Ultra Deep (14 page)

“TOO DAMN MANY!” the crowd echoed.

Aaron let them chant for a while. He smiled at them and looked around. Mark Jacobs of Greenpeace stood leaning against a pier railing, looking back at him. Jacobs had spoken to the crowd earlier but, Aaron thought, with less conviction than was called for in light of the developing news reports. Aaron frequently chided Jacobs for the soft stances that Greenpeace took.

It was more than news reports, of course. Rumors were flying with the agility and speed of F-15 Eagles. The meltdown had already occurred. Fish were dying by the millions, washing up on the beaches. Fishermen had been quarantined. Supermarket chains had already banned the sales of seafood products from Pacific waters.

Rumor or fact, people were frightened. How often could he or Mark Jacobs assemble a crowd this large on the Santa Monica Pier at one o’clock in the morning?

They were an odd lot. A few fishermen, a few freaks that had drifted in from West L. A. and Hollywood, a large number of beach bunnies and surfers, some boating people — judging by their clothing and the pseudo gold braid on the bills of their baseball caps — and a couple of cops. The cops appeared a little nervous as they eyed the weirdos and the louder protesters, and they did not chant along with the crowd.

A chilly wind was blowing in from the sea, breaking against his throat above his navy blue windbreaker. A couple of ships were steaming several miles offshore, but other than that, there was not much marine activity. A fairly steady stream of cars moved along Pacific Avenue. Aaron wondered if their occupants had come down to gawk at the contaminated water.

Donny Edgeworth, Ocean Free’s secretary-treasurer, was at the fringe of the mob, talking on Ocean Free’s only cellular telephone. Edgeworth was a skinny kid with hair so golden it looked green. He was not really a kid, being thirty-five years old, but his slight frame and rampant acne gave most people that impression.

As the chanting died away, Aaron lifted his bullhorn again and said, “And now … ”

“AND NOW…”

“They’ve done it again. Defying Nature, with no concern for the consequences, the powers that be have created yet another catastrophe”

“YES!”

“Doing their best to destroy what God and Nature have provided for mankind.”

“YES!”

“When will they learn to leave alone that which history and fate and nature have given to us?”

Wrong question, or form of question. The mob did not know how to respond.

“Leave it alone!” Aaron said into the mouthpiece. The three words issued from the bullhorn in volume and were blown away by the breeze.

“LEAVE IT ALONE!”

Edgeworth pushed his way through the throng of people as they intoned their new message and craned his turkey neck up toward Aaron.

“LEAVE IT ALONE!”

Aaron leaned down, gripping the rail of the pickup bed. “Curtis, San Diego just called. The
Orion
has left her port”

“I knew it! Brandeʼs involved. Was he aboard?”

“I don’t know. Becky was too far away to see much.”

“Go find Dawn. I think we’d better trail along on this party”

Edgeworth’s face showed his alarm. “I don’t know, Curtis. You think … uh, you think it’s safe?”

“Who knows, Donny, boy? But we’ve damned sure got a commitment — to ourselves, and to people like these here — to do what’s right. Get going.”

Aaron stood upright and used the bullhorn to reinforce the “Leave it alone!”

The mob voice regained strength, and he slipped over the side of the truck and walked away with that proud chant in his ears.

When he gave a thumbs-up to Mark Jacobs, Jacobs did not acknowledge it.

*

0250 HOURS LOCAL, 36° 4' NORTH, 170° 44' EAST

Mikhail Gurevenich had attempted to sleep for a couple of hours, but unsuccessfully. Illogically, he tried to attribute his restlessness to the fact that they had crossed eastward into a new time zone, but underneath, he knew that his anxiety about what he would find at the end of his journey was increasing steadily.

Also, he suspected that his inability to confide in anyone else — his second in command, even the asinine rookie officer, Lieutenant Kazakov — relative to his concerns and the terrible secret he carried heightened his unease. He kept wishing he had not decoded that second message, or that the message had not ordered him to maintain his silence.

Gurevenich gave up on his nap, rolled out of his narrow bunk, and dressed in a fresh uniform. Leaving his cabin, he prowled through the claustrophobic passageways of the submarine. It was mostly quiet. The high revolutions of the propeller shaft created an irritating whine and a slight vibration in the deck. Except for the crew members on watch, and two enlisted men playing chess in their mess, the men were in their bunks, snoring or dreaming or both. They had nothing to worry about, though certainly the various rumors regarding their high-speed transit would have rippled by now into a thousand even more various rumors.

The captain stopped outside the sonar compartment, then slipped through the light-trapping curtain into the red-lit space.

When the sonar man on duty, Paramanov, looked up, Gurevenich raised his hand to keep him in his seat.

“Have you heard anything of consequence?” he asked.

“It is difficult, Captain, when the
Winter
Storm
is traveling at such speed, to hear much beyond the
Winter
Storm
. An hour ago, I detected a surface vessel. I suspect it was a small freighter, headed east. Other than that, perhaps a whale or two.” Paramanov grinned at his own wit.

Gurevenich estimated they were still some sixteen hours and six hundred nautical miles from the target area.

“Soon, we will begin to encounter other vessels,” he said. “There may be many of them, and you must be careful to identify them.”

“Of course, Captain. There is the Russian submarine and the task forces.”

“I think that there will be others, as well, Paramanov. Take extreme care, for we do not want incidents of international importance.”

The sonarman nodded, but his expression revealed his puzzlement.

Gurevenich turned and left the compartment. Now was not the time for disgorging too much information and fueling the rumor mill that propagated itself aboard any vessel.

He would tell his crew as much as they needed to know, but not sooner than they needed to know it.

In point of fact, he would like to bare his mind, but he was not certain how his crew would react to the knowledge it contained.

*

0430 HOURS LOCAL, 33° 16' NORTH, 120° 47 WEST

Kim Otsuka, rising early from her bed, went forward to the communications compartment and used the ship-to-shore phone to call the Japanese Consulate. She asked for Mr. Sato.

When he came on the line minutes later, sounding sleepy, he greeted her in Japanese.

She replied in her native language. “Mr. Sato, I am calling from the
Orion
. We are at sea.”

“At sea. But I thought … ”

“I feel that my place is with those with whom I have learned to work, Mr. Sato. The chances for our success are much greater.”

After a short silence, Sato said, “The people at Hokkaido Marine Industries will be very disappointed.”

“I am sorry.”

“As will be your government. To disregard such an invitation…”

“Again, I am sorry. I do not wish to show disrespect, but my value is far greater here.”

Again, there was a short wait before he spoke. “Yes, perhaps you are correct. I will be talking to you again.”

*

0445 HOURS LOCAL, PEARL HARBOR NAVAL BASE, HAWAII

Avery Hampstead had arrived at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, in the middle of the night, but he was still wide awake.

He had slept for most of the overwater journey.

The others in the command center were in varying stages of wakefulness.

Adm. David Potter, CINCPAC, looked a trifle groggy. Cmdr. Harold Evans, the watch commander, did not appear much better, but Hampstead understood that he had been on duty for twelve hours or so.

The Third Fleet’s electronic plotting board had been cleared of inconsequential data, like the movement of potentially hostile capital warships. Instead, only the tracks of shipping aimed at 26 North, 176 East were shown. Next to each blip at the head of black lines were black, block letters identifying the ship. A frigate named the
Bronstein
and a patrol craft out of Midway were already on the scene.
Kirov
and the rocket cruiser
Kynda
were heading small task forces, plowing through the seas eastward at flank speed.
Bartlett
and
Kane
were headed west as a pair. Three thin orange lines indicated the tracks of the submarines
Los
Angeles
,
Philadelphia
, and
Houston
. Dotted lines projected forward from each blip intersected right at the target coordinates.

Technicians milled about in the command center, moving from one console to another, speaking on headsets, keying in new information for the display on their computer keyboards.

The room was completely enclosed. Hampstead did not even have a decent view of Pearl Harbor.

A new blip was suddenly displayed on the plotting board. It was a long, long way away, off the coast of California. It was identified as
Orion
.

“Hot damn,” Hampstead said. “The
Orion
checked in, Commander Evans?”

“Just a moment, Mr. Hampstead.” The officer picked up a phone from the table they were seated at, spoke to someone, somewhere for a moment, then said, “Yes sir. She’s en route to the target area.”

“As soon as you can, Hal,” Admiral Potter said, “Get in touch with the master. I’ll want to speak with Brande about my objectives.”

Good luck, Hampstead thought.

He checked his watch, decided it was almost ten o’clock in Washington, give or take an hour, and picked up one of the spare phones in front of him. He dialed his office.

“Angie, this is the boss.”

“What boss? I think they fire you when you don’t show up for work.”

“I’m working in Hawaii this week.”

“I’ll have my bags packed and be on the way in fifteen minutes,” she said.

“Actually, what I need is to have you put all my hot appointments on the back burner.”

“What about the stuff that’s already on the back burner?”

“It goes on the backest back burner.”

“How about your wife?”

“Fortunately, Angie, I already called her.”

He brought her up to date on his activities and his plans, and then he told her to screen all of his calls. He wanted nothing forwarded to him that did not pertain to the downed rocket. “So I’m stuck in the office?”

“You can take long lunches,” he told her.

Then he called Carl Unruh, who was out of the office, but the call was bounced forward to the Situation Room.

“Brande’s on his way, Carl”

“Okay, good. How long?”

“It’s going to be tight as hell. If I’ve got my numbers right, they’ll hit the area on the seventh.”

“Jesus. That doesn’t give them much time before meltdown day.”

“If your experts have
their
numbers right.”

“They’re still working on it. The President asked them to re-crunch.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just dandy.”

“You didn’t mention the deadline to Brande?” Unruh asked him.

“To one of his people.”

“And they’re still going?”

“Give them some credit, Carl. Marine Visions is loaded with competent people.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have mentioned the deadlines.”

“I’m not good with classified crap,” Hampstead said. “I never know why it’s supposed to be classified. You have anything new?”

“Where are you?”

“CINCPAC.”

“You’ve seen the plotting board?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve got the latest on ship movements. Except, we think there might be a CIS sub or two closing the area. One of our Ohio-class subs got a sonar signature on the
Winter
Storm
. She was going gangbusters for Midway.”

“I don’t think she can do much when she gets there,” Hampstead said.

“She can start looking. Hell, that’s why we’ve got subs on the way, too.”

“I suppose.” The decision to send subs had not been Hampstead’s.

“Next item, Avery. Half an hour ago, a Candid took off from Murmansk with the
Sea
Lion
aboard. She’s headed for Vladivostok.”

“What will they put her on?”