“Brace, brace,” he chanted. “We must show belly!”
The submarine lurched forward, propelled by emergency power that he had dredged from god-knows-where, her depth planes cutting through the water, forcing her upside down. Every metallic member of the submarine shuddered and rattled, every unsecured bunk, computer monitor, manual, loose change, everything came tumbling out of its place, spilling across the ceiling of the submarine as she showed her underside to the distant surface.
And for one perfect moment, there was stillness as the submarine plunged into the depths like a tuckedwing bird of prey, upside-down, passing 2500 feet. With one last scraping groan, the twisted wreckage of the Fool’s Errand peeled from the submarine and fell away into the darkness.
Vitaly hung from the ceiling in his mounted chair, arms and legs dangling like a dead deer ready to be trussed.
“He’s unconscious again!” shouted Alexis. Without prompting, she stood up and slapped him across the face, hard.
Vitaly snapped to consciousness, shaking his head and regaining control of the computer console.
“Da, da, da!” he shouted with such conviction that Dr. Nassiri actually found himself wondering if this was not the strangest position the young Russian had found himself waking to.
Vitaly’s fingers jabbed at the controls, plunging the bow further down, adjusting the depths planes — and then it happened. The submarine twisted, slowly regaining her equilibrium as the depth gauge nearly touched three thousand feet. Both ballasts blew simultaneously, rocking the vessel back upright, stopping the depth gauge cold and sending the unburdened vessel shooting upwards.
“No way that should have worked,” breathed Jonah. Alexis looked at Dr. Nassiri. She was more shell-shocked than happy, the sheer magnitude of the past hour weighing heavily on her shoulders.
Twenty-eight-hundred feet, read the gauge. Twenty-seven fifty. They’d break through the surface in minutes. Dr. Nassiri unbuckled Vitaly’s seat belt and carried him to the nearest bunk, laid him on the mattress, and set the IV drip to work. He injected Vitaly with a sedative and watched as the Russian’s eyes fluttered, then closed. It would be a rough couple of days, but the young man should survive his initial gunshot wounds. Whether or not he could survive this expedition — if any of them could — was another matter entirely.
CHAPTER 10
Dr. Nassiri sat alone in the command compartment of the submarine, eyes fixed on the radar screen. It was quite a different sensation to be on the surface again. The submarine rocked and bobbed in the gentle waves like any other midsized vessel, but there were no windows to anchor one to the horizon. A little nauseating, if one was completely honest with oneself.
None of them spoke during the interminable ascent through the water column, no cheers when they’d finally broken through the surface or opened the hatch. Battle fatigue set in, a kind of stillness in the soul made up of equal parts physical exhaustion and spiritual reflection. Dr. Nassiri found himself playing the day back like a movie reel, pointing out moments where he should have been faster, should have been cleverer, should have been killed but wasn’t.
He brushed his fingers across the name placard of the submarine.
Scorpion, it read.
Appropriate. Named for an arachnid that lies in wait for its prey, stinging when least expected. Perhaps this ship should not be renamed as was the Conqueror. What would be the point? There was no slipping this weapon through a shipping channel or canal with little more than a paint job, fake papers, and a forced smile.
Alexis worked alone in the engine room, trying to repair the batteries or at least isolate the damage. Dr. Nassiri found her technical explanations difficult to understand at best. At least he understood enough to get that the Scorpion was kind of like a hybrid car, using conventional diesel fuel on the surface, battery electricity while submerged.
Finding himself useless to her or Jonah, he occupied himself with the logs of the latest series of drone surveillance flights. Apparently Charles Bettencourt took his pirate neighbors to the west very seriously, taking great care to spy on each pirate harbor in turn.
One of the high-resolution aerial spy photos caught the doctor’s attention. At first, the harbor looked like all the rest — a single cut-out deep harbor guarded by two tall stone towers. Two rusting mother ships were nestled within, surrounded by a dozen fiberglass skiffs tied up by the bows. The compound was walled off with a corrugated steel fence. Apparently the pirates feared attack by land just as much as assault by sea. Several broken-down trucks dotted the interior of the wall. Whether they drove or not — in fact, whether anything in the compound worked — couldn’t be ascertained by the photograph alone.
Then he realized what had caught his surgeon’s eye.
One of these is not like the others, he thought. A dark shape in the far corner of the harbor couldn’t be ignored. It was somewhere between the size of a skiff and a mothership. Unlike the rusting white steel ships, this one was matte black.
Dr. Nassiri zoomed in with his fingers on the tablet computer. His first instinct was correct, this was no pirate ship. From the high-resolution surveillance photo he could make out the build of the ship, a futuristic ultra-lightweight trimaran carbon-fiber racing yacht. The name Horizon was painted on the side, but not recently. More interestingly, he recognized the distinctive crimson and gray logo of MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The name and the ship seemed familiar somehow, like he’d read about it in a newspaper or a magazine some long time ago. But then again, anything before about two weeks ago felt like it’d happened to a different man.
Dr. Nassiri realized he could see two shadowy figures on the back deck. They didn’t look like pirates, but then again, what did a pirate look like?
He zoomed in closer. Then closer again.
He could see now — the two figures were women, one young and one older, both with dark hair. The young one wore hers in a close-cropped, androgynous style. He scrolled over to the other woman… and then he saw her.
Dr. Nassiri climbed the boarding ladder and exited through the open hatch in the top of the conning tower. Jonah sat at a fold-out seat at the top, binoculars strung loosely around his neck, massive deli sandwich in hand he’d made himself, watching the African sun settle low over the horizon in a spectacular sunset. He nodded at Dr. Nassiri in acknowledgement, a friendlier gesture than the doctor had expected.
“Hey Doc,” said Jonah. The American split the sandwich in half and tried to hand it to Dr. Nassiri.
“No thank you,” the doctor said.“But that is very kind.”
“Take it,” said Jonah. “It’s what Americans do when somebody we care about dies. We feed each other. I’d give you a casserole, but all I have is this sandwich.”
“What type is it?” said Dr. Nassiri.
“It’s turkey,” said Jonah. “I don’t know if that’s your thing or not, but there’s no ham in it or whatever.”
Dr. Nassiri looked at Jonah quizzically for a moment, realizing the offer was completely genuine. He almost felt a little foolish for not taking it to start, especially once he realized how hungry he actually was.
“Why not?” said Dr. Nassiri. He smiled and accepted the sandwich. Both men ate in silence.
Jonah spoke first. “I’m sorry about your cousin,” he said. “I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed like a decent enough guy.”
“Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t,” admitted Dr. Nassiri. “Technically speaking, he was killed in the commission of a crime.”