Ocean Black

CHAPTER TWENTY

Stretched out on her bunk fully clothed, Penny Glenn had been napping when the buzzer of her wall-mounted intercom sounded off. She rolled over and hit the Talk key.

“Yes?”

“Penny, it’s Bert. Can you come down here?”

“On my way.”

The tinge of panic in Conroy’s voice urged her to speed, and she went through her doorway and down the spiral staircase at a trot.

In the control room, her eyes immediately checked the status board: Canberra was on the way to Test Hole J to collect samples. Perth was at Test Hole K. Melbourne was on the surface for her extensive repairs. Sydney and Brisbane were nearby, their crews sleeping aboard. There were three floor crawlers parked in the vicinity. FC-6 had been towed back from where it had been disabled and was in the process of being raised to the surface for replacement of her motor control cable aboard the Outer Islands Lady. Team Three was on the site of Test Hole L, drilling the hole for the explosive charge.

In the subsection of the status board for activities at Test Hole D, she noted that the sea station had been lowered to the seafloor, but was not yet anchored or manned. The nuclear reactor power supply was to be lowered today.

“What do you have, Bert?” she asked, taking a chair next to him at the main console.

He laid a forefinger against the upper right corner of the sonar display on his screen. “Right there, Penny.”

The elongated shape was moving slowly in the direction of AG-4, which was displayed as a gray circle in the center of the screen.

“Sub?”

“But it’s not one of ours. It appeared just a few minutes ago.”

“It’s got to be our friend Brande, then. Go wake up Mr. Deride.”

As he got up, Conroy said, “I’ve already alerted the sub and crawler crews. They’re taking up positions around the station.”

A defensive posture. AquaGeo Limited had never, and Penny Glenn had never, been anything but aggressive in their corporate and personal lives. She didn’t know why she should start changing now.

“Have you heard anything on their frequency, Bert?”

“Not much,” he said, headed for the doorway. “About an hour ago, there was a one-word message, ‘Glorify.’“

“Glorify?”

“Right. Some kind of code, I figured.”

She checked the station monitors and got a sense of Conroy’s paranoia. He had turned on all of the banks of exterior floodlights. The overhead camera was turning lazily in a circle, but not capturing much beyond the sixty feet of space illuminated by the lights. As she watched, the camera got a glimpse of the top of one of the floor crawlers, just starting to move. A few seconds later, it caught Sydney rising a few feet from her resting spot on the bottom. The monitoring video camera mounted outside the air lock showed Brisbane disengaging from the station.

Switching the acoustic transponder to the frequency utilized by Marine Visions, she pulled the desk microphone close and pressed the transmit button.

“DepthFinder, this is AG-4.”

The response was immediate, and even with the distortion of the acoustic system, she knew the voice was Brande’s.

“Dr. Glenn, I presume?”

“Are you snooping again, Dane?”

“I’m watching you,” he said.

She liked the thought of that — it set up a tingle of anticipation for the future, but she said, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Penny, I don’t know what topics the legal artists are toying with, but I like my ocean the way it is. Irradiating it or blowing up sensitive geologic structures is not my idea of progress.”

“We’ll have to talk about progress sometime, Dane. For the present, though, I don’t think you’ll find much change in your ocean.”

“Have you measured the radiation?”

“Nothing there that won’t dissipate in a short time,” she said.

After a momentary pause, he said, “This could all be resolved easily if you’d shut down your operation for a few days.”

“That can’t happen, Dane. We don’t have all that taxpayer-supported scientific money to rely on; we have to stay on schedule.”

“Whose schedule?”

“My boss’s, of course. Everybody has a boss.”

That was good. She wanted to get that statement on the record, and she was certain that DepthFinder and Orion were recording this conversation.

“I’ll have to stop you, Penny.”

That wouldn’t happen, either.

“I suspect, Dane, that if you try, Uncle Paul will sue you out of your beautiful ship and submersible. Look, this will be over in a few days, then I’ll come to San Diego, and we can laugh about our differences.”

“I’m not laughing, Penny.”

“You will,” she said. “Bye for now.”

Glenn immediately switched over to the scrambled frequency for Team Three.

“Dorsey, you there?”

She had to try twice before he answered.

“You always catch me when I’m trying to get a few winks, Penny. What’s up?”

“You’re on site?”

“You bet. After we rest, we’ll start drilling.”

“I want you to skip Test Holes K and L. Go right on to M.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am. And Jim, go now. I want that hole done today.”

“Hey, Penny, we’re getting into some rugged terrain. It’s going to take twelve hours or more to get there, and some of our reserves are getting low.”

“Then you’d better get underway,” she said. “I’ll send out a sub with fresh batteries and an oxygen recharge.”

“Please do,” he said. “I hate running this low.”

She signed off just as Deride arrived in the control room.

“It’s the middle of the night, Penny,” he said. “Something wrong?”

“Brande’s out there.”

“Bloody hell! You talked to him?”

“I tried,” she said, and left it ambiguous.

“Deride’s a stubborn man,” Dokey said.

“There is something definitely wrong with that woman,” Thomas said.

“That’s jealousy talking,” Dokey told her.

“Go to hell, Okey.”

Brande was reminded of family gatherings when he would get into arguments with a female cousin he couldn’t stand.

“Now, children, as my Grandma Bridgette would say, let’s stop the bickering.”

Dokey and Brande had brought DepthFinder and Gargantua to a standstill as soon as Glenn had contacted them. When he checked the sonar, he saw that they were still nine hundred yards from the station. The movement that Thomas had noted was still taking place; a sub had detached itself from the station. Another sub was moving toward them, but slowly. It was barely making five knots. The three floor crawlers were sidling away from the station in three different directions, protecting all of the flanks.

Dokey looked over the image on the screen.

“Any idea, Chief, how we go about fighting another submersible?”

“None, Okey.”

“We don’t ram it,” Thomas said.

“The veteran,” Dokey said, “knows something we don’t.”

“Judging by the one we saw up north,” Brande said, “I think we can outrun it.”

“But we don’t want to run.”

“Not just yet.”

“Both of you listen up,” Thomas said. “Let’s not start adlibbing right off the bat. We developed a strategy before we left the surface; stick to it.”

“You’re right, Rae,” Brande told her.

“Communications first, then,” Dokey said.

“Let me get a mine,” Brande told him.

“Keep the nomenclature pure, please,” Dokey said. “That’s a Marine Visions Unlimited Mark One, mod one, deep submergence mine.”

“I thought that’s what I said,” Brande told him as he worked Gargantua back toward them, into their lighted field of view.

It only took a couple minutes to pick a mine out of the basket and determine its number.

“Number fourteen,” Brande said.

“Fourteen,” Dokey echoed, setting the rotary dial on his detonator. “That’s in his left hand.”

“Remember that, if you don’t mind,” Brande said, switching to the right manipulator controls and picking out a second grenade.

“Number Three,” he said.

“I wish you could pick up these things in sequence,” Dokey said.

“Somebody could have packed them in sequence,” Brande said.

“Picky, picky.”

He eased in the rotational stick, spun the robot on its axis, and then drove forward, bringing the ROV’s bow down as he added power. That was one thing Gargantua could really boast. He had power to spare.

The center screen, with the ROV’s view, showed a heavily tracked and yet relatively smooth seabed. Brande dove almost to touchdown, and then leveled off, keeping the robot barely five feet above earth level. He extended both arms until they showed in the video eye.

“That’s the heading you want?” Dokey asked.

“For the time being.”

“Then I’ll go three points port.”

“Fine.”

Dokey moved the power switch forward, and the submersible eased ahead, and then left the track of the robot, moving divergently away to the left. They could only go so far with the tactic, until they reached the limit of the 250-foot tether.

The idea, of course, was to present the AquaGeo defenders with a major sonar target that would catch their attention and perhaps raise their adrenaline levels. If by chance, they happened to miss the significance of the smaller sonar target, the robot, so much the better.

Thomas called out the range. “Eight hundred yards to target.”

Brande saw the opposing sub picking up speed. “I’m going to call that first sub ‘Alpha,’“ he said.

“How military,” Dokey said.

“Alpha’s making nine knots, heading directly toward us.”

“Five-fifty yards to Alpha,” Thomas said.

Brande was a little surprised at how calmly Thomas was taking this. It may have been a residual effect of her harrowing experience after the collision, or it may have been her deep-seated anger over Svetlana’s death, or it may have been the result of her resolve, once the vote had been taken by the MVU employees. Whatever it was, he was proud of her, and he loved her all the more.

He even felt twinges of guilt at even considering a dalliance with Penny Glenn. Though he had just spoken to her, he now found it difficult to remember the details of what she looked like, or why he had found her so attractive.

He divided his attention between the robotic view and the smaller sonar shadow of Gargantua on the sonar. When the spread between them reached two hundred feet, he turned the ROV to parallel the course of the submersible, staying far out to the right.

He kept the robot as close to the seafloor as he dared. With any luck, the opposing sonars wouldn’t pick it up, or at least notice it, until it was too late.

“Making twelve knots,” Dokey said.

“Range to target, six hundred yards,” Thomas said. “Alpha is three-twenty out. The other sub, Beta, I guess you want to call it, is coming on strong, now. A bit over five hundred to Beta.”

On the sonar screen, the Alpha target closed on them quickly. Time seemed to go into hyper warp.

“Two-fifty,” Thomas said.

“You ready for this, Okey?”

“Better than ballroom dancing, Chief.”

When the Alpha sub passed under a hundred yards until closure, Dokey slammed the motors into reverse, bringing DepthFinder to a halt.

Brande abandoned the robot’s view and switched to the sonar. With the joysticks, he banked the ROV into a left turn and headed for the track of the Alpha sub, leading its forward progress by a wide margin. On the screen the intersection tracks looked perfect.

The pilot of the AquaGeo sub seemed surprised by their abrupt halt. After a few seconds, he reduced power to his own propellers.

Brande corrected the flight path of Gargantua to account for the now slower-moving sub.

Then the pilot became aware that he was being attacked from his left side.

He tried for altitude.

But Brande had him visually now, in the glaring eye of Gargantua.

And in the lower quadrant of that eye, the ROV’s arms were extended, reaching out for the alien submersible.

Brande quickly tried to determine a target, and just as quickly settled on the same one Dokey had used with the earlier sub.

He aimed the robot’s arm toward the portside propeller housing, and just before it touched, released the grip on the mine, then aimed Gargantua upward, sailing high over the submersible.

The sub was out of the camera view too soon. Brande didn’t see where the mine went, or if its magnet had been attracted to the housing.

“Nearing the end of my tether,” he called out.

“Going,” Dokey said, applying power so that the tether wouldn’t go taut on them.

“Turning starboard,” Brande said.

“Ditto,” Dokey said.

On the sonar, the ROV’s signal pulled away from the Alpha sub to the right, and DepthFinder followed.

The hostile pilot, not yet figuring out what had happened, seemed confused. He had slowed yet more, and he had turned to the left in his eagerness to dodge the robot.

“I think now,” Thomas said.

Dokey flipped the arming switch and hit the detonation button.

A couple seconds later, the dull thud reached the hull of the submersible.

“Worked,” Dokey said.

“But did we get him?”

“Look at the sonar,” Thomas said, “He’s going in a circle… now he’s stopped. We got something vital.”

“Damned sure he’s telling his pals about it,” Dokey said. “I’ll give you a million to one odds that these good old boys didn’t expect to run into boxes that go boom in the dark.”

Brande saw that the Beta sub had begun to slow abruptly.

The Beta sub turned completely around and headed back toward the station.

“Full speed,” Brande said.

“You’re still going to get there before I do.”

“Four hundred to target,” Thomas said.

The distance fell away rapidly.

“Floor crawler in our path,” Thomas said.

“What do you suppose the reach of that manipulator is, Okey?”

“With the crawler, maybe twenty feet of the seabed.”

“Go to forty feet.”

“Gone.”

The robot, leading by two hundred feet, and the submersible both rose higher to avoid the manipulator on the front of the floor crawler.

“Two hundred yard,” Thomas intoned.

“Beta’s been ordered to defend, at all costs,” Dokey said.

Brande glanced at the monitor. The sub had once again turned toward them.

“I wonder how brave they are?” he asked aloud, but the question was directed more to himself.

“I’m dropping number four,” he said, signaling Gargantua’s thumb to open.

“Five… four… three… two… one,” Dokey intoned, then added, “armed, blown.”

The thud of detonation sounded a moment later, and Brande worried about shrapnel from the blast — which hopefully had occurred on the seabed — severing the robot’s tether.

He wiggled the controls, and Gargantua responded immediately.

Brande had to force himself to not worry about power-usage. With the big ROV operating continuously, and despite his internal power supply, the battery drain on the submersible was substantial.

The Beta sub immediately turned off course. The opposition had no way of knowing how many bombs the robot carried. They probably thought they had just narrowly escaped death.

But Gargantua was now unarmed, though only in a manner of speaking. He still had his arms, and they were extremely powerful ones.

“Slow it down some, Okey.”

“Roger, Chief. Coming back to five knots.”

The robot was slow enough by the time the station came into its view that Brande had a chance to select his targets. He applied power to the forward up-thruster, and the robot raised his blunt nose, his video camera aiming upward toward the top of the sphere.

He steadied the flight.

Identified the sonar antenna, the acoustic antenna, and the winch that unreeled the surface antenna array.

“All stop,” he ordered.

“All stop,” Dokey echoed.

Slowing the robot to a crawl, Brande moved him in on the antennas, reached out, and found a grasp on the base of the sonar antenna. He ran in up-thrust, and the powerful motors surged, struggling with the anchoring point of the antenna. He rocked the right joystick back and forth, and the ROV responded, shifting left and right.

The antenna base snapped.

He dropped it, moved Gargantua slightly to the right, and gripped the acoustic antenna. If anything, the base broke more readily, but he had to back off six feet in order to snap the cable.

Using both manipulators, Brande grabbed the winch cable in two places, some eight inches apart. With Brande rocking the arms in opposing directions, it took less than thirty seconds to part the cable. When he released it, the cable leading from the surface immediately surged upward and out of sight.

“That was pretty good,” Dokey said with admiration. “Atlas couldn’t have done that.”

“That should make them feel isolated,” Brande said. “They’ve lost their ears and their sonar.”

“What about their eyes?” Dokey asked, pointing to the video camera on its rotatable tripod. It was now aimed at them.

“Let’s leave it.”

“Here comes Beta,” Thomas said.

“And away we go,” Dokey said.

The two of them went to full speed, headed directly west, and within five minutes, had outdistanced the pursuing submersible, which finally turned around and went back.

“Now the nuke plant?” Dokey asked.

That had been Thomas’s suggestion in their planning phase, and she said, “Now the nuclear plant.”

“Bridge, CIC.”

Harris moved to the intercom and pressed the button. “Bridge. Go.”

“We’ve detected two small detonations on the bottom. Type and strength are unknown.”

“Thank you.” Harris released the button and stood back.

He looked through the port wing window at the freighter and the maintenance ship that were holding position some two hundred yards away. The starboard crane of the maintenance vessel was lowering a gigantic seabed crawler to its well-lit deck. A dozen seamen swarmed around it.

“These guys work around the clock,” Commander Quicken noted.

“And force us to do the same, George.”

The California had been with the AquaGeo vessels for several hours now. Harris had mounted additional lookouts on his rain-swept decks, keeping an eye out for Brande’s submersible. His best sonar men were manning the warship’s sonars, told to look and listen for anything in the world that sounded suspicious. Even whale contacts had been reported, and there had been three of them.

He didn’t really think that Brande would attack the surface ships, but he also didn’t really know what to expect from the marine scientist.

“Two explosions,” Quicken said.

“Yes. I don’t imagine there’s been an accident, do you, George.”

“I doubt it, sir. Where the hell would Brande get explosives?”

“Maybe it’s AquaGeo’s people. They’ll have mining supplies.”

“I hope they didn’t get Brande.”

“Me, too, George. But I’ve got to report this to CINCPAC and Washington, and they may be hoping for the other outcome.”

“There went the first two,” Otsuka said.

She typed in “X”‘s next to the items on her checklist. As with all of MVU’s expeditions, they had set up a planning checklist, and she had been eyeing it on the monitor for quite some time.

“They’re about an hour ahead of my predictions,” Emry said. “I must be getting old.”

“Nonsense, Larry. Your mind’s just on Tahiti.”

“Not on Tahiti, Kim. On those grass skirts.”

“Quite, please,” Bob Mayberry said, “I’m trying to hear.”

Mayberry was at the command console, a headset in place.

After a few minutes, he said, “There it is. Codeword ‘Cranapple.’ Phase one complete, everyone’s in one piece.”

Otsuka felt a little bit better about her numbering system on the mines. Or maybe they hadn’t selected nine or nineteen yet.

She wanted to go on the acoustic and talk to Dokey about it, but Mayberry and Emry would think she was worrying needlessly.

“Go ahead and give ‘em a try, Bob,” Emry said.

Mayberry tried the UHF and HF radios, then several frequencies on the acoustic, asking for AquaGeo’s sea station AG-4, but he got no reply.

“Either they aren’t answering, or they’re off the air,” Emry said.

“Let’s hope it’s the second option, Larry,” Mayberry said.

“I want to talk to DepthFinder,” she said abruptly.

Emry and Mayberry exchanged a knowing look.

“Worried about your boyfriend?” Emry asked.

“I need to talk to him.”

Mayberry shrugged. “Fifty-fifty chance the station will never hear us, though the vehicles are probably still receiving.”

“Go ahead, Kim,” Emry said.

She leaned over and grabbed the mike, then depressed the transmit stud. “Okey?”

A few seconds went by before he replied, “Kim?”

“Don’t use six, nine, sixteen, or nineteen.”

“Got ya, babe.”

Paul Deride felt steel bands clutching his heart, slowly squeezing it. The sweating dampness of the interior was stifling him. His forehead felt as if it were caressed by frozen ice one moment, burning heat the next.

He and Penny Glenn, along with Bert Conroy and the four others currently aboard the station had watched in almost rapt fascination as Brande’s submersible ripped out their communications and sonar antennas.

A panicky Conroy had grabbed the controls of the overhead video camera and kept it trained on the robot — Gargantua, as Deride had recognized it — while the remote-controlled machine destroyed the antennas.

Several attempts had failed to produce any contact with the surface ships or with the subsea vehicles. He had tried to phone Anthony Camden to tell him to get the Navy, get somebody, in here to stop Brande.

Almost unbelievably, Deride had found himself unable to talk to his trusted advisor, to reach out to the world.

The station had closed in on him immediately.

He was pacing in a continuous circle around the work table in the center of the control room.

Trying to keep his voice level, Deride said, “All right, give that one to Brande. Penny, get the subs in here to take us off.”

“We can’t talk to them, Uncle Paul.”

“Use the goddamned floodlights. Blink Morse code at them, for Christ’s sake!”

Conroy appeared immediately relieved at that suggestion, as did the others milling around in the room

“It would depend on whether they’re close enough to see the lights,” she said.

The relief on Conroy’s face was short-lived.

“Besides,” she went on, “you heard Gary Munro before we lost the acoustic. Sydney’s out of the picture. She’s lost all propulsion, and he’s dropped weights. She’s already on her way to the surface.”

“Son of a bitch!” Deride yelped.

He thought he was yelping. He couldn’t help it.

“It’ll be all right, Uncle Paul. Brande’s just trying to scare us, and damn it, I won’t be scared off.”

“Fine, Penny, that’s just fine. You all can stay here. In the meantime, get that other sub in here. I’m going to the Outer Islands Lady so I can use a bloody damned telephone. I’ll have Anthony screaming so loudly at them, the whole bloody damned world will hear.”

“Bert,” she said, “blink the exterior lights and see if you can catch the attention of someone on the Brisbane.”

Conroy went to do that, and Deride felt better. He decided right then that, after he reached the surface, he was never again leaving it.

Jesus. These calls always came in the early morning.

Unruh had planned to sleep in, something he hadn’t done in months, but Ben Delecourt got him out of bed.

“The California says what, Ben?”

“They think there’s maybe a mini-war taking place on the bottom, Carl. Harris talked to the captain of the Outer Islands Lady, but the captain says he can’t reach the station on the seabed. Captain Harris is a little miffed at us. CINCPAC forgot to tell him there was a habitat on the bottom. Harris also tried the Orion, but somebody named Alvarez-Sorenson told him that communication with the submersible was sporadic. Also, Harris has requested permission from the Joint Chiefs to seize the Orion.”

“Whatever for?” Unruh asked.

“Violation of the injunction.”

“Is that legal?”

“Hell, who knows? I’ve got the Navy legal department looking into it, but the first question the guy asked me was, ‘did the Orion, or did the Depthfinder make the violation?’ He thinks we could seize the sub, but not the research vessel. Only we can’t find the damned sub.”

“Let’s get back to this mini-war of yours, Admiral. What’s that about?”

“California has heard explosions. They think someone is attacking someone else.”

“All those billions we’ve spent on satellites and high-tech intelligence gathering don’t seem to add up to much, do they, Ben?”

“Carl, we’d better get the task force together, and damned fast.”

“What will we ask them to do, Ben? And, better yet, what will they do?”

Delecourt thought about that for a second, then said, “Go back to bed, Carl.”

The Orion had startled him when she heeled to the right and added power. By the time Overton voiced his observation, Mark Jacobs had already replaced Mickey Freelander at the helm and shoved his throttles in.

Behind them, in a dismal gray night and high waves, eight boats of varying description fell into line and picked up speed. Behind the research vessel, the white and yellow tugboat was struggling to keep up.

“Where in hell do you suppose she’s headed, Mark?”

Jacobs shook his head. “As a guess, I’d think they’re about to recover their submersible again.”

“Well, damn it! This time, Brande’s going to tell me what he’s been up to.”

“Good luck, Wilson.”

Overton grabbed their coffee mugs and took the ladder down to the salon.

Freelander was there, frying himself an egg.

In the back corner, the fax machine was chattering, so Overton went to check on it.

It was directed to him, from Ned Nelson, and he read it as it came off the machine. When he could rip the page off, he refilled the mugs and carried them back upstairs.

Excuse me. Topsides.

When he handed Jabobs his mug, the Greenpeace leader said, “What do you have there?”

“Bios on the execs at AquaGeo.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not much on first reading, except for the Glenn woman.”

“Who’s she?”

“A geologist and, according to this, the heir apparent of the corporation. Hold on.”

Overton read through Glenn’s report a second time.

“This is kind of strange, Mark.”

Jacobs rode the slight bounce of the helmsman’s chair and just looked at him.

“Glenn’s more-or-less an adopted daughter of Deride. He put her through some good schools, took care of her from age twelve on. Made her a honcho in his company, and according to rumor, pays her millions.”

“The man may have the hots for her, Wilson. Nothing strange about that.”

“Yeah, but back in ‘71, it was Deride that aced her parents out of their mining company. Practically stole it from them, and made his first million with it.”

“What happened to the parents?” Jacobs asked.

“They died. Double-suicide, it says here.”

They rested on the bottom for nearly an hour, not only to relax themselves, but to hopefully build anxiety and fearful anticipation in their foes. The Beta sub passed close to them a couple times, but didn’t locate them.

“According to my trusty checklist,” Dokey said, “it’s time to go.”

“Let’s go, then,” Brande said.

He hadn’t relaxed much. He was keyed up, eager to get it over with, and that wasn’t good. That was when mistakes happened.

Rae Thomas had actually slept for forty minutes.

Dokey had eaten two of his meals. No doubt, he’d be bargaining with Brande and Thomas later for the eating rights to their desserts.

“This one’s on the floor bed,” Thomas reminded them. “That will mean the floor crawlers will have a chance at us, depending on where they are.”

As the submersible and Gargantua rose from their parking places and Dokey switched the sonar on, he said, “These guys strike me as dummies. They won’t know what we’re after.”

However, once they were within a thousand yards of their target, Dokey changed his mind.

“Damn. Two crawlers, friends. The bastards knew we were coming.