Ultra Deep

by William H. Lovejoy

  Around her, the MVU staffers she had cajoled into working late lounged on top of crates or on the dusty cement floor. There were seven of them, all males, and they looked slightly beat after unloading the trucks. Doug Vahrencamp, newly hired to work on the mining project, grinned at her. He was in his mid thirties and handsome in a red-haired way, like Van Johnson. He was unmarried and interested in her. She had turned down two of his dinner invitations because, to her way of thinking, anyone who worked for Marine Visions did not have much in the way of a future.

  She picked up her cellular phone from the crate beside her and dialed a familiar number and ordered five pizzas and two cases of beer. MVU people thrived on late hours and beer and pizza.

  Switching the phone for a walkie-talkie, she depressed the transmit button. “Orion, this is Mike Victory.”

  “Go ahead, Mike.”

  “Did you top off tanks, Mel?”

  “Right up to the caps, Kaylene. You have any idea what’s up yet?”

  “We’ve got a gang here to load you as soon as you’re alongside, Mel. Full replenishment of pantries and refrigerators.”

  “That’s three months’ worth,” Mel Sorenson, captain of the Orion, told her.

  “We just do what we’re told. Plus, we’re stocking up your replacement parts and batteries. We’ll load SARSCAN, too. Did you run systems checks?”

  “Sure did, on the way in. Everything’s in apple pie order, darlin’.”

  “Engines?”

  “Super good. We’re ten thousand hours away from overhaul. Kaylene, you haven’t answered my question.”

  “You did hear the news?”

  “I heard,” Sorenson said. “That’s it?”

  “I don’t know. You read between your lines, and I’ll read between mine.”

  “You sure, darlin’? If that’s it, I don’t like it a damn bit.” Thomas did not like it, either, and she was not yet certain how she would react when Brande broke the news. No, that was wrong. She knew exactly what her response would be, and it disheartened her as much as it relieved her.

  Thomas sighed as the research vessel eased into the pier, her cycloidal propellers deployed and stabilizing her. The twin-hulled ship was particularly beautiful to Thomas, who fell in love with practically any marine craft.

  She was going to miss it.

  *

  1656 HOURS LOCAL, 18° 51' NORTH, 165° 44' WEST

  Cmdr. Alfred Taylor sat in the wardroom with his executive officer, Neil Garrison. They were both attacking pork chops and slippery green peas, washing them down with tall glasses of milk.

  They had eaten silently for ten minutes, each of them digesting the contents of the message broadcast to the Los Angeles from the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.

  “What’s your best estimate, Neil?”

  “I had Jorgenson run it, and I haven’t double-checked his numbers, but it looks like another thirty-five hours. Something over eleven hundred nautical miles. We’re tapped out at thirty-three knots, Skipper.”

  “And what do we do when we get there?” Taylor asked.

  “Find the damned thing, I guess. That’s what CINCPAC wants us to do.”

  “Deep, deep,” Taylor said.

  “I know. I don’t give us much of a chance, but I told Chief Carter to make sure his sonar equipment was in first-class shape.”

  “Knowing Carter, it will be.”

  “We could get lucky, maybe. Say it didn’t drop into some ravine that shadows the sonar signal.”

  “I won’t count on it,” Taylor told him.

  “Me, either.” Garrison chewed silently for a full minute. “What about the crew?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, Neil. I think we should tell them.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Garrison agreed. “It’s not like we had a choice, of course, but I’d want to know the water could be irradiated.”

  “Maybe it won’t be,” Taylor suggested. He knew he was grasping at straws.

  “That’s something else I don’t think we can count on.”

  “How come we run all over the Pacific inside the same can with a D2G reactor and we have to worry about some puny thing the Russians lost?”

  “Iʼm a naval engineer, not a philosopher, Skipper.”

  “You suppose the guy who lost this thing is a philosopher, Neil?”

  *

  1815 HOURS LOCAL, GULFSTREAM EN ROUTE TO HAWAII

  Avery Hampstead remembered he had promised Adrienne that he would attend a wrestling match she had arranged in New York City. Pulling a pad of Post-it-Notes close, he jotted himself a reminder to call her and cancel.

  He hated to do it. He also hated wrestling matches, but he thoroughly enjoyed watching Adrienne making money the old-fashioned way. Conning people out of it, as it were. There were not many Hampsteads with her elan and guts.

  It was still light on the other side of the porthole window, but all he could see were the tops of fluffy white clouds. Behind them, night would be creeping up.

  Hampstead had been about to see Brande and Dokey off from Belle Chasse in his chartered Gulfstream when he thought about what he would be doing back in Washington. He would be sitting in his office, talking to a select group of people on the phone for the next couple of weeks.

  And he had quickly decided that he could talk on the phone from anywhere.

  From here, for instance.

  He picked up the telephone receiver from the table in front of him and asked the radio operator to connect him with Langley on a secure transmission.

  “Will do, sir. Do you need some coffee back there?”

  “Any time you have a chance, that would be great,” Hampstead told him.

  He felt guilty, all by himself in the main cabin of the C-20B VIP transport. It was operated by the Air Force’s 89th Military Airlift Wing, and it had a crew of three and thirteen empty passenger seats. He wondered which reporter would get hold of the voucher and crucify him in the press.

  The phone buzzed softly and he picked it up.

  “Your call, sir.”

  “Thank you. Carl, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Unruh said. The scrambler made his voice a little tinny.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d catch you in.”

  “My couch is soft. I know it well. Where in the hell are you, Avery?”

  “I’m not sure. But I’d bet most of the way to Hawaii, I think.”

  Unruh did not seem surprised that Hampstead would head for the scene of the crime. “Did you talk to Brande?”

  “I talked.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s going to pitch it to his people.”

  “Pitch it! He’s going to pitch it!”

  “What would you have him do, Carl? They’re civilians. They’re not like you.”

  “Shit. When do we get an answer?”

  “I don’t know, but you’ll be the second one to know what it is.”

  “What if he won’t go?”

  “Then, I think Admiral Delecourt will get to use the submersible.”

  “Does he know how to use it?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You’re probably right, Avery. Okay, look, the Russians are on the way.” Unruh gave him a rundown on the ships steaming toward the site of the crash.

  “I don’t believe any of those that you’ve listed are capable, Carl.”

  “It’s mainly a show of force in the area, I suppose. We think they’re moving the Sea Lion in from the Barents Sea. We’ll know more on that in a few hours.”

  Avery Hampstead rummaged through his mental file drawers, found the submersible, studied it, and said, “The Sea Lion is designed for seventeen thousand feet. They’re going to be late, and they’re going to be short of capability when they get there, Carl.”

  “Maybe they’re optimistic? Hell, at least they’re on the move.”

  The communications specialist came back and placed a mug of steaming coffee on the table. Hampstead nodded his thanks and l
oosened his tie.

  “There’s another angle, Carl. They may be operating an acoustically controlled ROV from the submersible. That’s a possible approach.”

  “Then they can do it?”

  “They can find it, maybe. But I don’t know of any of their non-tethered robots that are big enough to do the job if the wreckage is in a tight place.”

  “And we’re back to Brande.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s iffy?”

  “Brande’s not, but his coterie of experts may be. You can’t blame them, Carl.”

  “Yeah. Well, hell, it may all be academic, Avery.”

  “In what way?”

  “The nuke people from NRC, DIA, and the New Mexico study group have produced a very short report that says, one, meltdown is a certainty, and two, it could occur at practically any time.”

  “Jesus. They don’t have a best estimate?”

  “They do, but it looks slippery to me, Avery. No one wants to call it a guess, but they don’t want to have their names attached to a bad guess, either. What it says here, that given their projections of the design evolution from the Topaz Two, and given that there was a malfunction in the automatic controls on impact — they think that’s a certainty — the reactor will reach a critical point anywhere from 0100 hours September ten to 0100 hours September eighteen. That’s local time in the impact zone.”

  “Oh, damn. Nine days from now.”

  “A little over. That’s what they say. And it’s a hell of a broad range, Avery. I don’t know whether to believe them or not.”

  “Does the President believe them?”

  “Does he have a choice?” Unruh asked.

  “All right. I’ll call Brande.”

  “Don’t,” Unruh said.

  “But I’ve got to.”

  “Let’s not influence his decision with unreliable facts,” Unruh said.

  *

  2351 HOURS LOCAL, UNITED BOEING 767 OVER INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

  Wilson Overton had not fully appreciated the potential reaction to his story until the wire and TV reports began to filter back from the West Coast.

  He had spent most of his time, after the special edition hit the street, drinking endless cups of coffee in the city room with his editor, Ned Nelson.

  Nelson mentioned a Pulitzer more than once, but Overton did not want to think about it or talk about it, as if either thought or speech might jeopardize his chances.

  He was more concerned about what happened next. He had the political beat in the city, but this had gone international. He fretted and ripped increasing numbers of stories from the printer and forced a lighthearted banter with Nelson.

  He had tried to run down a guy named Hampstead who worked with oceanographic research at the Department of Commerce, but had been told he was out of town.

  Everyone was quickly getting out of town.

  At nine-thirty, the AP correspondent out of Seattle reported that ten people were then hospitalized as a result of the mini-riot that had taken place in front of the seamen’s union hall.

  Two thousand fishermen in the San Francisco Bay area had surrounded the CIS Consulate. They were making demands, but both demands and responses were somewhat incoherent.

  At eight in the morning in Tokyo, the students were beginning to fill the streets. Extra police had been called to duty. Same thing in Seoul. It was going to screw up their balance of riots, Overton thought. The Korean students usually rampaged in the early summer.

  The central thread running through all of the reports, Overton thought, was that people were angry and scared, but they did not know where to direct their anger or how to ease their fears.

  Get it up! Get it up!

  From where? How deep was it? No one seemed to know. Overton did not know.

  He wondered if he had overstated his case. The television networks had quoted him, almost word for word.

  He was on the verge of self-recrimination when the phone on Nelson’s desk rang. The editor picked it up, listened, spoke, hung up.

  “That was the international desk, Will. It’s your story, you run with it.”

  “Whoosh,” Overton let his breath go. “I suspect Defense will get involved. Maybe I’ll go out there.”

  “No. You go out to Dulles and catch the first flight you can for Honolulu. While you’re on the way, I’ll arrange a charter boat. Call me the minute you’re on the ground in Honolulu, and I’ll tell you what I’ve lined up.”

  When the pilot whispered over the intercom that they were passing over Indianapolis, Overton looked out his window and saw the faraway lights, all checkerboarded. Good old middle America.

  He wished he were in it, solidly placed and confident.

  Instead of heading into the unknown.

  The unknown was the fear.

  He pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket and jotted a few notes on that theme.

  *

  1524 HOURS LOCAL, VLADIVOSTOK

  The skies were overcast, a flattened dome of dull concrete gray that stretched infinitely toward every horizon. The air was chilled, not yet absolutely cold, but threatening. There was probably snow in the forecast, Oberstev thought.

  He cracked his window open and sniffed the air. It was tangy with salt.

  The car moved through the streets quickly, following the other polished black Zil. Around him, the city, the primary city of the Primorsky Territory, had a frontier flavor. There were newer apartment blocks, but they were interspersed with rows of wooden-framed houses. The people on the streets, most of them dressed roughly, ignored the official motorcade as it sped past them. Oberstev envied them their aloofness.

  Janos Sodur tried to strike up a conversation, but he was inept at small talk.

  “Have you been to Vladivostok before, Colonel?” Oberstev asked.

  “No, never.”

  “Then you should take advantage of the opportunity to see it now.”

  Sodur, sitting in a jump seat, took the hint and craned his neck to watch the small shops passing by. Free enterprise reigned in some of them.

  Oberstev looked across the wide seat toward his aide, Alexi Cherbykov. Cherbykov shook his head minutely. He, too, was agitated that Sodur had finagled his way into this trip.

  The three of them were in the back of the second Zil. The first Zil contained Aerospace Subcommittee Chairman Yevgeni and Admired Orlov as well as the commander of the Vladivostok naval base, the largest of the CIS Pacific Fleet, who had met them at the airfield.

  The base commander knew where his priorities were best placed.

  Oberstev did not mind his relegation to the second car. The eight-hour flight from Moscow had covered 6,000 kilometers and six time zones, and he was fatigued. He had slept, but fitfully and erratically and more as a matter of combatting exhaustion than as a normal part of a biological cycle.

  Soon, they turned onto a coastal highway and the gray Sea of Japan was visible. The whaling and fishing fleets were out, and the harbor looked almost barren. A few dozen freighters and tankers lay at anchor or were drawn up to the docks. There were perhaps twenty good-size warships near the naval base’s facilities.

  Oberstev watched the activity on the docks as they drove past. The workers moved desultorily, filling nets with cargo, off-loading small cars, wrestling with reluctant equipment. They seemed not to care about anything.

  Once on the grounds of the base, the commander’s car led them directly to a gray brick building with a white sign that identified it as the operations center.

  The drivers of both cars braked to a stop, then hopped out to open the rear doors.

  The passengers emerged, then merged as a group of six as they entered the building.

  The base commander explained, “I have set aside the officers’ mess as a command center, Admiral Orlov, if that will be sufficient?”

  “That will be fine, Admiral,” Orlov told him. “With any luck at all, we will not be here long.”

  They went down a long, wide hal
lway and were briefed on accommodations for bed and board. Quarters in the guest officers’ barracks were being prepared, and their luggage would be delivered there. Food would be sent in, anytime it was requested.

  In the officers’ mess, they shed their greatcoats. Navy seamen jumped forward to collect them.

  The mess had been fitted with a table surrounded by padded chairs and topped with a dozen telephones in addition to notepads, pens, pitchers of water, and glasses. Tea was brewing in an urn at one side of the room. Navy technicians stood at attention before six electronic consoles until Orlov told them to return to their duties. A large map had been tacked to the far wall.

  Oberstev settled into a chair. His eyes felt bleary. Removing his glasses, he methodically polished the lenses. He wondered if his slender shoulders could take the burden that he felt was coming.

  Yevgeni sat at the head of the table, his sycophant Sodur close by. Orlov spoke to a captain named Kokoshin who, in turn, barked a few orders, and technicians began to fly. In minutes, variously colored symbols appeared on the map, identifying the positions of ships and submarines. The area of the sunken A2e was designated by a circular set of dashes drawn in red grease pencil.

  Captain Kokoshin came forward to brief them on the symbols. He rattled off coordinates and ship types and estimated times of arrival in the area of operations, now called the AO.

  “Questions, comrades?” Orlov asked.

  “Deep submersibles?” Yevgeni asked.

  “The submersible based here is fully disassembled, retrofitting, as is its support ship. According to CIS Navy Headquarters, the Sea Lion, currently in the Barents Sea, has been identified as the alternate choice and is en route to Murmansk.”

  “Tell me about the timelines and the preparations, Captain,” Orlov said.

  “Admiral Orlov, the information given me is that the Sea Lion will be in Vladivostok within twenty-four hours. It will need, of course, a support vessel, and the patrol ship Timofey Ol’yantsev is now being fitted with lifting booms and other necessary equipment. It should be ready as soon as the submersible arrives.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, Admiral,” Kokoshin said, “it will require seventy-five hours to put the Olʼyantsev into the area of operations.”

  Oberstev appreciated a briefer who had his facts right at hand. Admiral Orlov may have also appreciated Kokoshin, but he scowled. “It will be four days before we have the submersible in place.”