Ultra Deep (27 page)

The fiber-optic cable used by Marine Visions was of the single-mode fiber type. The diameter of the filament was small enough to force a single beam of light to stay on a direct path. Lasers generated light signals in binary code — pulsing on for 1 and off for 2 — that zipped along the fiber at tremendous speeds. The high frequency of light waves allowed the transmission of thousands of times more information than was permitted by current flowing in a wire. The speed and data capacity of fiber-optic cables immensely reduced the thickness of the cable required. A quarter-inch-thick fiber-optic cable could handle telecommunications, computer data transfer, electronic mail, and image transfer with ease, and with space left over.

It was highly important that the laser light generators and receivers on both ends of the cable be correctly linked. A cable inserted into a connector with a V64-inch twist would scramble all communications between the host vehicle and the robot. Triple checks were made on the connectors and the synchronization of remote systems.

SARSCAN had never been towed by
DepthFinder
before, and modifications had been made to the submersible’s sonar readouts and recorders to accept the data transmitted by the deep sea sonar. A new black box had been installed under the third crew member’s seat, and a cable had been connected between the module and one of the computers. Two of Mayberry’s computer programmers were busy reprogramming SARSCAN’s memory in order to integrate it with the submersible.

Mayberry and Polodka came in from the side deck. Mayberry’s cornstalk hair was mussed by the wind, and his skinny body looked more emaciated than usual. Brande could not understand how the man shed calories. He was always first pig at the trough, and he put away rich, double helpings of desserts like they were gumdrops.

Polodka carried a name that was much larger than she was. At less than five feet of height, she might have been described as petite, except for the voluptuousness of the curves that could not be hidden by MVU jumpsuits. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, but did not have any other traits that would lump her with Russian stereotypes. Back when she and Dankelov had been involved with each other, Brande had been semi-jealous in the physical sense.

Not that he would have made a move on her. He believed in maintaining professional distances.

“Put that ratchet down, Dokey!” Mayberry commanded.

Dokey grinned at him. “You’ve got a loose rudder connection, Bob.”

“I loosened it, to adjust dead-center, asshole. Go find your own machine to screw up.”

Brande decided to stay out of it. Mayberry had been a little testy in the last two days, but he was under a lot of pressure, responsible for the electronics of not only SARSCAN, but all of the robots. And he would be thinking also about his family in San Diego and a runaway nuclear reactor.

Brande thought that maybe Thomas’s insistence on reviewing personnel policies and benefits — like life insurance — might be a good idea. He did not really know what kind of coverage existed for his people. The Mayberrys of San Diego might just be in trouble if something happened to Bob.

Brande tapped Dokey’s elbow and the two of them went forward to the wardroom. It was becoming a center of operations since the sonar/chart room was too small to accept more than four or five people.

Dokey headed directly for the galley.

Larry Emry had moved one of the computer stations into the lounge, and its screen had been alive since its transfer. He was playing with it then, adjusting the search grid over the undersea chart displayed on the cathode ray tube.

Brande came up behind him and looked over his shoulder. “You can’t do much more until we have additional data, Larry. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

Brande had issued orders for people to load up on as much sleep as possible. The time was fast approaching when they would not get much.

“I wish we knew more about the sea floor here,” Emry said, ignoring the suggestion.

“We may know more than we want to know soon.”

“Look at this”

Emry keyed in a command, and blue lines and swirls superimposed themselves on the chart. Brande did not like the looks of the low pressure cell.

“Weather?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a winter storm predicted by the meteorologists. This is what I predict it will look like by the time we reach the area.”

“Rain. How about wind?”

“The experts say gusts to thirty knots. We’ll have heavy seas.”

“Anything to really worry about, though?”

“For us, I don’t think so. The cycloidal propellers should keep us stable enough. But the reports we’re getting say there’s a bunch of nuts sailing around in the region. No telling what they’ll do.”

“Go home,” Brande said.

“I wish.”

Dokey came back from the galley, taking bites from a piece of cherry pie in one hand. Emry moved over to the wardroom table, and he and Dokey discussed the possibility of a chess match.

Brande told them he was going to bed.

He almost made it.

Rae Thomas was on the bridge, sharing the vigil with Connie Alvarez-Sorenson. Fred Bober was handling the helm. A variety of low-volume babble issued from the open doorway of the radio shack.

As he emerged from the companionway and turned toward the corridor leading aft, Brande said, “Good night, ladies and gentleman.”

Thomas followed him back to his and Dokey’s cabin. “You want to look at this, Dane?”

He pushed open the door, flipped the light switch, and stepped inside. “I suppose. What is it?”

Brande peeled his T-shirt off and tossed it toward the underbunk drawer that was his clothes hamper.

Thomas stopped in the open doorway and leaned against the jamb. “I had Avery Hampstead fax us a memorandum of understanding. Covering our fees.”

“Good. I’d forgotten all about it.” Brande sat down and unlaced his deck shoes. He pulled them off, peeled his socks off, and stretched his toes. It felt good. “Come on in, Rae, and sit down.ˮ

She moved over to Dokey’s bunk and sat tentatively on the edge of it. Because the cabin was so narrow, their knees almost touched.

“I asked him for thirteen-five a day plus incidentals.”

Brande looked up. “That much? I was thinking ten or eleven.”

“Of course you were. I covered our actual costs, and added a tiny fudge factor.”

“And got it. Good for you.”

“Look at this.”

She handed him the sheet ripped from the fax machine. After the gobbledygook bureaucratic headings and an introductory paragraph, it read:

1)Professional and equipment fees: $13,500/day.

2)Miscellaneous direct cost expenses: not to exceed $15,000/project.

3)Hazardous duty factor: multiple of 3.

Brande grinned. “Olʼ Avery. He’s kind of like my grandma Bridgette. A little gruff sometimes, but he cares.”

“That’s forty thousand a day.”

“Yeah. Some things work out, Rae.”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“Anything that deep can be dangerous, reactor or not,” Brande said. “A reactor gets us triple fees.”

She did not respond and he noticed a small tic in her cheek, under her right eye. Glancing down, he saw that her fingers were trembling.

“Rae?”

“I pushed it away, Dane. Ignored it.”

“The danger?”

“Yes. The risk and the decision you made to involve everyone.”

“I hope I was more democratic than that,” Brande said. “We had a meeting, remember?”

“That was only form, Dane. Everybody here would follow you wherever you went.”

Brande leaned forward, reached out, and took her hands in his. He could feel the tiny tremors.

She looked down at their hands.

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” he said. “I don’t want to be some kind of despot.”

“I followed you,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’re not a despot.”

“Only in the closet.”

Thomas raised her head and looked directly at him. “I’m scared.”

“We all are, Rae.”

“I’m scared for all of us. I’m scared for you.”

A tear appeared in her eye, broke, and slithered down her cheek.

Brande levered himself off the bunk, crossed the narrow space, and sat down beside her. He put his arm around her shoulders. Thomas laid her head against his neck. He felt a warm tear fall on his chest.

“It’s going to be all right, Rae. Believe me.”

Dokey appeared in the doorway. “Hey! We’re now part of the United States Navy! Whoops! Sorry, folks.”

September 5 

Chapter Eleven

2114 HOURS LOCAL, PLESETSK COSMODROME

Pyotr Nicholavich Piredenko, the Director of the Flight Data Computer Center, was troubled.

He did not consider himself particularly brilliant, but he did think he was competent, a craftsman in his field. As a scientist, he also thought that he was a fair observer, and he did not like what he was seeing.

For four days now, he and his staff had been working with seven members of the
Atomnaya
Secretariat
on nothing but computer modeling of the A2e crash. A scheduled launch had been delayed in order to devote computer time to continual replays of the launch and subsequent failure of the rocket. Using the actual telemetry data, they were able to reconstruct perfectly the speeds, pressures, and altitudes of the rocket right up to the moment of impact. From that point on, they tested seemingly endless variables in the attempt to determine what might have transpired with the payload and, more important, where the rocket and payload might have come to a final rest.

In fifty simulations, the computer suggested fifty possible landing locations on the ocean floor.

In fifty simulations, the computer suggested only one scenario for the nuclear reactor in the payload module.

During his infrequent breaks for a nap or a tasteless meal, Piredenko found himself sleepless or not hungry. His mind rumbled with damnations of General Oberstev, who would not listen to reason, and reactor designers, who would not imagine anything but perfection in their design.

And who had made the simplest of errors in their circuitry design. A fatal error.

Also during his breaks, he would guzzle glasses of tea and review the dispatches issued by television, by Radio Moscow, by
Pravda
and by
Novoye
Vremya
. There was not one mention of the potential disaster. Despite the media openness of recent years, some setbacks in Commonwealth domestic and foreign programs still went unreported.

Pyotr Piredenko was observer enough to realize that once again the
Rodina
, the motherland, was burying her head in the sand, afraid of the loss of face, distressed at owning up to her responsibilities. She, and many in her leadership, were ever sensitive to criticism by a world that was scrutinizing them so closely. It was, he thought, a trait ingrained deeply in the generations that followed the Revolution.

The director was also observer enough to realize that one Vladimir Yevstavyev, a civilian electronics technician assigned to the cosmodrome, did not make enough money to purchase shirts with Arrow labels, shoes with a Reebok logo, or portable cassette players with Sony stamped on them. Piredenko’s life revolved around his computer center, and he had not worried unduly about the sources of Yevstavyev’s additional income. Piredenko was not in the business of counterespionage, and if the experts had not detected a problem in the technician’s life-style, Piredenko was not going to enlighten them.

He stood at the back of his computer center, just outside his glass-walled office, and scanned the activity. All of the consoles were manned, flight center personnel and men from the atomic energy bureau hovering over the operators at their keyboards as segments of the ill-fated rocket’s flight were examined yet again.

He made up his mind.

Crossing to the rack of computer tapes — duplicates of data stored on the computer’s hard disk drives — Piredenko randomly selected one plastic box. The label was written in thick black ink and read: FLT PLK92/64 Simulation #47.

He dropped it in the pocket of his white laboratory smock, scanned the room once again, and saw that no one seemed overly interested in him.

He told the woman nearest him that he would be in the cafeteria and then left the center.

In the cafeteria, some twenty people were idling during their rest times. Vladimir Yevstavyev was one of them, and Piredenko was not surprised. The man had been present almost every time that Piredenko had visited the cafeteria. He drew tea from an urn and carried the glass across the dining hall to sit at the small table opposite Yevstavyev.

“Good evening, Director.”

The man’s face displayed only slight shock at Piredenko’s uninvited company. The two had never exchanged more than a nod of recognition in the past.

“Hello, Vladimir. You look tired.”

“We are on double shifts, Director. As you must be.”

Piredenko placed his glass on the table, then laid the tape box beside it, label down.

“Yes, though it feels twice that.”

They chatted about inconsequential for Five minutes, then Piredenko finished his tea and rose. “I must return to my charges.”

“Have a good night, Director.”

Piredenko walked away, leaving the tape box resting on the table.

When he glanced back from the doorway, the box had disappeared.

0950 HOURS LOCAL, PEARL HARBOR NAVAL BASE, HAWAII

Avery Hampstead was on the telephone again, as he had known that he would be for this week and perhaps the next week. The table in front of him was littered with telephones, and he thought that he had used every one of them. Naval people in khaki uniforms moved around the operations center as if they had purposes. The conversational buzz was low-volume, which he appreciated.

“I believe your voice sounds clearer with each passing moment, Dane.”

“That’s just your imagination working, Avery”

“Or my optimism. Did you get the maps?”

“We did. Where did you find them?”

“My lovely secretary — or perhaps she’s my boss — Angie and I have been calling every oceanographic outfit in the world. We simply asked if they had ever done exploratory work in the region, and if they had, could we see their maps. Except for the CIS, they’ve been very obliging. The photocopies have been rolling in.”

“Larry Emry’s happy,” Brande said. “He’s busy updating his geologic data base.”

“When he’s done, do you suppose he could transmit copies to us and to the
Kane
?” Hampstead asked. “We’re all compiling our own, of course, but the comparisons might erase a few glitches.”

There were discrepancies between some of the maps they had received — seamounts, trenches, valleys appearing hundreds of yards off of reported geographic positions. Most of those could be attributed to data collected prior to the more exact navigational positioning provided by the Global Navigation System.

“We’ll send it out as soon as we can.”

“We’ll be eternally grateful,” Hampstead said.

“I doubt it. Now, do you want to talk about the reason I called you?”

“No.”

Brande ignored the negative response and went on. “I have here a copy of an order signed by the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chief of Naval Operations. Under the provisions of an executive order declaring an emergency, they have commandeered my ship for thirty days.”

“I may have seen a copy of the same order,” Hampstead acknowledged.

“Whatʼs going on, Avery?”

“Well, you could have been more diplomatic with Admiral Potter, Dane.”

“To hell with Admiral Potter. It’s my ship.”

“It wouldn’t hurt…”

“But, Avery, thanks to Rae, I also have a prior-dated memorandum from you. I’m under contract to the Department of Commerce.”

“If we line up Commerce on one side of the Potomac and Defense on the other side, Dane, then open up with the weapons available to both sides, I think Commerce will be decimated. I’m talking legal weapons, of course.”

“Go over their heads, Avery.”

“That’s the President.”

“I know.”

“I only say ‘yessir’ to the President,” Hampstead said.

“This isn’t going to work,” Brande said.

“Well, if you just take it easy, go along with…”

“CINCPAC telexed us the search pattern we’re supposed to follow.”

“Yes.”

“You’re at CINCPAC. Why didn’t you bitch about it?”

“I’ve not been asked for input on that, Dane. They have the experts in that field.”

“It’s designed by a guy whose primary objective in life is looking for hostile submarines. We’re not searching for a submarine.”

“I’ll raise your objection with the search committee,” Hampstead said.

“I might have known it was a committee.”

*

1015 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 38" NORTH, 176° 10' 52" EAST

The forward torpedo room had become a museum of the
Tashkent
. About sixty kilograms of flotsam from the stricken submarine had been recovered on the surface and stowed aboard the
Winter
Storm
.

Gurevenich had ordered it left alone, but he knew that it was on everyone’s mind as they resumed the search pattern. It caused the men of the submarine to maintain even more silence than they had previously.

Rubbing the fatigue from his eyes with the heels of his hands, Gurevenich sat in the wardroom with a cup of tea and a half-eaten sandwich. His appetite had disappeared along with the
Tashkent
.

He looked up when Mostovets stepped in.

“Something, Ivan Yosipovich?”

“No, Captain. We have analyzed the tapes of a sonar return on a peak at one thousand meters depth. It is to the north about six kilometers. I ordered a magnetometer reading taken on our next pass, but I suspect the mass is much greater than that of a rocket. It wills an old shipwreck.”

It was the second wreck they had located. He could not count the
Tashkent
. What was left of the submarine had gone down, down, down, off their sonar, and into an abyss of unknown depth.

The analysis of sonar readings was difficult even when they were tracking the bottom. The blotches and smears on the screen — or on tapes of the screen — did not distinguish between artificial, man-made objects and natural debris on the seabed. What promised to be a nose cone could just as well be a rock outcropping.

And this was true only when they could see the bottom, which was infrequent. So far, they had identified four seamounts, the highest to the north, about a kilometer north of the point of impact.

“What of the
Houston
?” Gurevenich asked.

“Our contacts have been intermittent, but it seems to be following an east-west pattern, Captain, at six hundred meters of depth, and several kilometers to the north.”

“And the surface ships?”

“Still gathered to the west,” Mostovets reported.

The published and broadcast reports of the rocket’s point of impact on the surface of the Pacific Ocean had apparently been generally described as 26 degrees, 20 minutes North, 176 degrees, 10 minutes East, for that was where the gaggle of civilian ships had congregated. The actual impact point was to the northeast of that position by five kilometers, more precisely located eleven seconds further north and twenty-three seconds further east. He hoped that no one further enlightened the sightseers.

“The
Kirov
,” Mostovets continued, “has stationed itself slightly northwest of the civilian ships.”

“Amazing,” Gurevenich said. “Fleet Command actually followed a recommendation that I made.”

“It would appear so, Captain. If the
Kirov
maintains its position, it may keep the civilian craft away from the actual search area.”

“At least until the
Timofey
Olʼyantsev
arrives. They will likely have to operate the
Sea
Lion
closer to the crash area.”

“And the civilians will interfere, no doubt,” Mostovets said.

“Probably.”

“And the
Kirov
will have to demonstrate its firepower.”

“Let us hope not, Ivan Yosipovich.”

*

1120 HOURS LOCAL, 29° 52' NORTH, 163° 31' WEST

“Oh, God, no!” Brande said.

He was seated at the wardroom table with Okey Dokey and Rae Thomas.

Bucky Sanders, who had just come through the door with a seaman named Rivers, grinned at him. “Iʼm afraid so.”

“Mel put you on galley duty again?”

“That’s right.”

“He hasn’t learned much about your prowess with a pan, Bucky.”

“You could always talk to him.”

“What are we having?”

“Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.”

“You’ll find a way to grill the soup and boil the cheese, won’t you?”

“I think I’ve got it figured out this time,” Sanders said as he and Rivers disappeared into the galley.

“Put that on your list of priorities, Madame President,” Dokey said. “We need competent cooks. Trained in France would be all right.”