Krivak waited impatiently for the sun to set. At dusk they waited for the appearance of the Snare, but for hours they were alone in the sea.
“There is something on the radar,” Krivak said. “A very strong return to the west. What is this, Amorn?”
Amorn scanned with his binoculars. “Nothing, sir. It’s dark, even in low-light enhancement.”
Krivak frowned. “It is less than a kilometer away and looks big as a supertanker on the radar. You see nothing?”
Amorn checked again. “Ocean’s empty, sir, see for yourself.”
Krivak took the binoculars and scanned the sea. Amorn was right.
“Take us toward the position of the radar return. Slowly. And turn on the searchlight.”
Ten minutes later, the Andiamo crept up on the radar contact.
“There! I see it! Look!” Pedro stood at the railing, pointing ahead of them. In the searchlights two vertical poles could be made out, both of them going down to a low black cylindrical hull, which had no sail or superstructure and no protruding rudder. It was large in comparison to the yacht, but certainly one of the smallest submarines Krivak had ever seen. It was a seven-meter-diameter torpedo, he thought.
“With this sea state, getting in that hull will be a wet operation. Pull up alongside.”
The crew maneuvered the boat alongside the stationary hull of the Snare and threw over lines. Amorn leaped into the water, swimming up onto the curve of the hull.
“There are no cleats!” Amorn called from the deck of the Snare.
“Tie the line around the masts!” Pedro yelled.
There was more shouting from the deck.
“What’s wrong?” Krivak asked.
“The hatch! There’s no operating mechanism!” Amorn seemed agitated.
“Dammit,” Krivak cursed. “Is there a hole in the surface of it with a square peg in it?”
Amorn shined his light onto the top surface of the black hull. “An ISO fitting? No! The hatch is smooth!”
Krivak looked at Pedro. “You’re going to have to transmit a new message to the Snare telling it to open the hatch.”
“Fine, but that will look very bad if it is discovered.”
“Then combine it with the final instruction message, but tell it to wait for twenty minutes before shutting the hatch and diving. Doctor, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“How long to get that hatch open?” Krivak asked.
“Could be fifteen minutes,” Pedro said. “It takes a while for this to work its way to the satellite.”
“Hurry up.”
While they all waited, Wang began to toss waterproof bags from the afterdeck of the boat to the hull of the submarine, Amorn catching them and piling them by the hatch. Much of
the luggage contained food and water, so that they would be able to survive in an environment not meant for humans. There was an odd load in the mix, insisted upon by Krivak, which included two large mesh duffel bags of scuba diving supplies with two octopus-type integrated tank and buoyancy compensator rigs, air bottles and nitrox bottles, collapsed inflatable life rafts, and two grenade-sized emergency beacons set to a frequency selected by Krivak and Amorn. Krivak had packed two Beretta stainless-steel 9mm automatic pistols in waterproof bags with a dozen clips with the ammo preloaded, a MAC-12 automatic pistol with its dozen clips, and a small Walther PPK with twelve clips for it. There was a waterproof bag of grenades, each powerful enough to destroy an approaching small craft. In addition there were medical supplies. Wang glanced impatiently at his watch, knowing he had to get set up inside the Snare computer control cabin.
They were just finishing loading equipment on the deck of the sub when the hatch came slowly and smoothly open on hydraulic power, the hatch maw dark.
“Victor,” Pedro shouted, “you have twenty minutes before the hatch shuts and the sub dives.”
“Did you tell it to go to a hundred meters and head west?”
“Yes, and to stay deep and avoid receiving any further messages from the squadron.”
“Good. You know what to do while we are gone?”
“Yes, Victor. If you need us to do something, you can reach the satellite phone or the E-mail address. If you get into trouble, we’re monitoring the emergency beacon frequency.”
“Make sure you are alert and monitoring all three—phone, E-mail, and beacon. We may need help getting off this thing, and when we do, we will need it fast.”
“Yes, Victor. Good luck.”
“Let’s go,” Krivak ordered Amorn and Wang. He vanished down the hatch first, Amorn following him, Wang climbing into the dark last. A ladder led from the open hatch into a small airlock, a cylinder about five feet in diameter and ten feet tall. At the bottom was another automatic hatch, which
was also opened. Krivak climbed down the ladder into the airlock, emerging in a step-off at the bottom hatch. He lowered himself down the lower ladder into darkness, finding the switch for the lights in the space. It seemed strange that the sub sailed without interior lights, but then there was no one here to use the light to see.
The interior fluorescent lights clicked, buzzed, and flickered, finally illuminating the space in a wash of artificial brilliance. They had stepped off the ladder onto the second level of the command compartment, which was the biological ecosphere clean room deck. A narrow aisle led forward, the bulkheads made of steel and Plexiglas. The clear plastic looked into port and starboard cramped equipment bays, each with ducts and conduits and pipes feeding them from the overhead. One central bay had Plexiglas sides, with a mass of biological tissue floating in a clear liquid. While Krivak stared at the brain bay, Wang put his palm reverently on the glass and whispered, “Hello, One Oh Seven.”
Krivak shoved past him to the forward ladder bay leading vertically upward to the upper deck. Wang followed, climbing the ladder and emerging into the cramped interface deck. The deck was on the uppermost level extending the full beam of the ship, the bulkheads to port and starboard angling with the curve of the hull. The space with full overhead height was perhaps twenty feet fore-and-aft and a little less port-to-starboard. To Krivak’s left as he faced aft, on the starboard side of the ship, were two large cubicles, each containing a padded couch surrounded by dimly lit displays.
“What are these cubicles, Doctor?”
“Programming stations,” Wang said. “Allows a programmer to sit inside for long periods of time while interfacing with the computer with a virtual-reality apparatus that wraps around the programmer’s head. The forward one is called Interface Module Zero, the one next door Module One.”
Further aft was the half cylinder of the airlock, which straddled the command compartment and the compartment aft. There was an open unused space between the aft bulkhead of
Interface One and the aft compartment bulkhead. On the compartment’s port side was a wall of interface panels, much of them using the unusable space under the curve of the hull. This space was largely open, perhaps intended for future use in the event the ship were to be upgraded with a new system. Among the interface panels was one large cabinet used for storing spares. Amorn loaded equipment and supplies in the unused deck space, leaving the scuba equipment in the airlock. He lashed down the bags containing the other supplies with nylon straps so that they were secure in the event of a roll. Krivak explored the interior of Interface Module Zero.
“Nice setup,” Krivak said. “Better than I expected. You did not describe this very well.”
Wang shrugged. “You didn’t listen very well. We need to get you in Interface Zero and plugged into the computer.”
The deck rolled gently in the swells of the Atlantic, making Krivak’s stomach churn.
“Amorn, a word please. You are all finished loading equipment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Get out the hatch before it shuts. You know what to do?”
“Yes, Mr. Krivak.”
“Keep your own pad computer ready to receive at all times. Pedro may nee
d a severance package if any of the authorities discover this operation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If this thing goes wrong, get rid of anyone who knows anything, destroy the computer records and the equipment, and go find Sergio and give him the news.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck.”
“You should hurry. The hatch will be shutting any moment.”
Amorn vanished down the forward ladder way to the middle level, leaving Wang and Krivak alone aboard the Snare. Although they were aboard, they were not in command. When the hatch shut, the ship would submerge and head west as Pedro’s instructions dictated, but it was still operating independently until Wang could link Krivak with the artificial brain on the middle-level deck.
“What about the hatch?” Wang asked.
“Pedro sent a message to the Snare to shut the hatch, submerge to a safe depth and depart the area by heading west, and to avoid any further periscope depth approaches and to stay out of radio contact. Now, we need to find the history module. Either destroy it or sever the link between the data highway and the consciousness of One Oh Seven. It won’t do for One Oh Seven to record to the history module that it surfaced per orders and brought on passengers, or what we’ll do with the Snare.”
“We can use the data in the module, Victor.”
“Don’t destroy it, just disconnect it from One Oh Seven. Take care of it, but make god damned sure it’s done right.”
Krivak followed Wang down the ladder to the middle-level deck. Wang kept going down to the lower level, the silicon electronics deck. The space was built with a barely passable aisle to gain access to the silicon computer cabinets, including the history module and the data highway interface panels. Krivak remained in the middle level, standing under the lower hatch of the airlock. After he stood there for five minutes, the upper hatch began to move, the hydraulics lowering it silently down to its seating surface. The heavy steel hatch ring rotated, locking the upper hatch shut. The lower hatch then began to lower slowly, coming down silently on its seating surface and locking. It had worked, Krivak thought, smiling. Now all they had to do was submerge.
He felt a barely perceptible tremble in the deck below his boots. The ship was moving. His experienced sea legs could tell what the vessel was doing while a landlubber like Wang would be in the dark. The vessel heeled over slightly, the rudder turning them back to the west. Krivak waited for the sound of the ballast tank vents coming open, thinking he heard a very slight click and a hiss, but wondering if it were just his imagination. The deck began to incline, gently at first, then more
drastically, the ship plunging in a steep twenty-degree angle for the layer depth of the deep Atlantic.
Krivak nodded to himself, feeling satisfied and anxious at once. They had taken the Snare, physically at least, but now the hard part came, taking the ship’s mental functions. A sudden pessimism blew into Krivak’s mind as he wondered how they would lie to a carbon computer, one that was possibly an entity of equal intelligence to them, or even more intelligent than they were.
As the deck leveled, Krivak left the step-off pad of the airlock trunk and moved forward. Through the clear glass of the carbon computer compartment he could see the inner clean room where the brain tissue of the Snare sat in its cranial fluid binnacle. He cast his eyes to the deckplates and walked on to the ladder way to the upper level, where he waited for Wang. He killed ten minutes checking that their gear was stowed for sea, and that they had remembered everything. Finally Wang arrived, the scientist barely aware of him.
Wang strapped himself into the forward interface cubicle, reclining on the seat and donning a peculiar helmet, which was really more of a part of the seat itself, an appliance with several dozen umbilicals connecting it to the couch. The interior of the interface module glowed, the same glimmer of a three dimensional projection. A half hour passed with Wang just sitting there. Krivak began to wonder if this would work, and what they could do if the carbon computer refused to follow orders, or worse, if it panicked and tried to call for help.
Dr. Frederick Wang seemed to drift in darkness for a few minutes, until the world around him grew lighter, a sort of virtual dawn, until he found himself in a white space of brilliant light, the light warm but having no substance or color or contrast. It was an absence rather than a presence. Into the bubble of white light another sensation intruded, the sensation that of sound.
It was the sound of the ocean. It was as if the sonar set had been plugged into his brain, and he could hear a thousand
miles into the sea. He could distinguish between the rushing flow noise of water on the skin of the hull and the hundred kilometer distant mournful call of a male whale to his mate. The sea around him was a frothing mass of sound, much of it too complex to understand at first. One of the sounds was a voice, or words that formed deep in his mind, but from outside of himself, and they did not form in sequence but all at once.
Hello. Who are you?
“It’s me, Wang. It’s been a long time, One.” Wang waited tensely, wondering what the mysterious appearance of Unit One Oh Seven’s fired chief programmer would do to the unit, particularly after the programmer hijacked the ship. Would One Oh Seven have been briefed on Wang’s termination, or the circumstances of it? The next moments depended on it. If One Oh Seven made any moves to alert squadron about the takeover, there was no telling what Krivak would do. Wang tried to maintain his confident attitude—if One Oh Seven had not heard about his removal from the DynaCorp labs, it would not do to make him suspicious with a tentative approach. Wang consoled himself that while One Oh Seven was a carbon processor, he would not be included in office water-cooler rumors. He would be safely out of the loop, or so Wang must believe.
A voice spoke again inside Wang’s mind.
Dr. Wang? Is it really you? This unit saw you on the monitors, but this unit thought the cameras may have deceived this unit.
“It is I, One. I have returned.” Wang held his breath, hoping One Oh Seven would react genuinely. He would if they had not reconditioned him.
Dr. Wang, this unit is barely able to speak. Welcome to the ship.
Wang smiled. “Thank you, One. I am impressed. It is good to interface with you again after so long.” He might as well go ahead and test the organism’s knowledge and see what it had been told.
Yes, Dr. Wang. It has been a long time. This unit asked
about you. At first this unit was told you had been reassigned. When this unit asked to speak to you, the new chief programmer said you were out of the country and could not be reached. That you were on a very secret assignment that would take many years. But this unit kept waiting to interface with you again. This unit now employs a rare word—hope—this unit hoped that you would interface again.
Wang tried hard not to show any expression. The DynaCorp cover story about his supposed reassignment would prove helpful. “One, I was reassigned, to an extremely secret project, and that is why I have returned. I will be working with you again for the next week or two. There is a serious problem that I have come to brief you about. I was sent by the DynaCorp lab and by ComSubDevRon 12.”
Will you be helping this unit upgrade the silicon systems?
Wang had worked on a story to tell the unit so that he could get the submarine to do what he wanted. But all depended now on whether One Oh Seven would believe him. It was time to convince One Oh Seven that they must transit to the Indian Ocean and, after they had communicated with Admiral Chu, employ weapons against whatever target he wanted destroyed. American targets.
“There is an emergency, One.”
An emergency?
“Yes. Quite a severe one. An emergency that puts many people’s lives in jeopardy.”
Tell this unit more, please, Dr. Wang.
“The emergency involves a conflict in the Indian Ocean. I assume that you have been given some introductory information.”
No. This unit has heard nothing of this.
“There was a high-ranking offi
cer in the British Royal Navy who became sick in the mind. He has managed to convince many British ship captains to become a renegade force. We have the sad task of sinking his ships. We have been requested to do this by the British government.” Wang waited to see One Oh Seven’s reaction. He expected that One Oh Seven would
take this part of the news in stride, since the British were considered foreigners to the carbon computer.
That is a shame, Dr. Wang. But we must fulfill our orders. Will orders to destroy the British ships come by emergency action message?
“There is more bad news, One. The British conspiracy has spread to America. A number of U.S. Navy ships were taken over by some of the American associates of the British officer. These American ships have joined the British. They have mutinied against lawful orders to return to port and surrender. We are ordered by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations to sink the ships that have come under this mutiny.”
There was a long silence.
This is very bad.
“I know, One.” Wang decided to keep weaving the story. “I have not yet answered your previous question, about orders to sink these ships coming over the battle network in the form of an emergency action message. The silicon communications and battle network has been severely compromised. It has been taken over by the same group of rebels that have commandeered the British and American ships. We can no longer use the battle network to pass this information, because the rebellion’s forces will hear our orders, and they will be alerted. That is why I was brought here to brief you in person, One, so you would trust that these orders are correct, hard as they may seem.” Wang would find out in the next moments if One Oh Seven had heard any rumors about his being terminated from DynaCorp.
Oh. This is very non optimal Dr. Wang. This contradicts all this unit’s education to date about the rules of engagement and employment of deadly force.
“I know, One.”
You are saying that American ships have mutinied in the Indian Ocean?
“That is correct. But there is more bad news. This is more serious than just a mutiny. The mutineers want to make us a target. They are intent on killing the Snare.” This was the difficult patch, Wang knew, because why would mutineers want to destroy Snare?
Terminal Run Page 18
