‘It’s why the entire cavern system periodically floods,’ Chandler explained. ‘The turbines fail and are crushed beneath the pressure, and the water flows past once more and rushes into the cavern and docks, flooding it until the pressure equalizes once more and the excess flow drains away out of the tunnel we used to enter the base.’
Hannah leaned against a wall.
‘How long?’ she asked. ‘Before it happens again?’
Chandler’s features had paled slightly.
‘It could happen next week or in the next two minutes, but it’s imminent.’
‘Any other ways out?’ Ethan asked Riggs, already knowing the answer.
‘Nope,’ Riggs replied, ‘and that submarine only has two seats. Truth time, people — we’re not getting out of this base alive.’
XXXVII
‘This is not a good idea.’
Hannah Ford stood on the dock beside the Seehund midget submarine as Lieutenant Riggs and his SEALs hurriedly prepared her for diving. The U-Boat was an ugly black vessel emblazoned with the red stencil numbering of the Nazi fleet, the Kriegsmarine.
‘If this is your plan,’ Riggs added as he worked, ‘then your plan sucks.’
Ethan shared their concerns but he knew that there was no option but to use the tiny submarine to get below the surface and recover Black Knight. What he could not be sure of was what they were going to encounter beneath the waves. Not only would they have to contend with the frigid Antarctic waters, the danger of glacial collapses, the limited energy supply of the submarine and its antiquated controls, but they would also have to be ready to encounter something that was not of this world.
‘We’ll just go down, grab it, and bring it back to the surface,’ Ethan assured her.
‘Sounds easy if you say it quickly enough,’ Hannah mumbled in reply.
Lieutenant Riggs jumped down from the sub’s hull and looked her over one last time.
‘She’s good to go. The hull is secure, no leaks that I can find, so she’s in good shape considering how long she’s been here and you’re lucky — most Seehunds didn’t have ballast tanks but this one has been modified to carry them. My men are trained for this sort of thing and should be the ones going down there, and your experience is only barely enough to control the Seehund. Are you sure you want to go through with this?’
Ethan shook his head.
‘Hell no, I want to be at home with a beer watching the damned game but we’re here so we might as well get on with it. You’re going to need all the firepower you can get up there on the docks, so it makes sense to send somebody else. Get the hell out of here and get on with it.’
Riggs nodded and looked across at Doctor Chandler, who was standing nearby with his hands shoved in the pockets of his Arctic coat, his head almost completely concealed beneath his hood.
‘Are you all hooked up and ready to go?’ Riggs asked him.
Ethan had arranged for the doctor to provide a digital communications link to the dock, so that if they encountered anything that they could not overcome they could fall back on the scientist’s knowledge to help them through.
‘The data link is in place, and communications should be possible to some extent through the water,’ Chandler confirmed. ‘However, there is a common phenomenon in deep water known as thermal layering, whereby denser cold water can move below warmer water and create a barrier to communications. Given what we know about the flow from Lake Vostok beneath the glacier, you may find that at times we cannot communicate.’
‘Perfect,’ Hannah replied. ‘Anything else we might need to know about?’
Riggs gestured to the torpedo clamps on the submarine’s hull, and at the bow section.
‘The clamps are definitely strong enough to lift whatever’s down there, given what we know about its size and mass, but when you resurface you’ll have to come up real careful or you’ll smash the artifact against the dock wall. Do that and you might compromise the hull, which will likely sink you.’
‘Smashing,’ Hannah uttered.
‘There’s a a watertight section of the bow that used to contain a depth charge device that might help you to hook onto whatever’s down there, but you’ll probably have to improvise once you get a look at this thing.’
Ethan was about to grab Hannah’s arm and guide her as gently as possible aboard the submarine before she finally lost her nerve when Amy appeared at the dock hatch and hurried down toward them.
‘Wait for me!’ She hurried across and pointed at the submarine. ‘You need me on this one.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘This is too dangerous.’
Amy shot Ethan an accusing glare. ‘Yeah, right, and being in an unstable Second World War secret Nazi base beneath a moving glacier while under attack from gunmen is the safe option, right?’
‘This submarine might not make it back to the surface and we don’t know what we’ll find down there,’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s not your risk to take.’
‘It’s every bit my risk to take,’ Amy insisted. ‘You can’t take Doctor Chandler, you don’t have any experience in sub-aquatic Arctic environments and Hannah is clearly scared out of her wits!’
‘Hey!’ Hannah protested. ‘I’m just a little concerned about being dunked in a rusting tin can under ten billion tons of ice is all. Cut me a break!’
‘I’m not concerned,’ Amy insisted to Ethan. ‘This is my specialty — it’s why I’m here. You need me down there and they need Hannah up here. She can shoot, I can’t. It makes sense and you damned well know it.’
Ethan bit his lip and glanced at Riggs, who shrugged.
‘Don’t argue with a woman,’ was all that he could say.
‘Damn it,’ Ethan uttered as he released Hannah’s arm. ‘Okay, you’re up.’
Amy’s face beamed with delight as she clambered gamely up the submarine’s hull, a chunky digital camera dangling on a strap about her neck as she called back to Chandler.
‘Use the sonar buoy to increase the communications signal beneath the ice! It might help to burn through any thermal layers we encounter.’
Chandler’s features lit up and he called back. ‘Good idea!’
Hannah looked at Ethan. ‘Looks like you’re in good hands.’
Ethan smiled with a confidence he did not feel. ‘Cover our asses,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want to come back with Black Knight and have to hand it over to Veer and his men.’
‘Over my dead body, literally,’ Hannah assured him. ‘Be careful.’
‘You too.’
Amy’s voice called to him from the submarine’s entrance hatch, where she had attached a small digital video camera attached by a lead to a laptop computer that was tucked under her arm.
‘Are you getting on board or what?!’
Ethan took a deep breath and then clambered up the hull of the U-Boat and climbed carefully into the narrow confines of the tower. He reached over and took one last look at the dock before he pulled the clear dome hatch over his head and closed it, sealing it shut.
The interior of the submarine was cramped and dark, Amy moving into the engineer’s position at the front while Ethan took the commander’s position right behind her. His seat was provided with a periscope and a view through the clear acrylic dome for navigational purposes which could survive depths of almost a hundred and fifty feet, and he familiarized himself with his surroundings as he prepared to dive the vessel. The batteries were in the keel of the pressure hull, while a twenty two horsepower diesel engine was fitted for surface use, which Riggs had figured would give a maximum speed of around five knots. Below the surface, a twenty five horsepower electric motor provided a submerged maximum speed of seven knots.