Overton had already filed one story, using the Bronsteinʼs satellite relay telephone. He had been told that it was relatively private, and while, yes, they had scrambling equipment available, it was not available to civilians.
He was about coffeed out, and he thought longingly about his bottle of Chivas Regal Scotch, now resting in somebody’s secured locker. It had been confiscated from his bag as soon as he had boarded.
“Bridge, Comm,” came over the intercom.
“Go ahead, Comm,” the watch officer said.
“We’ve got an emergency.”
Overton rose from his stool and slipped back into the communications compartment, staying just inside the doorway and well away from the consoles, as he had been told.
“You’ll have to leave, sir,” an ensign told him. “We have an emergency under way.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Please, sir.”
He went back to the bridge.
The watch officer was standing next to the intercom. “Sorry to disturb you, Captain. We’ve picked up an SOS from the Los Angeles. She’s taking on water fast and is in danger of foundering.”
Overton could not hear the captain’s reply.
The watch officer turned to his helmsman, “Come about to zero-four-two. All ahead full.”
He got a chorus of “aye-ayes,” in return, and Overton got out his notepad.
Finally, some action.
The Orion crossed the international date line shortly after eight o’clock at night.
Paco Suarez was in the radio shack, Fred Boberg was on the helm, and Mel Sorenson had the watch. Brande, Dokey, Emry and Thomas were also on the bridge.
It was crowded, but Brande was not ordering anyone off the bridge.
An hour and five minutes had elapsed since Suarez had heard the SOS from the Los Angeles. He was currently scanning half a dozen military channels, and the low-volume chatter from the radio shack was a modern-day Babel. The primary channels had been cut into the public-address system so that ship’s crew and the team members gathered in the wardroom could also track events.
Brande was in his customary position to the right of the helm, staring ahead into the night. They were at midpoint in the time zone, and the sun had already departed, leaving a faint rosy glow in the overcast ahead of them. The seas were running heavy, long swells that rose five feet and more. Emry’s low pressure system and the Orion were going to meet right in the impact zone.
Emry, Sorenson, and Thomas were bent over the chart table located on the port side at the back of the bridge. One of the technicians manning the radar/sonar compartment called out the coordinates of ships as he picked them up. Sorenson plotted their latest position, provided by the satellite navigation system.
“How far off course would we have to take it, Mel?” Thomas asked.
“Where we are now, we’d have to come starboard a couple points, darlin’.”
“Do it, then,” she said.
Sorenson straightened up. “Fred, let’s take a heading of two-five-eight.”
“Two-five-eight cornin’ up, Captain.” Boberg leaned across his wheel and adjusted the autopilot. On the Orion and the Gemini, the helmsman was the backup to the electronic systems. Tied into the NavStar Global Positioning Satellite system, the autopilot could maintain a truer course than any human. Humans reacted much better to emergencies, however. Their thinking was not programmed.
Brande appreciated Thomas’s immediate decision. He glanced at Dokey, standing next to him in the red-glow of the instrument panel, and noted the affirmative bobbing of the man’s head. Dokey was wearing a black sweatshirt stamped with a big red YES! In mid-afternoon, he had entered into direct graphics combat with the NO! girls.
Turning slightly to his left, Brande also appreciated the form of Thomas leaning over the chart table. She was wearing white jeans and a green-and-white-striped polo shirt. It was similar to outfits he had seen her in a hundred times. It was also completely different. Now he was aware of the fullness of her breasts, the breadth of her hips, the smooth length of her legs. He could feel the throb of the pulse in her smooth throat. He liked the way her hair fell forward as she leaned over the table. The planes of her cheeks were soft in the red light, and her eyes were lost in shadow and determination.
Brande turned back to the windshield.
Not good, he thought.
He had been so damned careful to keep his relationships with people in the company at arm’s length. Sven Henning Brande had always said, “You don’t screw around with the help.”
Not that Sven Henning’s warning had meant much to a seventeen-year-old chasing the girls on the harvesting crews.
But with Kaylene Rae Thomas, other than the name, there were other little mannerisms, traits that resurrected the memory of Janelle Kay. It was a memory he did not want to lose or allow to blur. His memory of Janelle was what drove him to do the things he did. If he had had an Atlas ROV available, she would not have died.
That was all changed, now.
Lack of willpower? Brande was not certain. The desire had been there, certainly. For Rae, too. And yet, he well knew he had not given all of himself, and he did not think that she had, either. There was a resistance between them that prevented full revelation.
As soon as they had come on the bridge, he was aware of a slight increase in the formality between them when in front of others. She, and he, were determined to not let the sudden new intimacy change their professional approaches. And in the determination, lost the battle.
Dokey had looked him directly in the eyes and asked, “Have a good nap, Chief?”
“Yeah, Okey, I did.”
“Iʼm so glad.”
Brande spun around and went back to the radio shack, leaning against the jamb. “What’s the latest, Paco?”
The radio man turned in his chair and looked up at him. “The Navy types seem to think she’s stabilized, jefe. She’s a thousand feet down, with her emergency antenna deployed to the surface. But her machinery room is flooded, and she can’t move, and she can’t surface.”
“How about rescue craft?”
“The Bronstein is on the way.”
“Any deep divers?”
“I’m pretty sure I heard CINCPAC divert the RV Bartlett.ˮ
“Bartlettʼs only got sonar and visual ROVs on board, last I heard,” Dokey said, coming up behind Brande. “And the Kaneʼs way down south, according to Larry’s chart. Kaneʼs got a submersible that could mate with the sub’s hatches, but so far, CINCPAC hasn’t ordered her in.”
“We’re the best bet, then,” Brande said.
“Kaylene already knew that,” Dokey told him.
Brande and Dokey moved over to the chart table. Thomas looked across the table at him, but her eyes were opaque and unreadable in the red glow of the fixture attached to the overhead.
“Larry,” he asked Emry, “have you talked to Ingrid?”
“Yes,” he said. His bald head glowed with fire. “She’s got all the data up on a machine in the lab. What we know is that the reactor’s shut down, and they’re maintaining on batteries. The machinery room is totally flooded, and they’ve lost almost all of their operating systems. The lower level of the engine room is also flooded, but the last report says there’s no more water coming in.”