Ultra Deep

Chapter Nine

Avery Hampstead was awakened by the night-duty officer’s banging on the door to his borrowed room in the bachelor officers’ quarters.

“Cut it out, goddamn it!”

“Sorry, sir. You’re wanted at the operations center immediately.”

Hampstead sighed. “Coming, coming.”

His schedule of sleep, normally cut-and-dried, had been so disrupted in the past days that, in addition to the time-zone slippage from Washington, his body did not know whether it was up or down, or should be up or down.

He crawled out of the narrow bed and stood naked on the carpet. The window was open, and a stiff, cool breeze puckered his skin.

Not having planned this trip to paradise, Hampstead had arrived without luggage. Admiral Potter’s aide had gone to the base exchange and purchased toiletries, underwear, and white cotton shirts for him. He noted a few wrinkles in his suit pants as he pulled them on, and he was getting damned tired of the striped maroon tie.

Crossing to the attached bathroom, he checked his face in the mirror. He could not remember when he had last shaved, but apparently just before he had crashed into bed. He decided to let it go.

He tied his tie leaving the room, walked the short corridor to the front door, and let himself out into the night. He felt like he was sneaking out of his frat house.

The three-block walk to the operations center was pleasant. The breeze caused the fronds of the palm trees to rustle. The grass bordering the concrete sidewalk had been recently mowed, and the aroma took him back a couple decades. The scent of exotic flowers — frangipani? Hibiscus? — was also riding the zepher.

Inside the operations center, not much had changed since he had left four hours before. Commander Evans was back as the watch commander. Admiral Potter was gone, properly abed, Hampstead assumed.

Four of the nuclear experts who had arrived late yesterday afternoon were drawn into a tight circle at a small table stuck out of the way in one corner. They all appeared sober and serious. Harlan Ackerman, a stocky, unkempt man with wire-rimmed glasses, shaggy beige hair, and sagging jowls, was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission representative, and he seemed to be dominating the conversation.

Hampstead took a quick look at the plotting board which seemed to be moving in slow motion then crossed the room to where Commander Evans was talking to a technician.

As soon as Evans saw him, he broke off his dialogue with the technician.

“Mr. Hampstead, thank you for coming over.”

“What’s up, Commander?”

“We’ve had a bit of a fracas, sir. Over in the area of operations.”

“Fracas?”

“A CIS sub — probably the Winter Storm — surfaced, and several civilian boats tried to ram it.”

“Jesus!” Hampstead thought Evans’s “bit of a fracas” was very British. “Did they succeed?”

“We’ve been trying to straighten out the reports, all of which we’ve picked up from civilian radio transmissions on marine frequencies. The aerial surveillance was dropped as soon as night fell, and our ships patrolling the region were some distance away.”

Hampstead waited, patiently, he thought.

“The sub surfaced sometime after eight o’clock … ”

“Last night!”

“Yes, sir. Eight-twenty, our time, from what we can learn. At that time, an excursion boat and a trawler apparently attempted to ram her. We don’t think they were successful, though several passengers on the excursion boat claim to have felt hull contact.”

“Did they know who they were after, Commander?”

“I believe so, sir. The sub showed her lights. Several witnesses saw a red star on the sail.”

“You’ve notified the CNO?”

“Yes, sir, we have. But … this operation is a bit … chaotic. I don’t know what civilian agencies are involved, or are supposed to be involved, and I thought you’d better be informed.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

Hampstead turned back to the large conference table, plopped in a cushioned and castered chair, and picked up one of the telephones available. He told the operator to connect him with the Situation Room at the White House.

A few minutes passed before Unruh picked up on the other end.

“Avery?”

“Yes, Carl.”

“I was in the little boys’ room.”

“It’s allowed. Did you get the information on the CIS sub?”

“Yes. It was channeled here from the Pentagon. I think people are getting very scared, Avery.”

“So what’s happening?”

Unruh coughed. “What else? Committees. The State people are preparing alternative responses in case the CIS lodges a complaint. The Navy is trying to determine what ships were aggressive and whether or not the submarine was heavily damaged. Bob Balcon has asked a bunch of marine legal experts whether or not we could send in some battlewagons and clear out the area. I expect that opinion to come down any month now.”

“Aside from all of that crap,” Hampstead said, “we now know the Russians are on-site.”

“True. The CNO has sent out cautionary messages to ship commanders.”

“Is there any way we can monitor their progress? The Russians?” Hampstead asked.

“As of ten minutes ago, a decision had been reached to sow the area with sonobuoys, probably right after dawn. I don’t know if that decision will hold.”

Sonobuoys dropped from helicopters or aircraft were remote sonars, transmitting their findings to shipboard or aircraft receivers where computers kept track of the readings.

“We might be able to determine their search patterns Hampstead said. “That would help our subs when they reach the area.”

“Maybe. And maybe that reactor is too far down for the subs.”

“I’m inclined to agree with that position,” Hampstead said. “Do the Russians have more than one submarine on the scene?”

“Not that we know about yet. But if they don’t, I’d bet there’s more on the way.”

“No bet.”

“How about the nuclear people? They get there?”

“Yes. Yesterday afternoon.”

“Any insights?”

“None that I saw or heard when I met and talked to them,” Hampstead told him. He shifted his position at the table so he could see the confab in the corner. “They look very serious, though.”

“We might have some additional help for them in a little while.”

“What kind of help?”

“Some…assets inside Plesetsk have gotten a message out to the effect that there’s a computer-modeling program being run on the results of smashing a Topaz nuclear reactor into the ocean.”

“Damn. Details?”

“None yet. We’re trying.”

“Would it be any good, if we did get the information?”

Hampstead asked.

“The man in charge is Pyotr Piredenko. He’s Director of the Flight Data Computer Center, and our dossiers say he’s tops in the field. Anything we could get out of his shop would hold some credibility, I think.”

“All right, good. Is there anything we’ve talked about here that I shouldn’t pass on to Brande?”

“Hell, Avery, I’ve lost track of what’s secret or not. Tell him anything you think he should know.”

“Before, you told me to withhold some information, Carl.”

“Yeah, but it’s all out now, and he’s already made his decision.”

“I hope it wasn’t the decision to die,” Hampstead said.

Kim Otsuka was up early, as usual. Despite the fact that the Orion would be losing about an hour a day as she crossed time zones, Otsuka would not give up her discipline of rising at four-thirty. Her best work was done in the early morning.

She had dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a windbreaker, then slipped out of the guest cabin she was sharing with Svetlana Polodka. Kenji Nagasaka was at the helm when she went through the bridge area, and she stopped to talk with him for a few minutes. He was twenty-two years old, with lanky black hair, and had a crush on her. He was a countryman, but other than that, they had nothing in common.

No one was tending the galley at that time of the morning, and she fried an egg for an egg sandwich, then carried it out to the narrow port-side deck to eat it.

Pink tendrils of dawn were creeping up the sky behind the ship. The wind was cold, and she zipped the windbreaker tight against her throat. The rushing whisper of the hull through the water was soothing.

Yellow light splashed on the side deck as the door opened behind her, and irritated at losing her privacy, Otsuka turned to see Dokey standing in the hatchway.

He stepped outside, letting the door close against his foot, so the wind would not slam it shut and wake others. He was wearing an older model sweatshirt featuring a teamster tuna in a “Caterpillar” baseball cap driving a canned people truck. He was holding two steaming mugs, and he handed one to her.

“Mornin’, Kimmie.”

“Thank you, Okey.”

She held the mug up and checked it against the light from the porthole in the door. It read, “Sit on my lap and well talk about…”

She turned the mug around. “… whatever comes up.”

“You have a dirty mind, Okey.”

He leaned against the rail beside her. “My mind’s all right. It’s normal. It’s all these people with subnormal, laundered minds that take the fun out of life.”

“You must build a robot that thinks the way you do.”

“I thought about it, but the trouble is, the damned thing would be programmed with my own fantasies. There’s no surprises there.”

Sipping from the mug, she felt the warmth course through her. It was good coffee, made with eggshells, and from the old-fashioned blue enamel pot that was kept hot twenty-four hours a day. Those who did not like it that way were welcome to decaffeinated instant coffee.

Otsuka leaned forward to put her elbows on the railing next to Dokey. They both stared down at the dark water swishing past the hull.

“I’m glad you came along with us, Kim.”

She laid a hand on his forearm. “It is better to be with my friends.”

“Damned right.”

He did not move his arm, but he did not place his free hand on top of her own, either. Despite Dokey’s aggressive banter and T-shirts and mugs, he was not really all that comfortable with women. She had noticed that about him.

She wondered what that robot, programmed with Dokey’s own fantasies, would actually…

“That’s it!” she cried.

“That’s what?”

“The problem.” She could visualize the thousands of lines of computer instructions, and she scanned them in her mind. “Your fantasies don’t work!”

Dokey stood upright. “They don’t?”

“No. And mine don’t, either. Not for Celebes. Come with me. Hurry!”

Otsuka led the way down the side deck, pulled open the door to the laboratory, and rushed inside.

“Okey, I need the S-twelve board.”

He knew what she meant. Stopping to grab a screwdriver and socket set from one of the workbenches, Dokey turned around and went back out to the port-side deck.

Otsuka walked back to the starboard corner of the lab. Five computer terminals were lined up there, each in its own small cubicle. The last machine was used primarily for programming ROMs, read-only-memory chips that were inserted into logic circuits. Some of the programming used with MVU’s robots was inserted into memory, or onto hard disk, after the robot’s computer was activated, particularly programming that was dedicated to a particular task. That was random access memory, and the programming instructions were lost each time the machine was shut down.

With Gargantua, as with the smaller robots, some instructions were permanently entered into chips, governing actions that were repetitive and not expected to change. The closure rate of the pincers, or fingers, for example. Or the degree-range of arc associated with an elbow movement, for another.

Otsuka turned on the last computer terminal and the one next to it. Shoving the extra chair out of the way and pulling the keyboards close together, she sat down and prepared to operate with both computers. Lifting the intercom handset hanging on the partition, she punched two numbers.

“Radio shack. This is Bucky.”

Bucky Sanders traded off watches with Paco Suarez. “Bucky, this is Kim. Please block other accesses to the satellite channel, and hook Terminal Four into it”

“You dialing into the IBM?” he asked. MVU had a leased IBM minicomputer isolated in its own room on the manufacturing floor in San Diego. It was utilized for the more massive programs, or for a higher calculation speed, when the stand alone computers were too small or too slow.

“Yes.”

“How long you going to be?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe hours. Dane will approve it, if you ask him.”

“Nah. Consider it done.”

By the time she had both terminals up and had keyed her access codes into number four, connecting with the San Diego machine, Dokey was back, carrying a twelve-inch-square circuit board that was jammed with components. Without asking her what to do, he selected an adaptor from several different types stored in a drawer and plugged it into the board. Another adaptor cord connected the board to the programming terminal.

“I know what you’re after, Kim,” he said, pulling up a chair to sit next to her.

“Tell me,” she said as she tapped keys, accessed the board, and began to display the instructions stored in one of the circuit board’s chips.

“We programmed this thing the same way we programmed Atlas. That is, we thought in human terms when we wanted a certain hand movement. And it worked.”

“So what’s different with Gargantua?” she asked.

The long lines of programming instructions scrolled down the screen as she looked for the specific lines she wanted.

“Pressure sensors,” Dokey said. “Gargantua’s pincers have sensors to tell us, by digital readout, how many foot-pounds of pressure he’s applying when he grasps something. For humans, that’s an automatic signal to the brain. For Gargantua, we gave him what we thought would work.”

“What we thought would work for us,” she clarified.

The subsection of programming related to the pressure sensors — almost a thousand lines long — started to appear on the screen. Each line helped to tell the computer what to do when a sensor or other input, like digital impulses from the hand controllers, relayed information — what solenoids to move, and how far to move them.

To protect vital components, the computer also instructed Gargantua to shut down his arm-and-hand movements when he received conflicting instructions. And Gargantua had shut himself down on the first day of testing.

“You just mentioned the problem, Okey.”

“Of course I did. I’m right on top of this baby.”

Otsuka kept scrolling and kept quiet.

“What problem?” he finally asked.

“As operator of the remote controls, you like to see your readouts in something familiar, right?”

“Right,” he agreed, and after a second, added, “Oh, damn! Foot-pounds.”

“You’ve got it, big boy.”

“I’m reading foot-pounds, but Gargantua wants the metric equivalent.”

“We programmed all other movements in metric.”

“Damn, again.”

“See what your fantasies got you?” she asked.

“It must be the Orion,” Dawn Lengren said. She had gone right to the radar set after climbing out of the big bunk in the master’s stateroom. She was wearing fresh, though not ironed, cut-off jeans and a T-shirt with the black OCEANS FREE logo. The shirt was wrinkled pretty badly.

“Let’s hope so. We’ve been following the same blip for almost twelve hours,” Aaron told her.

Donny Edgeworth, who was taking his turn at the helm, said, “I haven’t been able to close on it. They haven’t changed heading or speed once.”

None of the six people aboard the Queen of Liberty were top-notch navigators, but with the Magnavox satnav set identifying their position for them, it was difficult to get too far lost. One or the other of them had been drawing lines and making marks on the chart down in the salon, using the information provided by the satellite navigation system, and the courses of both the Liberty and the ship they were pursuing were obviously headed for, at the minimum, the Hawaiian Islands. On paper, anyway.

The sun was low on the eastern horizon, lighting up the space under the canvas canopy erected over the flying bridge. Aaron thought it was going to get hot by noon. He could taste the aroma of bacon frying below. Julie Mecom was cooking this morning, and she always burned the bacon.

The Arienne was still with them, now a quarter-mile away on the starboard side. Aaron went to the half-height bulkhead at the side of the bridge and pulled a pair of binoculars from a clip. He focused them on the Greenpeace boat. It was a sixty-eight-foot Bertram, a few years old, but in terrific shape. She took the seas smoothly, and her white hull, with the green lettering, gleamed under the morning sun. Aaron wished he had the same resources that Greenpeace had. Contributions had dwindled to the point where it was difficult to provision and fuel the two Oceans Free boats, much less think about newer vessels.

There were two people on the Arienneʼs flying bridge, and another five gathered around a table on the stern deck, eating breakfast. Sun glints sparkled off glasses and silverware.

Mark Jacobs was holding court. He was a dark-skinned man, as much a result of his growing up in the south of France as from a deep-sea tan. His teeth were very white. Aaron had heard that he had attended the Sorbonne, studying international law, but he did not know for certain. He was probably close to forty years old, and he had been chasing around the Pacific for Greenpeace for at least ten years.

Aaron pushed the binoculars back in the clip and went forward to slap Dawn lightly on the buttocks.

“Let me sit there for a while.”

She gave him a grimace in response and moved from in front of the cushioned passenger seat. Aaron sat down and picked up the microphone for the VHF set. The readout on the face of the set displayed channel 16, the emergency channel, which they had been monitoring, but which had been mostly inactive. He pressed the keypad and watched the readout until it read 22, the channel that he knew Arienne monitored.

Pulling the microphone close to his lips, Aaron said, “Arienne, this is Liberty.”

Someone answered the call right away, then went to get Jacobs.

A minute later, Jacobs said, “Yes, Curtis?”

They had been on a first-name basis since the time Aaron had been a member of Greenpeace, until two years before.

“I’m glad you’re coming along with us on this,” Aaron told him.

“I do not know that our presence will mean much, after the fact,” the Greenpeace leader said. “We prefer to make our point before it is necessary.”

“You think that it’s a lost cause, Mark?”

“I do not have all of the facts available, of course, but the prognosis is not good. In those waters, a successful recovery is not likely to be achieved. Not with the time available.”

“Time? What time?”

“It was on the news this morning. On the CNN station. Someone in the Pentagon leaked the information that the reactor will become supercritical on September tenth.”

Aaron was shocked. Until just then, the whole episode had seemed rather academic, another problem to debate with the powers-that-be. He had not thought that the damned thing would actually blow up.

For lack of anything better to say, Aaron said, “Maybe that’s what Mother Nature intends for us.”

“That is stupid, Curtis. Very stupid.” Jacobs cut off his transmission.

Donny Edgeworth, who had overheard the conversation, fidgeted with the wheel, causing the cruiser to dip left and right. “Maybe we ought to turn back, Curtis.”

“And let Jacobs steal the show? No way, Donny.”

Almost everyone was back in the laboratory, debugging computer programs, calibrating instruments, and running systems checks for the nth time. In the wardroom, it was relatively peaceful.

Connie Alvarez-Sorenson, a dusky and beautiful miniature with a vocabulary that could match any seaman’s, was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and talking to Frank Vogl, the Orion’s chief and only engineer. It was he who kept the research vessel’s mechanical systems and diesel engines running flawlessly.

Thomas had taken a table out of the mainstream, spread her paperwork and vinyl folders and notebooks over it, and fortified herself with a mug and an insulated pot of coffee.

The ship was encountering long swells. It rose and fell almost imperceptibly. It was a lulling movement, encouraging a nap, rather than administrative tasks.

The stack of paper was horrendous, even though some of it was organized into binders. Thomas would have preferred working on one of the computer terminals in the laboratory, but she needed data stored on the minicomputer in San Diego, and Kim was using the dedicated satellite channel for communications with the mini.

She had gone through all of the binders, which contained primarily the contracts entered into between MVU and private companies, the federal government and universities. She had filled the better part of a legal-sized yellow pad with her notes. Except for some details, she thought she was ready for action.

Brande came through the door, went on into the galley, and when he came back with a roast beef sandwich obscenely leaking ketchup, and a mug of coffee, she said, “Dane.”

He grinned at her. “My grandma…”

“I know. Sit down a minute, will you? You’ve been on the go all day.”

He plopped in the chair on her right. “Did you sleep all right? Your eyes look a little droopy.”

Whenever had he noticed her eyes before?

“Ingrid snores,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“No”

“I kept waking up.”

“You want a different roommate?”

“I’ll survive. Look, I’ve got some things we need to talk about.” She pulled her notepad close and leafed through the yellow pages, looking for the items she had starred as priorities.

“Shoot.” He took a bite out of his sandwich.

“First…”

“What did you decide about George Dawson’s project?” he interrupted.

Thomas sighed. “I sent Jim Word a telex, telling him to put another ten days into it.”

Brande smiled. “Wonderful. You’re going to work out better than I thought.”

“What did you think?”

“I was teasing you. I’ve had faith from Day One.”

“This is only Day Two,” she said.

“And you’re doing well.”

“Dawson gets no more than ten days.”

“All right.”

“Some people you and I both know have put ten years into looking for one wreck.”

“I know.”

“Ten days.”

“I agree.”

“Okay.” She tapped her forefinger under the first star on her notepad. “Did you know we’ve got people working for us without a contract? In fact, I find only seventeen personnel contracts.”

“Well, yeah. That’s just kind of how it worked out over time.”

“Oral contracts.”

“Yes. Some people just happened to be available when previous projects were completed or petered out, and I encouraged them to stay on.”

“That has to change. The company needs something more solid, and our employees are entitled to know what the conditions of employment are. Medical and life insurance and retirement benefits, all of it.”

“The payroll service takes care of those details,” he told her. “Do you know how much we’re paying that service?”

“Not exactly.”

“Do you know what medical and dental plans we offer?”

“Not exactly.”

“We need a personnel officer.”

“Personnel officers cost money, Rae. You don’t like to spend money”

“It might be cheaper than the service. Do you realize we don’t have any secretaries?”

“Well, everyone does their own typing and telephoning. That’s a savings, isn’t it?”

Thomas shook her head. “You’ve got all of this stuck away in your mind somewhere, don’t you?”

“More or less.”

“We put a lot of dollars into professional expertise. How much of their expensive time is being devoted to routine clerical duties?”

“That’s a point,” Brande admitted. “I’ve already been thinking about the things I can do, now that you’ve lifted this load off me.”

“And that’s another thing. I’m going to have to give up Harbor One.”

“Do you want to?” he asked.

That was one of the tough questions. When she thought about how much of herself she had put into the development, how much she loved seeing it come to life, she waffled.

“I don’t know.”

“I almost promoted Andy Colgate to Harbor One director. Then I remembered that it’s your decision.”

He was grinning again.

“You’re enjoying the hell out of this,” she accused.

“I am.ˮ

She set her mouth in what she hoped was a grim line and went to the next starred item. “The workboats.”

“I’m glad you reminded me. We need to up the budget a little there. Those guys don’t have enough to eat.”

She ignored that statement and said, “Now that the heavy transport requirements are over for Harbor One and Ocean Deep, we don’t need all three boats. The Mighty Moose is the oldest, and I think we should sell it.”

“Bull Kontas is over seventy years old, Rae. Where’s he going to find another job?”

“Oh, shit!”

Cmdr. Alfred Taylor stood on the bridge, within the sail of the Los Angeles, as she cruised on the surface at twenty knots. He drank in the cool briny air, which tasted tainted and fresh at the same time, a refreshing change from the manufactured atmosphere of the submarine.

The sea washed over the bow of the sub, miniature rainbows reflected in the white spume.

On his right, steaming on a parallel course a hundred yards away was the Philadelphia. Every once in a while, her captain and her executive officer would look over at Taylor and Garrison and grin. The grins were a little strained.

They were moving on the surface at reduced speed in order to give the Kane a chance to catch up with them. Their sister submarine, the Houston, had checked in by radio, but she was forty miles to the north and would rendezvous with the research ship later.

“We’re going to have some heavy weather in a couple days,” Garrison said.

“Intuition, Neil?”

“Met report. It won’t bother us, but it might play havoc with any surface ships.”

“Especially with research vessels deploying submersibles, you mean?”

“Especially those,” Garrison said.

Six minutes later, Garrison swung his binoculars astern, then steadied them with his elbows on the coaming of the sail. “We’ve got a ship bow-up on the horizon, Skipper.”

“Kane’s doing pretty well for an old lady,” Taylor said.

“I’ll have the dinghy put over,” Garrison said.

Forty minutes after that, Taylor left his boat and was transferred to the Kane by a sailor manning the fifty-horsepower outboard Johnson.

He and Cmdr. H.E. Elliot of the Philadelphia met with the research vessel’s captain in the wardroom, accepting mugs of hot coffee.

Capt. John Cartwright was almost sixty years old. His hair was struggling to hang onto an umber tint, but the gray was creeping in from his temples. With his aristocratic nose, straight-set lips and high forehead, he had a classical appearance.

Cartwright tossed his uniform cap at a sideboard. “Sit, gentlemen.”

They both found cushioned chairs around the green felt-covered table.

“If I were adamant about military protocol and courtesy,” Cartwright said, Iʼd have been a commodore some time ago. Iʼm not. Iʼm more interested in what I can find in the ocean depths, and so are the people I work with. So, if you find us less than formal, and care about it, you’re out of luck.”

Taylor grinned at him. “It won’t bother me, sir.”

“John.”

“Al.”

“And I was christened Huckleberry,” Elliot said.

“You’re shitting me,” Cartwright said.

“No. It’s got to be Huck.”

“All right, Al and Huck, we’ve got work to do. I’ve had a few dozen messages from CINCPAC, apparently put together by a bunch of experts looking over the admiral’s shoulder. And I have a strongly recommended course of action to follow. Tell me what you think of it.”

Cartwright spread a large chart on the table. Drawn on it was a grid of lines.

Taylor took one look, compared it to the mental picture he had of the pattern he and Garrison had worked out, and said, “Not much.”

“Me, either,” Elliot said. “My exec and I made some preliminary plans that don’t match that at all.”

Cartwright rolled the chart and tossed it to one side. “Scratch that, then.”

He unrolled a fresh chart and Taylor and Elliot helped flatten it with ashtrays and coffee mugs.

“Okay,” Cartwright said. “First. You know the Russians are already on the scene?”

“News to me,” Taylor said.

“Their first sub got there last night. SSN named the Winter Storm, commanded by Captain Mikhail Gurevenich. He’s a capable man. A short time later, the Tashkent showed up. It’s also an SSN, and the boss man is Boris Verhenski. His dossier, according to Navy Intelligence, says he’s been a fast mover through the ranks and he’s ambitious. One of our recon planes got photos of the two subs meeting on the surface.” Cartwright told them about the eminent arrivals of the rocket cruisers Kirov, and Kynda, and the patrol ship Olʼyantsev.

“That’s them,” Elliot said. “Are we us?”

“Yes, except for the Bronstein and the Antelope which are already in place. They’re trying to be policemen without the authority to police. We’ve also got a private research vessel on the way, the Orion, but it’s a few days out. I doubt that they’re going to be here in time for much search activity. It’d be nice if we could point them in the right direction.”

Cartwright outlined the problems posed by the maverick surface vessels already in the region.

“That’s what we’ve got to work within, Al and Huck. What are your thoughts?”

“How about Navy submersibles?”

“They flew one out of England, but during the stopover in San Diego, discovered some sort of problem. They’re working on it.”

“Are we getting any reports from the CIS subs?” Taylor asked.

“None. CINCPAC says Washington is working toward some kind of cooperation, but nothing is forthcoming as yet”

“Fuck ’em, then,” Elliot said. “Both the Russians and the experts at Pearl. Let’s do it ourselves.”

“Let’s,” Cartwright said.

“I’ll do the drawing,” Taylor said, picking up a sharpened pencil and a straightedge. “I got a ‘C’ in drafting.”

“That’s better than I got,” Cartwright told him.

“Captain Gurevenich wishes to speak to you, Comrade General,” Leonid Talebov said.

“Gurevenich?”

“He is commander of the Winter Storm. Both he and the Tashkent commander are on the frequency.”

Oberstev walked across the bridge and took the microphone from Captain Talebov. The tall naval captain towered over him, and he turned to look forward. He had an unobstructed view of the bow and the seas ahead of the Timofey Olʼyantsev. The ocean was a beautiful aquamarine, as fine as the gem. The sun was gaining on its zenith, shining brightly, but he knew the air outside the bridge was chilled. In the view to his left, the overcast skies seemed to be gaining on them.

“This is General Oberstev.”

“Comrade General, I am Captain Gurevenich. Captain Verhenski is on the channel, also.”

“What is it that I can do for you, Captain? How is your submarine?” Oberstev had seen the report of the ramming incident.

“The damage is minimal,” Gurevenich said. “It will not affect our mission.”

“I am pleased by that,” Oberstev said. “It is the first good news I have had in days.”

“Thank you, General. We have received the search plan from Fleet Headquarters, along with the information that you will be the on-site commander.”

“That is true,” Oberstev said.

“And we have completed the first few legs of the search plan.”

“Yes?”

“The results are negative, General.”

“How deep are your sonars?”

“One-four-hundred meters,” Gurevenich said.

“We are running at the same depths,” Verhenski added.

“You have no feedback at all?”

“It is negative in terms what we seek,” Gurevenich said. “We cannot get the sonar arrays deep enough to find the bottom, except for several mountaintops.”

Oberstev looked around the bridge. Captain Talebov studied him, noncommittal. Alexi Cherbykov shook his head, rather sadly. Janos Sodur was offering the wisdom of his most sour look, suggesting that if Oberstev did not provide the right decision, Chairman Vladimir Yevgeni would know of it within seconds and subsequently provide the correct version.

“I am not a mariner,” Oberstev said into the microphone, “but my recommendation would be that, given the priority of this operation, you operate your craft at the extremes of your depth capability.”

“Is that a recommendation, General, or an order?”

Sodur glared at him.

“An order, Captain. It is an order.”

It was much like swimming in warm crystal, Brande thought. The water slid over his skin like velvet, and he could see so clearly he might have been viewing a television image. Visibility exceeded a hundred feet.

He swam lazily, barely moving his fins, rocking his shoulders easily as his arms trailed out beside him. The weight of the scuba tank was neutralized. The exhalation bubbles rose behind him in a long arc. Below, the vibrant blue and orange and yellow and red hues of coral and sea flowers and tropical fish made his world come to vivid life.

The warm waters of the Caribbean were soothing after the tumultuous month behind him. He and Janelle had received their doctorates on June sixth. On June eighth, his MGTD, which he had restored and raced in rallies, was stolen by a fifteen-year-old refugee from high school who thought he was a future Juan Fangio. The teenager and the MG were both totaled in Trabuco Canyon attempting a curve at twice the posted limit.

On June eleventh, Henning Sven Brande died. Sven died as he had lived, quietly and strongly. Janelle and her mother made around a hundred telephone calls and put off the wedding for two weeks while Brande flew back to Minnesota to help his grandmother with the funeral arrangements. He also helped Bridgette, who suddenly appeared more frail and more dependent than he had expected, move to a duplex in Grand Rapids. The tears streamed down her face when she signed the real-estate agreement to put the wheat farm up for sale. Brande felt as if he had failed two very good people.

He was not in the best of moods when he and Janelle Kay Forester were married on June thirtieth. His outlook was more up-tempo two days laters, after they had checked into the 18th-century manor house tranformed into the Harbor View Hotel in Charlotte Amalie.

Brande enjoyed playing the honeymooner, and Janelle, a San Franciscan, loved the romantic setting. They ate lavishly, made love on a whim, slept late and dove on Spanish galleons and more modern disasters from a rented boat in the afternoons. They crossed to the British Virgin Islands to dive on the Rhone, a British steamship that went down in 1867. Encrusted with coral and sponges, it was lush and colorful with marine life.

And today, near the island of Tortola, they had found a freighter which had probably been a Liberty ship. It was broken in two, and down about sixty feet. Swimming side by side, Brande and his new wife explored the after-section, then swam a hundred yards to the bow section.

Framed against the blue and yellow of coral gripping the steel plates of the wreck and the orange of tropical fish swimming in a dense school, Janelle was spectacular. Her short, dark hair streamed behind her, and she rolled onto her back, pulled the air-supply mouthpiece from her lips, and smiled at him.

Brande kicked harder, attempting to close with her. Janelle wrinkled her nose at him, visible through the glass of her face mask, and increased the fluttering kick of her own legs.

She swam backward, grinning at him, and when he saw that she was aimed directly at a rotted crane mast, he waved frantically at her.

She waved back.

Then hit the mast abruptly.

There was not much momentum to the impact, but the partially decomposed and brittle hardware that supported the crane boom snapped.

And the boom dropped across her midsection, pinning her to the sharp coral coating the deck, her flesh protected by the scuba tank.

A flurry of dust.

Startled fish darted away.

Brande surged forward quickly, reached the boom, and peered over it.

Janelle had replaced her mouthpiece and seemed to be breathing normally. Her eyes were wide and frightened behind the mask.

He tried to reassure her by patting her shoulder, than braced his legs against the deck, gripped the boom near her stomach, and heaved.

It would not budge.

He tried several times, but the boom was lodged firmly against the mast on one end and against the deck coaming on the other.

Brande figured that they each had half-an-hour of oxygen remaining.

Floating above her, he unsnapped her scuba harness and attempted to push the oxygen tank to one side, to give her room to escape.

It would not move. The boom was pressing too hard, making a concave gulley across her stomach.

He tried lifting again.

Janelle’s eyes followed him, reflecting less panic.

Believing in him

He needed a lever.

Rotating he searched around himself for anything and discovered nothing.

Signaling with two raised fingers that he would be gone two minutes, Brande pushed off the deck and shot for the surface. Their rented day cruiser was fifty yards away; and he swam for it.

Pulling himself over the transom, Brande scrambled around in the cockpit, searching lockers and seat cavities, then found an oar for the rubber dinghy. He paused for long enough to radio a mayday message, than went back into the water, stroking for the bottom, tugging the oar with him.

She smiled when he reappeared.

Resting the side of the oar blade against the coaming he attempted to lever the boom upward, but he could not get a firm footing. He changed position, going to the other side of the boom and shoving the oar beneath the boom.

With his legs spread wide and his feet pressed against the deck, he heaved upward.

And the oar broke.

He looked to Janelle.

She raised a thumb.

He swam to her and tried to explain with gestures that he had radioed for assistance.

She nodded her understanding.

Maybe fifteen minutes of air left in each bottle.

Brande slipped out of his harness and shut down the regulator. Holding his breath, he placed the tank next to her.

She understood that she was to switch to his bottle when the oxygen ran out in her own.

He swam for the surface.

Looked for boats coming but saw none.

Dove back to the bottom, held her hand, smiled at her, tried to shift the boom, then rose again to the surface as his lungs screamed.

Brande dove sixteen times.

On his sixteenth dive, Janelle’s eyes were lifeless.

The little flashbacks of futility flickered in Brandeʼs mind as he sat at the table in the lounge with Larry Emry and Ingrid Roskens, going over the search plan Emry had laid out on a big chart.

It was, rather than a circular pattern, a trapezoid, narrow on the west and wide on the east. “Because,” Emry said, “the ocean currents are moving in that direction, and the likely angle of impact, along with the rocket’s aerodynamic shape and fins, will glide it in that direction. Maybe for a hell of a long ways before it hits bottom.”

It was so damned deep.

“Tomorrow, Dane,” Emry said, “Fll put this up on the computer, so that we can shift the plan as information comes in on what the subs are finding.”

“If they find anything,” Roskens said.

“They’re bound to pinpoint some old wrecks and some terrain features that the charts don’t show,” the exploration director said. He stroked his thick mustache with his thumb. He was wearing a dark blue baseball cap with the MVU logo — protecting his bald head — and the lighter blue jumpsuit favored by team members on expedition.

Roskens was also dressed in the jumpsuit. She was assisting Emry with the search plan until she got some structural data on the rocket.

“If we could be assured,” she said, “that the rocket broke up on impact, it would be helpful.”

Brande knew she was right. A ship that breaks up and spreads debris over a mile-long stretch of the bottom was a great deal more findable than one that sinks in place. Looking for a rocket that was about thirty-one feet wide with the boosters in place and seventy feet long in a thirty-six-square-mile area of an ocean that was four miles deep was far worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.

“Even if only the boosters broke off, it would be extremely helpful,” Emry said. “It would triple our chances of finding a sonar return.”

Brande tapped the chart. “Is a search grid spacing of eight hundred meters going to be tight enough, Larry?”

“I think so, yes. It’ll depend upon the terrain, of course, but flying SARSCAN at an altitude of eight hundred feet above the bottom should give us enough overlap that if we miss it going one way, well get it on the return leg.”

“We don’t want to use Sneaky Pete simultaneously as a back-up?” Brande asked.

“I really think our best shot is with sonar. A visual sighting, unless the damned thing broke into a thousand pieces and spread out a couple miles, is going to be very, very unlikely, Dane.”

“You’re right, naturally.”

“What about the length of crew shifts, Dane?” Roskens asked. “That worries me.”

Because each descent and each ascent would require over three hours for DepthFinder, Brande had extended the bottom time for crews to ten hours from their normal maximum of six hours. The six hours required for a crew change took too much away from search time.

“I think our people can handle it, Ingrid. And it still gives us plenty of safety time on the battery packs.”

“We’re using up go-juice at a damned scary rate, if we’re going to maximize speed on DepthFinder’s motors,” Emry said.

“I don’t know of a better compromise,” Brande said.

In shallower water, SARSCAN or Sneaky Pete would be trailed below the research vessel, almost directly under it because of the weight of the cable. Twelve to fifteen thousand feet of fiber-optic cable was not only extremely heavy, but it also created a lot of drag in the water. The Orion would be slowed to four or five knots, greatly increasing the time required to cover the search area.

For this search, SARSCAN would be towed behind DepthFinder on no more than two hundred feet of cable. At maximum output on her propellers, with a heavy tow, Depth-Finder could make around twelve knots, about three times the speed the Orion could make towing from the surface.

The door from the corridor flew open with a bang and Dokey and Otsuka burst in.

“You tell’em,” Dokey said, headed for the galley.

“We got arms,” she said.

Brande grinned. “I knew you’d do it.”

Dokey emerged from the galley with two cans of Coke. “We could celebrate better if this chicken outfit allowed booze on board.”

“Talk to the head honcho, don’t talk to me,” Brande said. “Gargantua’s back in condition?”

“Damned right,” Dokey said. “I practiced by tearing toilet paper squares off a roll, then power-lifting a few fifty-five-gallon oil drums. I wanted to lift Kim, but she wouldn’t cooperate.”

Otsuka sipped from the Coke Dokey gave her as she sat down. “I’d have felt like Faye Wray.”

Roskens laughed.

“Thanks to both of you,” Brande said.

“Just a program problem,” Dokey said.

“One that required rewriting nearly seven hundred lines,” Otsuka added.

“I don’t know how we could have missed that earlier,” Brande said.

“Nobody thought about Okey not being able to think in metric,” she said.

Dokey hung his head until his chin was against his chest. “I’m a miserable scientist.”

Everyone agreed, and Brande excused himself to go up to the bridge, then back to the communications room. Bucky Sanders was manning the console and gave up his seat to Brande.

He called Hampstead at Pearl Harbor.

“According to what I see here,” Hampstead said, “you’re moving right along.”

“Bring me up to date, Avery.”

“The CIS has two subs working the area, Dane. The sonobuoys have identified them, and we’re recording their search pattern. I don’t think they’re finding anything.”

“How deep?”

“Our best guess is around two thousand feet.”

“I think they’re wasting their time.”

“Perhaps”

“Are they going to share their findings with us?”

“They have not, as yet,” Hampstead said. “I talked to Carl Unruh earlier…”

“Who’s he?”

“Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA. He’s trying to get someone to call Moscow and ask that the search data be released to us.”

Brande could imagine who ʻsomeoneʼ was. “What about information on the rocket?”

“There’s nothing new since I talked to you at noon about the computer modeling. We’re pursuing a great many channels on that.”

“Did you realize that your conversation is beginning to sound as if you’re part of the spy business, Avery?”

“God in heaven, no! I never thought I’d be sitting in a naval operations room, much less conversing with people who perform clandestine activities.” There was a hesitation as Hampstead covered the phone and spoke with someone. “Admiral Potter would like to speak with you, Dane.”

“Put him on.”

“Dr. Brande, this is David Potter.”

“How are you doing, Admiral?”

“Dr. Brande, as soon as you reach the area of operations, you are to report to Captain John Cartwright. He is aboard the RV Kane.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he is coordinating the operation locally. He will make your assignments. “

“Not mine, Admiral.”

There was a very long pause. “That is the way it is going to be, Dr. Brande. We can’t have civilians going off half-cocked.”

“I’ll be glad to keep you abreast of what I find, Admiral, but this is my business, and I’ll conduct it my way. Mr. Hampstead will be my liaison.”

“No, Dr. Brande. We will conduct this search my way. If you do not agree with that, then I will commandeer your equipment and still do it my way.”

“Let me talk to Hampstead.”

When Hampstead came back on the line, Brande said, “Avery, you better get hold of someone in power and get that asshole off my back.”

“Iʼll try the CNO.”

The Winter Storm was running silent at ten knots of speed. Part of the reason for the slow speed was to give the three sonar operators — all of them now on watch — a better chance of locating strange signals. One man, Paramanov, was monitoring the deep-tow sonar, while the other two men kept watch on the submarine’s standard sonars — forward-and side-looking, and took turns relieving each other.

The recorders were running, taping all of the sonar activity, which was very little. One exceptionally strong return had been recorded to the southwest, at 1,000 meters of depth, and dutifully recorded on the chart, but the consensus was that it belonged to a sunken ship, very likely of World War II vintage.

Mostly, the 116 men aboard the submarine were intensely conscious of the depth, 700 meters currently. It made them nervous and closemouthed. People spoke in whispers, when they spoke and it was not entirely necessary.

Those who were not on watch sat on their bunks, not playing chess, not playing cards and not talking. The tension was palpable throughout the submarine.

Lieutenant Kazakov walked the corridors, keeping an eye on the tension. He was acting very self-important today, Gurevenich thought, perhaps in defense against his own taut nerves.

Kazakov had a bruise on his forehead. He had been on the conning tower ladder the previous night when Mostovets came sliding down the ladder, slapping a boot into his head. Gurevenich had been right behind Mostovets on the ladder, calling out for an emergency dive even as he slammed the hatch shut and dogged it.

The Winter Storm was already in descent when the keel of the excursion boat struck the forward hull. It had been a sliding, grating contact, but when they surfaced several kilometers away to examine the hull, white paint rubbed into the dark gray paint of the submarine’s forward deck was the only evidence of damage.

Kazakov had called for an immediate investigation by some international body. Mostovets had suggested the use of a single torpedo to register their complaint. Instead, Mikhail Gurevenich put them to work contacting the Tashkent and initiating the search.

Now, over a day later, in the Control Center, the captain, Sr. Lt. Mostovets, and two deck officers stayed near the plotting table, watching the indicators and listening to the reports.

The plot had the search grid ordered by Commander in Chief of the Navy Grigori Orlov imposed upon it. A series of parallel lines, each running north and south, were 1,000 meters apart. The western edge of the grid, the first line, was located one kilometer west of the point of impact of the rocket. Each of the first lines was two kilometers long, but they became longer as the grid moved to the east, allowing for a longer glide path of the rocket, if it had indeed veered north or south and continued to glide.

“Control Center, Sonar.”

“Proceed, Sonar,” Gurevenich said as he depressed the intercom key.

“The Tashkent is making its turn, Captain.”

“Thank you.”

Mostovets leaned over the charting table and drew an X at the end of Tashkentʼs line, to the south of them, and 1,000 meters to the east. The two submarines were alternating on the lines of the search, with Winter Storm moving in the opposite direction. She was nearing the end of the current search line, still headed directly north.

“Let us come to a heading of zero-nine-zero,” Gurevenich ordered.

The order was passed to the helmsman by the navigation officer, Lieutenant Smertevo, who currently was in command of the submarine. Gurevenich had not relieved him, nor would he alter the standard rotation of watches, since he thought that this search would require many hours.

The submarine began a slow turn to the right. All maneuvers were made with deliberate slowness because of the thousand meters of cable trailing behind and below them. At the end of the slanted line, the deep-tow sonar was at 1,600 meters of depth. It was designated multiarray, but was primarily a side-looking sonar, with some capability for down-looking. Because of its downward limitations, the 1,000 meter limit had been set for the search lines. That provided a downward facing cone for the sonar which overlapped at the sides as the two submarines passed each other, but which reached down almost 3,000 meters.

Not far enough down. They were charting a few seamounts and occasional slopes, but the very bottom was as elusive as poltergeists.

In over twenty-four hours, they had yet to see bottom with the sonar. To the southwest, the sea floor rose to a small seamount, which had registered on the sonar scan, but which was outside of the search area.

They had yet to see anything man-made at those depths either, except for the Tashkent.

They heard things. They heard the creaking of the Winter Storm’s hull plates as they tried to deal with the tremendous pressures of the ocean at that depth. One seawater pipe had burst, but it had been quickly shut down, isolated, and the damage contained. A party from engineering was working on a replacement.

Gurevenich waited until they were headed south again, from a position to the northeast of the rocket’s impact point, then called the galley on the intercom and ordered sandwiches and iced tea.

The minutes dragged by.

He munched a salmon sandwich and waited.

They turned again on the south end, sailed 2,000 meters, then again turned to the north.

The sonar room was quiet.

Mostovets said, “Captain, if we could but dive another five hundred meters, we might pick up the bottom.”

“Would you like to make that decision, Ivan Yosipovich?” Gurevenich was afraid that he sounded a little testy.

Mostovets thought about it, then shook his head. “No, Captain, I would not.ˮ

Quiet.

Tension.

“Control Center, Sonar”

Mostovets responded, “Proceed.”

“We have an American submarine.”

“You’re certain?” Mostovets asked.

“Yes, Senior Lieutenant. By propeller signature, it is the Houston. Twelve thousand meters, bearing one-six-nine, depth two hundred meters and diving, speed two-two knots.”

Mostovets looked at him, and Gurevenich said, “Lock it into the firing computer, but take no further action. We want to track it, but that is all.”

Mostovets passed the information to the fire-control officer. Creaks. The titanium hull protested mutely from time to time.

More quiet.

Mostovets crossed the deck to stand beside Gurevenich at the plotting table. “I think we should wait for the submersible to arrive.”

Gurevenich smiled at him. “We serve our purpose, Ivan. We will prove that the rocket is not located between the surface and forty-five hundred meters.”

His senior officer grinned back at him. “You are laughing at the land-based commanders, Captain.”

“Not aloud, Ivan Yosipovich.”

“Our orders from the Olʼyantsev were to strain our limits.”

“So they were,” Gurevenich agreed. “My interpretation is that we are to go to the design depth. That is what we are doing.”

More watch and wait.

At close to midnight, Sonarman Paramanov reported, “Tashkent on approach course. Oh, Captain! It is at seven-three-two meters depth!”

“Foolish,” Gurevenich said to Mostovets.

“The captain may want to be a Hero of the Commonwealth, which is certain to be awarded to the one who locates the debris,” Mostovets said.

“It could be awarded posthumously,” the captain told him.

He closed his eyes and pictured the two submarines coming together, the Tashkent thirty-two meters lower and a thousand meters to the east. A submarine captain had to have the mind for imagining ship positions and anticipating their movements.

They slipped by each other without acknowledgment.

One minute later, Paramanov yelled, “Implosion!”

The Winter Storm rocked violently when the concussion waves struck it.