“Until when? I thought we were worried about earthquakes and such. You did mention something dire about the twenty-fourth of the month, didn’t you? That happens to be four days away from us.”
“We can’t do a damned thing until we can get this settled in the courts, Avery. Justice and State have both convinced the Vice President that we’re a law-abiding nation. Ben Delecourt is issuing new instructions to his ships on the scene. You have to tell Brande to suspend operations.”
“You can’t mean we’re going to sit on our asses and actually wait for the courts to decide something, Carl? Do you think Deride will wait around?”
“Stroh is going to file for an injunction preventing further exploration by AquaGeo until they satisfy environmental and ecological concerns.”
“Good luck.”
“I don’t know what else we can do. The Attorney General is crying because we have to do this much.”
“Christ. They wouldn’t even pursue the matter of one Svetlana Polodka, Carl.”
“The AG is, I’m sure, getting pressure from the Vice President’s office on the environmental side, or we wouldn’t be contesting AquaGeo at all.”
“And the Navy?” Hampstead asked.
“Stroh was going to talk to Delecourt some more, so I don’t know their reaction beyond a policy of non-interference. When we get down to it, though, Commerce, CIA, and the Navy are all contractual partners with MVU. We’ll have to get our acts together.”
“That’s going to be like asking a convention of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists which religion God prefers,” Hampstead said.
Kaylene Thomas took Hampstead’s call on the scrambled satellite channel in the radio shack.
“Injunction!”
“I haven’t seen it yet, Kaylene, but CIA says we should suspend your operations.”
“Just the CIA?”
“I suspect the Justice Department, my bosses, and the White House would back them up.”
“I can’t reach Dane just now, Avery.”
Hampstead cleared his throat patiently. “And why is that, Kaylene?”
“He’s imposed radio silence.”
“I see. Radio silence.”
“AquaGeo transmits on a scrambled acoustic frequency, so we can’t understand them. And we don’t want them overhearing what we’re talking about.”
“This isn’t a war,” Hampstead said.
“Tell that to Svetlana. If you can find her,” Thomas said. Her own fury was close to the surface.
“Ah, Kaylene. I know. Still, you have to call Brande back.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Please take action. There’s something more. I got a call from the Washington Post, and I had to admit that MVU is under contract to the Commerce Department. I’ve been able to stall on the reasons, but the reporters are onto something.”
Thomas almost made a suggestion, and then thought better of it. Recommendations made to Washington ended up in committee for twelve weeks.
“I’ll think about it,” she said again, then hung up.
She did think about calling Brande for nearly five seconds, and then cast it aside. He had made the decision on radio silence, and she wasn’t going to overrule him. Instead, she picked up the microphone, dialed the UHF set to channel nine, the international hailing channel, and pressed the transmit stud. “Arienne, this is the Orion.”
Whoever was on the radio came right back to her, and she asked for Wilson Overton. It took a few minutes to get him to the radio.
“Dr. Thomas? This is Wilson Overton.”
“How would you like to join me for breakfast?” she asked.
“What? I’d like that.”
“If you don’t mind joining us by way of a breeches buoy,” she told him.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t worry about it, and plan for eight a.m. You’ll enjoy the ride.”
She was halfway through the communications compartment hatchway to the bridge when another voice came over the UHF radio.
“Orion. Mighty Moose calling Orion.”
She went back and picked up the mike. “Bull, this is Kaylene. Where are you?”
“About half-a-mile off your stern, Missy. I’m ready to link up with you.”
What the hell?
“I’ve got your supplies,” Kontas went on. “It’ll take a while to transfer them in this weather. You want to tell Del Rogers to get on one of your cranes.”
“What supplies?”
“I don’t think, Missy, that we want to talk about it on the air.”
“Bull!”
“The torpedoes and stuff,” he said.
In the late afternoon of the preceding day, CINCPAC, Vice Admiral David Potter, had signaled the California and her escorts, Mahan and Fletcher, that their mission was simply to make their presence known and to stand by the Orion should any ship of a foreign flag harass her.
Mabry Harris had thought at the time that it would have been helpful if he had known just what the Orion was doing that required the support of a naval warship. Obviously, it was something on the bottom, which was some three miles down at this point. It was also something important enough to garner Navy interest.
And the interest of Greenpeace, since the Arienne hadn’t been out of sight since their arrival. If the people on the Greenpeace boat knew more about this than he did, he wouldn’t be surprised.
He would be irritated.
And was beginning to become so. At 1800 hours the night before, he had sent a request to CINCPAC, asking for a briefing on the mission of the Marine Visions craft. So far, he hadn’t received a response.
Captain Harris usually took the morning watch since mornings at sea were his favorite times, and this morning only he, the helmsman, and a radar officer were on the bridge when the chief petty officer from communications entered.
“Permission to come on the bridge, sir?” he asked from the hatchway.
Harris signaled him in and took the flimsy he handed to him.
“Give me the gist of it,” Harris said.
“Uh, sir, we’re to make certain that the Orion doesn’t launch her submersible.”
Harris involuntarily glanced through the windshield toward the research vessel and her bare stern deck.
Without intending to speak audibly in front of enlisted personnel, Harris said, “Somebody in Washington is totally fucked up.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed the chief petty officer.
Some sailor on the much higher deck of the research vessel fired a small cannon at them.
The pilot rope leaped from a coil on the deck, arched over the water, and across the rear deck of the Arienne. Mickey Freelander grabbed it, and then began towing in a heavier rope sliding off the deck of the research vessel.
Overton held firmly to the railing along the gunwale. Both the larger ship and the yacht were bouncing high on the waves and out of synchronicity with each other. The sea conditions had determined that he would go visiting aboard the RV Orion by this primitive method.
He wasn’t looking forward to it. He was wearing Levis and a sweatshirt. His parka held his camera and his tape recorder. And over that, he was wearing bulky weather pants and a slicker that felt as if they were made of the same stuff as his mother’s breakfast table cloth.
Freelander secured the heavy rope to an anchor point on the deck, and the breeches buoy came sliding down the rope from the other ship. It dipped into the sea, splattering water, before Freelander hauled it aboard.