of course. That elated her.

She smiled as the three of them approached her. They looked pretty beat.

Brande smiled back.

Dokey asked, “Don’t I get a kiss?”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. It surprised hell out of him.

“Coffee’s waiting in the wardroom,” she told them.

Brande said, “I’d better…”

“We’ll take care of it. Go rest.”

Ship’s crew and team members were swarming over the sub, pulling battery trays, preparing to remove
Atlas
for servicing, and scooting SARSCAN out of the laboratory. The sonar robot was ready to be attached to the sub.

She turned and walked forward with them. While it was not raining, the wind was gusting and throwing spray over the decks. Thomas kept a grip on the safety lines until they reached the side door and slipped inside.

She pulled off her slicker and hung it on a hook where it dripped.

Brande pointed upward. “Mel?”

“We’re already back on course, Dane. We only lost four-and-a-half hours.”

“What does the Navy say about that?” Dokey asked.

“I don’t know. I gave Dewey Dane’s message, word for word, and I haven’t heard from them since. Well, once. Captain Taylor has bought each of the crew members of the
DepthFinder
a week’s stay at the MGM Grand in Reno.”

“Damn, I think I’ll go now,” Dokey said.

“Go get coffee, instead,” Brande told him.

Dokey looked at the two of them, then took Dankelov’s arm and led him into the lounge.

“You’d better get some rest, Dane.”

“Right away?”

“Maybe not
right
away.”

*

2115 HOURS LOCAL, WASHINGTON, DC

“What have you got, Oren?”

“It gets shitty from here on out, Carl”

“I suspect I don’t want to hear this,” Unruh said.

“No, you don’t. But you have to, and you have to pass it on to your buddies in the room.”

For quite some time, there had been a celebration going, fueled by coffee and Danish, over the salvation of the
Los
Angeles
and her crew. The President had ordered hot roast beef sandwiches for everyone for lunch.

No one mentioned the dereliction from duty and orders of one Dane Brande.

Even the threat of planned protests had been forgotten for the moment. Seven days after the crash of the A2e, rally and protest planners were finally getting organized. Massive demonstrations were planned all around the globe, and most of them had been listed on the charts scattered around the Situation Room.