by Larry Bond
It took five minutes for the two divers to appear in the screen and reach the Manta. There was no way to find out the reason for the delay. They might have tangled a harness or had problems with the tools, but whatever it had been, they were ready to proceed.
There were three lift points on top of the Manta, and Reynolds and Harris dragged the cargo net to the first one, located in the center of the forward part of the vehicle. After hooking up the bag without incident, they swam aft. As the Manta broadened out into a pair of wings, there were two more points, one on each side of the tail. Jerry watched through the ROV’s camera as Reynolds made sure Harris was secure, then attached himself.
“All right, I’m turning to port and I’ll bring up the speed slowly to five knots.”
“Understood,” Emily replied.
Jerry gingerly applied some speed and turned the Manta toward the barge, wanting to hurry but moving slowly because of the divers. Davis managed to keep the Manta in the camera’s lens, even as she turned to follow. The plan was to keep the Manta in front of Huey so they could watch the divers for any sign of trouble.
As he increased speed, ordering the Manta from three to four to five knots, Jerry also carefully watched the Manta as well as the divers. There was no way to predict the effects of the weight and drag on the Manta’s speed or stability—or its battery life, he added, while glancing at the display. There was no perceptible feedback through the controller. The Manta was normally well behaved, but they were outside the design envelope here, and he had no way to tell what it would do.
The Manta’s passive sonar picked up two raps. That was the Master Chief saying everything was all right—if you could call being buffeted by freezing water all right.
“I’m increasing speed to eight knots.”
“Matching,” Davis answered.
Again Jerry slowly picked up the pace, and again the Master Chief signaled that all was well. Finally, the Manta and Huey reached ten knots as they made their way into Russian territorial waters.
The barge lay a mile and half away in ten fathoms of water. The bottom shelved rapidly near the barge, but this was as close as Memphis could get without crossing the twelve-mile limit. At five knots, that meant eighteen minutes just to reach the barge. Ten knots would halve that time, if the two could stand the ride.
Jerry waited to hear three taps on the Manta’s hull. That was the signal to slow down, or for trouble, but he heard nothing.
With the divers on the Manta’s back, he could now safely operate the active sonar to locate the barge. Jerry kept the number of transmissions down, just in case someone might be out there listening, and he only updated the barge’s position so that he wasn’t flying blind.
They found the barge quickly enough, and Jerry gingerly steered the Manta the last few hundred yards. He managed to bring it close alongside and watched in Huey’s camera as Reynolds and Harris detached themselves and then retrieved the tool bag. As soon as they were off, Jerry turned the Manta away from the barge. He began a tight thousand-yard circle, watching the passive display and praying that he wouldn’t detect anything.
The barge looked exactly the same, but the knowledge that two men were about to enter it made it much more menacing. Jerry watched the ROV’s camera as Emily took station above the barge’s open hatchway Her lights gave some general illumination, but both of Memphis divers had their own lights. Jerry could see them now swimming toward the edge of the open hatch. They stopped for a moment, and Jerry wondered if there was a problem. Then he realized they were just looking the situation over, like any prudent diver. They swam down into the hatch, and Jerry tried to remember the layout of the hold. Where were the obstructions? How much had the cargo shifted?
The hatch expanded in the screen, and Davis said, “I’m sending Huey in.” They’d all agreed earlier that she should do it, although there was some risk of complicating the divers’ situation. It would give them more light, as well as the all-important radiation detector and the camera.
As she gingerly navigated the ROV into the hold, the camera picked up Reynolds and Harris over in one corner, well clear and dead ahead. They were studying one of the metal crates. It was almost as long as Reynolds was tall, and at least three feet square. Metal clips ran around one edge. Lifting hooks implied some weight, as did the strips that reinforced the corners and sides.
After shining a light on all exposed sides, Reynolds tried to shift the crate slightly. It budged, but gave the impression of being heavy. He motioned to Harris, pantomiming tools, and swam over to the tool bag. He handed Harris a pair of pliers while the COB took out a large screwdriver.
They started working on the clips, wasting time as they searched in the darkness for the quickest way to open them. Reynolds discovered a way to pop them with the screwdriver and began working his way along the edge. Along with that Christmas-present feeling, Jerry wondered if it was a Pandora’s box. He couldn’t escape a mental image of the lid opening and a cloud of liquid waste escaping, poisoning the two with toxic chemicals and radiation before they could close it again.
As Reynolds finished releasing the clips, Harris moved aside as Emily pointed Huey right at the case. “The radiation count is still very low,” announced Emily. “I’m sending the ‘all safe’ signal.” Reynolds and Harris saw the lights blink once, and Harris held up his free hand, making an exaggerated thumbs-up gesture. So far, so good.
As they’d discussed, Harris swam away, to hover near the ROV. The idea was that if the crate did contain something deadly, only one of the divers would be exposed. Jerry watched the seconds tick by as Harris reached what they hoped was a safe distance, but they’d all agreed it was worth the time.
Reynolds wedged the edge of the screwdriver into the joint between the lid and the rest of the crate. He pounded on one end, and a thin stream of silvery bubbles appeared. He stopped for a moment and made a sweeping motion with his right hand, asking for Emily to take another radiation reading. Again, everything was within limits and she flashed the lights once. Facing the ROV, Reynolds gave the thumbs-up sign and returned his attention to the lid.
Working the screwdriver in, alternately wiggling it, and pounding on the end resulted in successively larger and thicker streams of bubbles until they merged into a solid mass of air that half-lifted the lid off. Jerry could see Reynolds’ surprised reaction and he backed off to give Emily some room to move Huey in a little closer and make yet another pass with the radiation detector. Huey’s lights flashed once and Reynolds waved Harris over. Emily backed the ROV away from the case to give the divers room to work.
This was why Jerry had wanted to make the dive. The COB and Harris could look in the crate. They knew what was in it, but nobody else on Earth did. Except for whoever put it there, Jerry corrected himself.
The two divers knew this, and Reynolds bent down and started heaving on one side, the side away from the camera. Harris quickly realized what the COB was after and started lifting from his end. The two men quickly tilted the crate so that it toppled over onto its side, turning the top toward the camera.
A rush of air bubbles didn’t obscure the view for more than a second. Emily automatically adjusted the lights and zoomed the camera to maximum magnification.
Framed by the rectangular box, a cone-shaped object lay in a cradle. It was about five feet long and two feet wide at the base. The wide end was flat, and narrowed to an almost needle-like point. It was dull green or black and its polished surface was marked by a few patches of white lettering near the base. They were looking at a full-up nuclear warhead, almost certainly a reentry vehicle for a ballistic missile.
Chills ran laps around Jerry’s spine and the sailors in the torpedo room either blasphemed or made improbable sexual suggestions. After a few moments, the phone talker’s voice in Jerry headphones said, “Captain Hardy wants your recommendations.”
I’ll bet he does, thought Jerry. Their mission orders had just changed and the trick was to figure out what they should no
w be. Jerry’s instant reaction was to grab it and get it back to the boat, but then he forced himself to think, Why?
Nuclear warheads hidden on the sea floor. Who’d hidden them there? Why? He doubted any of the cases carried luggage tags, but if they could examine the warhead, they’d get a lot more information than they had right now.
And they’d have to have proof. Photos or samples could be dismissed or denied. Jerry had a visual flash of that thing being wheeled into a press conference.
“We’ve got to have it,” jerry decided out loud, and realized that he’d spoken into the microphone.
“I’m glad you concur,” said Hardy’s voice acidly as he came onto the circuit. “I meant about how do we get it back to the boat.”
“Oh. Yessir,” Jerry answered. That was a much harder question to answer. The thing must weigh hundreds of pounds. Not even Reynolds could tuck it under one arm for the ride back.
Dr. Patterson was also on the circuit. “What if they disassembled it and just brought back the physics package?”
“Out of the question,” declared Hardy quickly. “It would take way too long to figure out how to get the damn thing out. And the risk of radiation exposure is way too great. No, we grab the whole thing.”
“And they’re running short of time,” added Jerry as he checked his watch. “They can stretch it a little by running shallow on the trip back, but we have to get them out of there in ten or fifteen minutes, tops.”
Patterson asked, “Can you maneuver the Manta in close enough for them to attach it?”
“No, ma’am. I can’t maneuver the Manta in close quarters and it wouldn’t even fit. . .”
As Jerry started to explain, the ROV’s camera image shook, first briefly, and then for a full minute. Davis, flustered, almost shouted, “The ROV’s in trouble. Something’s hitting it! I’m taking it out!”
“But the only things in there that are moving are the divers,” Jerry argued. Then he yelled, “Wait!”
Emily nodded, but nervously fingered the controls.
After another moment, the image steadied. They could see one of the divers in the immediate foreground swimming away from the ROV. The other was bent over the warhead with the empty tool bag. As the first diver moved away from the camera, Jerry recognized it as Reynolds. He was trailing a rope behind him.
“Control, U-bay, I think they’ve solved our problem,” Jerry announced happily. “I think that line leads back to one of the brackets on the bottom of the ROV. They’re going to use the ROV to lift the warhead out of the barge.
“Dr. Davis,” Hardy asked. “Can you lift the warhead out?”
“Yes,” she answered cautiously, “but Huey will take forever to get it back here.”
“Then we’ll transfer it to the Manta,” Jerry said. “I’ll come in under you and you lower it down on the top. We can use the same attachment point that we used for the tool bag.” As he spoke, he began steering the Manta back toward the barge. He risked one active sonar pulse at long range before closing. That gave him a good enough picture of the area to approach quickly.
The divers were already rigging the line to the tool bag, and Jerry noted how it angled up off the deck, confirming that it was attached to the ROV.
As Jerry brought the Manta in, he slowed it to a creep, loath to have it arrive too early. He tried to guess how long it would take Reynolds and Harris, tired and half-frozen to finish rigging the bag, then for Davis to carefully lift the load out and away from the barge. Then remembered to check the time. They were cutting it close.
They finished getting the bag around the warhead case, which entailed half-lifting each end to get the material around it. As they finished, Jerry expected the Master Chief to take up the slack and start the lift, but instead he saw Reynolds gesture to Harris. When the other turned to face the COB, he motioned to another nearby crate, and then to the line.
“They’re taking two of them!” Emily exclaimed as the divers passed the line through the lifting hooks.
“The first one will now likely have water damage,” Patterson guessed.
Davis worried out loud. “I’m not sure Huey can lift that much weight.”
“The divers can help with the lift,” Jerry reassured. “And if Huey can’t hack it, we’ll jettison one of the warheads. We can always come back...”
“We’re not doing this twice.” Hardy declared. “Make it work, Dr. Davis.”
“Conn, sonar. Two new contacts bearing two zero zero and two one zero. I’m detecting two medium-frequency active sonars, classified as probable Bull Horn.”
* * * *
Retrieval
Bull Horn, the NATO code name for a MGK-335 Platina sonar, meant Russian surface combatants. It could be a patrol craft, like a Parchim or Grisha, or a big destroyer like a Sovremennyy. Whatever it was, it was bad news. They hadn’t seen a single Russian warship since they entered the Kara Sea, and now two had chosen this moment to show up? Jerry wondered if the Bear Foxtrot that went by the other day had actually gotten a whiff of them.
“Dr. Davis,” Hardy ordered, “send the recall signal.”
“Yessir.” She cycled a switch on the ROV console, flashing Huey’s external lights twice. They had only one way of communicating with the divers, the ROV’s external lights, and two flashes meant it was time to come back.
On the video screen, they saw Reynolds still bent over the second case. When the lights flashed, he turned to look at the ROV and its camera. He waved, made an “okay” sign with his hand and then returned to the case. His movements, slower than normal underwater, now seemed almost glacial.
Davis looked at Jerry, her expression filled with concern. “How far away are they?” Jerry knew she meant the approaching warships.
“We can hear them pinging a long way off. I don’t have a proploss display in front of me, but call it fifteen to twenty miles.”
She relaxed a little, but asked. “Can they find us?”
“Not until they get to about four miles away. And we don’t even know if they’re headed toward us,” he added. Although that was the way to bet, he thought.
They watched as Reynolds and Harris finished knotting the line. The camera image jiggled again as the divers took up the slack, and Emily began feeding power to Huey’s motors. She kept the camera trained on Reynolds and Harris, but they disappeared in the foreground, and they had to assume that the two men were helping with the lift.
“Conn, sonar. Contacts have a very slight left drift. Screw noises indicate twelve knots. Classify contacts as Grisha-type corvettes.” Slight drift meant a near steady bearing, and a closing course. But it would still take them a while to get here, Jerry thought. They should have enough time. Should.
Jerry concentrated on getting as close to the barge as the Manta’s limited navigation allowed.
“Conn, U-bay. Request permission to transmit one ping with the Manta’s sonar. It will help me close quicker.”
“What’s your distance?” Hardy asked.
“Nav system estimates several hundred yards, sir. The divers are still inside the barge, and if I can get a better fix, then . ..”
“Is there any risk of the Grishas detecting the ping?”
“No, sir, not at this range and I’m pointed the wrong way.”
“Permission granted. We need all the speed we can get.”
Jerry sent the command for a single ping, waited for the image to return, and found himself about three hundred yards away. Imagining how long it would take to swim that distance, he adjusted his course and speed, then ran for a carefully calculated forty seconds.
By this time, Davis had Huey’s motors running at half-speed with hardly any movement. Thinking of the divers’ fatigue as much as the approaching patrol craft, Jerry told her, “Just pin it to the right, Emily.”
“I can’t risk damaging Huey,” she answered.
“Yes, you can. It’s only a risk, not a certainty. We’re running out of time and so are the COB and Harris.”
Taking a deep breath, she increased the power and a cloud of sediment totally obscured the camera. Jerry’s heart sank. How could she navigate safely in that debris cloud?
He saw her hands hover over the controls. She could reduce the power, but how much? And would the ROV hold position or start to sink? And where were the divers? He knew they would try to keep clear, but they had to be nearly blind as well.
“I can see the needle on the battery gauge moving,” she warned. “It’s slow, but I can actually see it going down.”
“Just a few more moments and we’ll know.” Jerry tried to be positive.
