Splashdown

Chapter 20

Dane tried not to let the headache interfere with his focus. But as the oxygen levels in the sub dropped and carbon dioxide increased, he was all too well aware that the throbbing pain in his temples was going to get worse before it got better. He looked over and saw Bones glance at the depth meter before closing his eyes and rubbing his temples.

“One thousand meters…” he announced without enthusiasm.

“Just about a half mile to go,” Dane said. “We’ll make it.” He tried to sound confident. At least he took comfort in the fact that the water outside their protective sphere was now only black as opposed to pitch black. And looking up, he was pretty sure he could see some gray. Their rate of ascent was increasing, too, although that also meant less control over the sub’s trajectory.

“Vertical thrusters on high,” he informed Bones. Eyeing the compass, he kept the submersible pointed in the direction of their trawler.

Bones glanced at their sonar, which thankfully showed an empty screen. The Russian sub was not yet in pursuit. He knew that a missile could show itself on the monitor, though, for a few seconds before it slammed into them, ending their existence in a single muffled implosion. He was about to voice this concern to Dane when the comforting hum of the sub’s thruster motors stopped. Silence. The cabin lights and instrument displays flickered for a moment, then came back on.

“We lost main battery power,” Dane said, almost panting now. “Reserve kicked on but it’s only got enough juice to run the oh-two pumps and the cabin lights.”

Bones studied their depth gauge. “We’re still rising. 500 meters. I can see light up there,” he said, plastering his face to the acrylic dome while he gazed toward the distant sky.

And then the cabin lights blinked out.

Dane and Bones looked around in the near darkness. The constellation of LEDs and various indicator lights that normally lit up the inside of the sub had been extinguished. Bones waved his hand in front of his face and could barely discern it. Most worrisome of all, their rate of ascent had begun to slow.

“Are we sinking?” Bones voiced their worst fear: plummeting back into the abyss as helpless as a stone, where they would suffocate on the bottom in their acrylic tomb. “No more depth gauge readout.”

Dane stared in vain out through the sub’s spherical window. With no reference points to look at, he couldn’t tell if they were rising, falling, or maintaining position. “Can’t say. I can dump the rest of our ballast, though.”

“Do it.”

It was the closest thing to fear in Bones’ voice that Dane had ever heard. Glad for the fact that the ballast dump was a mechanical system and therefore not dependent upon battery power, he pulled a lever that opened a flap in the buoyancy tubes, releasing hundreds of pounds of lead shot. “There they go.”

“Hopefully they land on Ivkin’s submarine down there,” Bones said. In spite of the situation, Dane laughed. “Clog up the missile tubes, right?”

Bones started to laugh then forced himself to quit. “Stop it, man. We don’t have the air for that.”

They could only stare outside their bubble and wait. After a couple of minutes their eyes had adjusted to the low light conditions, and it soon became clear that they were in fact still rising.

“Getting lighter,” Bones rasped. He craned his neck to look upward, where he saw only a dimensionless, whitish haze.

Dane reached down toward the floor of the cabin. “No mechanical override for the rudder’s joystick. We’re going straight up, which means we’ll probably come up short of the boat.”

“I don’t care where we come up,” Bones gasped, “as long as we come up.”

Dane did not want to vocalize his thoughts. Looking up, he could see that it was definitely getting lighter, but they were perilously close to going unconscious. Peering out the dome, his heart spiked with hope as he saw a school of silver fish dart overhead, their white bellies flashing as they turned. They had left the deep sea zone behind and entered the upper layers of the ocean, the realm where scuba divers could venture.

“I see fish, Bones. Hang in there.” But he heard no response from his fellow SEAL. Bones kept nodding off.

“Bones! Don’t go to sleep, buddy, c’mon!” He gave him a shove.

“Huh…what?”

“Wake up, man! Dane’s voice was at a near whisper. “Almost there.” He pointed up.

Bones supported his head against the cabin dome. Dane’s urge for oxygen was painful now, and he entertained thoughts of throwing the dome hatch open and making a mad dash swim for the surface. Deep down he knew that even if he wanted to try that — or needed to, if the sub began to sink instead of rise — that the water pressure even at shallow depths would prevent them from pushing it open while underwater.

Minutes passed in a haze of shallow breathing. Dane’s headache made it difficult to think straight and Bones hadn’t said anything in a while. He occupied himself by trying to start the dashboard controls; he knew that sometimes batteries would build up a reserve charge after they rested, but now he was having no luck. Then he gazed up through the dome, and there it was.

The surface!

The shimmering underside of the waves sparkled and danced above their rising sub.

“Bones. Bones! Get ready.”

“What?” he whispered without moving.

“One hundred feet! Let’s get ready to crack this hatch as soon as we surface.” The Indian SEAL remained motionless.

Dane saw a sea turtle fly by their window and he could tell that their little sub was moving fast. “Hold on, Bones. We’re gonna pop on out like a champagne cork and splash back down.”

He moved his friend’s hand to a handhold and was relieved to feel Bones grip down on it. He could see his face now and was reassured by the fact that his eyes were open.

Another quick glance at the surface told Dane that they were maybe fifty feet away and closing at some scary feet-per-second rate that would have made their sub instructors furious.

He did not have the breath to put air behind it, but he mouthed the words, “Here we go…”

The Russian mini-sub burst through the sea surface into the realm of sunlight and air. The world was a chaotic swirl of blue sky, water, and a ball of sun. Dane saw the form of their trawler perhaps fifty yards from them, bobbing serenely on the surface.

Unbelievably to Dane, Bones instantly scrambled to life and went for the latch that would open the hatch and deliver them sweet air.

“Wait!” Dane rasped, but it was too late. Bones could no more be stopped from opening that hatch even though their sub was now airborne than a starving dog could restrain itself from gobbling down a bloody steak dropped in front of its nose. Bones leaned over the seat and Dane heard a clicking noise. Immediately he felt the rush of cool air.

Then the sub reached the apex of its airborne arc and began to fall back to the ocean. It canted over and splashed down on Dane’s side, drenching him with water as the sea invaded their cockpit. They’d landed almost upside-down and with the hatch open. Dane knew from his training that usually this type of situation was the result of a botched sub launch. But regardless of the cause, he was all too aware that it was a potentially deadly position that he had been trained to avoid at all costs.

His feet sloshed in water as he turned to Bones. “We gotta get out. Now!” Bones made a move to grip the edge of the sub and nearly lost the fingers of his right hand when the dome hatch came slamming back down under the force of the water currents. He withdrew his hand just in time. Then the hatch opened again, closing and opening like an angry clam as they drifted.

Dane didn’t see how they would escape without injury. But the water was up to his waist now, so he was preparing to take his chances when suddenly Bones reached down to the cabin floor.

“Bones, you okay?”

He could see the strain on Bones’ face, and then the nuke appeared in his lap as he lifted its weight from the floor. “Help me,” he said, hefting the bomb up toward the rim of the sub’s cabin. Dane moved over to the co-pilot’s seat and together they wrangled the heavy device onto the edge of the cabin such that it prevented the hatch from closing all the way.

Water swirled about their shoulders.

“Go, Bones. Slip through!”

Bones stared wide-eyed for a second at the hazardous cylinder propping the flapping dome open, then squirmed out through the slim space into the ocean. Once through, he treaded water, holding the bomb in position while Dane squirmed through after him.

Dane looked around. The TV expedition’s Ocean Explorer was in the same spot, looking busy with their salvage operation. Much closer by was their trawler. He saw no other activity. Their mini-sub was rapidly filling with water and would soon sink back into the depths from whence it came. Dane knew that even in their weakened condition, he and Bones would be able to make the swim back to their boat. Their BUDS school experiences had seen to that. That wasn’t the problem.

He eyed the nuke, still wedged in between the sub’s frame and the dome hatch. It was far too heavy for even both of them to tread water with. The thought of losing it now after all they had been through nearly made him sick.

“Bones. We need to get the bomb.”