Splashdown

Chapter 11

Dane and Bones sat in stunned silence, processing the words they’d just heard while the two submersibles landed on the seafloor next to the space capsule. A cloud of silt billowed up around them.

“Tell them we don’t know what they’re talking about,” Dane said. How did the Russians know about the bomb?

Bones picked up the radio transmitter and conveyed the message.

The response that came was English with a clipped Russian accent.

“Our radiation detection equipment shows that you have the bomb aboard your craft. Do not lie. Pass it to us and we will go our separate ways.”

“Any luck breaking free from Hercules, here?” Bones asked, looking over at Dane, whose hands flew over the controls, trying different tactics, apparently none of them working.

“No. I can’t see crap now,” Dane said.

“At least they can’t either.”

“That could be a good thing!”

“What do you mean?”

Dane looked outside at the swirling maelstrom of suspended mud particles. “I think we try the old hidden ball trick.”

Bones glanced outside the sub at the sample collection bay where the explosive device sat. “Say what?”

“The hidden ball trick. Remember my old coach, Marco Cosenza? He taught it to me in Little League. It’s basically the old bait and switch.”

“Oh, yeah. What are you thinking?”

“You said those rocks we picked up from the treasure wreck gave off a radiation signature almost as strong as the nuke.”

“Almost as strong as the sexuality I exude around the ladies.” Bones smiled.

“So we drop the rocks here and they’ll detect the radioactive reading from them on the bottom. Meanwhile we still have the nuke onboard.”

“But that gives off a signature, too.”

“They have no reason to suspect we’re holding on to anything radioactive other than the bomb,” Dane said. “I think if we just tell them okay, we dropped it, they’ll do a reading aimed at the bottom and when they see it’s positive they’ll go to grab it. They’ll have to release us in order to do that, and that’s when we split for topside.”

“I like it!”

“Better hurry. It's just our luck that there's a current running through here and I can already see the visibility beginning to clear.” Outside, the black water was still a kaleidoscope of swirling particles and reflected light, but there were now pockets of clarity. Bones set to work opening the sample bay that held the rocks recovered from the shipwreck. They heard the electronic hum of the bay door sliding open.

“What if they hear that?” Bones worried.

“I’ll mask it with lots of servo motoring and thruster application so they just think it’s from our efforts to free ourselves,” Dane said, hands throwing switches on the control board.

Bones went back to work. “Dumping,” he said, peering into the black veil outside. He could just barely make out the sample bay where the rocks were.

“Hurry. It’s clearing fast. If they see us messing with the bays they’ll know we’re up to something.”

“Rocks are dumped. Bringing the bay back level…”

The radio boomed with the Russian voice. “Do not waste your battery power trying to free yourselves. Give us the device and be on your way.”

“C’mon, Bones.” Dane hit the thrusters some more.

“Closing bay door…It’s shut! Bomb is in our hold, rocks on the bottom next to the capsule.”

“Take a Geiger counter reading on the bottom to make sure it worked.”

Bones pointed the radioactivity instrument’s sensor where the rocks should be on the bottom. He consulted a display. “Yeah, nice and hot.”

Dane picked up the radio transmitter and spoke into it: “Roger that, Russian submersible. We don’t want any trouble. We have dropped the device, whatever it is, onto the seafloor next to the capsule, over.”

The Russian accented transmission in response was immediate. “We will remain engaged while we confirm your statement.”

“I usually make a guy buy me a drink before I let him hold me this tight,” Bones said.

Dane heard a small sound from the Russian sub that might have been a grunt of laughter.

A tense minute passed in the sub while they waited for an indication that their ruse had worked. Looking through the acrylic dome, Bones could now see the grab arms and payload bays, and was relieved to see the door concealing the nuke snugly shut.

“I don’t know,” Dane said. “They’ve had enough time to take a reading by now. Maybe we should ask them what’s up.”

And then they heard the faint mechanical whirring of their captors’ manipulator arms just before their radio crackled with the Russian’s voice.

“You have been released. Leave the site immediately and do not return.” They felt Deep Black list to the right as it was ejected from the Russian sub’s grab arms.

“Let’s do this thing!” Bones shouted, but Dane needed no encouragement. He already had them off the bottom and ascending at an angle away from the submersible. In his haste to leave, his path took them closer than was comfortable to the space capsule. Bones’ eyes widened as the words LIBERTY BELL 7 filled their bubble view, and then they were clear, passing over the capsule and flying through the blackness.

“Yes!” Bones whooped.

“I can’t remember when I’ve seen you this happy outside of a Hooters restaurant,” Dane said, aiming their little craft upward while keeping one eye on the dashboard’s instrumentation.

“We’ve got the bomb and they’re stuck with those freaking rocks! I wish I could see their faces when…”

Bones’ celebration was short-lived as he caught a shadow on his sonar readout in the corner of his eye.

“What is it?”

“I’ve got another sonar reading.”

“Sub chasing us?”

Bones stared more intently at the display. “No…I don’t think so. Because this reading is… above us.”

Dane took a deep breath as he leveled out the sub, maintaining a constant depth. He leaned over to look at the sonar display. “That’s a big signature, isn’t it?”

“Huge.” And then Bones’ face twisted into a mask of concerned recognition.

“What is it?”

“I just remembered what this sig is from sonar school.”

Dane stared transfixed at the elongated, fuzzy blob on the little screen. “And?”

“It’s some kind of Russian naval submarine. Like Streib was saying. Not mini-sub, but full-on, nuclear-powered, bring-war-to-your-doorstep, don’t-pass-go-don’t collect-two-hundred-dollars Russian Navy submarine, probably Typhoon class.” Dane was speechless, so Bones continued. “Underwater cruising speed of twenty-seven miles per hour. Can stay submerged for up to four freakin’ months.”

“Great,” Dane managed. “Anything else?”

“Outfitted with hundreds of nuclear warheads.”

The confines of the chilly submersible with its dry, recycled air and complex array of fragile life support systems suddenly verged on the claustrophobic for Dane, but he relied on his SEAL training to call up reserves up endurance that the average person didn’t know they could access. He’d been in sticky situations before.

“Let’s just go up and around it, giving it a wide berth, and get back to the ship. They have what they want, or at least they think they do.” He hoped the Russians didn’t learn the truth before he and Bones were safely away.

“It’s about 3,000 feet almost directly above us.”

“I’ll take us up at an angle so we go wide past it.” He knew this was a temporary measure at best. If the Russians really wanted the bomb, they wouldn’t give up the pursuit, and Atlantic Pride would afford them no refuge against a nuclear submarine. One problem at a time, he told himself.

Dane put the sub to full throttle and they ascended. After fifteen minutes he was starting to relax a bit when Bones pointed at the sonar display. “Multiple bogies! We have a contact right below us now, too.”

Dane grimaced.”How’d they sneak up on us?”

Bones shook his head. “Must be using some sort of sonar masking technology. Never seen it before on a submersible. They’re used mostly for research and salvage, so almost always the operators want to be found by sonar.”

Dane looked between his feet and was mortified to see the Russian mini-sub rocketing toward them. “I’ve got a visual. It’s coming up fast, below and behind us.”

“Just like a shark,” Bones muttered.

“Which makes us the minnows.” Dane gritted his teeth and focused on the task at hand.

“How about we send a missile their way? I’m in the mood to blow some crap up.”

“What’s the point? With the mothership right up there, it could take us out anytime they wanted like swatting a fly.”

Bones cursed. “So we just let them ram us? Damn, bro, that thing is fast.”

A flood of light invaded their cabin and Dane tensed. “Brace yourself!”

For the second time on this dive they felt a jarring impact as the Russian submersible slammed into Deep Black. Bones picked up the radio transmitter.

“Now what?”

The action of metal claws grating on their sub’s undercarriage vibrated beneath them.

The Russians responded. “You tricked us with rocks. They must be uranium or plutonium ore. We do not know where they came from, but it is of no matter. The device is still on your craft. Our radioactivity readings confirm it.”

“It’s just more of the rocks. That’s all we have,” Bones replied.

“We must examine your craft to see if what you say is true.”

Bones looked over at Dane, who was fighting the sub’s controls. “What is this, some kind of deep sea traffic stop?”

Dane shook his head. “Somehow I don’t think they’re going to write us a ticket and let us go. They’re dragging us up now. Toward the submarine.”

Dane applied their thrusters full force in the opposite direction from where the sub was pulling them but still their upward progress was inexorable.

Bones looked up through the dome, aiming the spotlight. “I see it! It’s massive, man. They’re…” He looked incredulously at the dark torpedo shape menacing above.

“They’re what?” Dane never lifted his eyes from the control panel as he sought a piloting solution to their woes.

“They’re opening a moon pool door in the hull! They’re going to take us aboard.”