They continued to descend silently into the dark ocean, but since the pod was merely a stubby cylinder, it was ideally shaped to fend off the mounting outside pressure. The structure was dimly lit inside by three banks of green tinted fluorescent lights and the wall was un-insulated allowing the cold temperatures of the deep Pacific void to seep inside. It was clearly designed for a single, quick, emergency ride to the surface and not for any appreciable human comforts.
The electric motors of the powerful ROVs were nearly silent outside and could not be heard at all inside the pod itself. To the 10 passengers, it was as though they were motionless, yet the depth gauge on the wall told an entirely different story, descending ever deeper, beyond 300, 400, 500 feet and heading toward 869 feet beneath the surface of the ocean, the depth of the top deck of the sunken Jiang Zemin.
No one spoke during the descent except for Seven calling off the depth at each 100 foot mark; his voice appreciably tense. He had made his most valiant attempt at requiring his wife to stay put in the safety of Pacifica, but that suggestion had no chance at all of succeeding. Seven did not know what they would encounter when they opened the hatch leading back into the submarine – whether they would find a totally empty and deserted boat or a remnant of angry and frightened Chinese sailors ready to defend their craft to the death. He knew that they would not be able to mate the pod to the submarine without making significant noise as they did so – like unceremoniously ringing the world’s largest gong to announce their arrival.
They had carefully studied the boat from ROV photographs and a comprehensive database onboard the Leviathan. It was a relatively massive submarine that weighed in at 6,000 tons, consisted of three decks stacked atop one another, and extended more than the length of a football field. The boat’s reactor was a gem – the latest nuclear technology built with stolen Russian technology that had originated from stolen United States technology. The Jiang Zemin’s power plant was a state-of-the-art 90 megawatt nuclear reactor that, according to the Leviathan’s top secret database, had just been refueled and should provide a steady stream of power for the next dozen years.
“750 feet, tell Striker to watch his speed,” Seven ordered. “Captain Bryce, are you ready for this?” Seven asked the Pacifica Security Chief, Larry Bryce.
“Yes, sir - locked, cocked and ready to rock!”
“Good,” Seven replied with a confident smile. He could see the depth gauge slowing now, as he reported, “800 feet. We’re close to the top of her deck now.”
Seven looked at the faces of the individuals seated in a circle around the pod. Their expressions were dimly lit by the weak light banks which only served to accentuate their nervousness. He glanced at the depth gauge and tried to imagine what was going on outside the walls of the pod.
Legend had set this operation up, controlling both ROV fleets from the Phoenix. Two of his most powerful robots, the Slave ROVs, controlled the descent and assisted the Pacifica’s bots, while two others provided a light bank aimed at the bottom of the pod in the total darkness of the sea at this depth, and another four undersea robots held a bank of cameras through which Baker was guiding the process from the hovering Phoenix, some 500 feet above them. By proper positioning of the lights and cameras, Baker was certain he could dock them with no difficulty.
“10 feet,” Seven called out. “Brace for docking.”
Long seconds passed as the depth gauge needle seemed to hold steady. Then there was a high pitched scraping sound as the side of the sub rubbed against the steel walls of the pod’s chamber, but there was still no sense of motion or movement inside. It was as though they were already still. Suddenly there was a slight sway, bump, and a loud metallic clang. Five seconds later, Seven touched the earpiece in his right ear, and looked at his crew. “We’re hard docked!”
They were now firmly latched to the Jiang Zemin.
“Joseph, let’s do it,” Seven said. But the Commander was already turning the valves that equalized the pressure between the submarine and the pod. Their ears began to pop as the higher pressure of Pacifica hissed into the submarine below them.
“Okay, Larry, open her up,” Seven said slowly, carefully keeping his emotions in check.
The members of the security team lowered their weapons toward the opening as Captain Bryce swung the wheel and raised the hatch. It opened into a short vertical tunnel and beneath it they could see bright lights. But the odor that carried itself into the pod was distinct and ghastly.
“Bodies,” Bryce said immediately. He paused another second, nodded to his team, and lowered himself into the hole. The next member of the security team quickly followed and the next until they were all inside, leaving Seven and his team secure in the pod. They had agreed upon this procedure earlier and no one would move until the immediate area was cleared by Bryce.
Four minutes later, Bryce’s voice lifted up though the tunnel, “Area secure.”
Seven was the first through the hatch, climbing down the six foot ladder to the deck of the Jiang Zemin, then helping Serea down. The odor at the bottom was worse, obviously that of decaying human bodies. But the submarine’s passageways were brilliantly lit and Seven could hear the distinct noise of ventilator fans. The temperature, however, was well into the high 90’s and very humid, which made the smell even more unbearable.
“This area’s secure and my team’s locked off the passageways leading here, just as we planned,” Bryce reported efficiently. “We’re going to follow the plan, so remain here until we can sweep the ship in front of the team. I’ll report to you by radio as we secure the areas.”
“Go,” Seven replied simply with a nod. “Let’s get this done quickly,” he said, feeling the first drops of sweat dripping down his skin.
“The life support system is off balance,” Bill Harper said. “Typical of a plant that’s not been tweaked. Obviously the power plant was left operational but hasn’t been touched since the crew left.”
“Can we fix it?” Seven asked.
“Oh yeah,” Harper responded confidently. “We just have to get to the reactor control room.”
“Platform one is secure,” Seven heard in his earpiece. “We’re headed down now,” Bryce reported, meaning the top deck of the submarine had been searched without finding anyone alive.
Minutes later, Bryce summoned them to the submarine’s bridge. Seven led the way, followed by Serea and the rest of their team. As they approached the bridge, the smell began to become more pronounced. They also began to notice signs of struggle and chaos. There were scattered pieces of equipment, trampled food, and papers lying everywhere.
As they entered the Jiang Zemin’s bridge, the centerpiece of the complex control room was the sight of Captain Xiao Luan. His hands had been duct taped to the periscope, part of his shirt torn away from his body and a single bullet hole was through his head just above his eyebrows.
“I guess this guy lost the Mr. Congeniality contest,” the Commander remarked dryly.
“It’s the skipper,” Harper remarked. “The crew lost it and went on a rampage.
“Three more bodies over here,” Bryce reported, pointing his gun behind a rack of equipment.
“Officers?” Harper asked.
“Yes, sir, all of them. And the team reports four more bodies down the passageway.”
“Officers?” asked Harper again.
“All but one.”
“I’d just imagine the sole exception would be the cook,” the Commander deadpanned.
“One more level,” Seven said somberly. “The engineering spaces. Let’s get it done.”
Five minutes later, he received a call in his earpiece as they were examining the bridge controls.
“We’ve got a live one down here!”
“I’m on my way,” Seven responded quickly. He looked at Serea and the rest, and ordered, “Stay here.” But as he turned and left the control room, escorted by one of Bryce’s men, he could hear the footsteps of Serea and the others following close behind.
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Just at the bottom of a short tunnel leading down he could see Bryce and two other security team members holding their weapons upright and pointed into the space beyond them.
“Do not shoot that man!” Seven ordered as he lowered himself down into the space in a half climb, half jump. He turned and faced the target, an exceptionally young man who looked to be in his late teens, staring at them like a deer in the headlamps of a Mack truck. His shirt had been removed, he was wearing dark blue denim pants and he was covered in filth and sweat. He was holding a pipe wrench, his face contorted in utter fear. Seven could see that his cheek was bruised, but he did not appear to be otherwise injured.
“I need Edgar on this line, now!” he ordered into his microphone.
“I’m here,” came her stern voice just seconds later.
“Tell me how to say, ‘It’s okay, you’re safe now.’”
He listened, then said, “Say is again and say it slower.”
Then he repeated her words to the sailor who looked surprised. Seven then repeated them again.
“Tell me how to say, ‘Put your weapon down and we promise not to hurt you’”.
He then repeated the phrase, which caused the young man to raise his wrench higher and begin waving it in the air.
“Shall I take him out now?” Bryce asked.
“No!” Seven and Serea answered as a single voice.
“Let me have your earpiece,” Serea asked Seven. She whispered to Edgar, then spoke in Chinese to the young man. He looked deeply moved, surprised, and then lowered his weapon and dropped it onto the deck.
“Move!” Bryce ordered his men.
“No!” Serea countered, just as they reached him. “Stand down!” she ordered, as she walked to him.
“Mrs. Seven, please! He may still be armed!” Bryce shouted.
“Stand down,” Serea repeated firmly as she continued to walk toward the young sailor, followed by Seven. She spoke to him again in Chinese as Edgar instructed, and the young man managed a weak smile. Serea then reached him and held her hand out to him, which he accepted and then bowed to her.
Serea then pointed to Bryce, and spoke again. The young man nodded to Serea, then to Bryce. “Larry, he consents to your search. Make it thorough but make it as gentle as possible.”
A moment later, Bryce responded. “He’s clean, but we need to get him out of here now.”
“Why?” Serea asked.
“In case he’s hidden any weapons in the space. We need to get him to the pod so we know he’s no longer a threat.”
“First ask him if there are any others alive on the boat,” Seven said.
After Serea asked in Chinese, the young man shook his head from side to side, looking directly at Seven.
“I’d sure like to know what you said to disarm him,” Spencer asked Serea, as all eyes turned to her.
She just winked at Seven.
“Oh, that…” he responded, shaking his head slowly at the others.
“What?” Frank asked.
“It’s probably best you don’t know,” Seven said with a slow nod of approval at Serea. “It’ll just drive you nuts; trust me…”
Five minutes later, Bryce declared the Jiang Zemin was totally secure. Seven, Bill Harper, the Commander and Spencer went directly to the sub’s reactor control room. Serea and two security men took the Chinese sailor into the pod for an interview.
Seven could feel the air become cooler as Harper expertly deciphered the Chinese engineering plan just by looking at the valve diagrams. It came somewhat too late as each of them were now completely soaked with sweat. But it meant the difference between uninhabitable and workable.
An hour later, as they met outside the escape pod, Seven asked Harper, “Bill, can you and your men run the plant?”
“No problem. Most of it’s clear to me, and what isn’t will be clear to my engineering officer and his men. We’ll just have to run this escape pod up and down once per day to swap fresh crews out.”
“Joseph and Frank, how about tapping into the power?”
“Piece of cake. We simply use one of the escape pod trunks as a cofferdam and cable pass through. Joseph says we can use the old OTEC plant cables lying all around us here and simply reconnect on this end,” Spencer advised.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Seven said as Serea approached, although the smell had long since receded into the background of their senses. “We need to get a hazmat team down here and clean this place up.”
Serea shared with Seven that she had discovered during her interview that the sailor was a young enlisted man, a deck hand who had hidden when the crew mutinied and killed the captain and his officers. He remembered a discussion among the crew about being trapped and doomed on the ocean floor and how using the escape pods was their only hope. They could not understand why the Captain was so adamantly opposed to using them even though the sub was totally disabled and stuck on the top of the seamount. The crew was convinced that the steel walls of the pods would protect them by day from the quantum storms and they could use the life rafts attached to the pods at night until rescue arrived.
It was Serea’s impression that the crew had very little understanding of the quantum storms, their effects, or of what they had actually done to the world. Ironically, by deliberately withholding that information to control the crew, it led to the terminal misunderstanding and mutiny in the end.
“One last thing,” Harper asked Serea, nodding to the sailor, whose eyes were still filled with uncertainty. “What did you say to him to get him to surrender?”
“His name is Zhu Jintao,” Serea replied, “and I told him that his mother wanted him to live, that his father wanted grandchildren, that I had met his wife-to-be and wished to introduce them.”
“That’s an unbelievable stroke of absolute, sheer genius!” Bryce gushed sincerely, in awe. “Have you had hostage negotiation training?”
“No,” Serea replied, glancing at Seven. “I was serious.”
Except for Seven, who had to deliberately hold back a reflexive laugh, everyone else in the team just stared back at her without a single clue.
76
There were so many boxes jammed into Miller’s Cave, for the first time they began to feel the pinch for room. They stored as much as they could in the large anteroom leading outside, but many of the boxes from the plane had to be stacked in the interior chamber.
Charles was the first to ask the obvious, “why?”
Warren patiently explained that all the supplies were to be used as barter with other shelters and would ultimately be used to trade in exchange for food. Unfortunately, that discussion led to a complete inventory, and the results invariably led to the countdown. Their days were shorter than any of them had ever dared guess. The total inventory gave them less than six months of food, even with the cases of MREs they had recovered from the plane as well as accounting for rather austere rationing.
Warren and Wattenbarger sat alongside Warren ’s work bench hours after everyone else had fallen asleep.
“It was a pretty good ride, don’t you think?” Wattenbarger asked with a satisfied smile.
“What do you mean?” Warren asked while he tweaked his ELF transmitter.
“You know… life.”
“What about it?” Warren replied in the voice that typically preceded a bad attitude.
“We had fun, you and me. We had a good time, I mean, together. When we were boys right here in this cave and during these last months together,” Wattenbarger said sincerely.
Warren sighed, stopped fighting with his equipment and looked into Wattenbarger’s perpetually optimistic face that never seemed to lose its boyish quality or its buoyant spirit. Warren gazed at him for a long, unspoken moment, and then he smiled.
“Yeah, it was a good ride,” he replied, at long last beginning to give in to the inevitable adjustment from life to the acceptance of death that most humans eventually face. He had just taken his first voluntary step toward the end and
he knew it. Oddly, it felt good, like an enormous burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
“You know, that ELF idea – it was awesome, don’t you think?” Wattenbarger asked.
Warren just returned his friend’s stare, then tossed his ink pen onto the bench top before him and shook his head slowly. “I know what you’re thinking,” he whispered.
“What?” Wattenbarger queried, more out of politeness than from really wondering.
“We’re the daring Quixote twins and have always been,” Warren said in a voice that was tired – the kind of fatigue that is heard in the voice of dying men. “Me, I played Don and you, Sancho - tilting at preposterous windmills all our lives. And now we’ve tilted at the sun itself in the most ridiculous misadventure of them all. It just kinda mirrors our lives, don’t ya think, that we should be so bold as to take on the very sun in the sky? And, the most outrageous part of it all is that we actually made more headway than just about anyone else. It’s just too bad we weren’t able to share the discovery we made with the shelters, the groups that really have a chance of makin’ it though all this.”
“Warren , I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better end. I know it’s in a cave on Concharty Mountain and not exactly with all the amenities, but I get to go out in a decent way. I made all the wrong choices in my life; I chose badly and I ended up with about every bondage in the books. But here, it’s better. I have no bondages, I have a good woman and my own son and the best friends of my whole life – all crowded together in this little cave. It’s my family – you guys are my family. You know, as totally bizarre as this sounds, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my entire life than I am right now.”
Warren laughed lightly, looked into the brown eyes of his boyhood friend and choked back a lump in his throat. Then he stood to his feet and Wattenbarger rose somewhat uncertainly to stand before him. Then Warren did something he had never done in his life. He reached out and embraced another man.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 70
