Ultra Deep

by William H. Lovejoy

  Under the weak light of day, the gold and olive and silver onion-shaped domes glistened with the moisture of melting snow. Oberstev was acutely aware that all around him was the work of artists and architects who had flourished as early as the 11th century. The building in which he stood, uncomfortable in the over-heated space, had been built in the 18th century. While he appreciated the history and the accomplishments, it seemed incongruous for him to be there. He was, after all, driving headlong into the 21st century, shaping its history. A ten-century span, a thousand years. He wanted to be the man who completed the massive Red Star space station. If possible, he wanted to be the man who initiated the first manned expedition to Mars.

  Besides the President, Yevgeni and Janos Sodur, there were two national parliament members, six generals and two admirals crowding the room. A delegation of two from the Russian parliament had also infiltrated. Oberstev was beginning to smell them.

  He leaned back against the windowsill, removed his glasses, and polished the thick lenses with a linen handkerchief.

  Sodur was reiterating for the generals his conviction that the disaster was the result of sabotage. Not everyone seemed to agree with Yevgeni’s aide, but they could agree on one thing — it was a disaster.

  “And on the first day of the celebration,” Yevgeni lamented, without mentioning that it was the wrong celebration for him.

  “The Westerners infiltrate everywhere,” Sodur told him. “All it takes is a screwdriver left in the wrong place. A bolt partially removed. A…”

  “The initial indication,” Oberstev interrupted, “is that the primary motor control computer malfunctioned.”

  He was not about to reveal to this group, and at this moment, that human logic — his own — had overridden that of the computer.

  “Exactly!” shouted Sodur. “A magnet! The agent had only to drop a magnet in the right location.”

  “You are certain that foreign agents are in place at Plesetsk?” Yevgeni asked. “The security…?”

  “I am certain,” Sodur said very soberly.

  Oberstev shook his head. They always looked for someone on whom to place the blame, looking backward, when the moment called for looking forward.

  The President apparently thought the same way. He lifted his hand to quiet the room, then said, “The causes may be examined at a later date. The consequences are of immediate concern. Chairman Yevgeni, you convinced me to tell the Americans that we can solve our own problem. How do you suggest we go about it?”

  The old man turned to face the younger President. “The navy has recovery apparatus. Send them to it.”

  It was always that simple, in the eyes of the blind.

  Most of the eyes in the room focused on Adm. Grigori Orlov, who was commander in chief of the Commonwealth navy. A forty-year veteran, Orlov was heavyset as a result of his skeletal structure, but appeared trim in his uniform. He had large bags beneath his brown eyes, giving him a canine appearance. Senior Commonwealth military leaders who had survived imposed retirement or outright ouster were a strong presence in the balance of national power, and Orlov’s soft-spoken voice carried the weight of that authority.

  “We do not yet know the location of the rocket,” Admiral Orlov said.

  “But we do!” Yevgeni argued, more loudly and more insistently than was necessary.

  “We know the coordinates of the impact,” Orlov countered. “We do not know what occurred after impact.”

  Oberstev nodded his agreement and said, “Our last telemetry readings suggest that the vehicle was not tumbling and was still in its original configuration. That is to say, that the payload module, the primary rocket, and the booster rockets had not separated. All propulsion systems had ceased operation long before, but the speed at impact was four hundred and sixty kilometers-per-hour. It may have broken up upon contact with the ocean surface, or it may have entered the water cleanly. We do not know.”

  “But you know where it struck,” Yevgeni insisted.

  “After impact, it could have traveled a great distance under the surface, and in practically any direction,” the admiral said. “I suspect it could have traveled laterally up to five kilometers. In an area to be searched, that is more than fifteen square kilometers,” Orlov said.

  “Impossible,” Yevgeni said.

  “I am afraid that Admiral Orlov is quite right, Chairman Yevgeni,” Oberstev said. “That region of the Pacific Ocean is over five thousand meters deep. Almost six thousand, if I am not mistaken.”

  “You are not,” Orlov said.

  “That will present recovery problems, I suspect,” Oberstev said.

  “Indeed,” the admiral told the group. “Our submarines cannot, of course, dive that deeply. The ocean bottom is extremely rugged, possibly preventing our ever locating the wreckage. At present, the only deep-diving submersible we have in the Pacific is at Vladivostok, undergoing repair.”

  “We should have let the Americans help us,” Dmitri Oberstev said.

  “I agree,” General Druzhinin, an air force deputy commander in chief and commander of the Rocket Forces, Oberstev’s superior, said.

  “Never!” Yevgeni said.

  Pod-Palcovnik Janos Sodur grinned his agreement. His teeth were stained yellow from his smoking.

  The President said, “The Americans referred to the nuclear reactor as Topaz Four.”

  Oberstev did not doubt it. Secrecy was the plaything of a bygone era.

  “It is as I said!” Sodur claimed. “Their agents are everywhere! Our complacency will lead to our downfall. Only by increasing our vigilance…”

  He dribbled off into blessed silence under the stares of a dozen superiors.

  The President let the silence linger as he looked around the room, studying each face.

  Finally, he said, “Admiral Orlov, do we have submarines in the area?”

  Orlov closed his eyes for a moment. “Within forty hours of transit time, I believe.”

  “Order them to begin the search. Determine the status of the submersible at Vladivostok. If it cannot be made available immediately, arrange transportation for any other that is available, no matter its location.”

  Oberstev thought that Orlov intended to make some kind of protest, then thought better of it. He left the room, shouldering his way through the throng of decision-makers.

  “There is another course of action, if I might suggest it,” Janos Sodur said.

  “And that is?”

  “Leave it there. We need not tell anyone. What will it hurt?”

  Oberstev cleared his throat. He thought that his voice might have squeaked a bit when he said, “That course of action is not open to us.”

  “Why not, General?” Yevgeni asked.

  “This nuclear reactor, Topaz Four, is unlike those that preceded it. I imagine that the automatic controls may have failed upon impact.”

  “Meaning?” the President asked.

  “Meaning that it will almost certainly achieve a supercritical state.”

  “Supercritical state? What supercritical state?”

  “The core will eventually become hot enough, then go into meltdown.”

  *

  0645 HOURS LOCAL, WASHINGTON, DC

  Avery Hampstead waited in the basement corridor outside the Situation Room.

  He waited with a dozen other people, many of them in uniform, and all of them under the careful scrutiny of two resplendent and mean-looking marines. Because of some unspoken sense of dire national concerns, or maybe because of the stern countenance of the marines, no one in the hallway spoke to another. In fact, they barely looked at each other. They seemed embarrassed to be there. Or uncertain of which of them had the greatest stature.

  After he had been there an hour, someone somewhere had made a decision about courtesy, and the White House-duty marines wheeled a stack of orange plastic chairs into the corridor and distributed them.

  Hampstead had smiled his appreciation for a gunnery sergeant and collapsed on his chair. He was dres
sed in his own uniform, a dark gray wool suit, pinstriped with silver. His black shoes gleamed with paste and elbow polish. His shirt was so white, it looked boiled. The muted gray and maroon stripes of his tie befitted his party — Republican — and his position — undersecretary of commerce.

  Though he was presentable, Hampstead had no illusions about his image. He was not handsome in the Hampsteads of Philadelphia family tradition. His face was elongated, and he had oversized ears, with great, dangling lobes. His square-cut, large teeth put William F. Buckley to shame, in a perverse way. He kept his dark hair cut short, though he would really have preferred styling it in a’60s Beatles fashion, to disguise his ears.

  There was Hampstead family money, correctly accumulated in steel and railroads, but other than for his education and a Triumph TR-3 when he was an undergraduate, his father did not spread it lavishly among Hampstead and his four siblings. Hampstead earned his living, and he did it in a Hampstead tradition. Most of his ancestors, and two of his brothers and one of his sisters, devoted themselves to public service. It was an honorable calling.

  His youngest sister, Adrienne, lived in New York City and promoted gargantuan professional wrestling matches. He loved her dearly.

  From time to time, the door to the Situation Room opened and Chief of Staff Balcon or National Security Advisor Amply stuck his head out and beckoned someone inside. The room should have a revolving door on it, Hampstead thought.

  He was called at a quarter of seven.

  By Carl Unruh.

  He had not even been sure that Unruh was in the room.

  Hampstead stood up, stretched, tugged his suit jacket into place, and passed through the doorway. It was similar, he thought, to entering an execution chamber. Same effect on the senses.

  There were over twenty people in the secured room — Senate and House leaders, Pentagon people, White House people. Unruh introduced him to the group, but did not bother providing the other side’s names. It would not have mattered, anyway. He knew who the President was, and he recognized the congressional faces, along with that of the Director of Central Intelligence, but he would have immediately forgotten the names of all the generals, admirals, and agency heads.

  “Mr. Hampstead,” Unruh said, “is an undersecretary in the Department of Commerce. He is responsible for things oceanworthy, primarily in the areas of exploration and development.”

  “Thank you for coming over so quickly, Mr. Hampstead,” the President said.

  “Not at all, sir. I’m happy to cooperate.” With what, he was not certain.

  Unruh indicated two upholstered chairs at the table, and they both sat.

  “General Wiggins, would you brief Mr. Hampstead?” the President asked.

  Wiggins stood up, and Hampstead vaguely recalled the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was built like an extremely short fire hydrant, and his voice rumbled around large pieces of gravel.

  “Mr. Hampstead, first of all, what you learn here this morning is not for public consumption. All contact with the media, or with anyone else, will be made through the White House spokesman.”

  “Certainly, General.”

  Wiggins crossed the room to a large screen radiating a map of the northern Pacific Ocean. South of Midway Island, there was a red dot. The general picked up a pointer and pointed out the red dot.

  “Shortly after midnight this morning, a CIS A2e rocket splashed down at this location directly after launch. It was unintentional.”

  The general paused, so Hampstead said, “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t know the current condition of the rocket or the payload, but we do know that the payload was an advanced nuclear reactor.”

  “Ooh.” Hampstead did not know whether or not his exclamation was a vocal one.

  “We have been briefed by Defense Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission nuclear experts, and we believe that there is a high probability that the reactor may go supercritical, that is, into a meltdown state.”

  Hampstead sat upright and placed his arms on the table. He did not know what else to do with them. “Is there a timetable, General?”

  “Unknown at this time. Our people are working on it.”

  “Have the Russians said anything? There should have been telemetry readings.”

  “The Russians are noncommital, Mr. Hampstead,” Warren Amply said.

  “I see. Do we know the size of the reactor?”

  “Fifteen megawatts or better, at best estimate,” Wiggins said.

  That was not large by land-based reactor standards, but Hampstead assumed it was massive in terms of its brothers already in space.

  “We think, Avery, that it could put out a massive dose of radiation, on an ongoing basis, over a long period of time,” Unruh said. “The navy oceanographer is double-checking the currents, but seems to think that a large area of the Pacific Rim is at risk.”

  Hampstead studied the map. One little red dot on a sea of blue. “The subsurface terrain is intimidating in that region. I’m placing it north of the Mid-Pacific Mountains and east-southeast of Mapmaker Seamount, south of the Milwaukee Seamount.”

  “Correct, Mr. Hampstead. Do you know the depths?”

  The speaker was in naval uniform, with about eighty rows of ribbons and thirty gold bands on his sleeves. Hampstead thought he was the CNO, the Chief of Naval Operations. Admiral…Benjamin Delecourt. He had a smooth, talcum-powdered set of jaws that jutted aggressively. His hair was gray and thin. The green eyes penetrated like arrowheads.

  “Yes, Admiral. Though the region is not fully charted, and there will be trenches of greater depth, I believe the mean depth is about seventeen thousand feet. About three-and-a-half miles. There are recorded areas that reach to over nineteen thousand feet.”

  “What does it take to get down there?” the President asked.

  “For location purposes, or for recovery?” Hampstead asked.

  “Weʼve got to find it, first,” Harley Wiggins said.

  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce had twenty-one research and survey vessels at its disposal. Transportation, Interior, and the National Science Foundation had another three, and the academic universities and institutes controlled another sixty vessels. The navy itself had eight ships dedicated to subsurface survey. Hampstead could think of an additional nine research vessels, privately owned, with which he frequently entered into government contracts, as he did with the university vessels.

  “There are about a hundred American vessels in the category,” he said. “Of those, very few can operate deep-tow sonar and remotes at the depths we need to penetrate. At this time of year, however, most of the university and institute vessels have been moved to southern waters.”

  “The Bartlett and the Kane are in Hawaii,” the CNO said. “I can have them on-site the quickest.”

  “The best sonar search apparatus is the SARSCAN,” Hampstead said.

  “That’s the navy’s?” the President asked.

  “No, sir,” Hampstead responded. “It belongs to Marine Visions Unlimited. It’s a privately owned oceanographic research and development firm.”

  “I think the Navy…” Admiral Delecourt started to say.

  “Can we get it?” the President asked.

  “I’m not sure where they have it located at present,” Hampstead said, “but I can find out.”

  “Do that, please.”

  “Are we ignoring the Russian effort?” the Chief of Staff asked. “Certainly, they’ll be doing something.”

  General Harley Wiggins said, “The DIA has been keeping an eye on their development program, of course. They pioneered the first autonomous undersea robots utilizing acoustical control. They are superior to tethered robots in that the potential risk of damage to cables is nonexistent, and, of course, cable length is not a limiting factor. It’s also cheaper. We believe they may have fifteen or sixteen operating models, but most of them are located at projects in the Barents, Baltic, and Bla
ck seas. They’ve been shooting some excellent deep-sea video in the last couple years. The Titanic site, for instance. One of the advanced remotes is aboard the research vessel Baykal, which operates out of Vladivostok. When I checked a couple hours ago, the Baykal was in drydock, being retrofitted over the winter months.”

  “So, they have a technological edge on us, General?” Amply asked.

  “Perhaps in command and control. We are not certain of their depth capability, but we’re pretty sure that their current remote-controlled vehicles aren’t up to heavy-lift.”

  “That concurs with what I’ve heard from various sources,” Hampstead said. “If the rocket is located, it will likely require some heavy-duty equipment.”

  “All right,” the President said, “If we find this thing, how do we get it up?”

  “The Navy has a tethered robot good for twenty thousand feet,” Delecourt said. “It’s in England, now, but we can get it on board a plane. We can operate it off the Bartlett, but I’m going to have to check on the availability of cable”

  “Okay, Ben, let’s get started on something. Deploy the two ships from Hawaii and arrange the transport for the robot. What about submarines?”

  “They can’t achieve the depths, Mr. President,” Hampstead said.

  “But they could aid in the search?”

  “Possibly.”

  “We can’t reach the ballistic missile subs,” the CNO said.

  Hampstead knew the big missile-carrying submarines patrolled assigned sectors of the sea, hidden even from their commands, and did not respond to communications directed toward them. They had their orders, and they surfaced at predetermined times to accept radio messages.

  “Whatever you can raise,” the President said. “I want every potentially useful asset assigned to this. What have we got at Midway?”

  “Midway Naval Base has a small task force, the largest ship a frigate, and recon aircraft. Not much help,” Delecourt said.