Brande enjoyed playing the honeymooner, and Janelle, a San Franciscan, loved the romantic setting. They ate lavishly, made love on a whim, slept late and dove on Spanish galleons and more modern disasters from a rented boat in the afternoons. They crossed to the British Virgin Islands to dive on the Rhone, a British steamship that went down in 1867. Encrusted with coral and sponges, it was lush and colorful with marine life.
And today, near the island of Tortola, they had found a freighter which had probably been a Liberty ship. It was broken in two, and down about sixty feet. Swimming side by side, Brande and his new wife explored the after-section, then swam a hundred yards to the bow section.
Framed against the blue and yellow of coral gripping the steel plates of the wreck and the orange of tropical fish swimming in a dense school, Janelle was spectacular. Her short, dark hair streamed behind her, and she rolled onto her back, pulled the air-supply mouthpiece from her lips, and smiled at him.
Brande kicked harder, attempting to close with her. Janelle wrinkled her nose at him, visible through the glass of her face mask, and increased the fluttering kick of her own legs.
She swam backward, grinning at him, and when he saw that she was aimed directly at a rotted crane mast, he waved frantically at her.
She waved back.
Then hit the mast abruptly.
There was not much momentum to the impact, but the partially decomposed and brittle hardware that supported the crane boom snapped.
And the boom dropped across her midsection, pinning her to the sharp coral coating the deck, her flesh protected by the scuba tank.
A flurry of dust.
Startled fish darted away.
Brande surged forward quickly, reached the boom, and peered over it.
Janelle had replaced her mouthpiece and seemed to be breathing normally. Her eyes were wide and frightened behind the mask.
He tried to reassure her by patting her shoulder, than braced his legs against the deck, gripped the boom near her stomach, and heaved.
It would not budge.
He tried several times, but the boom was lodged firmly against the mast on one end and against the deck coaming on the other.
Brande figured that they each had half-an-hour of oxygen remaining.
Floating above her, he unsnapped her scuba harness and attempted to push the oxygen tank to one side, to give her room to escape.
It would not move. The boom was pressing too hard, making a concave gulley across her stomach.
He tried lifting again.
Janelle’s eyes followed him, reflecting less panic.
Believing in him
He needed a lever.
Rotating he searched around himself for anything and discovered nothing.
Signaling with two raised fingers that he would be gone two minutes, Brande pushed off the deck and shot for the surface. Their rented day cruiser was fifty yards away; and he swam for it.
Pulling himself over the transom, Brande scrambled around in the cockpit, searching lockers and seat cavities, then found an oar for the rubber dinghy. He paused for long enough to radio a mayday message, than went back into the water, stroking for the bottom, tugging the oar with him.
She smiled when he reappeared.
Resting the side of the oar blade against the coaming he attempted to lever the boom upward, but he could not get a firm footing. He changed position, going to the other side of the boom and shoving the oar beneath the boom.
With his legs spread wide and his feet pressed against the deck, he heaved upward.
And the oar broke.
He looked to Janelle.
She raised a thumb.
He swam to her and tried to explain with gestures that he had radioed for assistance.
She nodded her understanding.
Maybe fifteen minutes of air left in each bottle.
Brande slipped out of his harness and shut down the regulator. Holding his breath, he placed the tank next to her.
She understood that she was to switch to his bottle when the oxygen ran out in her own.
He swam for the surface.
Looked for boats coming but saw none.
Dove back to the bottom, held her hand, smiled at her, tried to shift the boom, then rose again to the surface as his lungs screamed.
Brande dove sixteen times.
On his sixteenth dive, Janelle’s eyes were lifeless.
The little flashbacks of futility flickered in Brandeʼs mind as he sat at the table in the lounge with Larry Emry and Ingrid Roskens, going over the search plan Emry had laid out on a big chart.
It was, rather than a circular pattern, a trapezoid, narrow on the west and wide on the east. “Because,” Emry said, “the ocean currents are moving in that direction, and the likely angle of impact, along with the rocket’s aerodynamic shape and fins, will glide it in that direction. Maybe for a hell of a long ways before it hits bottom.”
It was so damned deep.
“Tomorrow, Dane,” Emry said, “Fll put this up on the computer, so that we can shift the plan as information comes in on what the subs are finding.”
“If they find anything,” Roskens said.
“They’re bound to pinpoint some old wrecks and some terrain features that the charts don’t show,” the exploration director said. He stroked his thick mustache with his thumb. He was wearing a dark blue baseball cap with the MVU logo — protecting his bald head — and the lighter blue jumpsuit favored by team members on expedition.
Roskens was also dressed in the jumpsuit. She was assisting Emry with the search plan until she got some structural data on the rocket.
“If we could be assured,” she said, “that the rocket broke up on impact, it would be helpful.”
Brande knew she was right. A ship that breaks up and spreads debris over a mile-long stretch of the bottom was a great deal more findable than one that sinks in place. Looking for a rocket that was about thirty-one feet wide with the boosters in place and seventy feet long in a thirty-six-square-mile area of an ocean that was four miles deep was far worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Even if only the boosters broke off, it would be extremely helpful,” Emry said. “It would triple our chances of finding a sonar return.”
Brande tapped the chart. “Is a search grid spacing of eight hundred meters going to be tight enough, Larry?”
“I think so, yes. It’ll depend upon the terrain, of course, but flying SARSCAN at an altitude of eight hundred feet above the bottom should give us enough overlap that if we miss it going one way, well get it on the return leg.”
“We don’t want to use Sneaky Pete simultaneously as a back-up?” Brande asked.
“I really think our best shot is with sonar. A visual sighting, unless the damned thing broke into a thousand pieces and spread out a couple miles, is going to be very, very unlikely, Dane.”