Splashdown

Chapter 10

Dane roved around a tall stalk-like life form growing out of the bottom and lined up his compass course toward the capsule.

“Streib said something about the Russians,” Dane said.

“Look, Maddock, I’m not sure yet, okay? It was only there for a second, and up a few thousand feet higher, too. I’m trying to remember all those signatures they showed us in training…” Bones rubbed his temples as if to coax the memories to the forefront of his mind. “It could have been a giant sea creature, an oarfish, maybe?” he hoped aloud.

“Don’t worry about it for now. Whatever it was, you said it’s up higher. I’ll boost our speed a little so we get there faster. Let’s do this thing.” Dane put the submersible’s thrusters on high and their craft accelerated over the deep mud flats.

Bones kept his eyes glued to the sonar monitor while they traversed the distance to the spacecraft, but the next thing to show up on his display was Liberty Bell 7.

“Capsule up ahead on the right,” seventy-five yards,” Bones said.

Soon they saw the looming form of the space capsule. Dane and Bones kept a sharp eye out for ROVs but for the moment, at least, they were alone.

“You know the drill,” Dane said. Bones began testing the manipulator arm he would use to grab the nuclear bomb while Dane maneuvered the sub next to the tilted capsule.

“It’s all good, ready when you are,” he said, flexing his fingers in preparation for the precision movements he would need to perform.

“Copy that, moving in.” Dane repeated the maneuvering he’d done on their first trip to the capsule, and in a few minutes he had the sub hovering once again over Liberty Bell 7’s open hatch.

Bones aimed the external spotlight into the sunken space relic, probing for the bomb. The sub lurched and they almost knocked into the capsule, but Dane corrected for the movement with a quick burst of reverse thrust.

Bones looked his way. “What’s up?”

“Sorry, got caught in some kind of downwelling. Weird. It’s been totally calm down here until now.”

Bones turned back to the window, peering inside the capsule. For one heart-stopping moment he thought the nuclear device was no longer there, but then he spotted the cylindrical form.

“There it is! It’s to our lower left.” He pointed. “I’ll need to come in from higher and to the right.”

Dane positioned the craft accordingly and Bones aimed his light again.

“Better?”

“Good as it gets,” Bones said, already priming the grab arm. “I’m going in.”

Dane kept his hands poised and ready over the sub’s controls, giving brief bursts of thrust every few seconds in order to maintain position.

They heard the mechanical whirring of the specially outfitted manipulator arm as Bones extended it into the downed spaceship. Dane could hear the Cherokee SEAL mumbling unintelligibly as he concentrated on dropping the claws around their prize. Then he heard Bones curse, mumble some more, followed by, “Got it! Do not move the sub!”

Dane complied while Bones withdrew the arm until the nuke was clutched in front of the open hatch. There, he turned the arm to orient the nuke so that it would fit through the opening. He retracted the grab arm.

“It’s out!”

“Do you drop it in a sample box or keep it in the grabber?”

“Box. In case we lose momentary power to the arm and the grabber releases. And so no one can see it when we surface.”

“I’ll hold position while you park the car in the garage.”

Bones opened the sample bay on the outside of the sub. He had just started moving the manipulator arm toward the box when they saw lights from above.

“Bones, is that your spotlight?”

Bones did not look up from his controls. “Negative.”

“Then we’ve got company again. Looks like Streib lied to us. When I get hold of him this time, I'm…”

Suddenly the light shining on the seafloor next to the sub began strobing, lending a surreal quality to this underwater world, as if Dane was watching a very old silent film. He squinted against the flashes.

Bones shielded his eyes with the hand not on the controls. “Deep sea disco time.”

“That strobe is disorienting. I need to go before I knock into the capsule. You got the nuke?”

Bones pressed a button with a flourish. They heard the sample bay door click into place. “We got it, man!”

“Say goodbye to Liberty Bell 7.” Dane pulled the joystick all the way back and the sub pointed toward the distant surface. He activated the thrusters and Deep Black shot upward.

“Watch out!” Bones warned. But it was too late.

The impact was sickening— a jarring crunch to the top of their acrylic dome — the only thing separating them from the bone-crushing pressures of the deep ocean.

“What is that?” Dane yelled. But as he craned his neck to look up, he had his answer before Bones said, “Submersible.”

Dane executed a downward thrust maneuver that should have sent the sub skittering back to the bottom. But instead he only heard the grinding of metal on metal. He tried the controls again to no avail. So focused was he on this effort that he almost didn’t register the meaning of what Bones had said.

“Did you say submersible? Not ROV?”

“Yeah! I’m looking up at a mini-sub with two dudes in it! One of them has got us snagged in his grab arm.”

“Is it Streib?” Dane’s fist clenched as he suddenly imagined breaking Streib’s jaw.

“Nope. Never seen ‘em before. White dudes, military haircuts. And they look pissed off.”

Dane again tried a combination of control jockeying that turned out to be futile. “Damn! No good.”

“Maybe someone is after this nuke after all,” Bones said, still looking up at the undersea craft they grappled with. “The capsule’s down there, free for the taking. But they want us.”

“Do you think they saw you grab the nuke and put it into the hold?”

“No way. I’m sure it was in before they got close enough.” Bones suddenly snickered, reading some perversity into the words.

Dane scowled. “Let’s get back to our boat and then we’ll pay a little visit to Streib’s ship.”

Bones looked up at the sub, now deploying a second grab arm onto Deep Black ’s metal framework. “Uh, sure, there’s only a couple of tons of submersible Transformer standing in our way. Maybe if you said ‘Simon Says?’”

“What about our missiles?”

“We’d blow ourselves up right along with them because they’d detonate so close to us. I was hoping this mission would be a blast, but not that much of a blast. So now what? They’re pushing us back down.”

Dane consulted their depth meter and saw that Bones was right. Slowly but certainly, they were being forced back to the bottom.

“Point the spotlight up at them, at least. Make it harder for them to see us.”

Bones aimed the powerful halogen straight up into the cockpit of the marauding mini-sub. He saw the pilot reflexively shield his eyes with a hand.

“Check out the look on his face!” Bones exclaimed. “It’s like when a chick sees you naked for the first time.”

“Get serious for a half a second, will you?”

“Don’t sweat it. I’m a multitasker.”

“Whatever. Maybe we can make radio contact?” Dane knew that undersea radio communication from sub-to-sub was tricky business, and judging by the look on Bones’ face, he did as well.

“Might as well give it a shot. If they’re transmitting to their support ship we might be able to hear that, too.”

Dane attempted to extricate their craft from the newcomer’s claws while Bones scanned available radio frequencies. They were hearing a lot of static and squelch noise until suddenly, human voices erupted in the cabin.

Dane looked up from his controls.

“That’s not English,” Bones said.

They heard more of the chatter, one of the parties sounding far away, one loud and clear. “…nyet…”

“Russian.” Dane’s stomach did a flip-flop. The mission was in a serious downward spiral at the moment.

“Talking to their support ship.” Bones adjusted the radio controls. “Should I break in?”

“How’s your Russian?”

“Uh, vodka, Stolichnaya, Kournikova — she’s pretty hot, you know, um…”

“Okay, okay.”

“I could try some Cherokee on them. I could accuse them of having marital relations with goats. My cousin’s father in-law…”

“Just ask them in English what the hell they want.”

Bones picked up the transmitter while the two locked subs continued to drift towards the bottom.

“Russian submersible: this is submersible Deep Black. Seems we’ve had a little fender bender. Please state your intentions, over.”

Bones looked over at Dane, who nodded. “Good work. Keep it diplomatic if we can. Three miles underwater is no place for a fight.”

“Especially holding onto an old A-bomb.”

The radio reply that came commanded their attention, as much for the fact that it was in English as for the actual words.

“Transfer the bomb to us and we let you go.”