Operation Siberia

by William Meikle

  “Which you do.”

  “—I’d say at least two hours with that heavy load and the limited thrust of the JSL. Maybe more.”

  “That maybe is straddling the line between saving your wife and losing her, Sean. You’ve done, what, a hundred dives in this thing? You have to be the one to go down and get her—you always find a way to keep us going. We haven’t lost a crew member yet, so let’s not start today, all right?”

  He allowed himself a very small smirk and said, “When did I promote you to first mate?”

  “When you lost your shit listening to Katherine. Besides, who do you want right now? Mickey is a boat chief, not a submersible expert. I’m not saying he can’t learn, but now seems an inopportune time for rookie training.

  “Slipjack doesn’t dive, but he could be your right-hand man on the surface once we get the JSL ready to go. And that should be soon, once they get the batteries installed and run through the checklist.”

  “Has Toro ever piloted a submersible?”

  “No. He’s purely a member of the boat crew, promoted to winch team. And I’ve dived a few times, just not in the pilot’s seat.”

  “Vanessa, I know all this. What are you getting at, already?”

  “I’m telling you that you need to get suited up, and you need to do this. Not because she’s your wife, but because she’s part of your research crew. Your skills and experience are the only things that can save her.”

  Sean took all of this in, sucked in a deep breath, then let it go. He shouted to Toro and Slipjack, “Let’s go, gentlemen! Time is short!”

  “Twenty minutes,” Toro said without looking up from his work.

  “Screw that. Fifteen at the most and I want this in the water.”

  Slipjack muttered under his breath, but it was plenty loud enough for Toro to hear, and laugh.

  “It’s a suicide mission, ese. You don’t want it. Like Van said, you don’t dive.”

  “No, I don’t. But I could. I want to be the hero for once, save the woman who…”

  “Who… who what?”

  “Who is really friggin’ important to this expedition! I want to be her hero instead of just a guy on the boat.”

  “What, you got a crush on Mrs. Muir? Ha ha, that is muy adorable!” Toro said with a sympathetic smile. “She is easy on the eyes, man, but come on. And you want to be a hero… or a martyr, maybe, you mean? ’Cause that’s what el jefe is gonna be in a few minutes, man. Ain’t no way this thing can drag up a full-size submersible.”

  “This ain’t right. The whole thing stinks like rotten fish covered with dog shit,” Slipjack said when they turned back to keep prepping the rickety-ass sub that was less likely to rescue the wonderful Kitty Muir than to send Sean and his wife to the bottom forever.

  He just hoped his check got signed before Sean Muir left on his mission to be the center of attention once again. And the Muirs would be at the center, all right. He could see the headlines: OCEAN RESEARCHERS DIE IN ‘ACCIDENT.’

  Except this bullshit is no accident, Slipjack thought, but kept it to himself. He had a job to do here, and doing it well and swiftly could mean rescuing Katherine instead of letting her die, even if the whole situation was Sean Muir’s doing, or if not his fault, then at least definitely his responsibility. But he shook that out of his mind and got the JSL ready as quickly as he and Toro could.

  “Sean… ?” It was Katherine’s voice, still sounding distant but much more cogent. “Come in, babe…”

  Sean spun around from watching them work with the JSL (just far away enough that he couldn’t hear what Slipjack was saying to Toro) and practically hurled himself the six feet to the mic and started talking almost before he had depressed the button: “Kat! Thank God! I thought you had gone off the deep end!” He winced at his own choice of words.

  “I’m okay. I’m alive. Had me a little freak-out there.” She sounded more with it, but hardly one hundred percent. “Honey, I’m just hanging in the dark. There’s nothing to see, not even dinosaurs… and directly below, there’s the vents. Maybe the dinos are nearby, maybe they can sense me…”

  “Don’t worry about that, honey—you’re not deep enough to give off a heat signature strong enough to attract them, anyway. So just forget about anything except my words, okay?”

  “Okay.” With that one-word response, she sounded again like the researcher who had first gone down in the submersible.

  “Okay, excellent. The cable is… not operational. We can’t haul you up with the winch, and we can’t even get you any deeper—not that we would—but never mind—I’m coming down to get you.”

  “Sean, it’s okay. I know the risks every time I go down.”

  “Jesus, honey, no—I said, I’m coming down right now.”

  “I’m at three thousand feet, Sean! What are you going to do, put on some swim fins and a snorkel? I can still get some data, even if we can’t find your prehistoric beasts—”

  “No! Just hang tight”—again he regretted his turn of phrase—“and I’ll be there in plenty of time. I’m using the JSL.”

  “That piece of [buzz]? Don’t you dare, Doctor Muir—we don’t both need to die! Somebody on the ship sabotaged the cable. Don’t give them a chance to mess with the JSL and murder you, too.”

  “Don’t say murder, Kat. Number one, you’re not going to die; and number two, I’m coming to get you and bring you up. Just keep your mind on that, okay? You’ve got to have two hours of oxygen left. I’ll make it in plenty of time.”

  “I love you, Sean. I’m so sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. We got this. And I love you, too, so much. And if I have to die to save you, that’s a fair deal to me.”

  “Well, it’s not to me!”

  “All right, then, we’ll both live. How’s that?”

  “Roger that. Okay, fine, go suit up and get down here already.”

  “On it.” He motioned for Mickey to come off the bridge. “Mick, you’ve got the comm, all right? Talk to her, keep her calm, and keep reminding her that I’m on my way.”

  “You got it, boss. And good luck—we know you can do it.”

  Sean nodded at that and got his ass over to the winch crew setting up the submersible, which looked like nothing more than a 1950s science-fiction robot. He squeezed into his wetsuit and stowed his air tank and regulator inside the JSL. There was no real reason he’d need them—or be able to use them—unless and until he got Kat near the surface and opened D-Plus to get her out. The extra equipment was fine, anyway; he’d take a load of anvils on board if it would help him get down there. He froze. Why in God’s name didn’t I think of this earlier?

  “Holy shit! Mickey, tell her to jettison her ballast, every bit of it, right away!” He literally couldn’t believe he hadn’t remembered to tell her to do that in the first place. Everybody on board must have thought he was a complete shithead who didn’t care whether his wife lived or died. Not that he cared much about that right now.

  Mickey relayed the message, and the last thing Sean heard before Slipjack helped him into the JSL was her response of “Roger that.” It gave him the tiniest peace of mind, which was better than nothing.

  Slipjack got him ready and was about to screw the hatch shut but stopped and looked Sean in the eyes. “Go save your wife. Save our Kat.”

  Our Kat? But Sean nodded, holding back the desire to say, Why in the hell do you think I’m sitting in this thing? but he could hardly blame the crew for loving her. She was so good to everyone, always smiling and working as hard as anyone else. Sean saw her occasional tantrums and tears, but that was the difference between a husband and a coworker on a research vessel.

  Slipjack screwed on the hatch and stepped back. He and Toro and Vanessa exchanged thumbs-ups with Sean and then with one another when each of them took their assigned positions to deploy the A-frame and crane to lower the submersible into the sea.

  Excruciatingly slowly, they lowered the JSL. So slowly he would surely never get down in tim
e to Kat, who was breathing the last of her air, waiting for him, so far away.

  * * *

  Inside D-Plus, Katherine quickly hit the necessary switches and buttons to release the ballast. She’d done it a hundred times in submersibles; the ballast was just seawater, but water actually made for better ballast than any other material, and it didn’t shoot a lot of garbage into the ocean they all loved, like the old-school kind did.

  But neither of the hatches on the sides of the submersible opened to release the ballast. D-Plus was still as weighted down as she was at launch, when the hatch worked perfectly to let the seawater in and allow the dive to happen in the first place.

  She didn’t panic, though, didn’t enter any kind of fugue state like before. She just went through the steps again, more slowly and carefully this time.

  It didn’t make any difference.

  The hatch wouldn’t open, and of course there was no way for her to get out at this depth and open them manually with the fail-safe tool. “You’re just going to have to lift me with my ballast,” she said into her headset.

  She kept in contact with Mickey up on the surface, but radio waves traveled more slowly the deeper one went—which was why a deep-sea submersible like D-Plus was connected to fiber optics for data and video and lines for voice and other communications. These lines were encased in armored steel and were supposed to be as close to indestructible as possible. That was because fail-proof systems were essential in extreme environments like those Sean and Kat were aiming for with this expedition. Supposed to be indestructible. At least, that was if no one with specialized knowledge—and some kind of motivation, obviously—got to them when no one was looking.

  But delay or not, saboteur on the loose or not, Mickey on Piranha II kept the video and other sensors tightly focused on the line that was all that was keeping Kat on D-Plus from sinking, fatally, to the bottom. If she had been able to jettison the ballast—which was done with the push of exactly two buttons and a switch—it would have made Sean’s job of grabbing hold of the cable just above D-Plus with the JSL’s clamp-like “hands” and bringing her up much easier.

  Easy wasn’t happening in this FUBAR situation anyway, but trying to bring up D-Plus loaded down with ballast might be impossible for an ancient gadget like the JSL. Sean would jettison his own ballast when he got to her, so at least he would retain some buoyancy.

  As was always the case in their line of work, they’d just have to go with what was even infinitesimally possible and make it a dead-certain reality.

  It was obvious that rescue of D-Plus—and, more importantly, Katherine—fell into this category. No one could blame him for failing, but everyone still would. He still would. He needed to show everyone that he could do this, save the day. Mariners were an odd lot who might call off the next dive “because of weather,” since they were empowered to make the final decision. Theoretically, this took into consideration the science team’s input, of course; but the professional sailors on board knew that, outside of a storm forcing waves over the deck, the scientists would always choose to dive. Thus, oftentimes the “consideration” of the scientists’ opinions meant “seeming to listen and then doing what real men and women of the sea thought right and proper.” So it was best to avoid discomfort in the sailing crew.

  Also, of course, if they lost this submersible—even if it during an unmanned test—it would render funding for of his any further dives highly unlikely. His and Kat’s funding, that was. She wasn’t dead yet. He had to not think like that, Jesus.

  Not yet, anyway.

  D-Plus and similar research submersibles were designed to be pulled up by the same cable that guided them down. That would make it a hell of a lot easier to drag it back up with the JSL, which was built for exploration mostly in the euphotic zone, not for its gripping or lifting power. Of course, there never would have been a problem like this if the deep-sea sub dived and rose under its own power. But that’s just not how it worked anymore, the cable being needed for heavy data and communications demands if not for lowering and lifting the submersible.

  Mickey told him which ways to activate the JSL’s small water jets to keep the vessel the right distance from the cable. Not that this was in any way a “normal” operation, but the usual and much less difficult way of approaching would have been for Sean in the JSL to loop onto the cable itself and just slide down to the research sub. However, that option wasn’t available to them since it was a flaw in the cable itself (Ha! That’s the understatement of the year, Sean scoffed despite himself) that had put the submersible in peril in the first place. One strong tug on that line and it would snap up on the boat and that would be that for his wife; the ballast-weighted D-Plus would be much too heavy for the smaller and lighter JSL to hold.

  They had gotten extremely lucky—or less unlucky, he guessed, because this was not a lucky day—that the surface was almost mirror-calm that day. Choppy or “confused” seas, when you couldn’t tell which way the water was going to take you, put a lot more stress on the cable.

  And that stress was exactly what the damaged cable couldn’t take.

  The JSL’s descent went smoothly, Mickey letting him know how things looked and also relaying any messages from Kat and doing the same for Sean’s messages to his wife.

  In fact, it went so smoothly that his mind drifted.

  Diving to just three thousand feet wasn’t going to be any help with the expedition’s goals, but they had been on the path to the benthic zone, where they’d found evidence that a line of hydrothermal vents stretched for several thousand miles from just north of Hawaii right up to the Marianas Trench. Maybe continued in the Marianas Trench, so little had those extreme depths been explored in any detail.

  Heat was at the center of his theories. When the oceans cooled and put the Permian Extinction into motion, most aquatic dinosaurs died off—actually, 95 percent of everything in the oceans and a huge percentage of things living on land, including dinosaurs. But where the ocean remained warm, even hot, was at the bottom, near the network of hydrothermal sulfur vents.

  The idea came to Sean Muir five years earlier, when he was a graduate student in oceanography with a specialty in undersea geology at UCSD. He went on a deep-sea expedition with his advisor and two other grad students the professor was mentoring. It wasn’t some kind of historic outing, diving in a well-explored area just off the California coast, but it was deep enough that there was no light except for the glow around their four-person submersible caused by the sub’s own floods.

  Looking at the constant snowy fall of organic material destined for the ocean floor could hold one’s interest for only so long, but they weren’t underwater for an hour when his advisor said, “Do you see that? This is a fount of life, lady and gentlemen!”

  The submersible had many viewports, and they all got a look at the odd orange-yellow light coming from the ocean floor. It was only about 1,500 feet down, but it presented a completely alien world. The vent had things all around it, things that looked like those giant inflatable men at car dealerships and such, beckoning buyers just by random movement catching their eyes: tube worms.

  It was the same principle at work here—all four of them were mesmerized by the giant sea worms, securely attached to the seafloor but being blown around by the sulfur-rich, superheated water coming from the tectonic rip.

  “I wish we could get closer, but that heat would overpower the sub and boil all of us faster than trout in a steam basket,” he said. “But look—it’s an ecosystem like none other. These worms—and amoebas so large they’re visible to the human eye—thrive directly on the chemicals pouring out, and then there are predators even down here ready to eat them, starting a food chain without the slightest thing to do with sunlight.”

  “Predators?” Sean asked in a dreamy voice.

  “Oh, yes, there are albino squid down here, octopoids, jumbo shrimp relatives, and there are signs of even more complex life. Even vertebrates.”

  One of the other
grad students spoke up: “Wouldn’t their bones get crushed at this depth?”

  “No, indeed. That’s what one would worry about, isn’t it? Your rib cage being flattened and your head caving in? But, in fact, you would die of capillary damage and organ failure at much shallower depths than those required to destroy the calcium in your bones. This is because water is incompressible. Not just the water in the ocean, but the water in the human body! This presses against all of the body’s systems, including the skin, and meets the incompressible water contained in your organs. They reach a stasis rather quickly, but stasis is not how organs keep us alive! A stopped heart may be perfectly balanced with the water pressure outside it, but that doesn’t do its owner much good if all the oxygen has been rendered immobile.”

  A chuckle went through the submersible, then the third grad student asked, “Then how can anything with organs live down here? I mean, tube worms are pretty simple, and octopoids are incredibly elastic, I know. But things that would eat them? I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “But you’re working on your doctorate in marine biology! Surely you know that, as Jeff Goldblum so succinctly put it in that dinosaur movie, ‘Life finds a way.’”

  “Jurassic Park,” Sean said almost automatically. It and its sequels were favorites of his since he was a kid. But paleontology was a field with precious few positions available, and professors retired very late, if at all; the joke was “Old paleontologists never die. They just turn into fossils.”

  “Just so. The way the concept was used in that story was a bit silly, but the statement remains valid in a general sense, and is definitely applicable down here. And Sean, since you’re a dinosaur aficionado, you see how, with the oceans growing colder after the Cretaceous event, some marine lizards could evolve to take advantage of heat sources far deeper than those they had earlier thrived in.”

  Sean said lightly but with respect, “That’s pretty speculative.”

  His advisor laughed. “Indeed, it is. But something balances the ecosystem down here, and aquatic dinosaurs have had a long time to adapt. I mean, the water didn’t turn cold overnight, and maybe the deeper one went at that point—and remember, there was a lot more going on volcanically and such down here during that period—the warmer it would be. Yes, they’d have had to evolve structures other than bones and organs that would work in ways we probably aren’t even able to conceptualize at this point… unless one were researching it full-time, say.” He gave Sean a meaningful glance. “Also, the giant lizards ruled the earth for 165 million years—you think they’d all just give up without a fight?”