Ocean Black

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For the last two hours, the seabed had been steadily rising, but not so much that anyone on the surface would know, or maybe care. Brande had been feeding altitude data into the submersible’s on-board computer, thereby updating Emry’s current mapping information on the Orion via the Loudspeaker telemetry data link.

On the left monitor, Brande had a copy of Emry’s map, with DepthFinder’s current position superimposed as a yellow square. On the small keypad, he tapped in the current depth reading: 18,214 feet. It was a pretty dismal map, showing almost no prominent features for the surrounding twenty miles of its scale. There was one seamount which rose to within 14,000 feet of the surface. If one could see through transparent water, looking down on its top would be similar to viewing one of Colorado’s “fourteeners” from sea level at Los Angeles. Colorado peaks were impressive, but they were normally seen from the spectator’s stance, which was already at least a mile up.

On the feedback link, Brande also had Orion’s position shown as a yellow circle; she was some fifty miles behind them on the surface. Mel Sorenson was staying way back, so that his location didn’t necessarily betray that of the submersible. He was constrained to a degree by the range of the Loudspeaker acoustic system. They had voice over a longer range, but lost data transfer capability at around fifty-five miles.

Over the last six hours, they had steadily moved north-northwest, travelling at a conservative cruise speed of ten knots in order to preserve their battery charges. Kim Otsuka had passed around their lunch boxes, and they had consumed every last bologna sandwich, potato chip, and apple. Brande was getting hungry again, but he suspected it would be another six hours before they resurfaced.

He was also certain they were on the right course. Over an hour before, they had detected the high-speed cavitations of propellers on the sonar, and Dokey had immediately settled DepthFinder on the seabed and shut down the lights and noise-making systems.

Brande had gone passive with the sonar to avoid giving away their location, but not before determining a bearing on the alien sub. After waiting twenty minutes, he activated the sonar briefly and took another reading on the sub, which was then six thousand yards behind them. From the two readings, he extrapolated its heading and track.

“If it were up to me, Okey, and if that thing was coming from where we’re heading, I’d want to bear right a trifle, to a heading of three-two-five.”

“Those guys will be going to help out a floor crawler, I’d bet,” Dokey had said. “and they’re flat moving out. Roughly, I calculate their speed at fifteen knots.”

“Given their lack of aerodynamics, that’s probably their top end, Okey.”

Now they were approaching their projected target range of eighty to a hundred miles from the last detonation site, Number Ten.

Under the six million candlepower floodlight glare ahead of them, Brande saw the seabed abruptly disappear. One second it was there, the next, they were floating over an abyss without an apparent bottom.

He tried the sonar, which was displaying its readings on the center monitor.

“Rather a sharp drop off, Okey. I show bottom four hundred feet down. Let’s go take a look.”

“Going, Chief.”

The sub nosed downward and glided at a slower pace as Dokey retarded the motor controllers. Soon, the seafloor gleamed in the floodlights once again, and Dokey made his glide path shallower.

“I’m hungry,” Otsuka said.

“Go back to sleep,” Dokey told her. “That way, you can at least dream about a steak.”

Brande extended the range on the sonar and aimed the antenna downward. He found nothing but undulating seabed.

“No contacts,” he said.

“They’ve got to be somewhere out there,” Dokey said.

“Why?” Otsuka asked.

“Dane and I think they have to work in teams of a sub and a crawler. The crawler will have to drill the hole and set the charge since the subs don’t have manipulator arms.”

“So we’re looking for a floor crawler?”

“Right on, doll.”

“And what then?”

“We’ll try to disable it, just like we took care of the last one.”

“And what if our timing is absolutely perfect?” Otsuka asked.

Dokey and Brande both looked back at her. In the dim illumination from the cabin lights, her face was creased with concern.

“Meaning?” Dokey asked.

“We could find the site just as they detonate a nuclear blast.”

Brande switched his gaze to Dokey.

“The lady has a point,” he said.

Paul Deride stood on the upper hull of the Perth, only partially protected from the spray by the sail. Fine droplets pelted his face and upper torso.

He took another deep breath and scanned the horizon. The Canadair seaplane was on its takeoff run, its hull bouncing from the wave tops. As he watched, it clawed its way into the air, then quickly disappeared into the overcast. The pilots had been overly anxious about making the landing in the first place, and Deride had to admit it had been a harrowing experience. He had given them permission to return to San Francisco, rather than wait it out on the surface.

To the east, he saw the hazy silhouettes of the three freighters they had circled before landing. They were still moving east, and he knew they were loaded with the specialized equipment required for mining at depth. There were three more submersibles, six more floor crawlers, a living module, and a nuclear power module along with the excavators, conveyors, and power washers. Two days from now, two more freighters would arrive with supplies and high-pressure pumps on board. There was, he estimated, a half-billion dollars sitting on board those fragile ships. His equity, of course, was as small as he could make it. The bulk of the investment, and the risk, was in the hands of the international bankers who had learned that Paul Deride delivered on his promises.

Once they were on station above Site D — where Penny had decided to initiate the mining phase, it would take eight to ten days to get everything set up on the bottom. In another six days, the refiner ship, Dolly Cameron, would be in place, accepting the crushed-rock sludge pumped up to her from below, and performing the first rough culling of the ore. With the content readings that Penny Glenn had been reporting, Deride expected that they would extract a quarter of a ton of manganese-rich ore from each ten tons pumped from the seabed. Over nine tons of rubble would be dumped back into the ocean; there was no economic sense in transporting the raw ore to Japan. The next stage of refinement, conducted in Japan, should produce roughly two hundred pounds of pure manganese. The ratio promised to get better and better as the mining operation moved north, following the trail Penny was preparing.

He fully expected that within two weeks he would be seeing the first shipment of partially refined ore on its way to the more sophisticated processing center. Within a year, he projected, Matsumoto Steel would be undercutting the hardened steel price worldwide. Two years after that, Matsumoto and Deride would own the world’s steel market.

The anticipation of that event almost made him forget that he was about to go where he didn’t want to go.

With a final deep breath of salt-laden air, Deride hunched his shoulders against the cold and his mind against the coming confinement, slipped down the ladder, and slammed the hatch behind him.

The pilot came halfway out of his seat, his eyes automatically darting upward to check the seal of the hatch as he extended his hand.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Deride.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Jerry Tompkins, sir. Pilot of the Perth. Hyun Oh, here, is co-pilot.”

Deride didn’t bother shaking hands. He nodded curtly to Oh, who appeared to be Korean, then flopped heavily into one of the four rear seats.

Tompkins twisted his way back into his seat, and soon, the submersible began to settle below the surface. The smoothness was comforting, though it couldn’t override the building anxiety he felt about losing touch with the surface.

Penny’s summons — she wouldn’t talk about it on the phone — had damned bloody well better be worth the discomfort he was undergoing.

As soon as Pamela Stroh had hung up, Carl Unruh dialed Hampstead’s number.

The secretary put him right through.

“Hello, Carl. You inviting me to lunch?”

“It’s not a lunch-type day, Avery. We’ve got legal problems.”

“We? In what way?”

“I just talked to Pam Stroh at Justice. I called her to see what they were doing about Brande’s claims against Deride.”

“And?”

“It’s gone the other way around. AquaGeo has filed briefs and lawsuits at the Maritime Commission, the World Court, and in U.S. District Court. The Maritime Commission has already issued an injunction.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Of immediate concern,” Unruh said, “is that Brande, Marine Visions, and any sponsoring organization, has been enjoined from interfering with the mining operations of AquaGeo Limited. That’s pending a hearing, probably to be set for January, Stroh said.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Hell, no. They’ve also asked for copies of all contracts between Marine Visions and its sponsoring organizations. You happen to have a contract, Avery?”

“Actually, it’s right in front of me. I’m just now working on a few of the clauses. I’m adding a compensation paragraph for the robot they lost. You and the Navy are paying for it.”

“What?”

“You’ve got to live with it, Carl.”

“Oh, hell. Yeah, I’ll live with it.”

“Anything else you think I should put in?”

“You mean this contract’s not even signed yet?”

“Brande and I trust each other, and if you’ll recall, everyone involved was in a big hurry.”

“Shit. Ms. Stroh is going to come unhinged.”

“Who is this Stroh?” Hampstead asked.

“Our attorney.”

“I don’t get a choice? I’d prefer F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli or the guy from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. You know, somebody who can win.”

“Don’t joke, Avery.”

“So what do we do?”

“Send me any notes you have about the contract, as well as what you have of it. Then, get on the phone and tell Brande to back off.”

“Until when? I thought we were worried about earthquakes and such. You did mention something dire about the twenty-fourth of the month, didn’t you? That happens to be four days away from us.”

“We can’t do a damned thing until we can get this settled in the courts, Avery. Justice and State have both convinced the Vice President that we’re a law-abiding nation. Ben Delecourt is issuing new instructions to his ships on the scene. You have to tell Brande to suspend operations.”

“You can’t mean we’re going to sit on our asses and actually wait for the courts to decide something, Carl? Do you think Deride will wait around?”

“Stroh is going to file for an injunction preventing further exploration by AquaGeo until they satisfy environmental and ecological concerns.”

“Good luck.”

“I don’t know what else we can do. The Attorney General is crying because we have to do this much.”

“Christ. They wouldn’t even pursue the matter of one Svetlana Polodka, Carl.”

“The AG is, I’m sure, getting pressure from the Vice President’s office on the environmental side, or we wouldn’t be contesting AquaGeo at all.”

“And the Navy?” Hampstead asked.

“Stroh was going to talk to Delecourt some more, so I don’t know their reaction beyond a policy of non-interference. When we get down to it, though, Commerce, CIA, and the Navy are all contractual partners with MVU. We’ll have to get our acts together.”

“That’s going to be like asking a convention of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists which religion God prefers,” Hampstead said.

Kaylene Thomas took Hampstead’s call on the scrambled satellite channel in the radio shack.

“Injunction!”

“I haven’t seen it yet, Kaylene, but CIA says we should suspend your operations.”

“Just the CIA?”

“I suspect the Justice Department, my bosses, and the White House would back them up.”

“I can’t reach Dane just now, Avery.”

Hampstead cleared his throat patiently. “And why is that, Kaylene?”

“He’s imposed radio silence.”

“I see. Radio silence.”

“AquaGeo transmits on a scrambled acoustic frequency, so we can’t understand them. And we don’t want them overhearing what we’re talking about.”

“This isn’t a war,” Hampstead said.

“Tell that to Svetlana. If you can find her,” Thomas said. Her own fury was close to the surface.

“Ah, Kaylene. I know. Still, you have to call Brande back.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Please take action. There’s something more. I got a call from the Washington Post, and I had to admit that MVU is under contract to the Commerce Department. I’ve been able to stall on the reasons, but the reporters are onto something.”

Thomas almost made a suggestion, and then thought better of it. Recommendations made to Washington ended up in committee for twelve weeks.

“I’ll think about it,” she said again, then hung up.

She did think about calling Brande for nearly five seconds, and then cast it aside. He had made the decision on radio silence, and she wasn’t going to overrule him. Instead, she picked up the microphone, dialed the UHF set to channel nine, the international hailing channel, and pressed the transmit stud. “Arienne, this is the Orion.”

Whoever was on the radio came right back to her, and she asked for Wilson Overton. It took a few minutes to get him to the radio.

“Dr. Thomas? This is Wilson Overton.”

“How would you like to join me for breakfast?” she asked.

“What? I’d like that.”

“If you don’t mind joining us by way of a breeches buoy,” she told him.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t worry about it, and plan for eight a.m. You’ll enjoy the ride.”

She was halfway through the communications compartment hatchway to the bridge when another voice came over the UHF radio.

“Orion. Mighty Moose calling Orion.”

She went back and picked up the mike. “Bull, this is Kaylene. Where are you?”

“About half-a-mile off your stern, Missy. I’m ready to link up with you.”

What the hell?

“I’ve got your supplies,” Kontas went on. “It’ll take a while to transfer them in this weather. You want to tell Del Rogers to get on one of your cranes.”

“What supplies?”

“I don’t think, Missy, that we want to talk about it on the air.”

“Bull!”

“The torpedoes and stuff,” he said.

In the late afternoon of the preceding day, CINCPAC, Vice Admiral David Potter, had signaled the California and her escorts, Mahan and Fletcher, that their mission was simply to make their presence known and to stand by the Orion should any ship of a foreign flag harass her.

Mabry Harris had thought at the time that it would have been helpful if he had known just what the Orion was doing that required the support of a naval warship. Obviously, it was something on the bottom, which was some three miles down at this point. It was also something important enough to garner Navy interest.

And the interest of Greenpeace, since the Arienne hadn’t been out of sight since their arrival. If the people on the Greenpeace boat knew more about this than he did, he wouldn’t be surprised.

He would be irritated.

And was beginning to become so. At 1800 hours the night before, he had sent a request to CINCPAC, asking for a briefing on the mission of the Marine Visions craft. So far, he hadn’t received a response.

Captain Harris usually took the morning watch since mornings at sea were his favorite times, and this morning only he, the helmsman, and a radar officer were on the bridge when the chief petty officer from communications entered.

“Permission to come on the bridge, sir?” he asked from the hatchway.

Harris signaled him in and took the flimsy he handed to him.

“Give me the gist of it,” Harris said.

“Uh, sir, we’re to make certain that the Orion doesn’t launch her submersible.”

Harris involuntarily glanced through the windshield toward the research vessel and her bare stern deck.

Without intending to speak audibly in front of enlisted personnel, Harris said, “Somebody in Washington is totally fucked up.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the chief petty officer.

Some sailor on the much higher deck of the research vessel fired a small cannon at them.

The pilot rope leaped from a coil on the deck, arched over the water, and across the rear deck of the Arienne. Mickey Freelander grabbed it, and then began towing in a heavier rope sliding off the deck of the research vessel.

Overton held firmly to the railing along the gunwale. Both the larger ship and the yacht were bouncing high on the waves and out of synchronicity with each other. The sea conditions had determined that he would go visiting aboard the RV Orion by this primitive method.

He wasn’t looking forward to it. He was wearing Levis and a sweatshirt. His parka held his camera and his tape recorder. And over that, he was wearing bulky weather pants and a slicker that felt as if they were made of the same stuff as his mother’s breakfast table cloth.

Freelander secured the heavy rope to an anchor point on the deck, and the breeches buoy came sliding down the rope from the other ship. It dipped into the sea, splattering water, before Freelander hauled it aboard.

“In you go,” he said, grinning hugely.

Clumsily, Overton stepped into the two holes for his legs. The slack came out of the ferry rope, and he was jerked off his feet. The sailors on the research ship began pulling on the second line, and he had to lever his legs up to clear the gunwale as he went overboard. He grabbed the rope above him with his hands, but nearly got them run over by the pulleys from which the breeches buoy was suspended.

As he had feared, when the ship and the boat passed each other in their up-and-down journeys, the rope slackened, and he went into the water.

Not far. His feet got wet, and his face was splashed by icy droplets.

Then four welcome hands on the ship were grabbing him, helping him out of the contraption.

He stood weakly on the side deck before one of the men said, “I’m Del Rogers. If you’ll follow me, Mr. Overton.”

The sailor walked with a wide stance, absorbing the shocks and sway of the deck with seemingly elastic knees. Overton tried to emulate him, but wasn’t very successful. He lurched about like a drunk.

It was much warmer inside the superstructure, and he shed his foul weather gear in a large corridor, and then went into the wardroom Rogers pointed out for him.

There were half-a-dozen people present, finishing their morning meals. He saw Thomas, whose picture he had seen before, sitting in a booth with an older, bald-headed guy with a big moustache. Also in the booth, unaccountably, like an amiable meal companion, was a computer.

The two of them got up as he entered and came across the deck to meet him.

“Hello, Mr. Overton. I’m Kaylene Thomas, and this is Dr. Lawrence Emry, Director of Exploration. I’m happy you could join us.”

They all shook hands, and Overton kept his suspicions to himself. Brande had denied him an interview three times, but now he was suddenly being welcomed with open, cuddly arms. Everybody wanted something; his boat ride with Jacobs was going to cost him a couple of articles. There were no free lunches. Or breakfasts, either, for that matter.

He shrugged out of his parka and dropped it on the bench seat of the booth.

Thomas led them into the galley, and they loaded plates from a warming rack of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits. With heavy mugs of coffee, the three of them went back to the booth with the computer in it. Thomas scooted a chair over and sat at the end of the table, and Emry sat in front of the computer monitor, turned slightly away from Overton, which displayed a confusing array of numbers. Emry seemed to know what they meant, and every few minutes, he glanced at them. So did Thomas.

They made it through the eggs on small talk, and they all got down to first names. Then Thomas said, “One thing that’s always mystified me about the media, Wilson, is its penchant for trying court cases in print and on the TV screen before the legal system is done with them.”

“The philosophy is that the public has….”

“I know what the rationale is,” she said, “and the more sensational, the better.”

Was this going to be an inquisition of his profession? Overton had a whole list of questions he wanted to ask, and the tape recorder in his parka just itched to be placed in the center of the table. But, he had been invited, and he waited, though perhaps not as patiently as normal.

“Would you like to take notes?” Thomas asked.

Overton dug out his notebook and recorder from the parka beside him.

“What subject am I taking notes about?” he asked.

“Do you know why we’re here, Wilson?”

“I only know about the seabed disturbances.” He told her what he had learned from the Earthquake Information Center.

“I got caught in an earthquake last July,” she said, “the one in Joshua Tree.”

“Cost her a damned good Pontiac,” Emry broke in.

“And I didn’t like it one bit,” she went on. “The property destruction was probably typical, but the effect on people was appalling. I saw people who were injured very badly, some who died, a little girl trying to be brave, administering first aid to her mother.”

Overton jabbed a finger downward. “Do you think that what’s happening down there, something that will affect people?”

He couldn’t help sounding dubious.

“I think it could, yes.”

“That why the Navy’s here?”

“I don’t know why the Navy is here,” she said.

Overton had to smile. “Tell me, why am I here?”

“Because I’ve had a change of heart. I have a case I want to try in the media before it gets to the courts. I thought you’d like that.”

Right after Deride arrived, Penny Glenn spent twenty minutes briefing him on what had taken place at Test Hole H.

They sat in the control room, Deride in his normal safari gear and an additional sweater, and Glenn in a heavy jumpsuit. He was nervous, and trying to not show it, but Glenn had always known he was uneasy subsurface. Her account of the disabling of the floor crawler had made him furious.

Deride got up and began to pace around the table. “That son of a bitch! He’s coming after us, isn’t he?”

“It was a deliberate act, Uncle Paul.”

“He’s mad about the woman.”

“Woman? What woman?”

“The one that drowned.”

“Paul, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was in the papers. The reporter that saw the DepthFinder surface damaged, saw the woman — some Russian name — fall overboard.”

Glenn hadn’t known about that. She was saddened to some extent but reminded herself that there were always casualties in dangerous ventures. Deride certainly knew about casualties in the minerals industry.

“Anthony has heard that Brande is blaming the accident for her death, and all kinds of U.S. agencies are probing into AquaGeo affairs,” Deride said.

That was all right. Glenn didn’t care about that. If the timing were right, it would be helpful.

“It was an accident?” Deride suddenly turned to look directly at her.

“You can talk to McBride, Uncle Paul. He’s here in the station.”

“I’ll do that.”

Glenn had already prepped McBride on what to say to the CEO, and she was about to call him on the intercom when one of the technicians at the bulkhead consoles pulled his headset off and said, “Penny!”

She spun around in her chair to look at him.

“Dorsey wants to talk to you.”

Jim Dorsey headed Team Three, and he was aboard the floor crawler FC-9 at Test Hole I. She scooted her castered chair over to the console, flipped the speaker switch so that the conversation would come over the ceiling speaker, picked up the microphone, and said, “Yes, Jim?”

“We’ve got a glitch.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got the charge set, and I’m ready to blow it, right? So we take one last look on the sonar, and there’s a sub hanging around. I know it ain’t Munro, ‘cause I just talked to him at Test Hole H.”

She told Deride, “It has to be Brande.”

“Goddamn bloody hell!”

She keyed the mike. “Have they located the charge?”

“Nah, not even close yet. But they’re getting there. What I need to know, Penny, is do I go ahead and blow it, or do I try to warn the sub off? Do you want me to try to raise them on the acoustic?”

“What do you think, Jim?” she asked.

“I don’t really want to get to close to the sub. Look at what happened to Eddie, when they went after him.”

The technician was following the conversation closely, looking back-and-forth between Glenn and Deride. It was important for Glenn that he be aware of the dialogue and who said what.

She asked, “Uncle Paul?”

Glenn knew that Deride was still angry about the damaged floor crawler, about the damaged sub, and about how much those repairs were going to cost in time and money.

“Jesus Christ!” he said. “I suppose we ought to give them some kind of warning.”

“I can reach them on their acoustic frequency,” Glenn told him. “It would certainly be more than they did for Eddie and Hank when they attacked FC-4.”

“That’s true,” Deride said.

“Then again, Brande’s violating the injunction you just told me about.”

“That’s also true.”

“And we may go a day or two over schedule on the project. You realize that?”

Deride nodded.

“The Outer Islands Lady will be here shortly, to make repairs on Melbourne and FC-4. The loss of those vehicles has also eaten into the project schedule,” Glenn reminded him.

“How much?”

“It’ll go over a million.”

“To hell with Brande,” he said. “Blow it.”