They all saw it simultaneously. On the sonar screen they could see their torpedo racing in the Akula’s wake when the sub came to a stop in a little less than half her length.
Hanley reacted fastest of any of them. “Wepps, autodestruct now!”
Mark peeled his gaze from the monitor and typed in the appropriate command. The torpedo was so deep that there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface when it exploded less than five hundred yards from its target.
“What happened?” Eric asked.
“She hit something, a seamount of some kind, a boulder. Something,” Max posited. “Back off the engines so we can listen on passive.”
“Why’d you blow our torpedo?”
“Because when and if that sub is ever found, the investigators will conclude, rightly, that this was an accident. No need to advertise that they were being chased when they did a nosedive into the seafloor.”
By the time the ship slowed enough for the sensitive microphones to be deployed, the Akula was as silent as the grave.
Max roused himself. “Helm, get us back to the wreck ASAP.” He shot a glance at the battered Timex on his wrist. “Their torps would have hit eight minutes ago. The Chairman and the others are on borrowed time.”
He wouldn’t let himself think about the more likely scenario that they were all dead.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Panic kills divers. That was the first lesson from his crusty dive instructor when Juan had earned his scuba certification as a teenager. That was the last too. Panic kills divers.
He and Mike and Eddie had between six and eight minutes to get away. Plenty of time. No need to panic.
Cabrillo shoved his camera back into the dive bag strapped to his waist, took one last glance at Tesla’s remarkable contraption, and headed back toward the staircase.
“Mike, are you on your way to the Nomad?” Cabrillo asked, irked that the helium made him sound like a little girl.
“Yes. I even got a sample from the frame.”
“Good. Eddie, we’re going to have to jam ourselves into the air lock. Once we’re in, emergency ascent.”
“Roger. Emergency blow once you and Mike are aboard.”
That’s going to cost me, Juan thought.
In an emergency ascent, the cylindrical hull of the submersible disconnected from the rest of the craft, all the motors, battery packs, and ancillary equipment. The crew compartment would shoot to the surface like a cork, taking them out of the blast range, but it also meant that about a million dollars’ worth of sub components would be left behind to be blown into oblivion.
Cabrillo misjudged as he moved up the staircase and bumped his trimix tank into a bulkhead. It wasn’t much of a hit, but to the old derelict it was a deadly punch. Steel bracings, weakened by decades of immersion, gave way, and the walls around the staircase collapsed in a slow pirouette of destruction. The water filled with an impenetrable cloud of rust particles that turned the light from Cabrillo’s lamps into a meager brick-colored glow.
He managed to push himself away from the worst of the collapse, saving himself from being sliced apart by the avalanche of plate steel.
His careless action had to have caused a chain reaction because he could hear additional rumblings as the old wreck tried to find some new equilibrium.
He remained curled in a ball until everything finally settled down. A piece of steel had landed across his back. His tanks had protected him, but now as he tried to push it off he realized it was either heavier than its impact indicated or it was wedged in place.
“Chairman? Are you there? Juan?”
“I read you, Mike. I might be in trouble.”
“What happened?”
“A wall gave way when I hit it. I’m in a stairwell and I might be trapped.”
“I’m coming.”
“Negative. Get to the Nomad. I’ll get myself out.”
“We’ve got five minutes.”
Cabrillo ran the odds through his head. “Okay. I’ll give you three. If you can’t reach me, get the hell away from here.”
Eddie Seng had been monitoring the divers and knew what he had to do. He powered up the Nomad and swung it around so that he was facing the wreck. He eased in closer, reaching across the tight cabin to switch on the manipulator arms at the copilot’s station. He could see Mike, working to remove his tank so he could fit through the frame surrounding the wreck, and radioed to him.
“Hold on, Mike. I’ve got a better idea.”
Trono had to have seen the sub’s dive lights shift toward him. He looked up and saw the craft practically looming over him, its arms outstretched like skeletal limbs. He quickly got out of its way.
With a deft hand on the thruster controls to keep the Nomad in place against the current, Eddie grasped one of the metallic bars with a manipulator hand and tore it completely free. He backed off to allow Mike to swim through the larger aperture.
Mike swam across the aft deck and reached the door Cabrillo had entered only minutes earlier. Rust particles billowed from inside the ship like smoke from a burning building. It only cleared when it was borne away by the current, again like smoke on the wind.
He groped like a sightless man along the passageway, sensing that there wasn’t much he could do until visibility improved.
“The stairwell is the fourth door on the right,” Juan said as if reading his mind.
Mike counted doors, and when he’d shown his light in through the correct door, he saw an open shaft that had once been a stairwell. The steps themselves had collapsed, and steel plating had peeled away from its internal structure. He realized that the rivets that had once held them in place had failed, allowing the plating to fall free.
The rust was settling out of the water, and he could just see Cabrillo’s leg peeking from the debris one deck down. The leg moved when Juan tried to free himself, but each upward thrust locked the tangle of junk even tighter.
“Hold on,” Mike said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cabrillo replied.
Trono swam down, careful not to tear his gloves, and began moving some of the plating. The sections weren’t large, but it was like the old game of pick-up sticks. He didn’t want what he was doing to cause additional cave-ins. He tore into the pile with repressed frenzy, wanting to work faster but knowing he had to be careful. All the while, he knew that Juan would order him away at any second.
He shoved away enough of the old bulkheads for Cabrillo to try to free himself one last time.
“It’s up to you.”
Juan gathered his energy, channeled it, and pushed with everything he had. Mike had done just enough so that the plate that had kept him pinned shifted and ground against the others but didn’t jam up. He heaved again and finally dragged himself out of the pile.
Mike was there with a hand to steady him.
“I owe you.” Juan meant it to sound solemn, but the helium lessened the sense of import. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
The two men swam back up to the main deck and finned down the corridor. They burst out of the superstructure to see that Eddie had used the manipulators to tear apart more of the old framework and had the submersible practically parked on the deck.
Mike reached the air lock door first and spun open the wheel lock. The space was tight — a phone booth, really — and he and Cabrillo would need to stay in it for quite some time. They’d been at depth long enough to need almost two hours to decompress. The cramped space would act as a decompression chamber once they reached the surface, but they would need the Oregonsupplying power since the Nomad’s batteries would be left behind.
Getting away from the wreck was only the first part of their ordeal. If they didn’t link up with the Oregonin time, both divers would run out of trimix, and the Nomad had no internal supplies of the gas. To make matters worse, Juan and Mike had to be decompressed before Eddie could leave the sub via the air lock.