Bower felt the bile rise in his throat at the sight, and his face twisted into a mask of incognizant fury. The submarine appeared intact with its keel deep in the sandy seabed.
“Sonar. Anything?” he asked.
“No, sir,” she replied. “I’ve got good visuals up to three miles with no contacts. There’s a chance a submarine is hiding inside one of the trenches farther out than that, but right now, we’re on our own.”
One of the modifications on the Omega Deep compared to traditional attack submarines, was the addition of a lockout trunk above and below the main hull. This allowed for deep sea rescue missions to be carried out if needed by direct connection to the other submarine.
Dwight Bower grinned sardonically. “Pilot, can you see their forward escape hatch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can line up our keel-based lockout locker and make a connection?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bower glanced above at the upper viewing half-sphere. There were no boats or submarines in view. “All right. Weapons, let’s be ready for any attack.”
“Understood, sir.”
Ballast control took on some more water, and the Omega Deep sank toward the wreck of the Jimmy Carter.
The pilot and copilot adeptly maneuvered the bow thrusters until the Omega Deep was directly above the stricken submarine.
A Navy SEAL team, positioned within the keel lockout hatch said over the internal radio, “We’re not getting a seal. We need to descend a little deeper. Maybe another foot.”
Commander Bower nodded at the pilot. “All right, take us down gently.”
“Copy that, sir.”
The Omega Deep dropped another half a foot.
Bower said, “SEAL team, report?”
“No good, sir. We’re still not making contact. We’re going to have to come down lower.”
“All right, will do.” Bower stared at the downfacing viewing sphere. Their keel was so close to the damned submarine — he felt he could reach out and touch it through the sphere. “All right, pilot. Nice and easy, it’s time to bump shoulders.”
The pilot took the Omega Deep gently downward.
Commander Bower’s eyes widened as they appeared to continue their descent. He held his breath and braced for the inevitable collision. His eyes focused on the viewing sphere below.
But there was no collision.
Instead, the Omega Deep kept descending.
It passed right through the wreck of the USS Jimmy Carter.
They descended through a layer of sediment like fog and kept sinking.
Commander Bower was the first to regain his composure. “Ballast, take us up.”
“I’m trying, sir, but the controls aren’t responding.”
Even as Commander Bower saw what had happened with his own eyes, he didn’t believe it could be real.
“Emergency ballast blow!” he ordered.
The navigation’s officer was the closest to it. He pulled the emergency main ballast blow lever.
No effect.
The Omega Deep crashed into the soft seabed below.
Bower searched their new environment. But, both the upper and lower viewing half-spheres were a complete whiteout in the murky gray silt.
“Sonar, give me one ping — I want to know exactly what’s coming for us!”
“Copy, sir,” Lieutenant Callaghan said. “One ping.”
The active sonar made an audible ping.
Commander Bower’s eyes were fixed in disbelief at the sonar screen as a clear outline of the surrounding seabed right through to the edge of the submerged ravine rapidly came into view. The seabed was clear, but more than a hundred small shapes approached. They were small. Much too small and plentiful to be other submarines. They were moving in a direct line toward his ship. Much too direct to be fish or any other marine life.
The commander gritted his teeth and knew in an instant that he’d been caught by one of the cleverest, yet simple ruses in the book. He oscillated between anger and acceptance, believing that he could muscle the Omega Deep out of her predicament or, at the very least, contain the fallout.
Commander Bower gripped the onboard microphone and gave the order he’d never expected to give as a submarine commander. “Prepare to repel boarders!”
Chapter One
The Maria Helena swayed heavily under the large swell of the Barents Sea, some hundred and twenty miles above Norway. This close to the Arctic Circle, the seas were rarely gentle, and even if they were, Sam Reilly wouldn’t have waited any longer. There simply wasn’t enough time to do so. Every day they lost was another day where they were guessing what caused the bizarre crash of the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter. Another day of playing Russian roulette with some thirty thousand commercial jets in service that may have the same critical fault with the aircraft’s software.
No one knew for certain if it was a one-off fault or the outcome of a coordinated cyber-attack. If it was intentional, someone had achieved the extraordinary and compromised the highly-secure computer controlling the most advanced and reliable flight and navigation system on board any modern jetliner, causing it to crash into the sea. Thrumming in the back of his head was the same terrible fear.
Next time, it might not be a cargo carrier.
Sea spray lashed the aft deck. It would be a miracle if they didn’t lose their latched-down Sea King helicopter to any number of the tremendous waves. Sam wore heavy wet weather gear to defy the near-freezing environment and stood outside the pilothouse door, facing aft. He watched as another wave lashed across the deck and glanced up at Veyron who was manning the purpose-built crane fitted to the aft deck.
He met Veyron’s eyes, planted his palms upward and mouthed the words, “What the hell’s taking him so long?”
Veyron simply shrugged.
It was out of his control and most likely out of all of their control. It should have been ready to bring up nearly twenty minutes ago. However, these things seldom worked as smoothly or simply as expected. Sam pulled the hood of his rain jacket tight so that it cradled his face. His cold blue eyes watched as another wave broached the deck. The icy spray stung his unshaven face. He waited for the water to dissipate over the sides, as the deck shifted more than thirty degrees in either direction — and then fought his way across the aft deck to the crane’s small pilothouse.
He climbed inside and closed the door. “Well, Veyron… what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know…” Veyron slouched in his chair, his face set with indifference, enjoying the heated comfort of his station. “Tom’s having trouble fitting the cradle.”
“All right. Did he give you an ETA?”
Veyron shook his head. “All he said was he’d let me know the second it was ready.”
“All right… let me know as soon as you get word it’s on its way up.”
“Sure will, boss.”
Sam waited for the crest of two waves to crash against the Maria Helena. She rode them surprisingly well, and he took the opportunity to climb out and return to the ship’s main pilothouse to check on Matthew.
He quickly climbed up the three sets of internal stairs, removed his wet weather gear and entered the bridge. His skipper, Matthew wore a blue Hawaiian shirt and had the temperature cranked up on its highest setting so that it made Sam feel like he’d just stepped straight out of the arctic freeze into the tropics.
Matthew was standing up, steering the Maria Helena manually. Despite the phenomenal advancements in autopilot technologies, nothing could beat the careful and studied manipulation of a ship through a rough sea like an expert skipper. Almost working as a sixth sense, the man had developed an uncanny ability to predict the movements of the swell and where each wave would strike his vessel.