“Then let’s get Macadam on his way,” Krail said, “regardless of what’s waiting for him when he gets here.”
“Have Charon’s men done their job?” Junko asked. Her concern was less with Charon’s competence than with the potential explosive reaction from the waste dump itself.
“They have,” Krail said confidently. “We’ll be ready to plug the leak within twenty-four hours.”
“Then let’s focus on that,” Garner said. “Because if it doesn’t work, finding mud banks will be the least of our worries.”
22
As placement of the demolition charges was completed, an eerie calm descended over the corridor between the Devil’s Finger and B-82. The almost continuous exchange of encrypted human information — bearings, timing, logistic concerns, and good-natured jibes — passing between the divers, the Hawkbill, and the Rushmore now gave way to the sound of automated machines. As each C-4 canister was activated in the trench, an electronic chirp was sent back to the trigger console on B-82 to verify the charge was working. The console then sent back an automated timing signal that activated the canister, verified its frequency, and checked its connection to the rest of the detonation array. Finally, an electrical signal was sent along each wire connecting the array, confirming that the trigger signal would be passed through the array in the proper sequence and that there were no power lapses or short circuits.
As each arm of the array was activated, the corresponding situation lights would illuminate on the trigger console, with a duplicate signal relaying this information to a status board on the Rushmore. The lights verified only the status of the canisters, not their actual position on the seafloor. Ordinarily, the precise position of any single canister could be confirmed by triangulation on the device’s built-in transmitter, but this exercise was not done, given the large numbers of canisters in close proximity to each other and the limited time available.
Once again clad in the JIM suit, Charon confirmed the subsurface wiring of the trigger console, then rendezvoused with Stimson topside.
Charon’s crew would set off the detonation from B-82 while Garner and the rest of the group monitored the status console on the Rushmore.
Krail agreed to remain on the Hawkbill as it was removed from the detonation zone, ready to return to the area as soon as the landslides had subsided. Within hours, the Hawkbilfs sensors could tell the others whether the leak had successfully been plugged; what followed from there would be Garner’s headache to address.
“How long now?” Krail asked Charon over the headset. “I’ve got a couple of geologists here ready to wet their pants with anticipation.”
“Give me twenty minutes. I’ll give the all-clear in fifteen — five minutes to detonation.”
Krail signed off and glanced at the two scientists sitting near the sonar console.
“Hear that?”
“Sure did,” said one of the geologists. He seemed a little irked by Krail’s comment about their impatient anticipation. “Though geologists are used to dealing with a longer time scale than hours or minutes. We can wait.”
“No we can’t,” the other geologist interjected with a wide grin. “This is going to be freakin’ great.” The sonar operators and geologists on a typical SCICEX cruise had little in the way of excitement to look forward to, save for the regular tedium of their mapping protocol and occasional visits by ringed seals, which apparently mistook active sonar pings for mating calls.
“We’ve got twenty minutes until all hell breaks loose,” Krail said. “Just make sure our ears are ready.”
The single most important aspect of Stimson’s personality — the thing that earned him the respect of a man like Charon and allowed him to hold a second-in-command position at a post like B-82 — was his calm but meticulous attention to detail.
Like the best vice presidents, Stimson was an excellent mop-and-bucket man, passing diplomatically behind his boss to ensure that all the crap fell exactly where it was supposed to and, if not, to tactfully deal with the situation as though it had all been in the original plan.
After Charon had directed the transfer of more than eight hundred thousand barrels of oil stored in B-82’s GBS into the Global Voyager, Stimson’s main duties had been to make certain the rig was secure and that all but the six men designated as essential personnel were airlifted from the platform. For the most part this had been easy; the Global workers didn’t need to be asked twice to take two weeks’ leave with pay. Those directly under Charon’s surreptitious military command, however, needed a little more persuading. Despite their remote location, these were men trained in the dogged pursuit of the hunt, even if that pursuit involved radio transmissions and satellite relays more often than guns or grenades.
They earned their post by volunteering for the missions no one else wanted. The back filling of Devil’s Finger was the biggest thing to come near B-82 since its inauguration, and every single crewman wanted to be a part of the proceedings. The news was not well received when Charon announced that only a half dozen men, including himself and Stimson, would be allowed to stay on the rig. In truth, even that was overstaffing — it only took two men to monitor the trigger console and perhaps two more to briefly oversee the rig’s essential functions, especially with the wellhead shut down and the GBS drained of its valuable contents.
In the hours immediately before the detonation, while Charon was wrapping up another marathon shift in the JIM suit, Stimson repeated his systems check of the topsides. He checked the hydraulic systems in triplicate. He checked the safety and emergency equipment. He checked the bleeder valves, the riser shafts, and the status of the OLS pipes snaking across the seafloor. He was about to check the capacity gauges for the three fuel cells in the GBS’s reservoir when Charon called him back to the trigger console to check the wiring contacts. Now, with only twenty minutes remaining until the detonation, Stimson suddenly remembered he had never made it back to look at the fuel cells.
The GBS weighed nearly thirteen million tons when empty and perhaps twice that amount with the reservoir filled. The reservoir itself was partitioned into three fuel cells, which in turn surrounded four maintenance shafts, each seventeen meters in diameter and extending from the topsides to the base of the GBS. The trio of fuel cells was monitored from a central control room, and it was from this location that Charon’s crew had overseen the transfer of oil from the rig into Voyager’s massive storage tanks via the OLS. As Stimson now checked them, all three cells showed secured status and the corresponding capacity gauges showed less than five hundred barrels in each.
Ordinarily, Stimson would have been satisfied with this, except one of the gauges seemed to be reading less than zero gallons. He tapped the gauge with his finger, frowning. The tap failed to create even a responsive waver from the needle, suggesting that the gauge itself may have shorted out. A broken gauge should have produced a warning light on the control console, but when Stimson investigated this, he found that the warning circuit’s fuse had also apparently shorted out.
Annoyed at the growing runaround, Stimson retrieved a backup fuse and got the warning light to come on, but this only verified that the gauge wasn’t working.
He quickly unscrewed the gauge from the panel and temporarily replaced it with one from another cell.