Ultra Deep

Chapter Thirteen

The Bronstein had reported the Orionʼs position to CINCPAC as soon as the frigate had positively identified her on radar.

In compliance with Brandeʼs standing order, Paco Sanchez and Bucky Sanders had replied, “On track, on schedule,” every time CINCPAC yelled at them over the radio.

The satellite-linked telephone was not being answered. Brande just figured he would have to argue with Hampstead, and he did not have time for arguments.

The fantail of the research vessel was ablaze with lights, alive with activity. The team members had been double-checking and preparing DepthFinder for the past four hours. The sheath below the bow had been exchanged for a larger one, and Atlas was secured in place.

Brande stood alongside the submersible with Dokey, Dankelov and Thomas. He patted his baby on her flank.

“How come, when you were president, you still got to dive?” Thomas asked.

She had been complaining that Brande would not let her make the dive. He had selected Dokey and Dankelov for his crew members.

“Because the chairman of the board was compassionate back then,” Brande told her. “He’s less compassionate now, and he’s made up a new rule.”

The withering look she gave him almost erased the pleasant memory of their mid-afternoon tryst. She could not be certain whether or not he was protecting her, favoring her, or picking on her.

“I need you up here, Rae. You’ll have to run interference with the Navy.”

“If we get that far,” Dokey said. “Looky here.”

From about a mile away, a ship was bearing down on them, her searchlights probing the dark.

“That’ll be the Bronstein” Brande said. “Rae, you know what to do.”

“Stand in the direct line of fire?”

“They don’t shoot women,” Dokey said.

“They don’t shoot beautiful women, anyway,” Brande clarified.

She lost some of the heat in her eyes. He thought about kissing her, but figured that would be a bad move. The fire would come back.

Brande turned and scrambled up the aluminum steps of the scaffolding parked next to the submersible. He stepped aboard the submersible as Dokey and Dankelov followed him. The three of them were wearing their customary jumpsuits and woolen socks. They each carried sweaters. Dankelov’s squat figure appeared almost too bulky to pass through the hatch, and, in fact, it was a tight fit.

The PA system blared with Connie Alvarez-Sorenson’s voice as the Russian forced his way down the hatch: “DepthFinder, we’ve got the strobe light on the sub’s emergency antenna buoy. ETA five minutes.”

Brande waved in the direction of the bridge, then climbed over the sail. Dokey disappeared down the hatch.

Looking to the winch operator located on the port side, Brande signaled for release and lift.

The deck crew released the tie-downs, the winch operator took up the slack in the lift cable, then eased off the brake for the line attached to the bow.

DepthFinder began to back off the stern of her mother ship.

When she reached the limit of rearward travel, the bow cable was detached and the operator raised her a foot off the deck. Two men with a nylon line run through a bow cleat kept her from swinging sideways.

The yoke slowly moved rearward, taking the submersible with it.

The throb of Orion’s diesels died away as the antenna buoy came up on the port side. It was bobbing high and hard in the rough seas. Wave peaks were at about nine feet, Brande guessed.

The RV was pitching in the waves, but steadied as Sorenson deployed the cycloidal propellers.

The Bronstein arrived.

Slowing as she moved alongside, maintaining a separation of fifty feet, the frigate matched their speed, and a figure on the bridge wing raised a loud hailer and called down to them, “Orion, I have a message for you from CINCPAC!”

Rae Thomas raised her own loud hailer and replied, à la Joan Rivers, “Can we talk?”

“Who are you?” the figure asked.

“President and CEO of Marine Visions.”

“Ah, damn!”

Brande gave the winch operator a thumbs-down, and the DepthFinder settled into the sea, slapped from below by wave tops, bucking hard against the waves running between the twin hulls.

Gen. Dmitri Oberstev and Capt. Leonid Talebov stood together on the fantail of the Timofey Olʼyantsev and watched as Pyotr Rastonov and Gennadi Drozdov clambered into the submersible Sea Lion. Under the bright floodlights, the scene appeared surreal.

Lt. Col. Janos Sodur waited in the background shadows, his arms wrapped around his shoulders, fighting the chill night wind.

A few miles to the north were the running lights of several ships, probably civilian ships headed toward the area of the sinking submarine. Sightseers and tragedy lovers. Oberstev felt nothing but contempt for them.

The submersible cradled on the stern deck was not, Oberstev felt certain, as pretty as the one the Americans would have. Americans were so devoted to appearances, while Russian sensibilities were more concerned with function.

The Russian citizen had never had to worry about tailfins going out of style.

Conversely, he was forced to admit, the majority of Russians had never owned an automobile, stylish or not.

The Sea Lion was a light-gray rectangular box with rounded corners. The box encapsulated the pressure hull and was adorned with projecting antennas, sonar modules and angled propulsion propellers. In the wire basket below the blunt snout of the submersible was the small remotely operated vehicle called Seeker by Gennadi Drozdov.

The ROV was almost a miniature reproduction of the submersible, gray and flat and rectangular, but affixed with a manipulator arm, cameras and lights. It was truly remotely operated, for there was no cable to attach it to the Sea Lion. The acoustic control system, called Loudspeaker, which Oberstev did not fully understand, allowed the ROV to operate up to a mile away from its controller.

There were some drawbacks. One ROV had gotten lost, literally. In the blackness of the depths, the position of a Seeker exploring a cavern had been lost to the mother ship’s sonar. While depth, altitude above bottom, and compass heading were telemetrically transmitted to the controller from the ROV, the controller — who saw on his screen what the ROV saw — became disoriented. He raced the ROV about, seeking a way out of the cave, until the batteries depleted, and it sank to the bottom. Somewhere.

Oberstev watched as the hatch was sealed and the Sea Lion raised from the deck by the crane.

Talebov, a taciturn man anyway, was even more silent this morning. He and Oberstev had argued a few hours earlier about the sinking American submarine. Leonid Talebov had insisted that it was the mariner’s duty to aid a stricken vessel. Oberstev’s position was that they had a higher duty. And Oberstev was supported by Admiral Orlov and Chairman Yevgeni.

As the submersible swung out over the side of the ship, Oberstev and Talebov, Sodur trailing behind, walked back toward the superstructure. They would monitor the mission from the combat information center.

“I am optimistic, Captain Talebov. Far more so this morning.”

“I wish that I shared your mood, General.”

“We have the charts the Americans sent to us. We have the updated sonar contacts discovered by the Winter Storm. The search narrows, Captain.”

“You should not trust the American charts,” Sodur interrupted. “They intentionally mislead us so that they can steal our prize.”

Oberstev looked out at the sea, huge waves that crashed against the hull, spewing white foam, and causing the massive ship to heel and dive.

He looked back at Pod-Palcovnik Sodur and asked, “How would you like to go for a swim, Colonel?”

Thomas had boarded the Bronstein by way of a breeches buoy catapulted from the frigate to the research vessel.

She was wearing long johns under her jumpsuit and a blue parka with the MVU logo, but the bouncing breeches buoy had dipped her to within a few feet of the surface, and she had been drenched from the knees down. She shivered as she stood on the bridge with Captain Dewey, a refined black man who wore thin gold-rimmed glasses. There was also some reporter named Overton present.

“Captain, the Los Angeles is already down fourteen hundred feet! With every minute we delay, it goes deeper.”

“Our job, Miss Thomas, is to stand by for possible survivors.”

“There aren’t going to be any goddamned survivors if you don’t act!”

“Miss Thomas, I take my orders from CINCPAC, just as you are supposed to do. I admit that I don’t know what sanctions will be taken against you, but I am certain there will be sanctions if you do not get under way immediately. Your ship is under command of Admiral Potter.”

“Think about the damned Tashkent! Do you want to be responsible for more deaths?”

“Other people, paid better than I am, make the decisions,” Dewey said.

“Look, you idiot! Look over there! The submersible is already deployed.”

“And you should recall it as soon as possible,” Captain Dewey told her. “You are placing a large part of the world at risk.”

The reporter decided to interrupt, rather than observe. “The lady’s plan seems logical to me, Captain. What are you objecting to?”

Captain Dewey turned his head and solemnly surveyed the reporter. Thomas could practically see the wheels turning inside his head. Thinking about headlines.

The commander sighed. “Very well, I’ll radio Hawaii, but I don’t think Iʼm going to get very far.”

As he left the bridge, the reporter asked her, “Your first name is Kaylene? How do you spell that?”

Avery Hampstead could not believe that so many people could get so pissed off just because one man wanted to save a hundred men.

The operations room was in turmoil. Technicians banged angrily on keyboards, hauled messages in and out, updated plotting boards. Cmdr. Harold Evans held a microphone in one hand and held a headset against his ear with the other hand, talking to some captain aboard the Bronstein. Adm. David Potter, who was seated at the table next to Hampstead, was red-faced and on an open line to the Pentagon. Hampstead figured he was talking to the Chief of Naval Operations.

The nuclear people had congregated in one corner, trying to stay out of the battle zone. They were smarter people than he had given them credit for being.

They had known for some time, via radar contacts, that Brande had veered off course in the direction of the Los Angeles. What had really raised temperatures was the Orionʼs continual, “on track, on schedule,” responses to every query sent out by CINCPAC.

Hampstead had even tried the telephone, but only reached an answering machine. “Sorry we can’t get to the phone right now, but we’re on track, on schedule. Try calling back in a couple days.”

Potter slammed his phone down. His face was an even deeper red. “The son of a bitch!”

“Who?” Hampstead asked.

“All of them.”

“Admiral,” Evans said, “Captain Dewey has a Kaylene Thomas on board.”

“Who’s Thomas?”

“She’s the president of Marine Visions Unlimited,” Hampstead offered.

“What the hell does she want?”

“She’s got a plan to save the Los Angeles,” Evans said.

Hampstead thought the commander sounded hopeful.

“You tell her to get that goddamned boat of hers back on course.”

“Sir? Shouldn’t we…I mean, there’s men…”

“Don’t question me, Commander. I care about those men, but I do what Washington tells me to do. You do what I tell you to do. Got that?”

Hampstead wondered if there was not another line of work in which he might be happier. One located a long way from Washington.

It was not until the Winter Storm had approached the surface and deployed its antenna to transmit its latest search data to the Timofey Olʼyantsev that Capt. Mikhail Gurevenich learned of the catastrophe that had struck the Los Angeles.

He had immediately ordered the search temporarily abandoned and the Winter Storm onto a heading toward Captain Taylor’s vessel.

He had only momentarily considered reporting his change in mission to the OVyantsev, and then had foregone the report.

Now, as they neared the reported coordinates, cruising at 200 meters of depth, sonar had reported surface vessels, the American submarine at depth, and what was likely a deep-diving submersible.

He told Mostovets, “Lieutenant, I am going to the communications compartment. You have the deck.”

“I have the deck, Captain.”

“Decrease speed to five knots.”

“Five knots. At once, Captain.”

“Then we want to dive within a few hundred meters of the Los Angeles and stand off to the west.”

Gurevenich walked aft and entered the communications section. Radio Operator Kartashkin was on duty.

“Kartashkin, turn on the acoustic receiver.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The technician leaned to his far right and worked the switches and toggles on the little-used transceiver.

A babble of noise erupted on the speaker. Kartashkin refined it with the squelch and filters, then began to scan the spectrum of frequencies.

“Stop! There!” Gurevenich said.

He had heard a garbled phrase, then had to readjust his mind to accept English.

Kartashkin fine-tuned the set.

Two different voices, both unknown to Gurevenich, were exchanging information.

The DepthFinder had submerged almost as soon as Brande had released the lift cable tying her to the Orion. He had clambered down through the hatchway, accidentally kicking Dankelov in the shoulder, and dogged the hatch tight. About a bucket of salty seawater came with him.

“Did you get a fix on that antenna buoy, Valeri?” he asked.

“Yes, Dane. It is one hundred and fifty yards away. We should take a heading of two-three-six.”

“Got two-three-six,” Dokey said. He was operating the sub’s controls.by leaning across from the right seat.

Brande settled into the canvas seat and took over the controls.

The sub descended at her maximum rate as Brande rotated it to the new heading. He eased in minimal forward propulsion. The tossing and turning of the surface had completely subsided. The ride was smooth and the interior of the hull seemed exceptionally quiet. Hum of electronics.

“Fire up the sonar, Okey.”

“Coming up.”

“Depth sixty feet,” Dankelov said. “Lithium hydroxide blower operating at full speed. Oxygen reserves nine-six percent.”

“Let’s have the cabin recorders, Valeri. We may want a record of this.”

“Recorders on. Acoustic transceiver on.”

Almost as soon as he said it, Mel Sorenson checked in. “DepthFinder; status report.”

Dankelov put the acoustic transmissions on the instrument panel speaker and reported for them. “All systems are green, Captain. Depth nine-eight feet. Normal descent.”

Dankelov, whose speech was so formal normally, gravitated to the American radio idiom of clipped phrases whenever he got hold of a microphone. It was, Brande thought, much like the Citizen’s Radio band craze of earlier years. Everyone who bought a radio sounded like an Alabama trucker with the pedal down as soon as they got on the air.

Brande stared out the forward porthole. There was nothing but blackness. He flipped the toggle for the floodlights, which gave them a forty-foot range of vision. A golden-orange fish darted from in front of them, too quick to identify.

“Got’em at fourteen-thirty-seven feet,” Dokey said. “Hey, we’ve got another one coming.”

“Another what?” Brande asked.

“Sub. I don’t know whose it is.”

“Keep an eye on it.”

It took them almost fifteen minutes to achieve the depth Brande wanted, about twenty feet lower than the Los Angeles.

“She’s northwest of her emergency antenna buoy,” Dokey said. “Range three hundred yards.”

“I’m releasing weights,” Brande said, raising the protective plastic flap over the two toggles, then snapping them down. Two green LEDs told him the weights had dropped.

The submersible slowed her descent, then began to rise.

“I’m taking on ballast,” Dokey said.

The DepthFinder stabilized at 1,460 feet of depth. Brande eased the power stick forward and watched as the rate of speed came up to ten knots. He held it there.

“Two-five-five yards,” Dokey said. He placed his forefinger on the screen in front of him, as if making personal contact with the blip on the screen.

“The other sub has stalled at one-four-hundred feet, two hundred yards west.”

“Let’s see if either of them are listening,” Brande said. “Let me have the phone, Valeri.”

Dankelov passed the handset on its coiled cord over Brande’s shoulder.

He pressed the transmit stud. “Los Angeles, this is the DepthFinder.”

Somebody had been hanging around the acoustic radio set aboard the submarine. The response was immediate. “DepthFinder, this is Commander Alfred Taylor, commanding. Where are you?”

“Al? Dane Brande here. We’re a couple hundred yards out and closing. Your electronics down?”

“Just about everything is down. We lost sonar a couple hours ago.”

“How’s the environment?”

“Holding out, but getting a little stale. My people tell me we’ve got ten hours of air left.”

“That’ll be a hell of a lot more time than we need.”

“We’ve been sinking steadily,” Taylor said. There was a lot of understandable tension in his voice. “The rate of descent is picking up.”

“We calculated that. We’re still okay.”

Brande eased off on the power, and pulled the right stick back a trifle. The bow rose.

A minute later, Dokey said, “Heads up. We should get her in a second.”

The sub appeared in the lights abruptly.

Brande reversed the motors for a second, to cancel the forward momentum.

The submarine appeared to be hanging in space. The stern was down by ten degrees, and she was canted to the starboard a few degrees. The bow was to Brande’s left. It was a dully reflective gray under the harsh lights.

“I see you, Al.”

Taylor’s sigh came over the receiver, echoing. “Wish to hell I could see you. Dane, is it?”

“Right.”

“Look, from what I’ve read about the DepthFinder, we’re not going to find a mating surface.”

“No, that’d take too long, anyway. We’re going to tow you out.”

“What?”

“I see that your diving planes are in the full-up position. Are they operational?”

“No”

“No sweat. Full-up is what we want, anyway.”

After a pause, Taylor said, Tve got you. But not with the submersible?”

“She’s a tough little gal, Al, but not seven thousand tons displacement tough. No, we’re negotiating with the Bronstein, which is just above us.”

“She is? Why didn’t she contact us?”

“You’re Navy, Al. I’m not, so I can’t answer those kinds of questions.”

“Okay, Dane. What’s the procedure?”

“We’ve got an ROV with us, and hanging below us is a two-hundred-foot steel cable and a two-thousand-foot coil of light line. I want to attach the light line to your towing bitt, then we’ll take the other end to the surface and snag a cable from the frigate. Then we can pull the cable down and hook you up.”

“Sounds damned good to me,” Taylor said.

“Go, Okey,” Brande said.

Dokey leaned forward over his control board, gripped the control handles, and eased forward speed in. Beneath the forward porthole, they saw Atlas nudge his way forward, out of the sheath. The fiber-optic cable trailed behind, pulling away from its spring-loaded reel.

Dokey cut in the ROV’s video camera, and the image filled the starboard screen.

Brande activated the submersible’s own video camera, channeling the picture to the center screen. Atlas swam into view.

Working the controls was much like flying a radio-controlled airplane, and controllers frequently referred to the operation of ROVs as ʻflyingʼ.

Dokey could be expected to fly barrel rolls and loops with his ROVs, but now, as Brande glanced at him, he was deadly serious. The giveaway was his tongue stuck into the side of his cheek.

“Clear,” Dankelov said, monitoring the sensors beneath the submersible. “Cable is unreeling freely.”

A female voice broke in on the acoustic receiver. “DepthFinder?”

Brande picked up the handset from his lap and thumbed the button. “Go ahead, Rae.”

“The goddamned Navy has to check with Washington!”

She was definitely perturbed.

“Easy, Rae. Well just go ahead and get started, so we’re ready when they are.” He dropped the phone.

Another voice came out of nowhere.

“DepthFinder. This is Captain Mikhail Gurevenich of the Commonwealth submarine Winter Storm.” The English was a little hesitant, and with the echo of the acoustic transmission, difficult to understand.

Before Brande could find his handset again, Taylor spoke. “Captain Gurevenich? This is Al Taylor.”

“I am aware of your plight, Captain Taylor. We wish to assist you.”

“That’s our other sub,” Dokey said.

“May I speak to him?” Dankelov asked.

“Sure thing, Valeri.” Brande passed the telephone back over his shoulder.

Rapid-fire Russian filled the speaker for several minutes, then Dankelov said, “Because of his propeller configuration, Gurevenich says he must tow in reverse. We are to attach the towing line to his bow bitt.”

Brande repeated the instructions to Taylor.

“Sounds good to me, Dane. Captain Gurevenich, the men of the Los Angeles wish to express their gratitude.”

“It is not necessary, Captain Taylor. We owe you a cup of coffee.”

“What the hell’s that about?” Dokey asked.

“Damned if I know,” Brande said. “Let’s go.”

He eased in forward propulsion and advanced toward the stricken submarine, following behind the ROV. The whole scenario felt as if it were taking place in slow motion.

Twenty feet from the bow of the sub, Brande slowed, then stopped. In the center screen, the ROV also stopped, spun slowly around on its vertical axis, then moved down below the submersible.

Brande switched his attention to the starboard screen. Atlasʼs video eye had picked out the loops of the one-inch steel cable hanging from the wire cage of the sheath.

“Don’t drop it, Okey. We don’t have time to go looking for it.”

“Up yours, Chief. You ever see me drop anything before?”

“No, because it was usually gold.”

“This cable is as good as gold to the guys inside that can,” Dokey said.

On the screen, the manipulator arm reached out to almost its full length. Dokey’s left hand went to the slide switches on the panel, and the thumb and two fingers of the claw flexed. Gently, it found one of the plastic ties holding a single loop to the sheath, gripped it, and tugged.

The plastic broke and the loop fell away.

Dokey snapped the ties on three more loops which dropped out of sight of the camera and the halogen lights, to give himself slack in the cable, then came back and lifted the hook on one end of the cable from its latch on the wire cage.

Immediately, the picture on the screen began to tumble and spin.

The weight of the cable tugged the ROV downward.

Dokey’s hands whipped back to the ROV control sticks, gently feeding in downward and sideways thrust.

The screen image stabilized.

Picture of a metal arm and a metal hand gripping a metal hook. Background of darkness.

Rotating.

Rising.

The bow of the sub came into view on the ROV screen just as the ROV rose into position ahead of DepthFinder.

“You sweating yet?” Brande asked.

“Thinking about it.”

Brande could imagine the other people sweating over their progress. Thomas and Sorenson and the other team members would be on the bridge of the RV, waiting for word from below. Gurevenich, too, was blind.

And Taylor and his men had the most to sweat about.

Atlas eased away from them, moving toward the towing bitt on the bow, dragging the fiber-optic cable and the heavy steel cable behind. As the ROV closed on the hull, the extending weight of the steel line caused it to nose down.

“Come with me a little, Dane,” Dokey said, “This son of a bitch is heavy.”

Brande glanced over and saw that Dokey was using full thrust on the robot’s lift motors.

He tapped in forward power and the submersible slid forward, the towing cable draped downward, and the ROV reached the hull of the submarine.

It took almost ten minutes to maneuver the ROV around the bitt, pulling the cable around with it. It slipped off twice, and got hung up on the crossbar once. Finally, the claw worked the hook downward and snapped it on the cable.

“That bastard better not come loose,” Dokey said.

“It will not,” Dankelov said. “There is too much weight on it.”

“Give everyone a progress report, Valeri.”

Dankelov lifted the telephone and said, “Atlas has secured one end of the cable to the Los Angeles.”

No one replied, perhaps in fear of interrupting the concentration of the crew in the submersible.

“Dane, I don’t think we want to cut loose all of the coils,” Dokey said. “Atlas won’t take all of the weight.ˮ

“All right. Just get one coil and the hook. I’ll carry the weight until we’re done. Valeri, tell Gurevenich we need to have him move in closer.”

“She is down another seven feet, Dane. The Winter Storm also should come in lower.”

He checked the sonar readout, which had been changed to the port-side screen. “Good idea, Valeri. Tell him to lose about three hundred feet and come ahead a hundred yards.”

Brande could not understand much Russian, but he heard where Dankelov converted the measurements to meters.

Valeri Dankelov had never liked the English measurement system.

After Dokey had cut a plastic tie and had the other hook gripped firmly in the ROVʼs claw, Brande advanced toward the sub, then turned ahead of it, toward the west.

The tow cable only allowed him to move fifteen or twenty feet before it slowed him to a stop.

He pumped water ballast aboard, and the submersible began to descend.

The snout of the CIS submarine slowly appeared on the screen.

“Tell him another fifty feet, Valeri.”

Dankelov translated the direction.

The sub moved slowly, but Brande kept a firm grip on his controls, ready to dart sideways if necessary. He did not want any collisions.

Dokey advanced Atlas toward the foreign bow even before Gurevenich slowed it to a stop.

The towing bitt appeared on the ROV screen, and this time, Dokey had the cable secured in eight minutes.

“Getting pretty damned good,” Brande told him.

“I was always good, Chief”

Twelve minutes later, with the rest of the loops cut away from beneath the submersible and the ROV back in its sheath, Brande told Dankelov, ‘Tell Captain Gurevenich that the towline is secure. I would like to have him come slowly up by two hundred feet, as well as move dead slow astern”

Brande backed DepthFinder away as the Soviet submarine began to move. He trained the video camera on the space between the two vessels and watched as the towline rose out of the depths then began to tauten.

“Tell him to go easy, Valeri. It may not be the strongest cable in the world.”

Brande rotated the sub until the Los Angelesʼs bow came into view.

As they watched, the towline straightened, seemed to hum. Brande held his breath, waiting for the cable to snap.

The Los Angeles began to move.

“We feel movement, DepthFinderTaylor reported. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Dankelov said over the transceiver.

“Good work,” Sorenson told them from the RV.

“Valeri, tell Gurevenich we want to hold the tow to less than three knots. Let’s not let speed overcome caution.”

Brande kept pace with the American sub, rising slowly as the forward movement on the diving planes forced it upward.

He took the phone from Dankelov. “Rae, you there?”

“Here, Dane.”

“It’s going to take about an hour. When she surfaces, I want the Bronstein to take over the tow. They’re going to have to keep her moving to keep her on the surface until they can get some pumps going.”

“Captain Dewey will probably have to get orders from twelve different places,” she said.

“He’s got an hour to do that. Or when I meet him, I’ll shove his ship up his ass.”

“I’ll be happy to pass that word,” she said.

The seas were rough. Long, deep swells with tall, white-capping waves threatened to wash over the bow of the Queen of Liberty.

The weather canvas had been installed around the sides and back of the flying bridge, but briny spray occasionally breached a gap in the old canvas, and the deck was wet and sloppy.

A white-faced Donny Edgeworth sat in the helmsman’s seat and tried to keep the bow headed into the oncoming breakers. He was mostly successful.

Dawn Lengren and Julie Mecom had gone below long before and taken to their bunks. Both of them looked green, but Aaron thought that Dawn’s illness was related more to the beer she had been drinking. She was usually pretty seaworthy.

Curtis Aaron stood near the forward windshield, his hand wrapped around a grab bar. He was not particularly worried about the weather. It would probably pass over soon.

The Queen and Jacobs’ Arienne had both caught up with Brande’s research vessel shortly after it had stopped near the Navy ship. At first, when the submersible was lowered into the sea, Aaron had thought they had arrived on the scene of the crashed rocket, but Dawn, who had been checking the navigation positions, said it was probably the submarine that was sinking. Those reports had been on the radio for a couple hours by that time.

The flotilla of Navy ship, research ship, Queen and Arienne had been drifting westward for over an hour, making just enough headway to keep from broaching in the seas. There was no radio traffic on any of the channels Aaron could monitor, and in the darkness, not much to be seen.

“There!” Edgeworth yelled, pointing with a skinny finger.

“Where?”

Searchlights from the Navy ship suddenly came to life, and the ocean was bathed in bluish white. In the path of one light, Aaron saw a conning tower breaking the surface.

“Damn,” he said, “they got her.”

“I don’t think that’s the right one, Curtis. Look at the red star.”

In fact, there was a red star on the sail. It was bold and clear in the glare of the searchlight. Water sluiced from the hull as more of the submarine emerged from the sea.

“It’s moving backward,” Edgeworth said.

“And so it is, Donny. What the hell’re they doing?”

Three minutes later, he knew.

A second conning tower erupted from the surface.

And then that of a tiny submarine, bobbing like a cork on the rough seas.

The big Navy ship started to close in on the second submarine.

“You want me to follow them, Curtis?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“But they’re kind of messing around with fate, aren’t they? With Mother Nature and Lady Destiny?”

“Maybe not, Donny. Maybe this wasn’t meant to be. They hadn’t gone down yet, anyway.”

Lately, Aaron had begun to concern himself as much with fate as he was with nature.

Sometimes, it was difficult to tell which way nature and destiny were headed. It was a struggle to not get confused.

“It’s past nine o’clock here,” Ned Nelson said. “You’re screwing up my whole timetable.”

“This is hot, Ned,” Overton said. Hot enough that he had forgotten about his roiling stomach. “I’m on the scene.”

“Scene of what?”

“This research ship showed up out of the blue and saved the crew of the Los Angeles.ˮ

“Oh, shit! You sure?”

“We’re towing it now, and we’ve taken most of the sailors off the sub. I’ve got interviews. Oh, babe, I’ve got interviews!”

“Let me get somebody from rewrite over here.”

“Hey, Ned! You picking up the tab on my charters?”

“Ah, hell. Did you get good receipts?”

It took over an hour to get DepthFinder aboard and snugged down. While the Orion was stable enough on her cycloidals, she still surged up and down, and the submersible had to make several tries before she successfully approached between the hulls and captured the lift cable.

Thomas was on the fantail, ordering those who were not wearing one into life jackets when Brande, Dokey and Dankelov slid down the ladder of the scaffold.

She felt like throwing her arms around Brande, she was so glad to see him. In addition to the rescue of the submarine crew, of course. That elated her.

She smiled as the three of them approached her. They looked pretty beat.

Brande smiled back.

Dokey asked, “Don’t I get a kiss?”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. It surprised hell out of him.

“Coffee’s waiting in the wardroom,” she told them.

Brande said, “I’d better…”

“We’ll take care of it. Go rest.”

Ship’s crew and team members were swarming over the sub, pulling battery trays, preparing to remove Atlas for servicing, and scooting SARSCAN out of the laboratory. The sonar robot was ready to be attached to the sub.

She turned and walked forward with them. While it was not raining, the wind was gusting and throwing spray over the decks. Thomas kept a grip on the safety lines until they reached the side door and slipped inside.

She pulled off her slicker and hung it on a hook where it dripped.

Brande pointed upward. “Mel?”

“We’re already back on course, Dane. We only lost four-and-a-half hours.”

“What does the Navy say about that?” Dokey asked.

“I don’t know. I gave Dewey Dane’s message, word for word, and I haven’t heard from them since. Well, once. Captain Taylor has bought each of the crew members of the DepthFinder a week’s stay at the MGM Grand in Reno.”

“Damn, I think I’ll go now,” Dokey said.

“Go get coffee, instead,” Brande told him.

Dokey looked at the two of them, then took Dankelov’s arm and led him into the lounge.

“You’d better get some rest, Dane.”

“Right away?”

“Maybe not right away.”

“What have you got, Oren?”

“It gets shitty from here on out, Carl”

“I suspect I don’t want to hear this,” Unruh said.

“No, you don’t. But you have to, and you have to pass it on to your buddies in the room.”

For quite some time, there had been a celebration going, fueled by coffee and Danish, over the salvation of the Los Angeles and her crew. The President had ordered hot roast beef sandwiches for everyone for lunch.

No one mentioned the dereliction from duty and orders of one Dane Brande.

Even the threat of planned protests had been forgotten for the moment. Seven days after the crash of the A2e, rally and protest planners were finally getting organized. Massive demonstrations were planned all around the globe, and most of them had been listed on the charts scattered around the Situation Room.

The plotting display had been refined to the immediate area of the crash zone. Most of the players were on the scene. The Sea Lion had already been deployed by the Russians, and the Eastern Flower was in the vicinity, though she had not yet launched a submersible. Reports from the submarines were being shared with the Japanese and the Russians, but so far, the Russians had not responded in kind.

“Okay, Patterson. Give it to me.”

“The eggheads broke down the computer tape. It’s not an application program, but it lists the data obtained from one run of the computer model.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, the configuration of the rocket when it hit the sea, and then what might have happened afterward. Fins moved one way or another, boosters breaking off, that kind of thing. This particular model shows the rocket hitting at over four hundred kilometers per hour, a booster separating, and the rocket veering to the southeast from the point of impact.”

“Damn. When can I get that data in hard copy?”

“Iʼm sending a courier now. But don’t jump on it, Carl. It’s just one scenario.”

“I understand that,” Unruh said, “but maybe it’ll help somebody.”

“Here’s something that won’t help anyone: the meltdown is scheduled to begin between 1800 hours, eight September, and 2400 hours, nine September.”

“Fuck!”

“That’s local time in the area of operations, and it looks like solid data, Carl. The eggheads say that information was not entered as a variable.”

Unruh felt sick. That hot roast beef sandwich was no longer appetizing.

“Jesus, Oren. What do I do?”

“Take it and run, Carl. Run like a sumbitch.”