Ultra Deep (41 page)

The two submersibles had been communicating infrequently on the acoustic telephone, and Drozdov responded from the
Sea
Lion
. “I hear you, Miss Kaylene. What is the coordinate of your return?”

“Nineteen, fifty-three, ten, thirty-one, Gennadi.”

“We show only the outline of a large ridge,” Drozdov told her.

Brande looked up at the search monitor and pictured the bottom mentally. The
DepthFinder
was a half-mile farther south than the CIS sub, and three-fourths of a mile to its west. SARSCAN had picked up a return to its east side which was probably blocked from the
Seeker’s
sonar probes by the ridge.

Something there.

Hiding.

“What’s your depth, darlin’?”

“Twenty thousand-two, Mel. But Okey says we’re on the brink of a trench.”

“It goes deeper?” Sorenson asked, with some degree of awe in his voice.

“Okey says, ‘count on it.’”

Twelve minutes later, Dokey’s voice sounded on the speakers. “Depth two-zero-eight-five-four. Position one-nine, five- three North, one-zero, three one East.”

Sorenson yelped, “You’ve got it!”

“Shit, no! What we’ve got looks like the first stage. No second stage, no payload stage.”

There was a long collective sigh from the people behind Brande.

The
Orion
rocked hard to the right, making everyone scramble for balance.

Dokey said, “That son of a bitch is in the canyon, for sure.”

*

1012 HOURS LOCAL, WASHINGTON, DC

Through the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ben Dele-court, the President had ordered CINCPAC to leave the searchers in the Pacific alone.

Adm. David Potter had complained about a breakdown in the chain of command.

The President said, “I don’t give a damn who’s calling the shots, as long as they’re called. Let the people on the scene share command”

Carl Unruh thought it was as good a system as any other. At least, Brande had discovered some way to get the Russians to cooperate.

Other than for that little bit of drama, nothing else was going on. The major players were on the scene in the Situation Room, but they were not saying much. The whole mood was somber and defeatist as the final deadline approached.

Others were optimistic. According to the placards on the easels, the zealous nature of protests and rallies had died away as soon as word got out that the boosters had been found. Some had been canceled, others had waned for lack of interest.

The display on the electronic board in the Situation Room was now the same as one being generated by someone named Emry on board the
Orion
. It was being transmitted from Brande’s ship through the
RVKane
to the CRITICOM satellite network, then picked up by Hawaii and Washington.

Three pieces of debris. Two boosters and the first stage were shown.

A curving dotted line showed the beginnings of a flight

path and three more lines breaking off the first indicated where the boosters and the first stage might have separated from the main body of the A2e.

Where the dotted line would end was still open to conjecture.

But they were getting there.

He kept watching the clock on the wall that was labeled Japan, but which had been reset to keep track of time in the target zone.

There was not much time left on it.

A decade before, when Unruh was part of the operations directorate, he had relished action. Always doing something, going somewhere. He thought that maybe Brande was somewhat like the younger Unruh.

But he was older now. He sat in rooms like this and waited for the actions to take place around him. It seemed like he did not have much control, but he did. He was part of the process that formed the general shape of the actions that would take place. And, distasteful or not, he was good at it.

He did not think Brande would understand or appreciate that.

Earlier, after Brande had chewed him out so thoroughly, Unruh had thought about looking Brande up after it was ail over and trying to explain the process.

Now, he did not think that he would.

He looked up at the clock mislabeled Japan, and he looked at the three pieces of debris that an electronic map said were crunched deep in the Pacific Ocean.

There was supposedly a canyon out there, deeper than deep.

And not enough time.

Unruh did not think he would ever meet Dane Brande, and he thought that that was going to be his loss.

*

0935 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 53" NORTH, 176° 10' 31" EAST

The
Orion
was directly above the resting place of the A2eʼs first stage. A hundred yards off her bow, the
Timofey
Olʼyantsev
was fighting to stay on station. Though the Commonwealth patrol ship, at 312 feet, was seventy-two feet longer than the research vessel, she did not have the stabilization of the cycloidal propellers.

When Brande visited the bridge to check on Connie Alvarez-Sorenson, she pointed out a yacht, dimly seen through the slanting rain, half a mile to the south. “Cartwright says that thing’s loaded to the gunwales with reporters. They won’t leave us alone. On the radio, the Navy’s trying to get them outside the cordon.”

“Be a shame if we lost them all, wouldn’t it?” Brande said. “I’ll plead the Fifth,” she said.

“You doing all right up here?”

“Just dandy, thanks to computers and satellites. We’re not going anywhere we don’t want to go.”

Brande moved to the right side of the bridge and stared forward through the water sluicing off the windshield.

Dismal, gray view.

Kenji Nagasaka stood near the helm, ready to grab if the autopilot let go.

Alvarez-Sorenson, wrapped in a bulky ski sweater, came over and stood beside him.

“Worried about her?”

“What?”

“Kaylene.”

“Of course not.”

“Bullshit, boss. Shows all over you.”

“You’re the resident expert, Connie?”

“Might as well be expert at something. Go ahead and bring them up.”

“Little early, yet,” Brande said.

“Hey, I’m the acting captain, right? I say, with that weather out there, we need more time.”

Brande went back to the radio shack and said, “Bucky, hook in with the acoustic, would you?”

Sanders flipped toggles and handed him the phone.

“How you doing down there, Bob?”

“We just reported. Check the screen.”

Mayberry was a little testier now, with some fatigue setting in.

“I’m not near the screen.”

“Sorry. Situation the same. We’ve prowled the edge of the canyon, peeked over it a few times. Nothing.”

“The
Sea
Lion
? You check with them on radiation?”

“Thirty minutes ago. No radiation count to speak of. They’re on ascent now, to change crews.”

“That’s what I want you to do, too. Bring it on up.”

There was a delay while Rae wrestled the phone away from Mayberry. Brande pictured it that way.

“Not yet, Dane. We’ve still got a couple hours of shift yet.”

“Now, Rae. Connie wants more time for lift-out. And I want time to install
Celebes
.”

“Damn it, I was just getting comfortable. Why Gargantua?”

“So we’re ready, just in case. With time the way it is, we’ll have to make do with the submersible’s sonar.”

“All right. Let it be recorded that that’s an unwilling ‘all right’.”

“So recorded.”

He waited with the phone in hand until he heard that the weights had been successfully jettisoned, then went below to manage a final inspection of Gargantua.

He had over three hours to wait, but standing idle was not working for him.

*

1120 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 43" NORTH, 176° 10' 23" EAST

“Everybody below is sick as a dog, Curtis. Don’t you think we should head for Midway?”

“This’ll pass over, Dawn,” Aaron told her. Besides, he was not sure he could find Midway.

When he had last talked to Mark Jacobs, earlier in the morning, Jacobs had told him that he was taking the Greenpeace boat to Midway. Aaron might have followed then, if he had known where the
Arienne
was.

The radar screen was just a lot of little dots appearing behind the sweep as it rotated. Some dots were brighter than others, but it was difficult to pick out which were true vessels and which were random feedback from the sea.

He had given Dawn a new heading after deciding that a circle of brighter blips was too uniform to be anything other than ships.

The trouble was, somehow they had drifted southwest of the main body of ships, and heading back to it, they were taking the swells off the left rear quarter. Not infrequently, huge waves crashed over the stern, swamping the deck.

A few more minutes, they would reach the circle of ships and could turn back to facing the waves.

Damn, if the weather had not turned so crappy, he could be in the center of those ships, spreading the word.

The closer they got, the brighter the blips looked.

Aaron sat back away from the radar hood and rotated the tension out of his shoulders.

The
Queen
of
Liberty
was rocking violently, threatening to heel over. Aaron had to keep a firm grasp on the side of his seat to avoid being spilled onto the deck.

He was mad as hell, trying not to show it to Dawn.

Nothing worked out the way he wanted. The world was going to hell in a handmade basket, and no one wanted to recognize it, to listen to the solutions. These jackasses kept screwing around with it, kept altering it, kept ignoring the signs.

They had to be stopped.

No getting around that.

Jacobs had scooted for Midway Island.

And that left Aaron on his own.

All he could do was his best.

*

1208 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 49" NORTH, 176° 10' 30" EAST

The CIS and U.S. cordon of warships had drifted south and slightly west in anticipation of sending the submersibles into the trench.

Oberstev, partially protected from the hard rain by a gray slicker, stood on the fantail of the
Timofey
Olʼyantsev
and watched the harried activity of the crew as they serviced the
Sea
Lion
.

It was noon, and yet it was dark enough to require floodlights. Pyotr Rastonov scurried about, slipping on the deck, examining connections, antennas, transponders, access doors. He called for more grease for the hatch seal.

A figure clad in yellow rubber pants and shirt exited the superstructure and approached Oberstev.

“I believe I am ready, General Oberstev.”

Gennadi Drozdov was so fatigued, he appeared emaciated. His thin dark hair was plastered to his skull by the rain, and his eyes were sunken holes.

“Are you up to this?” Oberstev asked.

“Yes. Pyotr is correct, General. We must share if we hope to complete the recovery.”

“You are optimistic?”

“Very optimistic.”

Oberstev’s own pessimism had grown. It had taken days to get this far, and they had yet to discover the site of the reactor. He was also leery of what might come out of his unilateral decision to cooperate with the Americans, much less give them access to the Loudspeaker system.

He had no doubts that Chairman Vladimir Yevgeni, and perhaps Admiral Orlov, would take him to task during the subsequent hearings. And there would be hearings; there always were.

He might be relieved of his command of
Red
Star
and forced into retirement.

And yet
Red
Star
and enforced retirement seemed less important now. There was more at stake on his own planet. Why seek Mars when Earth was so close to hand?

“Go then, Gennadi Drozdov, and luck go with you.”

Drozdov nodded, then turned and crossed the deck uneasily, headed for the work party that had set up the breeches buoy. Two men helped the scientist up into it and secured straps over his lap. Then they loaded two medium-size, aluminum, watertight cases onto his lap and strapped them to his body.

With a signal from one of the sailors, the breeches buoy abruptly lifted off the deck, and Gennadi Drozdov went over the railing, sliding toward the sea.

Oberstev almost felt like going with him.

*

1440 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 19' 49" NORTH, 176° 10' 30" EAST