The Ties That Bind r5-4

by Cliff Ryder

  The submersible pulled away from the Scorpion, but Jason was relentless. He pushed the engines to their limit trying to drag the vehicle farmer under.

  The towline broke and the submersible took off like a shot. Jason looked at his radar, but they weren't on-screen.

  "Where did they go?" Tina asked.

  "They're here somewhere. They must be jamming our radar."

  They both looked intently into the black, trying to catch a hint of the other vehicles. Small fish swam by, but the water looked undisturbed otherwise. Jason maneuvered the vehicle in a circle.

  "There!" Tina cried, pointing up.

  The two submersibles were descending on them, and Jason didn't have time to move as they crashed on top of the Scorpion. Jason guided the Scorpion lower, trying to get out of their range. The third submersible came around and Jason could see the pilot, and felt his jaw go slack.

  It was his brother.

  "No," he heard Tina gasp.

  Jason moved the controls forward and rammed into the cab of the submersible. A chunk of the Scorpion's armor broke as they collided. He pulled back and was about to ram again when he realized that his anger was making him a sitting duck for the other pod. He changed course and the Scorpion dived. Looking at his radar, he saw what he was really looking for and turned toward the first pod.

  "What are you doing?" Tina asked.

  "I'm drawing him in closer."

  "Why?"

  "I have an idea."

  Tina braced her hands on the frame of the cockpit and said, "I hope it's a good one."

  The first submersible hit and Jason punched one of the keys. A small explosion rocked the outside of the Scorpion and small pieces of it began falling away along with a small oil slick. Jason turned the pod and pulled away from the other two. Adjusting the variable on the shield, he moved the Scorpion off to a rocky outcropping and shut everything down but the radar and the life support.

  "Some idea! Now we're sitting ducks," Tina said.

  "That's the idea."

  "This was your clever idea? To disable us in the middle of the ocean!"

  Jason smiled and looked at Tina.

  "No, that was just the idea I wanted them to believe."

  "I don't understand."

  Jason pointed at a radar image as a large submarine came on-screen. "I wanted them to think we were out of the way so I can follow that."

  13

  Jason and Tina sat in awe as the submarine passed in front of them. He would have given anything to snap pictures of the exterior because he had never seen anything like it. To say it was large would have been an understatement. Jason estimated that it was at least as big as the largest sub in the American fleet. The Scorpion's cloaking device kept them hidden, but they sat in silence, afraid that the submarine's sonar might pick up them up. Jason tried to memorize every detail and let his instruments record as much data as possible.

  The submarine continued to move forward and far enough out of range that it was safe to talk.

  "I need to go after it," he said. "The scoop on the front is proof that they're using some form of cavitation, but it's not what I need — I need the design."

  "Proof of what?" she asked. "Cavi-what?"

  "They've developed a nuclear sub with supercavitation capabilities."

  "Super-what?" she said. "Would you mind speaking a language I happen to know?"

  "Supercavitation," he repeated. "I won't bore you with the science, but the easiest way to explain it is that they have a sub that can travel twice as fast as anything we have in the water."

  "That can't be good," she said. "Okay, let's go."

  "There is no way to get the Scorpion close enough without being detected. I have a dry suit on under my clothes and there is dive gear on the Scorpion."

  "I'm not really keen on the idea of you just popping the hatch. I'm not the Boy Scout that you are, and I left my dry suit in my other pants," Tina said.

  "You won't be getting wet, I promise," he said. "This thing comes complete with an escape hatch."

  "You're not going to leave me here, are you?" she asked. "Alone?"

  "It's the only choice I've got," he said. "You'll be fine."

  "What if something happens?" she asked, panic filling her voice.

  "Calm down," he said, soothingly. "Nothing is going to happen."

  At least, that's what he hoped.

  Jason typed in his wish list of dive gear on his computer. Room 59 had been very thorough in giving him the equipment that he wanted. The only thing missing was a particular regulator that he liked, but the one in inventory would work fine.

  He slipped into his equipment and dialed in the escape hatch. The floor beneath his feet became translucent, and he could feel the power shield surge as he placed his feet along the edges.

  "I see water, but we're not sinking," Tina said. "That's a good sign."

  "The portal actually retracts and is covered by a thin layer of positively charged energy, kind of like static electricity. It tells the water to stay out, but isn't dense enough to cause me harm. Plus, the oxygen exchangers keep the compartment filled with fresh air — in other words, it keeps everything afloat. As soon as I'm through, I'll close the hatch. I have a remote to open it when I return."

  "So you're really going to just leave me here. What if something happens to you?" Tina asked.

  He pointed to the control panel. "See that red button on the center of the console? If you think I've gone to the great beyond, then just press that. It's preprogrammed to go to the last beacon point, which is up on the shoreline. Just be quick getting out — you'll only have a minute. A secondary protocol will go into effect, and it will return to its primary base of operations. In this particular case, that's not a place you want to visit."

  "Good to know," she said. "How long…"

  "Should you wait?" he asked. "I don't know, but if I'm not back in two hours, hit the button. If I'm still alive, I'll get back to shore on my own."

  She was silent for a moment, then said, "You're the real thing, aren't you?"

  "The real what?" he asked, confused.

  "Superspy," she said. "It's not like a desk job, that's for sure."

  "You don't strike me as the kind of person who'd be very happy sitting at a desk yourself," he said.

  "I wasn't," she replied, maneuvering herself around to face him more directly. She kissed him lightly on the lips. "Be careful."

  "It's practically my motto," he said.

  Jason sealed his face mask and slipped through the portal into the cold ocean depths. The water enveloped him and he adjusted his gauges to the current depth, pressure and temperature. The dive suit itself was another Room 59 marvel — a flexible skin that would keep him warm in the extreme environment, but was strong enough to repel small-arms fire. His dive equipment included a suite of modified tracking sensors and a radar-distortion device that would make him look like nothing more than another sea creature to the sonar on a submarine or other seagoing vessel. He detached the personal propulsion system from the hull of the Scorpion and made some quick adjustments, then tapped a few buttons and he was off, headed after the submarine.

  The propulsion system pulled him through the water. He hadn't traveled with this particular system before and was surprised at the speed he was able to travel. The submarine was holding a position about four miles offshore. Jason slowed his approach, not wanting his speed to give away his presence. Few sea creatures would swim as fast as he was moving, and being detected now would make getting to the sub impossible.

  The massive vessel floated still and silent in the water. Jason was amazed at the lack of distortion in the water surrounding it. Even though it was holding position, he still expected to feel the suction of the engines as he approached it, but the water was absolutely still. Either the engines were off-line, or this was the kind of technology that the bad guys should never be allowed to have.

  All around him, tracking beacons floated in the water — some were his,
some were not. So far, his hadn't been able to transmit the information that the submarine was in the area, so they were either jamming or ghosting on top of the signal or it was just invisible to them. From the pack he'd attached to his back, Jason removed a different type of beacon and made several adjustments to it, spreading the signal out over a larger bandwidth and on several different frequencies, including radio and ultraviolet pulse.

  Shutting down the propulsion system entirely, he swam in closer to the hull of the boat. He was careful not to bump any of his equipment on the hull of the vessel, knowing the sound would travel easily through the metal skin and might alert the crew to his presence.

  He attached the sensor to the underside of the sub, marveling at the smooth metal skin that was so unlike any sub he'd ever seen before. At least with the sensor placed where it was, even if it surfaced, someone would have to go beneath it to find and remove it. He began to swim along the hull, noting the location of the torpedo tubes and which one might give him the best chance for access. Using a handheld sensor, he scanned the tubes carefully, looking for anything out of the ordinary. By all indications, they were fairly standard launch tubes.

  Each one had two openings. One was on the inside of the sub, where a torpedo or — in his worst nightmare — a nuclear warhead was loaded. The second was on the outside of the sub, which opened during the launch sequence, and was controlled by a computer system. He positioned a set of locking magnets around one of the tube doors.

  The easy part was done. Now all he had to do was somehow access the computer system from the outside and tell it not to go crazy when he disengaged the locking mechanism and opened the tube from the outside.

  He continued moving farther down the sleek hull of the sub, taking readings as he went. Finally, he found what he was searching for — a watertight access panel that had one of the main computer lines running through it. In an emergency, a crewman could open the panel and work on the system from the outside. Still, if he opened it, alarms would go off on the bridge and his mission would be doomed to failure.

  Sometimes, what was needed was a subtle touch rather than brute force. He reached into his pack again, this time taking out a small transmitter with a magnetized backing and a shield much like the one that operated around his dive suit. Visually, it looked like nothing more than a sea barnacle, but if one looked closer, tiny metal tendrils could be seen floating from its surface.

  He attached it to the access panel and activated the tendrils. Much like the antenna of an ant or the tongue of a snake could read the environment, the tendrils from this device would tap into the submarine's computer system line by extending into the line itself. In some ways, it was like a computer parasite. Once it was in place, he could use his handheld in sync with his computer and tap into the sub's system. With any luck, it would be fully online within eight hours — and totally undetected.

  Jason turned and began making his way back to the front end of the sub where he'd left the propulsion unit. Preoccupied with thoughts of everything he needed to accomplish, he was slow to notice the two Russian minisubs headed straight for him. He did a double take, then put on a burst of speed, barely avoiding a harpoon fired from the nearest one.

  It clanked off the metal hull of the sub behind him with a sharp pang that echoed through the water. He knew that even a dry suit as advanced as his would have a hard time fending off gas-fired harpoons. He reached the propulsion unit just as they closed in.

  Fortunately, he'd left the machine on standby mode, and it launched itself forward with barely a touch of a button. The timer on the console showed that he'd been in the water for the better part of an hour, which meant that Tina should still be waiting in the Scorpion where he'd left her. If he could somehow survive long enough to make it back, he might have a chance at escape. Out in the open water, however, he was as good as dead. Sooner or later, if nothing else, they'd simply run him over.

  He pushed the unit to its top speed, then dived for the shelter of a rocky outcropping, zipping around it just as the minisubs closed the distance once more. They would expect him to try to hide, so he did the opposite, careening around the far side and heading straight for the surface.

  On the map display, he could see his location and the location of the Scorpion, but he didn't want them too close when he got there. That would be almost as bad as having them catch up to him in the open water.

  He risked a glance behind and saw that the minisubs had slowed and were carefully searching for him around the rocks. The light-bending technology was working and he wasn't showing up on their sonar; they had to spot him visually in order to find him.

  Jason took an indirect route back toward the Scorpion, zigzagging in different directions and varying his depth, just to be on the safe side. At one point, running without lights, he nearly collided with the bottom of one of the minisubs, but fortunately, he saw it in time to swerve away. He breathed a sigh of relief that it had been the bottom side, rather than the front where the operator would have had him dead to rights.

  It took the better part of his second hour, but he finally made it back to the Scorpion and came to a stop beneath it. He knew that he had a few minutes, maybe five at the most, before they'd find him again. They'd adopted a grid search pattern and were likely using their own sonar, as well as the sub's, to track anything remotely suspicious in the water. He attached the propulsion unit to the underside of the Scorpion, grabbed his pack and used the remote to open the hatch.

  He stuck his hands through the opening and pulled himself inside.

  Tina was watching him, her eyes filled with fear and anxiety. As soon as he had his faceplate off, she said, "Oh, my God, are you okay? I was just about ready to push the button and give you up for dead!"

  "I'm fine," he said, peeling off the dry suit as quickly as possible. "But we've got to get out of here in a hurry."

  "Did you find the sub?" she asked.

  "Lots of them," he said. "Including the one I was looking for."

  He slipped back into the seat for the controls. "I'll bring you up to speed later, but right now, time is not our friend."

  "Why not?" she asked.

  "Because of the other subs I found," he said. "Or, rather, the ones that found me."

  "You mean those subs?" she asked, pointing through the view screen.

  "That's them," he said, punching at the controls.

  The Scorpion leaped off the rock perch he'd parked it on and shot between the two oncoming minisubs like a missile. The sharp clank of another harpoon hit the side, but bounced away harmlessly. They would have to do better than that to stop him now.

  "Where are we going?" she asked, watching the sonar as the subs gave chase.

  "Anywhere but here," he said, trying to focus on maneuvering the vessel around rock clusters and large chunks of floating ice. The tide must have come in, bringing the ice with it. "For now, we just need a place to hide, but before we can do that…"

  He veered sharply to the left, dodging a massive piece of ice and one of the other subs that had somehow managed to pull even with them.

  "We've got to get away from these guys," he said.

  Tina had been smart enough, he noted, to buckle herself in, and she'd quickly learned how to move with the craft, rather than fight against it. "If you can lose them, I think I know of a place we can hide," she said.

  He was about to reply when she shouted, "Look out!"

  But the warning came too late. The Scorpion clipped one of the larger pieces of floating ice, spun in the water and came nose to nose with one of the minisubs.

  "Damn it!" Jason yelled. "Hang on!"

  He slammed the craft into full reverse, but it was almost impossible to maneuver. His collision with the ice had damaged something, and the other sub stayed with him. Taking a risk, he extended the arms of the Scorpion to their full length, then slammed on the brakes. "Brace yourself!" he shouted.

  The other sub smashed into the arms at nearly full speed. They pierced the
main window of the craft, shattering it and allowing the sea to pour mercilessly inside. He could see the horror and surprise on the faces of the two men inside. Their mouths were open in screams of panic that he was grateful he couldn't hear. At least their deaths would be quick, Jason thought. That was more than they would have likely offered him if he'd been captured.

  Engaging the engines once more, Jason began to back off, using the extended arms to shake the other sub free. One of them broke off completely, lodged in the metal frame of the craft. The other came free and he retracted it back to the body of the Scorpion.

  He got them turned around, and dived lower, hoping that the other sub would be too busy trying to figure out what had happened to keep tracking them for at least a few minutes. Glancing at Tina, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears and her lips were moving silently.

  "I didn't have a choice," he said softly. "They would have tried to sink us."

  She shook her head. "I'm not…I'm not upset at you. All of this is just…it's so real…I don't know if that makes any sense or not."

  "I'm not sure," he said. "What do you mean?"

  Tina wiped her eyes. "Ever since we met, it's been like one long video game, you know? People shooting and dying and danger and thinking about those things, even playing games or watching movies, it's…it's not the same, is it?"

  He shook his head. "No, I suppose it's not. Especially when you're not used to it."

  "Trust me," she said, "I'm way beyond my depth here — no pun intended." She gestured at the murky water all around them.

  He chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "But I need you to hang in there for a bit longer, okay? There's at least one more sub out there looking for us, so if you know of a safe harbor where we can hide for a while, I'd sure like to know about it."

  "I do," she said. "Can you bring up the map again?"