He thought about the collar and how it might have been disconnected. It was unlikely that it would have been done outside the cockpit because the collar was designed to form a watertight clamp that engaged on the firing socket. Once fitted there was no chance of water seeping into the cockpit.
The screened, wiring circuit that connected the collar to the firing button was encapsulated and ran through the centre of the ‘thorax’ to the rear of the instrument panel. Therefore it would have been simpler, and quicker, to have disconnected the collar inside the cockpit.
Beside the firing panel was a small bank of capacitors. When the circuit was energised by pressing the first button, it initiated a charge to the capacitors. After a ten second delay, the firing circuit would be closed and a red light would come on above the firing button. When this was pressed, the capacitors would discharge down the firing lines, into the collar and detonate it. The shaped charge inside the collar would explode and sever the polymer cockpit from the submersible.
All Marsh had to do now was to figure out a way of reconnecting the collar to the firing panel.
He needed a tool or something with which he could remove the front of the firing panel. He looked around the interior for something he could use. The smooth, contoured features stared back at him. Everything in there had been designed for ease of handling, simplicity. No sharp objects. Helen had proclaimed it was the only place she could safely work where she wouldn’t snag her nylons.
He ran his hands beneath the seat, then opened up a small, virtually unnecessary toolbox and found it was empty. It didn’t surprise him. He continued the search and thought about Richard the Third who offered his Kingdom for a horse. What Marsh would have given for a simple screwdriver.
He sat there for a while thinking furiously, playing with the watch on his wrist. Then realised he might have the answer there in his hand; or more correctly, on his wrist.
He removed the watch and placed it on the floor, then stamped on it with his foot. It smashed immediately and he picked it up. Ignoring the little shards of glass, Marsh pushed the entire works through the back of the watch. As they popped out, the steel back dropped on to the floor. This was to be Marsh’s screwdriver.
One by one, even with his hands trembling and sweating, Marsh removed the facia screws from the panel until it swung free and revealed the wires in the firing loom.
It was as he had suspected; the loom had been cut!
Marsh began working on the cotton bindings of the loom until he could strip away the braided steel armour of the loom, exposing the cables. He then began to strip back the insulation of the two cables leading up to the capacitor bank.
Marsh knew that all the return circuits in the Challenger’s systems were coded blue and that none of them were switched. After twenty minutes, with his fingers raw and bleeding, he had managed to connect the return cable from the capacitors to the blue cable running from the firing panel. Then he gently lifted the power cable from the panel and touched it against the exposed copper wire that supplied the bank of capacitors. Nothing happened for a moment, and then he heard the sweet, soft, high pitched whine rising in crescendo as the capacitors charged up.
Marsh was almost crying by now and shaking nervously. Sweat poured from his forehead into his eyes. He stopped, took in several deep breaths and then let the power cable drop away from the charging circuit.
The capacitors were now full charged.
At the rear of the firing panel, Marsh could see the metal, braided firing lines which ran through the loom to the explosive collar. He reached in and pulled them clear and looked at the severed ends. He knew he still had time before the charge in the capacitors began to decay, but his fingers were sore and bleeding, making him wonder how much time he had before the strength in his hands began to decay too. And his eyes were stinging now because of the sweat running from his forehead.
Using the watch back again, he paired back the insulation to expose their bright, copper conductors He attached one to the capacitor bank and brought the other cable to within a fraction of the cables that ran from the firing button.
His hands began to shake again. He breathed in, concentrated and carried on. Marsh knew it was vital that once he had made contact, he had to keep the cables together long enough for the energy now stored in the capacitors to discharge along the firing lines to the explosive collar.
Then he was ready.
And he prayed.
Oh, how he prayed.
Slowly, he brought the ends together and held them fast. There was just time to reflect that he was not strapped into his seat when he heard the dull ‘crump’ as the shaped charge in the collar exploded and severed the thorax from the Challenger.
For what seemed like an eternity, nothing happened. Then the bubble moved and began to lift. Slowly at first, shaking off the pull of gravity and the pressure from the sea above it as the air inside exerted its own force and went in search of its own pressure level above that black, forbidding sea.
It moved up rapidly, gaining speed and momentum at the same time. It also began to roll to one side as Marsh lost his balance and fell. As he tumbled he could just see the Challenger, clamped to the sea bed and looking like his launch platform. It faded from view as the gathering light intensified until the cockpit bubble broke through the surface like a shot from a cannon.
It spun in the air and crashed down on to the surface. Marsh felt a terrible blow to his head as the bubble fought back against the pull of the sea and bobbed upright.
Marsh’s last memory of that moment before he passed out was of the blessed, beautiful sky; beautiful but menacing with huge, black clouds.
The bubble settled and canted over gently under the pressure of the wind. The automatic beacon switched on, punching out its distress signal on the international distress frequency. And the Gulf Stream current carried the odd looking craft towards the Florida Channel and the vast, open reaches of the Atlantic Ocean.
Chapter 18
On the bridge of the Taliba, Captain de Leon glanced up from his map table as the F-16 flashed by in the distance. To him it was just a silhouette; a momentary transition of life in an otherwise empty, darkening sky. It jogged his memory and he thought about the hurricane. They were running from it, but the wind was well up to gale force and he wondered what conditions would be like on the rig.
He left the bridge and went to his cabin. There was little he could do or even needed to do. The officer of the watch was quite capable. He thought he would freshen up and probably return to the bridge within the hour. Then he could fret about the gathering storm.
The Taliba had been battened down for storm conditions and the helicopter had been made ready to fly off if Khan thought it prudent to do so. It looked so vulnerable, shackled to the forward heli-pad. De Leon gave it little more thought as he pulled off his shoes and lay down on his bunk. Within a few minutes he was asleep.
The officer of the watch had been on the bridge, thinking about the gathering storm and what it meant to their brief spells ashore. None for the men, or himself for the foreseeable future; they were safer out at sea, running from the hurricane.
As he paced up and down the bridge he glanced occasionally at the radar screen. When he saw the blip at first, he ignored it. But on his second pass along the bridge, he looked again. He frowned and studied it a little more carefully. The bearing on which the trace was moving would bring it directly over the Taliba. Whatever it was, he reasoned that it was significantly slower than an aeroplane so it was probably a helicopter.