by Don Keith
The Marines’ fifty caliber M2A1s quickly answered, concentrating fire at the closest boat. Several other members of Readly’s squad had sprawled on the deck and were firing with their M4 carbines.
Readly signaled his TOW crew and got their attention. He pointed at the lead patrol boat. Almost immediately, a missile jumped from the launch tube and lanced across the open water, pounding into the side of the patrol boat amidship. The resulting explosion left little more than a burning pile of debris. And that was quickly sinking below the surface.
The other two boats suddenly lost all interest in the fight or defending the sovereignty of their tiny nation. They spun about and headed for the horizon at full throttle.
Readly and Ramirez got to their feet and dusted themselves off as they watched the gunboats disappear into the night.
“So much for being defenseless,” Ramirez said. “We’d better get a couple of teams over on those other two ships before they get any more ideas. Would be nice if we had some more firepower, though.”
Readly nodded his agreement.
“Take a couple of RHIBs and head on over to that container ship. Take control of the son of a bitch. Arrest the ship’s master and any combatants you find aboard. Last time I looked, using a commercial ship to launch an unprovoked attack like that is considered an act of piracy. Meantime, I’ll call back home and see what we can do about getting some more shooters out here. I’ve lost my patience with these sons of bitches.”
Ψ
The crust of planet Earth was showing its own impatience with the status quo. Ten miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the Tonga Plate was still active, shrugging its massive shoulders. It yet again shifted the Pacific Plate down several more meters. The displacement of a colossal amount of rock, compressed by millions of tons more material and seawater above it, caused the earth to violently shake. The seismographs in Sydney and Wellington this time registered a seven-point-three tremor centered at sixteen degrees, twenty-six minutes south latitude and one-seventy-two degrees, fifty-four minutes east longitude.
Incredibly hot magma oozed up through the widening cracks in the rock, moving toward the seawater above. By the time it spewed out from the ocean floor and emerged as lava, the molten rock had cooled considerably, but only to a thousand degrees centigrade. This was still well above the boiling temperature of seawater at that depth. Massive amounts of water instantly flashed to steam, cooling the lava. The steam clouds produced by this process promptly collapsed in the ice-cold waters away from the lava. That caused loud explosions, like thunder, heard for thousands of miles through the water.
The lava began building a towering cone. In some places, it reached a height of more than five hundred feet above the sea floor in only a couple of hours. Even so, there was still over twenty-five thousand feet—almost five miles—for it to pile up before a new island popped up in the daylight at the surface.
The disruption was powerful enough to cause a massive ledge to break off the trench wall and begin a slide down into the abyss. Millions of tons of rock rolled down and fanned out over the abyssal deep. Mud and rock churned across the bottom, raising a thick cloud of silt that slowly sank back to the bottom and created an entirely new sea floor, burying the old one.
And that included covering the mounds of pure gold under hundreds of feet of mud and rock.
Ψ
The men on the DSV heard and felt the tremors and the rockslide. The wall of debris pushed the little submarine along its leading edge as the pilot tried desperately to lift the craft up and away from the roiling destruction on the sea bottom. He reached for the emergency disconnect from the MRV and its heavy load of gold dust, but Yon Hun Glo slapped his hand away from the switch. The admiral was not about to leave a billion dollars’ worth of gold down here just because of a little earthquake and some mud. Even if this turned out to be their only trip down here, it would still be worthwhile.
“Take us up, now. Surface! Surface!” Yon shouted.
But then the heavily burdened MRV got caught up in the rockslide and tugged the Fendouji down toward what would certainly be its destruction. There was no driving away from this unbelievably powerful natural force. The men inside the little submersible braced themselves, but they were still thrown painfully against each other, against the bulkheads and instrument panels.
The wall of debris rolled on past, leaving the MRV and its glittery cargo covered by mud and boulders. The DSV lay on its side, partially buried. Rocks and debris jammed the disconnect link. The two craft remained permanently connected, stuck forever on the ocean bottom, ten kilometers below sunlight and salt air.
The Fendouji’s emergency distress pinger still managed to activate. That, at least and for what good it was, marked the location where the DSV lay on its side, miles below the surface of the ocean.
Ψ
The pair of Osprey aircraft arrived just as the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon, announcing a beautiful day in the tropics. The first odd-looking bird flew straight to the Canberra, where it unloaded twenty combat-ready Marines, a Navy doctor from the Portland, and a load of extra ammunition, supplies, and some of the parts needed to help get the ship underway again. Once unloaded, the plane was reloaded with wounded personnel. That included Louise Gadliano, who had argued forcefully, but unsuccessfully, with the doctor to be allowed to remain on her ship and help take her back to port.
As that Osprey lifted up and roared away from the LCS, headed back to Pago Pago, the second one came around to land. It delivered more stores and parts but also a couple of technicians from the Chesty Puller, there to help get the LCS back underway as quickly as possible. Before somebody else showed up to start another fight over this seemingly innocuous bit of deep ocean.
Colonel Readly had another mission for this bird once it was unloaded. Sergeant Major Ramirez and his team were already firmly in control of the Pearl Moon after only some minor skirmishing. But the other ship was still an unknown entity. For all Readly knew, there could be a whole boatload of shooters over there, waiting for their chance. He loaded up an assault team and promptly headed over to the Zhang Jian, the Chinese research vessel.
Since there had not yet been any hostile action from her, no one had paid a visit to the research ship. At least the vessel that was purported to be a research ship. The Pearl Moon had, after all, pretended to be a freighter before suddenly becoming something far different and more deadly. At any rate, Readly now had the team and the transportation to go over and take a look.
The Osprey did not even bother to transition to level flight on the short hop over after it took off from the LCS helo deck. It merely played helicopter for the thousand yards to the Zhang Jian. Readly was the first man to fast-rope out of the hovering bird to the ship’s deck below. A dozen heavily armed Marines followed him down.
What they found was a research ship manned with mostly sailors, technicians, and engineers. No one offered any resistance. Most actually seemed relieved to see the Americans.
The research vessel’s Stanford-trained chief research engineer, who introduced himself as Sun Ryn, hurriedly ushered Readly into the mission control module. There he explained that he had a serious problem. There was a DSV with three people aboard. As far as he could determine, it was on the bottom, but they had lost all communications with it. He had no idea of what might have happened to not allow the little submersible to return to the surface.
But there was one thing. They had heard an emergency pinger. It had been actuated ten thousand meters directly below them. The men down there needed help. Needed rescue.
The DSV only had enough life support for twenty-four hours submerged. As of now, they had already been down for almost twelve hours.
Readly thought for a half minute, then did the only thing he knew to do.
He made a call back to Joe Glass on the Chesty Puller.
27
The fog of unconsciousness in Yon Hun Glo’s head slowly gave way to some semblance of lucidity.
Groggy as he was, he was certainly aware of a pulsing pain at the back of his head. He reached back to feel.
It was sticky wet. Blood.
Then there was the blindness. The admiral was certain his eyes were open, but everything was completely dark. There was not the barest glimmer of light anywhere. Could it be that he really had been blinded in the tossing and turning they had just endured? Or maybe he was not even awake at all.
He groaned and tried to move from the awkward, painful position in which he seemed to be stuck. That was when he heard another dreadful growl from someone nearby. Then that someone moved. It was the pilot.
“I believe I am awake,” the pilot said weakly. “Which of you is that?”
“It is I, Admiral Yon Hun Glo. What are you doing?”
He could feel the man fumbling about in the tight, dark space, looking for something. Then a small light clicked on.
When their eyes adjusted to the weak illumination, they could see that the interior of the DSV was in shambles. It was now obvious that the mudslide—or whatever had slapped their vessel so hard—had tipped the Fendouji over onto its port side. The little view window on that side was useless, completely covered with silt.
The equipment operator lay still, jammed up against one of the control panels. A faint trickle of blood seeped down from his nose and dripped onto his coveralls. Yon Hun Glo reached over and searched for a pulse. If there was one, it was so weak that he could not feel it. At least not with his cold, numb fingers.
It did not really matter. There was nothing they could do for the operator. Not down here. Not until they got this machine back underway and to the surface. There they could see to him. But, more importantly, they could also determine how much of the load of gold they might have managed to hold onto in the turmoil.
The pilot was already fiddling with his controls, but he was also shaking his head and mumbling in frustration.
“Admiral, we do not have any propulsion at all. I am unable to make the vessel move. It does appear that the life support systems are working as designed. And the battery is showing about half charge.” He suddenly hit the control panel in frustration. “But I am unable to get it to move. Not even a millimeter!”
Yon Hun Glo looked at the pilot and calmly told him, “You must remain calm. Do you understand me? You are the only one who knows how to drive this thing. We will simply tell the Zhang Jian of our problem. They will figure out something and get us back up to them at the surface. Remember, they, too, will have a share of the gold and ample motivation to rescue us. They will get us up once we inform them that we have run into difficulties.”
The pilot offered only an ugly laugh. Then he snorted and laughed even louder, bordering on maniacal.
“That’s the rest of our problem, Admiral,” he finally said. “The data link and acoustic comms systems are both out of order. We do not have any communications with the surface. They likely have no idea of the seriousness of our situation. They only know they have lost communication with us.” The pilot glanced at a gauge on his panel. “And here is the really depressing news. We have a bit less than twelve hours of air remaining.”
“Twelve hours?”
“You are a submariner, Admiral. You know what happens when the air begins to run out. When it has become mostly expelled carbon dioxide. When the air you have left to breathe is so bad your lungs refuse to accept it, you gag, you cough. When you feel as if your head will explode and your fingers and toes turn blue and your lips…”
“Stop it! Stop that kind of talk.” Yon resisted the impulse to slap the frantic pilot. Instead, he eased back down and tried to find a comfortable place to rest while he considered their situation.
“There is one bit of good news,” the pilot said.
“Please share,” Yon Hun Glo responded irritably.
The pilot pointed to the equipment operator, now clearly not breathing.
“We will have a third more air to breathe than we would have if Wang Wei had not just died.”
The admiral gave the pilot a hard look. The man’s insubordination would not go unpunished. Then he glanced at the air gauge on the instrument panel.
Peering sideways at the pilot, Yon asked, “So, what you are telling me is that we may not be able to get this first load of gold up to the ship right away?”
Ψ
Joe Glass eased the desk phone back down into its cradle. The call from Stanton Readly had left him with yet another major problem. At least the Canberra appeared to be under repair and would start limping back to Samoa shortly. The ramifications of one of his submarines sinking a Chinese sub had already been kicked upstairs to be handled by folks of a higher pay grade. He was also awaiting guidance on what to do with the two Chinese surface ships his people now held captive out there at the scene of the battle. He had also decided not to worry about the PLAN submarine that had tucked tail and fled.
The latest problem, though, had him in a quandary. Glass had no idea how he would solve it, but he certainly knew who to ask. Maybe the only person on the planet who might even possibly offer any hope. And Glass just happened to have on his desk the man’s business card with his satellite phone number.
He punched in the numbers to reach Dr. Rex Smith. As the phone rang, Glass reassured himself that if anyone knew of a way to reach that damned Chinese DSV stuck on the sea floor, and if he just happened to be close enough to do anything, it would be the ocean geologist from the Deep Ocean Explorer.
Smith sounded almost chipper when he finally answered. And quite confident once Glass explained the situation. He was well aware of the potential result if they did not get the people off that little submersible.
“Yes, I know Sun Ryn well, by the way,” Smith said. “His ship and crew, too. We did a project together off Wenzhou a couple of years ago. A good man despite it all, who tries to make the most of his situation.”
“Well, we got three souls about to die a horrible death if we can’t work some magic down there,” Glass shot back.
The two quickly concluded that the Deep Ocean Explorer would not be of any use. There was no way to get the slow-moving ship out to the site until well after the clock would have run out on any possibility of mounting a rescue. But as Joe Glass had hoped, Rex Smith had an ace up his sleeve.
Back when Smith and his ship had been captured by King Two-for-One’s henchmen, they had simply left the Sea Raptor, the scientist’s unmanned research submersible vehicle, lying at rest on the ocean floor. And in a spot not that far from where the Chinese were stuck on the bottom. Now, if there was some way to re-activate it, they might just be able to do something with it to rescue the DSV.
Exactly what that “something” was had yet to be determined. But Smith was already talking with his people about it by the time the call from Glass ended.
It took only thirty more seconds for Smith’s technicians to think of a major snag. To re-activate the Sea Raptor, they would have to disconnect the control and communications systems from the Deep Ocean Explorer, move them two hundred miles out to the site where the DSV was, set everything back up on the Chinese research vessel, wake up the UUV, and then, assuming the little gal responded to the wakeup call, put her to work rescuing the men stuck down there near the Tonga Trench. And all this would have to be done before the air ran out on the DSV.
Glass looked at his watch as if the instrument were a crafty adversary. If the chief research engineer on the Chinese ship was anywhere close to correct in his calculations, they now had only about eight hours left.
Rex Smith gathered up his team and set to work disconnecting all the electronic equipment that formed the remote-control system for the UUV. Everything had to be documented to be sure it went back together correctly. Other techs were tasked with assembling anything that they might possibly need, from manuals to patch cords to spare fuses. There would be no time to ask someone to bring out some part or gizmo they neglected to load.
Meanwhile, Joe Glass grabbed Lew Wooten, the skipper o
f the Chesty Puller, and worked to gather any parts or equipment that the massive Expeditionary Mobile Base ship might have to aid in the rescue. They would gather all the equipment onboard the big ship, mostly on the Puller’s expansive flight deck. The first load of electronics flew away on an Osprey, which quickly reached top speed of three hundred and fifty miles per hour, making it a relatively quick hop. Rex Smith, Mitch O’Donnell, and Sandy McDougal hitched a ride on that bird. Joe Glass and Bill Bix jumped onboard the CH-53K King Stallion helicopter for the ride out. The chopper carried several pallets loaded with heavier equipment. At a cruise speed of about two hundred miles per hour, it would take them a bit longer to get to their destination, but Glass figured the most important people and parts were on the Osprey.
Joe Glass checked his watch yet again as the two aircraft took to the air. The hands seemed to be spinning. The former submariner had had his own couple of experiences with too little and bad air while stuck beneath the sea. He did not wish that on anyone.
They now had about five hours left if there was to be any hope.
Ψ
It took two hours for the Osprey to reach the Zhang Jian and then hook up the Sea Raptor’s control and communications equipment to the research ship’s power supply. Sun Ryn, the Chinese chief research engineer, walked them through the ship’s hook-ups. Soon a rat’s nest of wires and cables ran around the command center, but everything seemed to check out. Sandy McDougal sat down in front of the command console and promptly sent out the “wake-up” signal to the Sea Raptor.
The little UUV came to life on the very first ping. Everyone cheered as if the home team had just scored the first touchdown.
As the systems came online, Mitch O’Donnell ran through a quick diagnostic checklist to make sure the UUV was functional. All appeared nominal. All but one reading.
