“When this is over, Kaylene, I want you to meet my sister. You two will get along fabulously.”
“It’s a fucking carnival,” Wilson Overton told his seagoing guide and helmsman.
“Carnivals are supposed to be fun,” the dour, acne-faced man told him.
Overton had flown to Midway Island on a chartered light-twin, then promised to pay the owner of the twenty-six-foot Maika Lyn three times his normal charter rate to bring him out here.
The twenty-six-footer was the largest boat available by the time he had arrived at Midway. Its captain, Lenny Lu, was Hawaiian by birth, nearly mute by inclination, and a reincarnation of Midas by philosophy. He was turning a small fishing business into gold.
With the seas running at four feet or more, the small boat bobbed up and down mightily as they slowly threaded their way through the fleet gathered at the site where the Soviet rocket had gone down. The motion was slowly getting to him, and Overton was feeling ill.
He almost regretted having told Ned Nelson to fuck off — he was not going to share any boat with five or ten newspapermen, half-a-dozen radio reporters, and three television crews. And he almost regretted exceeding the limits on his Master-Card and Visa credit cards by renting his own aircraft and boat.
Nelson probably would not honor his expense voucher.
Unless he landed a whopper of a story. Exclusive.
He did not even know how to file an exclusive report from the middle of the Pacific. There would be 10,000 ears listening to any radio channel. ABC and NBC ears. CBS and CNN. They were everywhere.
The Maika Lyn sat so low in the water that the boats and ships around them seemed to stretch from one horizon to the other. The people aboard them waited like hawks for something to attack. They waited in relative comfort, though. He saw people stretched out in deck chairs on a small cruise ship, sipping cold drinks. He thought about a martini, but Lenny Lu did not stock liquor. A trawler with her nets stowed passed by, her crew gathered along a gunwale, drinking beer, staring at him with some degree of malevolence.
He thought about a Michelob.
Overton looked at the swarthy fishermen and had a momentary flash of negative image. Forty-two varicolored cats waiting to pounce on a single rat. He snapped a few shots of the cats with the Nikon he had also charged to Visa. He was required to be his own photographer.
There was no sign of the CIS submarine that had been reported earlier. There was no sign, either, of the one that had imploded.
Just the self-created thought of the Tashkentʼs demise was sickening.
They rose and fell with the sea, creeping along at ten miles per hour.
Overton’s stomach threatened rebellion.
“Shit. Where is it?”
Lu pointed a finger downward. “Down there. You ain’t gonna see it.”
“Not the rocket, Lenny. The Navy ship.”
After twenty agonizing minutes, Overton saw the frigate cruising on the fringe and pointed it out to Lenny Lu. The captain advanced the throttles and the increase in speed helped to steady the boat, if not his stomach.
The massive, white, and squared-off numerals on the bow of the ship, 1037, slipped by, and Lenny Lu made a 360-degree turn and pulled alongside.
A seaman with a loud hailer came to the edge of the deck. “Ahoy the cruiser!” he chanted. “You are to remain one hundred yards away from this ship!”
Overton stood up, holding his press card high. He yelled, “I’m with the Post! I want to come aboard.”
“Oh, shit!” the sailor said before he realized his loud hailer was still on. “Stand by.”
“How’s our insurance? You pay the premiums lately?” Dokey asked.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brande said.
“I mean, if this hummer — meaning Orion — went down right now, we’d lose most of our inventory of exotic and very expensive playthings.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Valeri. Next thing I know, you two will be jet-skiing around San Diego Bay with ʻEnd of the Worldʼ signs.
Dokey was right, though. Marine Visions’ major robotic creations were all snugged down across the fantail of the Orion. The research vessel had been designed to accept large increases of weight on her stern, but still she was a little lower in the water than usual.
In terms of research and development costs, as well as the cost of materials, the Orion at that moment was probably worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Not counting the personnel, whose education and intellect was probably incalculable.
Brande was certain the insurance coverage was inadequate. Loss of the Orion would surely plunge the company into irretrievable bankruptcy.
The fantail was brightly lit by floodlights. Recesses and crannies stood out in stark, black relief. Overhead, the stars were clear. To the east, behind them, Brande saw the running lights of two watercraft appear from time to time.
He and Dokey watched as Bob Mayberry and Svetland Polodka snugged a yellow tarp over Gargantua. All of his systems had been fully examined, and all had performed flawlessly. One of his three hands had been removed and replaced with a cutting torch. The specialized oxygen and acetylene bottles attached to the arm were composed of extra-thick titanium. Dokey had practiced with the torch by cutting an hourglass-shaped figure from a piece of quarter-inch steel, the same design one frequently saw on the mud flaps of semitrucks. One of the ship’s crewmen had confiscated the result, spray-painted it pink, and hung it in his cabin.
Dokey thought his art would undoubtedly increase in value over time.
Gargantua’s mass somewhat overwhelmed Turtle, who was tied to the deck just ahead of him. Turtle’s tracks had been cleaned and lubricated, his arms and hands fine-tuned, and his electronics thoroughly probed.
DepthFinder was also ready for work. Her hull had been scrubbed down and waxed. Diving weights had already been installed in their receptacles on the underside of the hull. The wire cage basket under the bow now contained Atlas, whose operating systems, though proven by four years of continuous usage, had also been subjected to intense scrutiny. A towing hook and fiber-optic cable receptacle, for connecting SARSCAN, had been installed just aft of the sheath and ahead of the weights. This would be the first time the submersible was to be used as the towing vehicle for the sonar array.
Except for her battery trays, the submersible was complete. Every computer, sonar, oxygen, propulsion, and communications system had been signed off on by Dokey, Otsuka, Mayberry and finally, Brande. If there was any paperwork in the company that Brande insisted be accurate and complete, it was that associated with safety checklists.
While he knew that DepthFinderʼs outer hull was sleeker and prettier than really necessary, Brande was still pleased with the way she looked. The ungainly appearing pressure hull was disguised, and the sub gave the impression of being fully capable of whatever was demanded of her.
He hoped it was true.
He and Dokey made yet one more trip around the sub, opening access doors and visually checking equipment that had been examined with microscopic intensity by digital and analog probes. Neither of them mentioned the fact that they probably would not see an infinitesimal crack in a silicon chip. The personal examination was still reassuring.
Under tarpaulins near the sub’s bow were two Sneaky Petes, ready to be installed if needed. A technician had just loaded film canisters for the still cameras in Sneaky, Atlas, and DepthFinder.