He cursed. “All right. Anyone got another idea?”
Svetlana said, “It seems to me that the material worked. It showed us that the USS Omega Deep is out there, presumably somewhere to the south of us.”
“You’re right,” Sam said. “Matthew, can you please take us across that reef?”
Matthew’s eyes ran across the bathymetric image of the reef, taking note of the exact depth at its highest point, and landing back on Sam’s determined face. “It will be shallow, but we should have a few feet to spare beneath our keel.”
“All right, let’s see what’s on the other side of that reef.”
Matthew eased the twin throttles gently forward, and the Maria Helena’s bow slowly edged toward the reef.
There was a concerned silence on the bridge, broken by the depth-sounder’s warning. It came on whenever the keel suddenly got within five feet of the seabed below. Matthew eased the throttles into reverse, slowing their forward momentum to a near standstill.
The Maria Helena drifted forward across the shallow reef, revealing a narrow valley or ancient river, running southeast, at a depth of fifty feet.
Sam’s lips curled slightly upward in relief. “We’ve crossed over.”
“Of course, we have,” Matthew replied. “You don’t really think I would have put the ship into any danger just because you wanted me to follow one of your whims, do you?”
Sam and Tom laughed.
Matthew was, by far, the most conservative member of the crew. It was a good trait to have for a skipper. And his high aversion to risk often came to clash with Sam’s carefree, risk-taking behavior.
Sam returned to the task at hand. “All right, Veyron. Can you please drop the second canister of cadmium?”
“Understood, releasing it now.”
Sam stared at the UV monitor and smiled as the cadmium followed the ancient river along its southeastern course.
Matthew didn’t need to be asked to follow. Instead, he shifted the throttles forward, and the Maria Helena began her pursuit.
The cadmium followed the river for nearly fifteen minutes before its weight finally caused it to catch on some coral. Sam stared at the UV monitor, as the fine particles thinned until there was nothing left to follow.
But it was obvious now that the submarine would have had trouble leaving the ancient valley, so they continued, taking the same route the USS Omega Deep had before them.
The submerged valley below opened up into a large open space, nearly a mile wide and ending in a concaved atoll, which rose nearly all the way to the surface.
Sam said, “This is it. There’s no way the USS Omega Deep would have cleared that reef.”
Matthew eased the throttles into reverse and brought the Maria Helena to a standstill. Sam ran his eyes across the bathymetric readings.
The seabed was full of sand.
Nowhere to hide a submarine so large.
Sam swallowed, feeling disappointment weigh him down. “I don’t get it. I was certain it was here.”
Svetlana glanced at the monitor and said, “What about here?”
He looked directly where she was pointing. There was a shallow curved indent in the sand that ran nearly 600 feet in a perfectly straight line. It very well could have been where the Omega Deep had originally run aground. There were even large piles of sand where scuba divers had obviously gone to the effort to free the submarine from its buildup of sand.
Sam said, “I don’t believe it. We’re too late. Someone’s already beaten us to it.”
Svetlana made a winning smile. “I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“Why not?” Sam asked.
She pointed to the almost negligible increase in water temperature surrounding the aft end of the depression in the sand. “That looks to me like the thermal runoff from their active nuclear reactor.”
Sam met her gaze. “You think the Omega Deep is right in front of us, hiding in plain sight?”
“Yes.”
Sam grinned, turned to Tom, and said, “Come on. There’s only one way we’re going to prove whether your dad’s submarine is down there.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Sam stood inside the moon pool at the bottom deck of the Maria Helena and donned his wetsuit and scuba gear. The dive was shallow, less than 80 feet — closer to 50 to the top of the submarine if it was there — and they had no need to be down there very long, so he and Tom didn’t go to the trouble of setting up their closed-circuit rebreathers. Instead, opted to dive with a standard single dive tank containing 210 Bar of compressed air.
He checked his Heckler & Koch MP5 and secured it to his right thigh. The 9mm submachine gun was one of the preferred weapons among military special forces around the world, for its durability, reliability, and accuracy — even after prolonged periods of water submersion. It functions according to the proven roller-delayed blowback principle, making multiple subsequent shots highly accurate.
Veyron glanced at him with a wry smile. “You’re expecting trouble?”
Sam shrugged. “No, but I thought I should come prepared anyway. That way I’m less likely to find it.”
“Not a bad principle.”
Sam stood up on the diver’s platform at the edge of the moon pool. The water was so clear, he could now clearly see the outline in the sand where the Omega Deep had almost certainly been at some stage.
In his left BCD pocket, he kept a pair of night-vision goggles. It was an absurd thought, but he and Tom had decided to bring them, just in case they were to find survivors inside the stricken vessel. By now, he imagined the entire system would be shut down and dark, to preserve energy.
That’s if it was even there.
The 30-billion-dollar question as to whether or not it was still there, remained to be seen.
He and Tom quickly checked each other’s equipment.
Elise entered the room, a worried crease across her brow, which was out of character for her. Without preamble, she said, “I just got off the phone with the secretary of defense. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Russian aircraft carrier, and the Chinese Type II aircraft carrier will all converge on this location in under an hour.”
Sam glanced at his watch, making a mental note of the time, and said, “All right. That just means Tom and I had better be back here well within that timeframe.”
Elise said, “The secretary also wants me to remind you of the second package you were given.”
“You can assure her I haven’t forgotten.” Sam motioned to the inbuilt pouch on the right-hand side of his buoyancy control device, where two of the HF magnetic homing devices were stored. “If the Omega Deep’s down there, it won’t be for much longer.”
“Okay. Stay safe and get back here as soon as you can.”
“Understood.” Sam turned to Tom. “You’re all set.”
“Set and ready to go.”
“All right.”
Sam pulled his full-faced dive mask over his head and stepped into the moonpool.
The water was warmer than he expected, more like diving in the tropics than the Southern Ocean. He descended to 20 feet, making certain that he cleared the rest of the Maria Helena’s keel. He glanced at his dive gauges. Everything appeared to be working correctly.
“You still good, Tom?” he asked.
“Never better,” Tom replied cheerfully. “Let’s go find the truth before World War III starts above us.”
“Agreed.”
Sam released some more air from his buoyancy control device, making him markedly neutrally buoyant.
He descended another twenty feet before his hand reached something cold and made of steel.