Ultra Deep

by William H. Lovejoy

  “Heading west”

  Dokey put Gargantua into a long, sweeping curve, and Brande followed along.

  The bottom dipped away, disappearing from the robot’s camera.

  “Jesus.” Dokey dove the ROV, and the bottom reappeared.

  Down 24,056 feet.

  Brande fought off thinking about the immense pressure of all that water trying to get inside his tiny sphere.

  Ping!

  The sonar volume, set low, sounded off.

  Brande glanced at the waterfall display, saw the slope of the canyon rising to the right. Outcroppings above them. He would have to watch out for that, warn Rastonov.

  Small ridge coming up, still below them.

  Ping, ping.

  Not a ridge.

  “Right there, Dane.”

  Brande switched his attention to the starboard display and saw what Gargantua was seeing.

  Soviet A2e rocket.

  The top stage, with stabilizing fins, was still connected to the payload stage, the pointed module end lower on the slope. It was a hell of a lot bigger than he had expected it to be. He had seen the recorded video pictures of the boosters and first stage, but with only the perspective offered by the sea floor, he had not gotten a feeling for the size of the thing.

  “Hot damn!” someone from above shouted.

  “Let’s get the hoods on, Okey.”

  They donned the protective hoods, and Brande immediately felt handicapped. The big glass plate visor restricted his vision to the side.

  Easing the power stick forward, and nosing down with the right stick, Brande moved the submersible in until the cliff and the rocket body became visible under DepthFinder’s floodlights.

  He picked up the microphone, shoved it under the hood, and said, “Pyotr, we’ve got it. You want to come to one-nine, four-seven, one-oh, two-eight?”

  “We are on the way, Dane.”

  “I’m looking it over,” Roskens said. “Okey, you want to circle it, maybe get in a little closer.”

  “Anything for you, sweetheart,” Dokey said, taking the mike from Brande.

  For ten minutes, Dokey and Roskens talked back and forth, and he poked Gargantua in closer and closer to the depleted rocket.

  The skin was pretty banged up, crumpled in places, creased in others. The whole thing looked to be bent along its length. The two fins that could be seen were mangled badly.

  The Soviet Seeker swam into Gargantua’s view, also probing. “You here, Pyotr?”

  “Yes, Dane. We are behind and above you. Now moving to your right side.”

  From the Olʼyantsev, Oberstev, who was viewing the Seeker pictures, said, “It is in a dangerous position. If we try to cut the payload module away, the rocket may push it further down.”

  “Also, General,” Brande said, “directly above us is a rock ledge that extends partway over the wreckage.”

  “General,” Roskens said, “do you have drawings of the rocket? At least of the payload module?”

  Oberstev did not hesitate. “I will send Colonel Cherbykov to get them from my cabin, and we will transfer them to you by photo scanner.”

  They waited fifteen eternal minutes.

  The digital readout that he had been ignoring read: 1915. Four hours and forty-five minutes to meltdown, if the Commonwealth nuke people were right.

  Four hours to the surface.

  “Pyotr,” Brande asked, “any radiation readings?”

  “None, but our sonar picks up a hissing. I think it is freon boiling.”

  Brande gulped and turned up the squelch on the sonar. “Definitely hissing,” Dokey said.

  “You mind if we don’t listen to it?”

  “Not a damned bit.”

  Brande squelched the sonar down.

  “Got it!” Roskens said. “Okey, move Gargantua forward, extend the cutting torch, and go where I tell you.”

  “Tell me fast.”

  She directed him, and Brande watched the monitor as Gargantua’s cutting torch appeared, then touched several places on the side of the payload module before Roskens told him, “Start there, Okey, and cut straight forward.”

  The manipulator went down, slapped the side of the module, and…

  The whole damned thing started to slide.

  Three feet.

  Four feet.

  And stopped.

  Dokey said, “In my next life, I’m going to be a neurosurgeon. It’s a damned sight easier.”

  Brande went to the acoustic phone. “Pyotr, can you go sit on the rocket?”

  “Keep pressure against it? Yes. But please hurry. We do not want to use up electrical power too quickly.”

  The Sea Lion moved into view, coming from the right side, eased in against the rocket, and added power to its propellers.

  A cloud of dust rose, blinding nearly all of them.

  Dokey moved the ROV in again, found his starting place, and started cutting the thin aluminum skin with the electrode cutting tip.

  Brande called Oberstev, “General, can we access the switch module from down here?”

  “I have an open line to the nuclear people, Mr. Brande. I will ask.”

  A few moments later, he said, “It would be difficult. They do not know what tools you have available, but the reactor is in a sealed container. Access doors would have to be removed, as would a large computer component, before the switch module could be reached. They are sending me complete instructions.”

  Brande sighed. A lot of this could have been taken care of a lot earlier.

  “All right, General. Once weʼve cut away the side of the pay-load bay, what then?”

  “The reactor is secured to the framework inside the module by four bolts. They could be unbolted or simply cut.”

  “Weʼll cut them.”

  Dokey had completed a thirty-foot cut along one side and a sixteen-or seventeen-foot cut around the bottom circumference of the payload module. He was starting up the near side, working close to the seabed.

  “Mel?” Brande asked.

  “He’s coming,” Rae Thomas responded. She sounded breathless.

  Brande wanted to see her pretty badly.

  “What you got, babe?” Sorenson asked.

  “How much cable do we have?”

  “We’re lifting about three tons?”

  “General?” Brande asked.

  “I am converting the measurement. Less than that. Four thousand, two hundred pounds.”

  “I can run out the port-side winch, then hook it into the starboard, then into the’midships, and get you thirty thousand feet, Dane. Do the reverse coming back up.”

  “Do that, Mel. Use four or five of the sub weights to get it down here fast, and we can cut them away. Better put a sonar reflector on it so we can locate it.”

  “What kind of connection you going to make?”

  “There are two lift rings on the reactor,” Roskens said.

  “Hook then?” Sorenson asked.

  “That’ll do,” Dokey said, “And I’ll weld the son of a bitch in place. It’s not coming off.”

  Brande passed that message.

  At 1942 hours, Dokey used Gargantua’s manipulator with the claws and peeled the skin from the module. He then had to cut away three interior structural members at Rosken’s direction.

  It took four minutes for Gargantua, guided by Dokey’s interpretation of the sonar readout, to locate and latch onto the cable suspended from the research vessel. It did not look very substantial, but Brande knew it was tested to five tons.

  After glancing at the chronometer readout, Dokey was surprisingly quick in cutting away the weights, fastening the hook to the lift ring, then welding it in place with two spot welds. Gargantua backed away, keeping an eye on everything. Brande spoke into the mike, “Mel, take up slack.”

  “Keep in mind, Dane, that we’re bouncing ten or twelve feet. That slack is going to come up unexpectedly.”

  “Let’s everyone back off a bit. Pyotr, take it up. You can head for the surfac
e.”

  The Sea Lion rose from her perch on the rocket body, and it started to slide, then roll down the slope.

  It went twenty feet, the cable jerked taut, and the reactor came free of the module, swinging freely to the south.

  Brande turned DepthFinder to follow it.

  It went nearly a hundred yards into yet deeper water, following the only guide it had, the position of the Orion on the surface, and then slowed to a standstill for a moment, then abruptly jumped as the wave action above tugged at it.

  “I hope to hell that cable can take the stress,” Dokey said.

  Brande turned up the sonar, heard the awful hiss, and closed it down again.

  “Dumping weights,” he said.

  *

  2351 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 50" NORTH, 176° 10' 29" EAST

  The lieutenant commander named Acery had lent Overton a set of binoculars, and from the bridge of the Bronstein, he had been scanning the seas on a regular basis for the last two hours.

  They all knew it was coming up.

  Every warship in the cordon had moved in, tightening the circle, and every searchlight available was trained on the two ships in the center of the circle, the Orion and the Timofey Ol’yantsev. The circle seemed a lot tighter than it was since the turbulent seas kept each ship quite a ways apart.

  Overton guessed the circle was a mile in diameter. Even with the searchlights and the binoculars, it was difficult for him to see the Olʼyantsev, some 400 yards away.

  The yacht with all of the radio, television, and newspaper reporters had been told to stay out of the cordoned-off area, and Overton felt, probably excessive, glee at that. There would not be video at eleven.

  He thought that his manner aboard ship — staying out of the way, being polite — had paid off. Most of the officers were almost cordial to him now.

  Between scans of the sea, Overton had been jotting on a yellow pad, writing the start of what was going to be an in-depth story on the amazing cooperation between the Russians and Americans in this time of crisis.

  It was shaping up.

  He raised the binoculars and looked toward the research and patrol ships again. Scanned the raging waters near them.

  Nothing.

  He took a quick look to the right, toward the Kane.

  Nothing.

  On their left was the CIS cruiser Kynda, and Overton checked it with the glasses.

  Noth…

  Looked again. Refocused.

  Cruiser.

  Going like a bat out of hell.

  OCEAN FREE screamed from the hull.

  “Hey!” Overton yelled, pointing.

  Every officer on the bridge turned, raising their field glasses to their eyes.

  Why had someone not seen Aaron coming on a radar or something?

  But where was he going?

  Overton trained his glasses on the research ship, but did not see anything he had not seen in the last hours.

  Switched to the Commonwealth ship. Same thing.

  Wait.

  A hundred yards this side of the CIS ship, something was bobbing in the sea.

  He leaned into the window, spun the focus wheel.

  A submersible had just surfaced. All he could see was the sail, and it disappeared, falling behind a wave crest.

  Alarms sounded and the Bronstein surged forward.

  Overton held onto a grab bar, trying to keep the binoculars trained on his target.

  Jesus! That Aaron was crazy as hell.

  Probably did not know the difference between a reactor and a submersible.

  Getting close.

  The cruiser was maybe a couple hundred feet from the sub.

  He was going to stop?

  No. Plunging straight ahead.

  The submersible rose into view at the top of a wave.

  Overton felt sick. It was as if he personally had pushed Aaron into this.

  No.

  Yes.

  Maybe.

  The cruiser slammed into the sub when it was at the top of the wave.

  A second went by, two seconds.

  Wilson Overton saw the flash of the detonation before he heard it. Bright yellow-red-orange fireball.

  The thunder rolled slowly toward him, but he was already bent over, his stomach contracting, and his supper splashing on the bulkhead.

  *

  0009 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 47" NORTH, 176° 10' 28" EAST

  Brande had been talking to Pyotr Rastonov when Rastonov’s phone went dead.

  He had immediately asked Rae, “What happened up there?”

  “God, Dane, it’s awful.”

  “Jesus, what? The reactor?”

  Dokey looked at him with a white face.

  “No. Some cruiser just crashed into the Sea Lion. It blew up. Fuel tanks.”

  Brande’s stomach churned.

  “I should have gone to the bathroom before we left,” Dokey said.

  “The Olʼyantsev and the Bronstein are putting boats over.”

  “How about the reactor?”

  “Mel says another hundred feet.”

  Brande looked at his own depth readout. They were at 600 feet and rising at the maximum rate.

  “Everybody ready?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bob’s got a crew ready, and he’s talked to the Russian nuclear people. Svetlana did the translation.”

  By the time the DepthFinder reached the surface and began to toss in the swells, the reactor was on the aft deck of the Orion. Brande cruised around near the stern, waiting.

  Dokey talked to Connie Alvarez-Sorenson on the UHF.

  At twenty-one minutes after midnight, Bob Mayberry came on the radio. “Control rods are shut down, Dane.”

  “Son of a bitch! Good job, Bob.”

  “Aw, hell! Those guys in Russia were wrong. I think we had smother couple hours.”

  September 16

  Chapter Seventeen

  1050 HOURS LOCAL, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  Rather than subject himself to a potential inquisition by the fourth estate, Hampstead bought economy-class tickets on a commercial carrier, and United Airlines got him into San Diego International within two minutes of the advertised arrival time.

  He and Adrienne stayed in their seats until the people in a hurry had jammed the aisles of the Boeing 767 and then gushed forth into the terminal. Then they got up and deplaned leisurely, Hampstead carrying their two overnighters and Adrienne’s hanging bag.

  Kaylene Thomas was waiting at the gate for them.

  “Dane couldn’t make it?” he asked.

  “Unavoidably detained,” she said. “But he said he’d get in touch with you later in the week. If you’re actually taking a whole week’s vacation.”

  “The whole week.” He nodded. “Anyway, my primary purpose was to introduce the two of you. Kaylene, Adrienne.”

  The two women shook hands and sized each other up. Adrienne was several inches taller than Thomas, but she had the dark coloring of the Hampsteads. Her only resemblance to Avery was in the slightly elongated shape of her face. She had laughing green eyes and a smile that could charm the last twenty bucks out of Scrooge.

  “I’ll run you out to La Jolla,” Thomas said. “And Dane said you could use his car while you’re here.”

  “The old Pontiac?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I think we’ll rent,” Hampstead said.

  “I like old cars,” Adrienne told him.

  “Before we go,” Hampstead said, “let’s find a place to sit down and get our business over with.”

  They walked up the concourse to the terminal and found a coffee shop with a vacant table.

  Seated amid the luggage and beautiful women, Hampstead said, “Adrienne?”

  His sister dug through a voluminous beige leather purse and came up with the envelope.

  Thomas gave him a questioning look.

  “Adrienne handles money well,” he said. “Better than Brinks. She also raises funds well.”

&nb
sp; Thomas took the envelope, but before opening it, said, “You know the Navy billed us for that C-130?”

  “I know. I took care of it directly.”

  Thomas smiled and opened the envelope.

  Frowned.

  There were quite a few checks in there.

  “The first one completes our contract, Kaylene. Three hundred and sixty-some thousand. The rest of them are from grateful governments. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, California, Oregon, Alaska, like that.”

  “My God, Avery! How did that happen?”

  “I got some phone numbers, and Adrienne made some calls.”

  Thomas looked at his sister with some awe and respect in her eyes. She said, “Have you ever considered a career in fund-raising for a poor oceanographic research firm?” Hampstead was glad he had introduced them.

  *

  2115 HOURS LOCAL, RENO, NEVADA

  Brande was unavoidably detained in the semidarkened lounge of the MGM Grand, enjoying a Johnnie Walker Black Label and a trio of young ladies who did credible things with old standards like ʻStardustʼ, ʻBlue Skiesʼ and ʻUnchained Melodyʼ.

  The dinner with Capt. Alfred Taylor, Cmdr. Neil Garrison and a Navaho chief petty officer named Tsosie had been congenial and delicious. His prime rib had been so tender it melted if he stared hard at it.

  “You sure didn’t need to do this, Al,” he had told the commander.

  “We damned sure did. My whole crew went to the memorial service for the men of the Tashkent. You can’t help but think how easy it would have been to add our names to that list.”

  “And fortunately,” Garrison added, “the crew of the Sea Lion wasn’t on the list, either.”

  The pressure hull of the CIS submersible had protected Pyotr Rastonov and his two crewmen from the blast, though they had been shaken up some. The outer hull was a total loss, however.

  Curtis Aaron and the people who had been with him — they never got a final count — had not been memorialized.

  Brande was sorry Valeri Dankelov had not come along to meet the representatives of the Los Angeles and enjoy their hospitality. He was even sorrier that the somber, brown Russian had returned to Leningrad. They were going to miss his expertise.

  Dankelov had, however, written a long recommendation endorsing Svetlana Polodka’s visa extension, and she was likely to get it.