“Guides,” Tanner said, realizing what he was seeing.
Litzman had never intended to simply shove the CAPTOR overboard and sail away. Wary of his proximity to the Kvamer Trench, he’d wanted to be sure of the mine’s placement. Tanner’s abrupt arrival had changed that. These ropes had been put in place to help Litzman guide the CAPTOR sled to the bottom.
Still a chance.
Tanner untied the first rope, tied it to the stern cleat in a figure eight, then did the same for the other rope. He finished donning the rest of the gear, tested the regulator, then slipped into the water. With an arm draped over each of the guide ropes, he flipped over and dove.
As his depth gauge passed seventy feet, the captor sled appeared out of the gloom. He followed the ropes to what appeared to be a pair of makeshift spooling mechanisms affixed to the rails.
Knowing he had neither the time, the tools, nor the knowledge to tamper with the mine, Tanner had decided on the only remaining option: drag the CAPTOR clear of the Aurasina’s path and dump it into the trench. Eighteen thousand feet beneath the waves, it would sit harmlessly on the bottom until its battery wound down and its sensors went blind.
Working in the narrow beam from his headlamp, Tanner cut both ropes at their spooling mechanisms, then spliced them together, threaded the joined end ‘through the CAPTOR’s hoist hook then tied it off. He gave the line several tugs, then finned for the surface.
The CAPTOR emitted a muffled poosh, followed by a series of ratchetlike clicks. Tanner stopped, looked back. At the CAPTOR’s propeller, a stream of bubbles hissed from a valve. Engine spool-up, Tanner thought. The CAPTOR was going through prechecks, which could mean only one thing: It had detected a target.
Pulling himself hand-over-hand along the guide rope, Tanner kicked the surface. The rope suddenly shivered in his hand. He heard what sounded like a pair of firecrackers going off as the cradle’s explosive bolts gave way. He glanced back.
The CAPTOR was enveloped in a cloud of billowing sand and white water. As though levitated by some magic, the nose cone appeared, followed by the body. With a high-pitched whirring, the propellers engaged, and the CAPTOR shot upward, trailing a column of foam.
The line snapped taut in Tanner’s hand. He let it go and broke the surface. The dive platform was ten feet to his left. With an audible twang, the guide ropes arched from the water. The Barak’s stern dipped and then began backing through the water.
Tanner stroked over, hefted himself aboard, stripped off his gear. He stopped and cocked his head. Over the rush of the wind, he thought he’d heard something. It came again, louder and more distinct this time: a ship’s whistle.
Half-skating, half-sprinting, Tanner moved up the port side, mounted the side ladder, and climbed to the flying bridge. The canvas awning whipped in the wind. Tanner spotted a storage box mounted to the dashboard. He threw open the lid and rummaged around until he found a pair of binoculars. He raised them to his eyes.
Half a mile off the Barak’s port quarter a pair of red and green running lights emerged from the darkness. The lightning flashed. Tanner caught a glimpse of a towering, blunt-nosed bow and white superstructure.
No more time, Briggs. He reached for the ignition key.
The deck lurched beneath his feet. He stumbled backward, reached out, and grabbed the railing. He looked aft. Fifty feet astern, the curved back of the CAPTOR breached the surface, hung there for a moment, then plunged back under. The deck lurched again. Tanner saw white water swirling around the stern. Even against the pull of the Barak’s anchor, the CAPTOR was steadily dragging her backward.
He cranked the ignition key. The diesels whined in protest, hesitated, then roared to life.
He scanned the dashboard, reading the switches. “Come on, where are you …” His eyes fell on a switch labeled “Emergency Anchor Release.” He flipped it. From the forecastle came the staccato grinding of steel on fiberglass. The anchor fell away.
Tanner looked over his shoulder. Fifty feet astern a rooster tail of water from the CAPTOR’s propellers arced into the air. Past that, three hundred yards distant, the Aurasina was clearly visible now, her squared bow ramp bulldozing the waves. Her whistle wailed once, then again.
She doesn’t see me, Tanner thought. The weather was too treacherous for lookouts, the seas too heavy for a clear radar picture. The Barak’s signal was likely lost amid the sea clutter, just another wave crest among thousands. Even if she’d spotted the Barak, the ferry’s maneuvering capabilities were limited. From her captain’s order, she would need a mile to reach a complete stop.
He punched the horn button. Nothing came.
The main generator’s down, he reminded himself.
He shoved the throttle to its stops. The Barak surged forward.
The Barak’s diesels were more than a match for the CAPTOR’S relatively small power plant, but it wasn’t that simple, Tanner knew. With its head start, the CAPTOR was running at full thrust and would do so until either her fuel was spent, or she struck the Aurasina.
Like a tugboat towing an ocean liner, the CAPTOR had slowly but steadily begun dragging the Barak backward through the waves. Reversing that momentum would take time Tanner might not have.
Oblivious to the disaster looming in her path, the Aurasina kept coming, closing the gap at a rate of five hundred yards a minute. The math didn’t lie. Unless Tanner could reverse the CAPTOR’s momentum and stay ahead of the Aurasina until the mine’s engines shut down, collision was inevitable.
The Barak’s engines changed pitch, began sputtering. Tanner scanned the dials, looking for some sign of the problem. He spotted a pair of gauges—“Port RPM” and “Starboard RPM”—and as he watched, the port RPM needle began dropping.
“No, no, don’t do that …,” Tanner whispered. “Don’t!”
The needle fell to zero. The port engine hesitated, roared back to life, then coughed and died. The Barak staggered, began slowing. Fifteen knots … twelve … eleven …
Tanner glanced aft. The CAPTOR was skipping along the surface now, plunging from wave crest to wave crest, sending up plumes of spray in her wake. A hundred yards off its nose came the Aurasina, plunging and heaving through the swells.
Tanner hunched over the wheel, trying to will life back into the port engine.
The gap dwindled to seventy-five yards, then fifty. The CAPTOR seemed to strain at the ropes as though desperate to reach its target. The Barak’s nose plunged into a trough. Her engine groaned, faltered. Tanner glanced at the speedometer and saw the needle fall off.
No, no, dammit!
The Aurasina loomed over the CAPTOR. Forty yards … thirty. The CAPTOR skipped over a wave crest, arced upward. The Aurasina’s bow swooped down to meet it.
Tanner cranked the Barak hard over. The port guide rope snapped. As if watching it in slow motion, he saw the CAPTOR’s nose slam into the Aurasina’s bow.
50
In the end, the Aurasina’s survival came down to a few degrees of angle. While more a frantic, last-ditch impulse than a considered tactic, Tanner’s cranking of the Barak’s wheel nevertheless made the difference.