Up on the starboard wing of the bridge, Sandecker peered through binoculars at a commercial version of the Navy’s SH-60B Sea Hawk helicopter, with NUMA markings, as it approached the ship from bow-on, circled once and dropped on the big ship’s stern landing pad, Two men hurried from the aircraft and entered the aft superstructure. A minute later, they joined Sandecker on the bridge.
“Did the drop go well?” Sandecker asked anxiously.
Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames nodded with a slight smile. “Four arrays of remote acoustical sensing instruments have been deployed under the surface at the required locations thirty kilometers distant from the convergence zone.”
“We laid them directly in the four estimated paths of the sound channels,” added Gunn, who had made the flight with Ames.
“They’re set to measure the final approach and intensity of the sound?” Sandecker asked.
Ames nodded. “The telemetry data from the underwater modems will be relayed by their surface flotation satellite link to the onboard processor and analyst terminal here on board the Explorer. The system works similarly to submarine acoustic locating programs.”
“Fortunately, we have a weather and current window working in our favor,” said Gunn. “All things considered, the sound waves should come together as predicted.”
“Warning time?”
“Sound travels underwater at an average of fifteen hundred meters per second,” replied Ames. “I figure twenty seconds from when the sound waves pass the modems until they strike the reflector dish under the ship.”
“Twenty seconds,” Sandecker repeated. “Damned little time to mentally prepare for the unknown.”
“Since no one without some kind of protection has survived to describe the full intensity of the convergence, my best estimate of its duration before it is totally deflected toward Gladiator Island is approximately four and a half minutes. Anyone on board the ship who does not reach the dampened shelter will surely die horribly.”
Sandecker turned and gestured at the vivid green mountains of Oahu, only fifteen kilometers distant. “Will any effects reach the people on shore?”
“They might feel a brief but sharp pain inside their heads, but no permanent harm should come to them.”
Sandecker stared out the bridge windows at the huge mass of machinery soaring skyward in the middle of the ship. Infinite miles of cable and hydraulic lines ranged over the deck from the derrick and cranes. Teams of men and women, sitting and standing on platforms suspended in the air like those used by skyscraper window cleaners, worked at reconnecting the seemingly unending number of links on the enormous reflector shield. The giant derrick held the main frame of the shield, while the surrounding cranes lifted the smaller numbered pieces into their slots where they were then joined. Thanks to Rudi Gunn’s foresight in cleaning and oiling the connectors, all parts fit quickly and smoothly. The operation was going like clockwork. Only two more parts were left to install.
The admiral turned his gaze toward the jewel of the Pacific, easily distinguishing details of Diamond Head, the hotels strung along Waikiki Beach, the Aloha Tower in Honolulu, the homes fading into the clouds that always seemed to hover over Mount Tantalus, the jetliners landing at the international airport, the facilities at Pearl Harbor. There could be no room for error. Unless the operation went according to plan, the beautiful island would become a vast killing field.
At last he looked at the man studying the digital numbers on the ship’s computerized navigation system. “Captain Quick.”
The master of the Glomar Explorer looked up. “Admiral Sandecker.”
“How far to the site?”
Quick smiled. It was only the twentieth time the admiral had asked the same question since departing Halawa Bay. “Less than five hundred meters and another twenty minutes until we begin pinpointing the ship over the numbers your people computed for the Global Positioning System.”
“Which leaves us only forty minutes to deploy the reflector shield.”
“Thanks to Chief Toft and his engine-room crew, otherwise we never could have made it on schedule.”
“Yes,” Sandecker agreed. “We owe him big.”
The long minutes passed with everyone in the wheelhouse keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the red digital numbers of the Global Positioning System as they diminished finally to a row of zeros, indicating the ship was over the precise site where the sound rays were calculated to converge and explode with unparalleled intensity. The next project was to hold the ship in the exact spot. Captain Quick focused on programming the coordinates into the automated ship’s control system, which analyzed sea and weather conditions and controlled the thruster jets on the bow and stern. In an incredibly short time span, the Glomar Explorer had achieved station and was able to hover motionless in the water, resisting wind and current within a deviation factor of less than a meter.
Several other systems, each critical to the operation, also came into play. The pitch was feverish. Teams of engineers and technicians, electronics systems experts and scientists worked simultaneously to put the reflector shield in the precise path of the sound waves. The NUMA team, working on platforms far above the deck, made the final connections and attached the shield to the drop hook of the derrick.
Far below, one of the most unique sections of the ship stirred to life. Taking up the middle third of the ship, the 1,367 square meter Moon Pool, as it was called, filled with water as two sections of the center hull, one fore, the other aft, retracted into specially designed sleeves, The true heart of the seafloor dredging system and what had been the recovery operation of the Russian submarine, the Moon Pool was where it all came together, where the dredging hose would be extended thousands of meters deep to the minerals carpeting the ocean’s bottom and where the vast reflector shield would be lowered into the sea.
The engineering systems on board the Glomar Explorer were originally constructed to raise heavy objects from the seafloor, not to lower lighter but more expansive objects downward. Procedures were hurriedly modified for the complex operation. Minor glitches were quickly overcome. Every move was coordinated and performed with precision.
The tension on the lowering cable was increased by the derrick operator until the reflector hung free in the air. The appropriate signal by the NUMA team was given, indicating that the reflector assembly was “all completed.” The entire unit was then lowered diagonally through the rectangular Moon Pool into the sea with centimeters to spare. It was that close. The immersion time ran ten meters a minute. Full deployment by the cables securing the dish at the precise angle and depth to ricochet the sound waves to Gladiator Island took fourteen minutes.
“Six minutes and ten seconds to convergence,” Captain Quick’s voice droned over the ship’s loudspeakers. “All ship’s personnel will go to the engine-room storage compartment at the aft end of the ship and enter as you have been instructed. Do this immediately. I say immediately. Run, do not walk.”
Suddenly, everyone was dropping down ladders and scaffolding, hurrying in unison like a pack of marathon runners toward the propulsion and pump room deep in the bowels of the ship. Here, twenty ship’s crewmembers had been busily sound-isolating the supply compartment with every piece of dampening material they could lay their hands on. The ship’s towels, blankets, bedding and mattresses, along with all cushions from lounge chairs and any scraps of lumber they could scrounge were placed against ceiling, deck and bulkheads to deaden all intruding sound.