As he brought Little Geek around, One Night manipulated Flatbed's right arm to give Sonny the brace he was about to install. "Heads up, hon."
"Perfect timing, sweetie," said Sonny. It was true, too. Lisa "One Night" Standing was always paying attention, always knew just what you needed and when.
Of course, she knew she was that good. "Don't I always?" she said. But nobody minded her being a little cocky about it. There's nothing wrong with knowing when you're good.
This was something Hippy knew about himself: He concentrated best when there was a steady, unpredictable distraction going on. Like that girl's wandering hand. Like dancing a little to the music. Like his white rat, Beany, who right now was crawling along his shoulders, along his neck, little feet pressing here and there, the delicate brush of whiskers, the faint wet press of Beany's nose and breath on his neck. He'd had bosses who didn't understand how Beany helped him, how Beany's unpredictability kept him alive and on edge. He'd lost jobs over Beany. But Bud Brigman never made a big deal about Beany. It was like he understood that Hippy needed Beany the way some guys had to chew gum or cuss or something. It was part of being yourself.
OK, that part of the job was done. Hippy checked both the window and the video display from the camera mounted in the front of Little Geek - the same video they were watching topside. When he was sure he wasn't tangled up with anything, he backed Little Geek out of the work area a little bit so that Sonny could move on to the next job.
That was the moment when Bud burst into the control module, slamming the hatch open as he came, knocking something over. Hippy might have cussed at Bud for surprising him like that, distracting him - only the look on Bud's face told him that wasn't the world's best idea.
Bud didn't say a word, but he slammed the top of the cassette player with his fist, turning off the music.
Yeah, he was not calm. Hippy watched as Bud reached out and slammed his palm down on the recall switch. Outside Deepcore the hydrophone loudspeaker started blaring a siren. Diver recall. And just in case anybody missed the point, Bud picked up a headset and barked, "All divers, drop what you're doing. Everybody out of the pool."
Hippy immediately began pulling Little Geek out of the way so they could all come back in. He could hear One Night and Sonny talking on the headphones.
"Dammit, we just got out here," said One Night.
Sonny just sighed. "There was a time when I would have asked why." Right. As if Sonny was as old as the hills, as if he'd seen it all.
Hippy happened to notice that as Sonny swam past Flatbed's manipulator arm, One Night made the arm grab at Sonny's butt. Sonny saw it, twisted out of the way. "Oh, hey!" said Sonny.
The thought passed through Hippy's mind: One Night's in heat, and Sonny's number just came up. Not a speck of jealousy, though. Any such emotion Hippy might have felt drained away, as if each of Beany's footprints on his shoulders was a tiny hole that let feelings seep right out.
Sonny got on top of Flatbed and hung on as One Night piloted it between Deepcore's legs. She was skimming only a few feet above the sea floor. Hippy brought Little Geek along right behind her, for all the world like a faithful puppy. Hippy saw Flatbed slip into the lighted area under the moonpool, then rise up into the light.
"Deepcore, Deepcore," said One Night, "this is Flatbed, preparing to surface."
Hippy checked out Flatbed's position, especially in back, where she was blind. "Roger, Flatbed, you're clear."
"Thank you much."
Catfish and Finler caught one of the lines dangling there and pulled themselves up hand over hand. Sonny caught a ride on Flatbed's back as One Night brought the craft directly under the pool. Hippy brought Little Geek along right after. Just chasing your little ass up into heaven, baby.
Flatbed rose to the surface of the moonpool as Jammer and Perry and a couple of other drill-room boys were helping the other divers out of the water. The water at this depth was only about six degrees above freezing, and despite their heated drysuits, the divers were all cold and stiff and not too good at little things like pulling off their helmets and getting the rubber neck-dam off without ripping all their hair off at the roots. No fun, but it was part of the job.
They weren't thinking about it that much, anyway. Their minds were all on something else - wondering why they'd been called in. Anything out of the ordinary like this smelled like a problem, and any problem at this depth could get pretty bad in no time. They were worried, they were annoyed, they were curious.
"What the hell's going on?" asked Finler. "Why'd they recall us?"
"Hell if I know," said Sonny. His tone of voice sounded like he didn't care, either. Nobody was fooled for a second.
The moonpool looked like a swimming pool at an indoor gym. The difference was that in here, it wasn't gravity holding the water in the pool. It was air pressure. Like when you push a glass upside down into dishwater. There's still air in the glass, so the water stays down at the bottom. But if the air seal ever broke, the water from the moonpool would erupt and fill all of Deepcore, if it could. Just one of the little things that could kill them if something went wrong.
Finler was as nervous as a cat, and as often as he could find somebody to listen to him, he was asking questions that nobody could answer. "So what's the drift, partner? Why're we up?"
Catfish pulled his neck-dam off, dragging past his sweat-soaked beard. It hurt every time. You have to be some kind of masochist to wear a beard as a diver. But because Catfish had one, Finler had one. "Just follow standard procedure, will ya?" Catfish said. "Flog your dog till somebody tells us what's happening."
That was what they needed to break the tension - somebody talking crude. "Hey, Catfish," said Jammer, on the deck a few feet away. "I'll sell you my October Penthouse, with the letters, for twenty bucks, what do you say?"
By this time One Night was climbing out of Flatbed. Dry as a bone, so she was the only one not shivering with the cold. Jammer tossed her a line.
"Save your money," One Night said to Catfish. "The pages are all stuck together by now."
Bud came in just as Jammer pulled Catfish out of the water. Everybody looked to Bud. He'd have the answers, and they knew he'd tell them all he could.
"Hey Bud, what's the deal, huh?" asked Jammer.
Bud shook his head. "Folks, listen up. We've just been told to shut down the hole and prepare to move the rig."
Move. "Shee-it," said Sonny. They all knew that moving was the end. The project was cut off. Benthic had lost its nerve and was getting out of the underwater experiment business. Chickenshit accountants somewhere decided they weren't cost-effective. It was over.
Or maybe not. Bud knew what they were all assuming - that their project was a victim of corporate politics or the bottom line or pure stupidity or something - and he dispelled that idea as fast as he could. "We've received an invitation to cooperate in a matter of national security. Now you know as much as I do. So get your gear off and get to control. We've got a briefing in ten minutes."
There were some groans. Bud clapped his hands together a couple of times. Like a coach encouraging his team. "Let's move it," he said. What they heard was: I don't like it either but we've got to do it, and what the hell, it probably won't be so bad.
Somehow the whole crew fit into the command module for the briefing. It was sweaty and the air stank, but nobody wanted to get the news secondhand. There was a Navy guy on the monitor from the Benthic Explorer - Commodore DeMarco, he said. Kirkhill was visible in the background. If he'd been talking, Bud wouldn't've believed him for a second. Guys with ties tell you what they think will get you to do what they want. Whereas Bud knew - wasn't his dad a Marine? - that guys in uniform will leave stuff out for national security reasons, but by and large they'll tell you what you need to know in order to do a good job. The difference was trust. Corporation types, they expected everybody to use whatever they knew to stab everybody else in the back so they could get ahead. They couldn't tell anybody the truth because they c
ouldn't trust anybody not to use it against them. Whereas military types expected you to obey orders, period, so it was OK to tell you the truth. A lot of civilians didn't understand that. Bud did.
"At 0922 local time this morning," DeMarco was saying, "an American nuclear submarine, USS Montana, with a hundred and fifty-six men aboard, went down twenty-two miles from here."
"Damn," said Bud. Civilians could hear of a couple of hundred servicemen missing, probably dead, and they'd think, well, that's what they're for, to die for their country. But people in the military - and their families - they always felt it like a part of their own family dying. Because it could have been. Bud knew. One of those numbers they read over the TV news during Vietnam, one of those "forty-two casualties" or even "light losses" was his dad. That was why DeMarco paused, why Bud swore. It was a moment of silence. It was all the mourning they had time for right now.
"There has been no contact with the sub since then. The cause of the incident is not known. Your company has authorized the Navy's use of this facility for a rescue operation. The code name is Operation Salvor."
It was a two-way connection, and One Night had a question. "You want us to search for the sub?"
"No. We know where it is. But she's in two thousand feet of water and we can't reach her. We need divers to enter the sub and search for survivors, if any."
This was the part that Bud didn't like. His people were trained to work with Deepcore. With drilling equipment that they knew, stuff that was all in the right place. Inside a wrecked sub they might find anything. Bud flashed on a picture of twisted wreckage snagging on an air hose or tangling in something. He saw one of his own crew coming back dead. "Don't you guys have your own stuff for this kind of thing?" he asked.
DeMarco knew it was a fair question, and he gave it a fair answer. "By the time we get our rescue submersibles here the storm front will be right on us. But you can get your rig in under the storm and be on-site in fifteen hours. That makes you our best option right now."
Bud knew the urgency the Navy felt - it was their men in that sub, and if any of them were alive, they had to get them out. Had to do anything to get them out, if they could, because that's what they'd expect the Navy to do for them, if they were in trouble.
Bud's crew didn't necessarily feel that way. "Why should we risk our butts for something like this?" asked Hippy.
DeMarco didn't have an answer. Poor guy, thought Bud. He still hasn't learned that civilians don't give a shit about military lives. Yes sir, Commodore, this is the guy you're supposed to die for, if we get in a war. Makes you proud, right? For just a moment, Bud was ashamed to be part of this crew, though he knew that he wasn't being fair, that civilians were supposed to regard the military as expendable.
The silence didn't go on long, though. This sort of question was right up Kirkhill's alley - this was something a guy with a tie could understand. Hippy was speaking his language. Kirkhill thrust his face toward the screen. "I have been authorized to offer you all special-duty bonuses equivalent to three times normal dive pay."
There were whistles and hoots of appreciation. "Yes sir," said Finler, pointing at the screen. "Yes sir!"
Catfish plucked Beany off Hippy's shoulder. "Hell," said Catfish, "for triple time I'd eat Beany."
"No!" said Hippy.
Catfish gave the rat back without looking.
Finler was getting into the spirit of this. Just how eager was he for triple pay? "I'm here to tell you, you could set me on fire and put me out with horse piss."
It really annoyed Bud, Kirkhill bribing the crew like this. Triple pay was dead man's pay, and Bud knew it. He didn't want any part of this. It was Commodore DeMarco he spoke to, though. He knew better than to try to talk sense to a suit. "Look, I don't care what kind of deal you guys made with the company, but my people are not qualified for this. They're oil workers."
That was military language, a military way of thinking; Bud had learned it from his father. You never put your men in a situation beyond their training. And if an officer orders you to do so, you inform him of their limitations.
DeMarco understood at once. "This is Lieutenant Coffey. His SEAL team will transfer down to you to supervise the operation."
That was a help. They'd have somebody there who knew how to do the job. But that brought up another danger. Bud had never known a SEAL, but he assumed they were gung-ho Rambo types, Green Berets with flippers. "You can send down whoever you like, but I'm the toolpusher on this rig, and when it comes to the safety of these people, there's me, and then there's God. Understand? If things get dicey, I'm pulling the plug."
DeMarco gave him a short nod. It was all according to the book - you rescue your men if you can do it without unacceptable losses.
Kirkhill, though, was obviously embarrassed that his toolpusher was talking back to the Navy. Bud sounded so - so uncooperative. Smooth this over, make everybody feel good, that was Kirkhill's job, right? "I think we're all on the same wavelength, Brigman," he said. "So relax. Now let's get the wellhead uncoupled, shall we?"
Silently Bud answered, Let's get our head out of our ass, shall we? But he didn't say anything out loud. No point in it. He and DeMarco understood each other, and that's all that mattered. He'd have the authority to keep his crew safe, and he couldn't ask for more.
Bud started out of the room. Nobody else was moving. "Let's get to work, gang," he said.
They caught on. The meeting was over. Bud stood near the hatchway as the others filed out, heading for their tasks. They all knew what was at stake. They had to uncouple the wellhead in such a way that it could be recoupled later. That was their only chance to make this project work. Even so, once Deepcore was unhooked from the well, it would be only too easy for one of the opponents of the project - which included everyone in the corporation who wasn't in position to claim credit if it succeeded - to use this as an excuse to cancel the whole thing. They had to make it as easy and cheap as possible to get everything back like it was.
The only good thing about this, Bud thought, is that Lindsey isn't here. And when she finds out, I want to be on another continent for about a year. Because somehow, God knows how, she's going to find a way to make this all my fault.
Chapter 6
High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome
They got the wellhead uncoupled with no problems, except the problem that they didn't want to do it in the first place. All the triple-pay enthusiasm was gone by the time everybody got back inside. They'd thought through the difference between a couple of days at triple pay and having a job at regular pay for three months. Even the slow ones knew enough arithmetic to figure it out. Besides, they were about four days from the end of their four-week shift. Counting decompression time, just over halfway to getting back topside. Who knew how long this detour would slow things down?
Bud sat at the controls of Deepcore, using a joystick to pilot it through the water like an airplane, except that Deepcore didn't make much better than a knot and a half under water. The rig was meant for going down to the bottom and staying in one place - it was only supposed to be maneuverable enough to choose the best resting place, within a few hundred yards. Deepcore was equipped with thrusters powerful enough to get its five thousand tons of mass moving, but it took Flatbed on tow cables to steer it with any kind of precision. That's part of the reason why Deepcore needed as powerful a submersible as Flatbed.
So Bud had One Night piloting Flatbed, the mobile platform, out in front, picking a safe course as Bud did the coarse steering that kept Deepcore lined up behind her. Plus Deepcore was still attached to the Benthic Explorer on the surface by the long umbilical. He figured Deepcore looked about as silly as a randy doberman straining against a leash, trying to catch up with a chihuahua in heat.
"Hey, One Night, how you doing?".
"I got white line fever, baby." As well she should. It was at least a twelve-hour trip, and there was no time to unhook the tow cables, bring Flatbed back, and change drivers.
Bud read off a slight course correction from the Explorer. "Why don't you take her about five degrees left?"
"Five degrees left, roger."
Hippy came in, checked out a couple of things. McBride, in the meantime, came onto the topside monitor with the latest news. "Well, it's official, sportsfans. They're calling it Hurricane Frederick, and it's going to be making our lives real interesting in a few hours."
Hippy walked out again just as a new face appeared on the topside monitor. It was just about the last person Bud was hoping to see.
Lindsey didn't even try to build up to things gently. "I can't believe you let them do this."
It was as bad as his worst fears. All his fault, of course. And Lindsey was using her you-are-screwed voice. But he was determined not to let her get under his skin. He smiled. In fact, he couldn't help it. He was glad to see her, even when she was pissed off, even when he knew she was here to cause him trouble, here to punish him for every sin she could pin on him. He was glad, and not just because she was sure to make life unbearable for Kirkhill.
"Hi, Lins. I thought you were in Houston." Actually I wish to hell you were in Houston, sweetheart. Don't I have enough trouble without you being up there in the Explorer, griping at me?
"I was, now I'm here. Only here isn't where I left it, is it, Bud?"
"It wasn't up to me." He tried to laugh at the idea, help her see how ridiculous it was to blame him.
The Abyss Page 9
