Ultra Deep (5 page)

“Shortly after midnight this morning, a CIS A2e rocket splashed down at this location directly after launch. It was unintentional.”

The general paused, so Hampstead said, “Yes, sir.”

“We don’t know the current condition of the rocket or the payload, but we do know that the payload was an advanced nuclear reactor.”

“Ooh.” Hampstead did not know whether or not his exclamation was a vocal one.

“We have been briefed by Defense Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission nuclear experts, and we believe that there is a high probability that the reactor may go supercritical, that is, into a meltdown state.”

Hampstead sat upright and placed his arms on the table. He did not know what else to do with them. “Is there a timetable, General?”

“Unknown at this time. Our people are working on it.”

“Have the Russians said anything? There should have been telemetry readings.”

“The Russians are noncommital, Mr. Hampstead,” Warren Amply said.

“I see. Do we know the size of the reactor?”

“Fifteen megawatts or better, at best estimate,” Wiggins said.

That was not large by land-based reactor standards, but Hampstead assumed it was massive in terms of its brothers already in space.

“We think, Avery, that it could put out a massive dose of radiation, on an ongoing basis, over a long period of time,” Unruh said. “The navy oceanographer is double-checking the currents, but seems to think that a large area of the Pacific Rim is at risk.”

Hampstead studied the map. One little red dot on a sea of blue. “The subsurface terrain is intimidating in that region. I’m placing it north of the Mid-Pacific Mountains and east-southeast of Mapmaker Seamount, south of the Milwaukee Seamount.”

“Correct, Mr. Hampstead. Do you know the depths?”

The speaker was in naval uniform, with about eighty rows of ribbons and thirty gold bands on his sleeves. Hampstead thought he was the CNO, the Chief of Naval Operations. Admiral…Benjamin Delecourt. He had a smooth, talcum-powdered set of jaws that jutted aggressively. His hair was gray and thin. The green eyes penetrated like arrowheads.

“Yes, Admiral. Though the region is not fully charted, and there will be trenches of greater depth, I believe the mean depth is about seventeen thousand feet. About three-and-a-half miles. There are recorded areas that reach to over nineteen thousand feet.”

“What does it take to get down there?” the President asked.

“For location purposes, or for recovery?” Hampstead asked.

“Weʼve got to find it, first,” Harley Wiggins said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce had twenty-one research and survey vessels at its disposal. Transportation, Interior, and the National Science Foundation had another three, and the academic universities and institutes controlled another sixty vessels. The navy itself had eight ships dedicated to subsurface survey. Hampstead could think of an additional nine research vessels, privately owned, with which he frequently entered into government contracts, as he did with the university vessels.

“There are about a hundred American vessels in the category,” he said. “Of those, very few can operate deep-tow sonar and remotes at the depths we need to penetrate. At this time of year, however, most of the university and institute vessels have been moved to southern waters.”

“The
Bartlett
and the
Kane
are in Hawaii,” the CNO said. “I can have them on-site the quickest.”

“The best sonar search apparatus is the SARSCAN,” Hampstead said.

“That’s the navy’s?” the President asked.

“No, sir,” Hampstead responded. “It belongs to Marine Visions Unlimited. It’s a privately owned oceanographic research and development firm.”

“I think the Navy…” Admiral Delecourt started to say.

“Can we get it?” the President asked.

“I’m not sure where they have it located at present,” Hampstead said, “but I can find out.”

“Do that, please.”

“Are we ignoring the Russian effort?” the Chief of Staff asked. “Certainly, they’ll be doing something.”

General Harley Wiggins said, “The DIA has been keeping an eye on their development program, of course. They pioneered the first autonomous undersea robots utilizing acoustical control. They are superior to tethered robots in that the potential risk of damage to cables is nonexistent, and, of course, cable length is not a limiting factor. It’s also cheaper. We believe they may have fifteen or sixteen operating models, but most of them are located at projects in the Barents, Baltic, and Black seas. They’ve been shooting some excellent deep-sea video in the last couple years. The
Titanic
site, for instance. One of the advanced remotes is aboard the research vessel
Baykal
, which operates out of Vladivostok. When I checked a couple hours ago, the
Baykal
was in drydock, being retrofitted over the winter months.”

“So, they have a technological edge on us, General?” Amply asked.

“Perhaps in command and control. We are not certain of their depth capability, but we’re pretty sure that their current remote-controlled vehicles aren’t up to heavy-lift.”

“That concurs with what I’ve heard from various sources,” Hampstead said. “If the rocket is located, it will likely require some heavy-duty equipment.”

“All right,” the President said, “If we find this thing, how do we get it up?”

“The Navy has a tethered robot good for twenty thousand feet,” Delecourt said. “It’s in England, now, but we can get it on board a plane. We can operate it off the
Bartlett
, but I’m going to have to check on the availability of cable”

“Okay, Ben, let’s get started on something. Deploy the two ships from Hawaii and arrange the transport for the robot. What about submarines?”

“They can’t achieve the depths, Mr. President,” Hampstead said.

“But they could aid in the search?”

“Possibly.”

“We can’t reach the ballistic missile subs,” the CNO said.

Hampstead knew the big missile-carrying submarines patrolled assigned sectors of the sea, hidden even from their commands, and did not respond to communications directed toward them. They had their orders, and they surfaced at predetermined times to accept radio messages.

“Whatever you can raise,” the President said. “I want every potentially useful asset assigned to this. What have we got at Midway?”

“Midway Naval Base has a small task force, the largest ship a frigate, and recon aircraft. Not much help,” Delecourt said.

“Get some of those into the area,” the President ordered.

“How large is this reactor?” Hampstead asked.

Unruh coughed, then said, “It’s a cylinder fifteen feet in diameter by twenty-six feet long.ˮ

“Weight?”

“Forty-five hundred pounds.”

“That includes the payload module?”

“No, Avery, it doesn’t. Best estimate is that the module is thirty-five feet long by seventeen in diameter. I don’t know about the weight.”

“So, the whole thing may have to come up? The reactor hasn’t broken loose?”

“No one knows. And yes, the whole thing may have to be raised.”

“If it were me,” Hampstead said, “making the decisions, I’d want to have MVU’s recovery robots on-site. They’re the best currently available for heavy-lift, and we don’t know what we’re going to run into.”

“Ben?” the President asked.

“The reports I’ve seen support that assessment,” the CNO said, perhaps with some reluctance. “Navy Procurement is requesting funds to buy one.”

“All right, then. Get Marine Visions’s sonar and robots on the move,” the President said.

“I’ll try, sir.”

“Try?”

“I can’t guarantee that Brande will want to move his people into an area that might become radiation-contaminated at any moment. He’s a civilian, after all.”

The President slumped back in his chair. He looked washed out. “That’s a point, isn’t it? Got any motivators in your pocket, Mr. Hampstead?”

“Maybe one or two.”

“Do what you can, then.”

“Tell him he’s to report to CINCPAC,” Admiral Delecourt said.

“That may be a problem also, Admiral. Dane Brande doesn’t report to anyone.”

*

0221 HOURS LOCAL, 46° 16' NORTH, 160° 12' EAST

Capt. Mikhail Petrovich Gurevenich ordered his submarine, the NATO-named Sierra-class
Winter
Storm
, to the surface in response to an urgent message recorded by the Extremely Low Frequency receiver. Because of technical restrictions on the ELF band, which could penetrate ocean depths, but which had very poor data transfer capability, elaborate or long transmissions were not normally attempted.

Sr. Lt. Ivan Mostovets, in charge of the watch, ordered the planesman to increase the climb angle to thirty degrees, and Gurevenich braced himself against the bulkhead of the communications cabin. He reached out with his right hand and pressed the bar on the intercom.

“Sonar, this is the captain. Report.”

“Captain, Sonar. No contacts.”

The bow cleared the surface, and the submarine leveled itself abruptly, tossing Gurevenich upright. He steadied himself by gripping the jamb of the hatchway.

The intercom blurted with Mostovets’s soprano, “Captain, Control Center. Deploying antennas. I will know about surface traffic momentarily.”

Gurevenich did not expect to find other ships in the area. They were three hundred kilometers southeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

“All right, Kartashkin, you may transmit.”

“Yes, Captain.” The radioman leaned into his console, depressed the button that activated the transmit mode on his headset, and said,
Seeʼnee
-
dva
-
sem
-
zelyoʼnee
.”

Blue-two-seven-green, the code they had been instructed to use in the ELF message.

They did not hear the response. Three burst-messages, communications compacted into one-fiftieth of a second bursts, were transmitted by the Molniya satellite, accepted by the data receiver, and recorded. They would play them back at normal speed.

The radioman scanned his equipment. “I have the transmission recorded, Captain.”

Gurevenich punched the intercom button. “Lieutenant Mostovets, take the boat back to fifty meters depth and resume course.”

“Fifty meters, Captain. Proceeding, now.”

As the deck tilted, Gurevenich wondered what was so important that Fleet headquarters would use military emergency channels to send him a top secret communication.

He could not imagine that war had broken out, but that did not alleviate the ball of lead that had formed in his stomach.

*

0331 HOURS LOCAL, 16° 22' NORTH, 158° 58' WEST

*

SECRET MSG 10-4897 l/SEP/0322 HRS ZULU

FR: CINCPAC

TO: USS BARTLETT USS KANE USS LOS ANGELES USS PHILADELPHIA USS HOUSTON

1.CURRENT ORDERS SUSPENDED.

2.PROCEED AT BEST POSSIBLE SPEED TO 26N 176E.

3.CAUTION. CIS VESSELS LIKELY IN AREA. DO NOT ENGAGE.

4.RPT ALL CONTACTS THIS CMD.

5.DETAILED ORDERS AND COORDINATES TO FOLLOW.

Cmdr. Alfred Taylor, captain of the nuclear attack submarine (SSN)
Los
Angeles
, read the decoded message, then handed it to his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Neil Garrison.

Garrison, a short and lithe man built for earlier submarines, read through it quickly. He asked, “You think this is it?”

“I wouldn’t have expected it in this political climate, Neil. It’s probably some minor crisis.”

“With
Bartlett
and
Kane
involved, we may have a ship down.”

“That’s possible.”

Taylor moved over to the plot and studied it. Taylor had been in submarines for twelve years, but this was his first year as a commander and he was proud of his boat, even if it was almost twenty years old, and he had confidence in his crew. He was a compact man, kept that way by a daily set of exercises in his cabin. The planes of his face had become a little convex in the last couple of years, and his blond hair would have shown more gray if it were longer. He walked with a slight limp, the result of not moving fast enough and catching his leg between a concrete pier and a docking tender.

“All right, Neil. Plot it and give me a course.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Garrison bent over the plot.

“Mr. Covey,” he said to the Lieutenant (j.g.) who had the conn, without turning toward him.

“Sir?”

“What is your status?”

“Sir, depth sixty feet, heading zero-one-five, speed one-seven knots.”

Taylor watched as Garrison drew his line. Garrison looked up at him.