Nighthawk

15

Kurt nudged the thrusters and slowly spun the Angler until it was pointed in the direction of the approaching hum. He switched off the normal light, leaving only the UV system in place. Still they saw nothing.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” Emma said.

A sharp ping exploded through the water, reverberating in the hollow confines of the Angler like someone had struck the side with a hammer.

Emma put a hand to her ear. Kurt marveled at a ripple in the silt, caused by the power of the invisible sound wave.

“Someone just painted us,” Kurt said, meaning the sonar ping had found them and probably registered back to whatever submarine had issued it.

“Searching for wreckage like us?”

“Maybe, but you don’t need a sonar pulse like that to search for wreckage,” Kurt replied. He left unsaid that powerful sonar pings were normally used to get targeting data for torpedoes.

With a smooth touch, he spun the Angler around, looking for the source of the ping. The thrumming sound grew louder, like a freight train barreling down on them.

“What are you waiting for?” Emma asked.

“We have to look both ways before we cross the road,” he said, pivoting the nose of the submersible upward and turning the UV light to full intensity while simultaneously glancing toward the monitor.

At first there was nothing. Then, in the far distance a distortion appeared, like a portal to another dimension opening in the deep. Kurt knew it was the swirling water and the tiny sedimentary fragments being forced aside by a pressure wave. Behind the distortion, a shape began to form, emerging out of the darkness.

Huge, wide and bulbous, it was the curving nose of an approaching submarine. Not a small submersible like the Angler, or even a svelte attack submarine, but a monster of the deep, grinding toward them, its bow a wall of steel.

It was cruising slowly, perhaps a hundred feet off the seafloor.

“They’re trying to run us down,” Emma said.

“No,” Kurt said. “They’re just following the same debris trail we did.”

“Then we should get out of the way.”

Kurt shook his head. “Moving now would give them our location. As long as we remain still, we should appear no different than a rock formation or part of the wreckage.”

As Kurt spoke, another ear-splitting pulse came forth. The NUMA submersible rang like a bell and still Kurt held his ground.

A swirling cloud of sediment swelled forth, beneath and in front of the approaching vessel. It made it seem like the behemoth was riding on a cushion of dust.

“Hang on,” Kurt said.

The disturbance hit the Angler and the small submersible was spun around and swept to one side.

Kurt used the thrusters to straighten the sub out and watched in awe as a mountain of rust-colored steel passed over them, filling the view from one edge of the canopy to the other. It passed by slowly, almost endlessly. The submarine crossing above them was as wide and long as the cargo vessel floating on the surface.

Finally, the propellers came into view.

As they neared, the Angler was pulled off the bottom by the turbulence and drawn toward the spinning props. It was swept in close and then spat out behind the passing leviathan, tumbling in the submarine’s baffles. Kurt fought to control the ride, but had little power against what was essentially an underwater tornado.

The Angler spun and rolled and banged against an outcropping of rock. Several warning lights blinked on. And then everything went black.

Up on the Reunion, Joe and Captain Kamphausen watched the events live until the video feed suddenly cut out. Without sound or commentary, it was hard to tell what happened. The last image caught on tape was a shot of the churning brass propellers.

“Did it hit them?” Kamphausen wondered aloud.

Joe picked up the microphone. “Angler, what’s your status?”

He waited a few moments before making another attempt. “Come in, Angler. Kurt, are you there?”

When he received nothing in response, Joe put the microphone down and played the video one more time, studying the blast of sediment and the last, ominous view.

“I don’t think the props got them,” he said. “A close call, nothing worse. But the communications line must have been cut.”

“Why didn’t he move?” the captain asked. “He just sat there like a deer in the headlights.”

“Kurt doesn’t freeze up,” Joe replied. “He must have felt it was safer to stay put. A tactic I would agree with. It’s very surprising that a vessel that large would be traveling that close to the seafloor.”

Joe checked the last burst of telemetry data from the Angler’s control systems in hopes of gaining more insight. What he saw concerned him. A list of warning lights had come on right before the line was cut.

“Battery pack,” he said, reading off the labels. “Pumps. Gyrostabilizer. They must have hit something pretty hard for all of those systems to go out at once.”

Kamphausen offered a grim look. “What exactly does all that mean? Are they drowning?”

“I doubt it,” Joe said. “The Angler has a strong hull, so I’m assuming they’re dry. But they may be facing the submariner’s worst nightmare.”

“Worse than drowning?”

“Being marooned alive on the bottom,” Joe said. “With electrical problems and the pumps off-line, they may not be able to surface.”

“Is there any way we can help them?” Kamphausen asked. “Or do we just have to wait and see?”

“Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a big problem,” Joe said. “I’d just drop another sub in the water, hook a line on them and tow them back to the surface. Failing that, I’d don a hard suit and hook a cable to them and winch them up. But since we don’t have either of those things, we’re going to have to improvise.”

“What about that submarine that almost ran them over?” Kamphausen said. “Judging by the rust on the hull and the general state of neglect, I’d say it was a Russian boat. Is it too much to assume they’re after whatever you’re after?”

“We’d be foolish to assume anything else,” Joe replied.

“Are we in any danger?”

“I doubt they’ll torpedo a surface ship like the Reunion,” Joe said. “That would be inviting war and their rapid destruction from our sub-hunting aircraft. But the depths of the sea are a different story.”

“How so?”

“To a large extent, what happens down below, stays down below,” Joe replied, co-opting the famous Las Vegas advertising slogan. “They could easily eliminate the Angler by ramming it, or hitting it with a torpedo, or by sitting on it and crushing it down into the silt. In all cases, no one up here would ever know what happened. And that, I cannot allow.”

Kamphausen scratched his head. “But how can we stop them?”

“By getting them off the bottom before anything else happens.”

Kamphausen nodded, looked around as if he was thinking deeply and then turned back to Joe. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Fortunately, I’ve got an idea,” Joe said. “But it’s going to take a little work. I assume you have a few generators on this ship.”

“Several.”

“Show me to the largest one you’ve got. And have your engineering team meet us there with a complete set of tools.”

Kamphausen looked at him suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said. “I’ll put it all back together when I’m done.”

Nine hundred feet below, Kurt and Emma sat in darkness. The huge submarine had passed over the top of them and continued on into the dark. The turbulent ride had slammed them against a ledge of volcanic rock, tripped a few circuit breakers and lit up several warning lights on the panel before shutting off all the lights.

Using a flashlight, Kurt found the main panel, pushed the circuit breakers back in and brought the Angler back to life. “No real damage,” he determined.

“Listen,” Emma said.

The hydrophone was still picking up the sound of the propellers, but the intensity level had waned. Before long, it ceased altogether.

“They’ve come to a stop,” Kurt said.

“Better than having them double back.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Kurt replied. “But what are they doing down here in the first place? Considering the size and shape of that sub, I make it out as a Russian Typhoon, a ballistic missile submarine. Not exactly cut out for search-and-rescue work.”

“Maybe it was the nearest vessel they had with sonar capability,” Emma suggested.

Kurt wasn’t so sure. He straightened his headset and tried to reach Joe. “Joe, are you out there? I’m hoping you got the number of the truck that almost ran us down.”

There was no answer. Not even static. “I think the Typhoon cut our line as it passed overhead,” Kurt replied. “We’ve lost communications with the surface.”

“Maybe we should count ourselves lucky and head up,” she suggested. “See if Joe can identify this aircraft and let everyone know this is a dead end.”

Kurt considered that, but a curious mind and a sharpened sense of suspicion ran in his family just like the silver-gray hair he’d inherited at a young age. “That would be the smart thing to do,” he admitted. “But something doesn’t make any sense here. Did you report this location to anyone?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t told a soul.”

“Neither have I. So, there couldn’t be a leak.”

“What about our partners on the Reunion?”

“I can’t imagine a Russian agent being stowed away on a refrigerated agriculture ship I chose at random,” he replied. “And even if we were that unlucky and someone up there did pass our location to the Russians, what are the odds they would have a Typhoon submarine within a few hours’ sailing time of our location?”

“Astronomically low,” she said. “The few Typhoons they have left spend most of their time in port, and when they do sail, they rarely venture far from home.”

Kurt knew that, too. He also knew the Typhoons were in the process of being retired from service. “By all rights, that sub should not be here.”

“Maybe we should worry about it another day,” Emma said. “They’ve already scanned the debris field with their sonar. If we’re lucky, they’ll bring their salvage fleet out here and spend a few days recovering aircraft parts off the bottom before they realize this wreckage doesn’t come from the Nighthawk.”

Kurt was one step ahead of her. “That’s just it,” he said. “I think they already know.”

His hand went back to the console and he raised the volume on the hydrophone. A new sound was emanating from the dark, a pulsing noise that sounded more like water running through a pipe.

“Bow and stern thrusters,” he said. “They’re keeping station out there in the dark. I suggest we go find out why.”