“Dad?” Tom asked.
“In the flesh,” the old man answered.
Chapter Fifty
Command Center, USS Omega Deep
Tom took his father’s right hand in a firm grasp.
There was strength in Commander Bower’s return grip, but it was borne of tenacity and emotion, not the latent power Tom was used to feeling there. The skin of the hand was dry, raspy and tough – Tom could sense the bony features. He looked his father in the eye and placed his other hand on the commander’s left shoulder – it was the closest they ever got to a hug.
“Been down here long Dad?”
“Long enough, son. Long enough.”
Looking at his father, Tom could see the strength and suffering in his face. Tom was overwhelmed with compassion and pride for this man, commander of the most advanced undersea weapon in the history of the world, his mentor. A man reduced to an emaciated state in the pursuit of his duty and never for a moment wavering in his resolve to serve – at any cost.
“It’s really good to see you, Sir,” Tom paused. “What happened?” he asked.
“It was a double-cross. My XO, James Halifax. Whoever he was working for is well-funded and highly organized. They had a dummy sunken hull the size of a Seawolf, and from it, transmitted the secret distress code.”
“There’s a secret distress code?” Tom asked.
“Yes, there is. Detectable by sonar, there’s a U.S. Navy captain-to-captain, coded distress message sent over a particular bandwidth. It’s Commander Security clearance and above, intended for use only in the case of a stricken submarine,” The captain hung his head, shaking it morosely. “I’ll be damned if I know how he got a hold of it.”
“What about the rest of your crew?” Sam asked.
“Halifax disabled the CO2 scrubbers and flooded the ventilation with smoke grenades. He set off the alarms and ordered the evacuation. Combined with our loss of power, once the wheels were set in motion – the crew couldn’t get off fast enough. They were squeezing twenty at a time into the escape trunks.”
“What happened to them at the surface?” Tom asked.
“God only knows. I fear the worst.”
“Where were you?”
“I remained behind to change the main computer’s codes and stop them from stealing the Omega Deep.”
“Good thinking,” Sam grinned. “Why didn’t you send an emergency locator buoy to the surface?”
Tom knew the device used a satellite phone to send an encrypted message back to the head of the Navy in Wisconsin…
“I did,” Commander Bower said. “Multiple times. My only guess is that they’ve covered the top of the submarine where the buoy is deployed from.”
“What about trying to get to the surface?”
“You mean taking an escape suit and trying to reach the surface?” Commander Bower asked.
“Sure. You’re only in fifty feet of water. It wouldn’t have been difficult.”
“Yeah, but what was I supposed to do then?” the commander asked. “Look where we are. We’re a hundred and eighty miles off shore here. I’m an old man Tom – I wouldn’t last three days.”
“So, you stayed here and starved.”
Commander Bower nodded. “I’ve hung in as long as I could.”
“Like you said Dad, long enough.”
“Sir, do you think we can get this submarine underway again?”
“We’ll need more than the three of us, but I don’t see why not. Halifax’s efforts were more subterfuge than actual sabotage. Over the past six weeks, I’ve rectified faults and restored power to the propulsion intakes, the ventilation circuits, and ballast pumps. As far as I can tell, she should be good to go, all I need is a crew.”
“How many do we need?” Sam asked
“Bare minimum five for basic operations, seven if we want to fire anything from the ship.”
Sam ran his eyes over the sophisticated system.
Commander Bower said, “Where possible, every system has been fully automated, which has reduced crew numbers. Even so, we’re going to be limping into Pearl Harbor with a crew of seven.”
Sam said, “We have aircraft carriers from Russia, China, and the USA all about to converge on our location. I’ve been ordered to destroy your submarine if I can’t make it disappear before they get here, so it’s your call, can it be done?”
Commander Bower grinned through a thick beard. “You’re damned right it can be done.”
A crisp, audible ping, came from the passive sonar station – once the confines of the lower decks distant from the Command Center – and Sam glanced at the monitor. It showed a submarine approaching from nearly 800 feet away, making no attempt to cover up the sound of its propulsion as it raced ahead.
The passive sonar made another sweep, revealing only two possibly enemy targets. One was a surface vessel, which Sam knew was the Maria Helena, while the second one was the unidentified submarine, which appeared to be making a straight line toward the Maria Helena.
Sam swore.
To Commander Bower, he asked, “How long before one of your torpedoes are available to fire?”
The thick creases of the commander’s face appeared to deepen and harden with concern. “Five or six minutes at least. They’re not armed.”
Sam said, “You and Tom get onto it, now!”
He watched Tom and his father disappear to the main torpedo room at the speed of much younger men.
Sam picked up the VHF radio, depressed the mike and said, “Maria Helena, you’ve got an incoming submarine!”
Chapter Fifty-One
On Board the Maria Helena
Svetlana heard the radio and raced to the active sonar monitor.
The outline of a large predator submarine lit up the screen. At a glance, she knew it was too short to be an American, French, or British nuclear attack submarine. Its hull was too wide to be a nuclear bomber, too. It looked similar to one of Russia’s new Yasen class nuclear-guided submarines, but even that seemed unlikely. The outline was similar, but it was making far too much noise. In fact, that’s what hit her as wrong about the submarine – it was making too much noise to be any submarine built in the past three decades!
Unless it wanted to be heard?
But why?
So it definitely wasn’t one of ours.
Matthew seemed to spot the conflict twisting in her face. His voice was confronting, and he asked, “Is that one of yours?”
“Afraid not,” she replied. “It looks like one of our old Typhoon class nuclear submarines, but I can promise you it’s not.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can hear that thing from a mile away.” She made a thin-lipped smile. “Let me assure you – we didn’t spend billions of dollars to produce a submarine that can be spotted by a salvage vessel. Besides, we sold the lot of them in the early nineties.”
“Touché.” Matthew grimaced. “But that doesn’t reveal what it is doing here!”
Svetlana studied the shape a little more closely. “You know what. I do believe this is an old Typhoon class nuclear submarine, that has been heavily modified.”
“How so?”
She pointed to the bow, where a sphere rose like a strange wart. “That doesn’t belong there. If anything, it adds more noise and increases the size of the submarine’s natural wake. My guess is that it’s been retrofitted, but I couldn’t even guess what purpose it serves.”
That slowed him. His face pale and disturbed by her reference to the sphere, Matthew said, “I can.”
“Really?” she asked, now curious. “What?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” he said, his eyes fixing on the sonar monitor. “The submarine appears to be surfacing.”
Her eyes darted from the monitor across to the calm surface of the sea, half a mile off the port bow.
The submarine rose fast, disappearing from the view of the Maria Helena’s array of active sonar transducers.
Nearly two minutes late
r, the submarine still hadn’t surfaced. She turned to Matthew and Elise who were searching the bathymetric and sonar monitors. “Where did it go?”
Matthew increased the range and decreased the angle of the transducers. “We’re working on it.”
On the edge of the horizon to the starboard bow, a vessel appeared.
Elise flipped the radar monitor around to the side. “We have a battleship on the horizon.”
“Where?” Matthew asked.
“Starboard side. Approximately two miles out.”
Svetlana said, “Any idea whose battleship it is?”
“Not a clue,” Elise replied, turning the monitor to face her. “You’re the surveillance expert. What do you think this is?”
Svetlana glanced at the radar monitor. “That’s a French, La Fayette Class Frigate. But I can’t imagine what it’s doing here.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Matthew said. “It’s coming around to meet us.”
The French Frigate raced toward them.
Matthew picked up the mike for the VHF radio. “Unidentified battleship, this is the Maria Helena. We’re an American-owned civilian salvage ship, currently on a search and rescue mission, do you need our assistance?”
Svetlana rolled her eyes but remained silent. The French Frigate was nearly ten times their size and practically an indestructible battle-tank on water.
Like her, the French Frigate remained silent as it steamed across the horizon until she was perpendicular to the Maria Helena.
Veyron stepped up onto the bridge. “Anyone else notice we have a French La Fayette class frigate on our starboard?”
“It came to our attention,” Elise said.
Genevieve raced up the steps to the bridge, breathing hard. “There’s a…”
“We see it!” Matthew said. “Veyron, you’d better prepare the countermeasures.”
“I’m on it!” Veyron shouted.
Genevieve said, “I’ll prepare the torpedoes!”
Svetlana turned to Matthew. “Countermeasures and torpedoes? I thought you were a civilian vessel?”
Matthew shrugged. “Sometimes we work in some pretty unfriendly locations. Consequently, we have a pretty advanced weapons and defense system.”
Svetlana swallowed. “I doubt it’s going to do anything against a Frigate.”
“Yeah, I don’t suppose they will,” Matthew replied. “I’m still hoping an outright confrontation can be avoided.”
Toward the forward third of the Frigate a 100 mm TR automatic gun rotated on its turret 90 degrees until it lined up square with the Maria Helena.
“Diplomacy’s out!” Svetlana shouted. Fear rose in her throat. Her heart pounded in the back of her head. “What weapons have you got?”
She didn’t hear a reply.
Instead, the 100 mm TR automatic gun began to fire.
The barrel lit up with flame, as its multipurpose artillery pieces fired at a rate of 78 rounds per minute.
Svetlana closed her eyes, accepting her death.
But it didn’t come.
She turned to Matthew, “What the hell happened! How could they have possibly missed?”
“Don’t look too relieved. It was a ruse. A holographic distraction!”
“What?”
Matthew said, “The La Fayette’s not real.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. That submarine must still be out there.”
Svetlana scanned the horizon.
She placed the headphones on her ears and listened. Instinct taking over, she instantly turned the array of sounds into useable information, giving her a visual image of the submarine nearby. She closed her eyes and listened.
In the distance, she heard the blast of a torpedo entering the water, followed by the whir of its electric propeller, and the closing of the submarine’s torpedo hatch.
A moment later she spotted the torpedo.
It was half a mile away, running just below the surface, it could have been a shark if it wasn’t running so damned fast.
Matthew responded surprisingly quickly.
He depressed the mike for the shipboard PA system and said, “We’ve got a live torpedo approaching at 270 degrees!”
Veyron shouted back. “Countermeasures in the water!”
Svetlana glanced out the portside, where an AN/SLQ-25 Nixie torpedo decoy raced to meet the incoming torpedo.
She grinned and held her breath.
What sort of civilian salvage vessel carried torpedo decoys?
The torpedo wasn’t to be distracted. Instead, it glided past the decoy, undeterred, racing straight for the Maria Helena.
Svetlana said to Matthew, “You got anything else in that bag of tricks?”
Matthew set his jaw with disbelief. There were tiny tremors where all color was gone from his face. He depressed the mike to the shipboard PA system. “The torpedo’s gonna hit us hard. Everyone off the boat!”
Svetlana opened her mouth to argue. Her eyes darted from Matthew to the incoming torpedo. The sight confirmed what she already knew – they had run out of time.
They had seconds to get off the Maria Helena.
Elise was already out the starboard door.
Svetlana followed at a sprint.
Matthew shouted, “Jump!”
Svetlana Jumped.
Behind them, the torpedo ripped through the Maria Helena’s hull.
By the time Svetlana’s feet touched the water, the time-delay detonator fired and the torpedo exploded. Its blast ripped through the Maria Helena as though it’s steel bulkheads were made of plastic.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Genevieve’s head broke the surface first.
She ran her hands through her short brown hair, wiping it out of her eyes. She opened her eyes. Parts of the Maria Helena were scattered throughout the sea for hundreds of feet. The bulk of what was left of her hull was now being pulled down by her stern. Gone. After braving some of the worst storms in history, their trusted ship had made her way to the bottom in a matter of seconds. The ship had been Genevieve’s home, her reprieve from a previous life of violence, and a place she shared with a crew who were closer to her than her own family.
A moment later, she spotted with relief, the heads of the rest of that crew as they surfaced and Svetlana, the Russian spy – who, by now, she had to admit, was unlikely to have been involved in the attack.
If there had been more time, she would have wept. Instead, her blue eyes gazed on a surfacing submarine, less than half a mile away. Squinting, she spotted someone on the conning deck. He gripped something in his hand. It was too far away to see it clearly, but she had no doubt about what it was and what the submariner’s intentions were. If there had been any doubt, it was removed a second later, when the machinegun opened fire.
Seawater sprayed into the air where the shots fell short of their desired targets.
There wasn’t time for a debate about their options. In fact, they didn’t have any options. On the surface, they were unable to defend themselves. Even if they had weapons, they would have been of little use against a nuclear submarine.
Genevieve shouted, “We have to reach the Omega Deep!”
“It’s nearly sixty feet down!” Svetlana said. “It’s too deep!”
“There’s emergency regulator mouthpieces attached to compressed air inside the lockout trunk,” Genevieve said. “If we can reach that, we’ll be all right.”
Another round of shots fired closer.
Genevieve started hyperventilating.
Svetlana said, “Sixty feet it is then!”
A third set of shots raked the water, progressively approaching their heads.
Genevieve took one last deep breath and dipped under the water.
She kicked hard all the way to the bottom. Sam had marked the top of the lockout trunk with a red marker, so that it could be spotted, despite the Omega Cloak.
Her chest burned with that unforgiving and relentless desire to take a deep breath.
> Reaching the horizontal opening, Genevieve entered the code into the keypad and the outer hatch swung open. She swam inside and fumbled around in the dark for the mouthpiece. Her right hand made its connection and she shoved it into her mouth and took a deep breath.
The air was cold and sweet.
Next to her, Matthew shined a waterproof flashlight that he must have had in his pocket. Genevieve handed her mouthpiece to Svetlana who was the last to enter the lockout trunk. Genevieve made her way to the opposite end of the trunk to locate another regulator mouthpiece.
When all five of them were attached to the internal breathing apparatus, Genevieve closed the external hatch and vented the water, leaving them inside a dry chamber.
The lockout trunk filled with air, expelling the last of the seawater. When the pressure equalized with the internal hull, Veyron turned the lock, and the watertight hatch opened up.
Sam Reilly looked up from inside with a grin. “Welcome aboard.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Inside the Command Center of the USS Omega Deep
Sam brought the rest of his crew up through the forward passageway into the Command Center. He swallowed and breathed deeply. The adrenaline rush would soon ebb and he we would be forced to acknowledge the deep pain and loss he felt for the Maria Helena. But for now, it surged through his veins, filling him with steadfast determination and allowing him to concentrate wholly on the task of getting the USS Omega Deep up and running before the enemy submarine made them all a permanent fixture of the seabed.
They were bruised and battered, but in remarkably good shape given that the Maria Helena had been torpedoed seconds after they jumped overboard. Genevieve had a small laceration above her right eyebrow that she appeared not to have noticed and no one had any fractured bones as far as he could tell.
Genevieve spotted Tom at the helm, where he and his father were quickly working their way through a series of checklists to start up all the submarine’s system.
She came up and gave him a passionate kiss on his lips.
It was short and sharp. They both knew there was plenty of work to do if they wanted to live much longer.
Omega Deep (Sam Reilly Book 12) Page 23
