“You’re welcome. Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know. I was on a submarine. We must have struck some sort of underwater mountain. There was a hull breach. And the submarine flooded…”
“You’re American,” the stranger said, noticing her accent.
“Yes.”
“Where were you when the shipwreck… submarine wreck occurred?”
“I’m not certain exactly. But somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean.”
The stranger stared at her. Even in her confused state, she spotted the incredulity in his face. “I’m sorry, that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“You’re ten miles out, off the West African coast. No way you could have drifted all that way.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The Maria Helena made its rendezvous with the Matilda at 8:15 a.m. Genevieve had flown the Sea King out to San Cristóbal to pick up a company skipper for the Matilda, who took possession of the vessel, and by 9:00 a.m. exactly, the Maria Helena was making its way due south.
At the navigation station on the bridge, Sam Reilly stared at several neatly-arranged Admiralty and bathymetric charts.
Next to him, Matthew and Veyron examined the map.
“What makes you certain the Omega Deep is headed this way?” Matthew asked.
Sam answered without hesitation. “Because that’s where I would go.”
“Really?” Matthew was surprised by his confidence. “Why? That submarine could be anywhere in the world right now. Given what we know about her, we have no reason to even believe that she’s lying on the bottom of the sea somewhere with a wrecked hull.”
Sam said, “Because Commander Dwight Bower’s original orders involved taking the USS Omega Deep into the South Pacific to test her maneuverability.”
“Sure,” Matthew accepted that, “But the South Pacific is massive — in fact, most of her seabed has never been charted — so what makes you think you can guess where she went?”
“I know it’s a long shot, but it’s all we have.”
“Where exactly are you thinking?” Veyron asked.
“Here,” Sam said, pointing to a series of submerged valleys.
Veyron studied the submerged valley. He had a doctorate in submersible technology and a second one in mechatronics. There was little he didn’t know about how a submarine, like the Omega Deep, might handle.
After a few minutes, he shook his head. “I don’t think it would have gone here.”
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous. Commander Bower would never have risked it.”
“But I ran the submarine through a simulator of the same submerged valley with identical dimension. It was hard but doable.”
“Sure. But I read the report on the Omega Deep’s upgraded systems. It wasn’t running with sonar — it would have been relying on visual navigation, using its new digital video sphere system.”
“Its what?” Matthew asked.
“More than two hundred tiny video cameras are imbedded into the hull of the Omega Deep, allowing it to provide a real-time 360-degree view surrounding the submarine, as clear as though they were looking out the window.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “And you think that technique would be intrinsically more difficult to navigate by the previous systems, such as inertial navigation, GPS, and sonar?”
“Not more difficult, simply unknown,” Veyron replied. “And I’ve met Tom’s dad. He’s no fool. Like all good commanders, he would have known that arrogance with new technology was lethal. So he would have taken them farther south…”
“Where?”
Veyron studied the next map, which extended into the waters south of New Zealand and out toward South America and Cape Horn. “Here. There’s an ancient valley system extending hundreds and potentially thousands of miles. They start off wide and continue to get smaller, giving the crew of the Omega Deep time to practice. That’s where I would have gone.”
Sam said, “That’s great. Now we just need to narrow it down to an area of more than a million square miles.”
Veyron put his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, I’m just saying what I would have done if I was commanding a new experimental submarine like the Omega Deep.”
Sam said, “Thanks, Veyron.”
The satellite phone rang.
Sam picked it up.
It was the secretary of defense. She said, “Where are you headed?”
“South. Somewhere near New Zealand. Veyron thinks the Omega Deep headed to a series of known submerged ancient valleys to perform maneuvering tests. Possibly, something went wrong, and the submarine ran aground.”
The secretary said, “That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because we just found the crew of the Omega Deep!”
Sam felt his heart take off at a gallop. “Where?”
“In a series of individual SEIE suit life rafts scattered along the Skeleton Coast of West Africa.”
“Was everyone rescued?”
“We only recovered about two thirds of the crew.”
“Tom’s father and the XO, James Halifax are missing too.” She paused. “There’s a chance they’re still out there in the Atlantic, and it’s just a matter of time before we locate them. Or…”
“What?”
“Or, it just proves they were responsible for the theft of the Omega Deep.”
“All right. What are the crew saying happened?”
“None of them can remember. They were following a private submarine — an Orcasub — into a valley, but something went wrong. They all seem to be giving conflicting stories. Some say the submarine’s hull was breached and flooded. Others say they made an emergency exit using the SEIE suits. Others say they surfaced and abandoned the submarine for life rafts after mechanical faults and the two most senior officers went below to scuttle the submarine. You have to remember they were all sleep deprived and dehydrated, so they aren’t quite making any sense yet.”
“How bizarre. Was there any similarity between their stories?”
“Not really. Except…”
“Except what?”
“You wouldn’t credit it, but almost all of them made some reference to being in paradise only to be attacked by what they are calling monsters.”
“Monsters?” Sam asked. “What sort?”
“They were described as being beasts as large as cars. Some looked like bears — others were covered in scales and spikes. I would have dismissed the lot of them, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the only general theme they all shared.”
“Bizarre. Did you find drugs in their system?”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah. Amphetamines, cocaine, LSD? Something that might account for their shared hallucinations.”
“Not yet. They were only picked up an hour ago by local fishermen. One of our vessels currently stationed in the Mediterranean is on its way to meet them.”
Sam said, “All right. Let me know what they find. We’re going to keep heading south. Let us know if you learn anything, and we’ll circle around Cape Horn and head into the Atlantic to help. Just one more thing…”
“Shoot?”
Sam made a thin-lipped smile. “Did any of them give a rough location of the wreck site?”
“Yeah, but we’re pretty certain its wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because they said they were in the South Pacific Ocean at the time. But that’s impossible. There’s no way anyone would have survived floating on a single-person raft all the way from the Pacific around the Cape, and across the Atlantic, is there?”