“I need you up here, Rae. You’ll have to run interference with the Navy.”
“If we get that far,” Dokey said. “Looky here.”
From about a mile away, a ship was bearing down on them, her searchlights probing the dark.
“That’ll be the Bronstein” Brande said. “Rae, you know what to do.”
“Stand in the direct line of fire?”
“They don’t shoot women,” Dokey said.
“They don’t shoot beautiful women, anyway,” Brande clarified.
She lost some of the heat in her eyes. He thought about kissing her, but figured that would be a bad move. The fire would come back.
Brande turned and scrambled up the aluminum steps of the scaffolding parked next to the submersible. He stepped aboard the submersible as Dokey and Dankelov followed him. The three of them were wearing their customary jumpsuits and woolen socks. They each carried sweaters. Dankelov’s squat figure appeared almost too bulky to pass through the hatch, and, in fact, it was a tight fit.
The PA system blared with Connie Alvarez-Sorenson’s voice as the Russian forced his way down the hatch: “DepthFinder, we’ve got the strobe light on the sub’s emergency antenna buoy. ETA five minutes.”
Brande waved in the direction of the bridge, then climbed over the sail. Dokey disappeared down the hatch.
Looking to the winch operator located on the port side, Brande signaled for release and lift.
The deck crew released the tie-downs, the winch operator took up the slack in the lift cable, then eased off the brake for the line attached to the bow.
DepthFinder began to back off the stern of her mother ship.
When she reached the limit of rearward travel, the bow cable was detached and the operator raised her a foot off the deck. Two men with a nylon line run through a bow cleat kept her from swinging sideways.
The yoke slowly moved rearward, taking the submersible with it.
The throb of Orion’s diesels died away as the antenna buoy came up on the port side. It was bobbing high and hard in the rough seas. Wave peaks were at about nine feet, Brande guessed.
The RV was pitching in the waves, but steadied as Sorenson deployed the cycloidal propellers.
The Bronstein arrived.
Slowing as she moved alongside, maintaining a separation of fifty feet, the frigate matched their speed, and a figure on the bridge wing raised a loud hailer and called down to them, “Orion, I have a message for you from CINCPAC!”
Rae Thomas raised her own loud hailer and replied, à la Joan Rivers, “Can we talk?”
“Who are you?” the figure asked.
“President and CEO of Marine Visions.”
“Ah, damn!”
Brande gave the winch operator a thumbs-down, and the DepthFinder settled into the sea, slapped from below by wave tops, bucking hard against the waves running between the twin hulls.
Gen. Dmitri Oberstev and Capt. Leonid Talebov stood together on the fantail of the Timofey Olʼyantsev and watched as Pyotr Rastonov and Gennadi Drozdov clambered into the submersible Sea Lion. Under the bright floodlights, the scene appeared surreal.
Lt. Col. Janos Sodur waited in the background shadows, his arms wrapped around his shoulders, fighting the chill night wind.
A few miles to the north were the running lights of several ships, probably civilian ships headed toward the area of the sinking submarine. Sightseers and tragedy lovers. Oberstev felt nothing but contempt for them.
The submersible cradled on the stern deck was not, Oberstev felt certain, as pretty as the one the Americans would have. Americans were so devoted to appearances, while Russian sensibilities were more concerned with function.
The Russian citizen had never had to worry about tailfins going out of style.
Conversely, he was forced to admit, the majority of Russians had never owned an automobile, stylish or not.
The Sea Lion was a light-gray rectangular box with rounded corners. The box encapsulated the pressure hull and was adorned with projecting antennas, sonar modules and angled propulsion propellers. In the wire basket below the blunt snout of the submersible was the small remotely operated vehicle called Seeker by Gennadi Drozdov.
The ROV was almost a miniature reproduction of the submersible, gray and flat and rectangular, but affixed with a manipulator arm, cameras and lights. It was truly remotely operated, for there was no cable to attach it to the Sea Lion. The acoustic control system, called Loudspeaker, which Oberstev did not fully understand, allowed the ROV to operate up to a mile away from its controller.
There were some drawbacks. One ROV had gotten lost, literally. In the blackness of the depths, the position of a Seeker exploring a cavern had been lost to the mother ship’s sonar. While depth, altitude above bottom, and compass heading were telemetrically transmitted to the controller from the ROV, the controller — who saw on his screen what the ROV saw — became disoriented. He raced the ROV about, seeking a way out of the cave, until the batteries depleted, and it sank to the bottom. Somewhere.
Oberstev watched as the hatch was sealed and the Sea Lion raised from the deck by the crane.
Talebov, a taciturn man anyway, was even more silent this morning. He and Oberstev had argued a few hours earlier about the sinking American submarine. Leonid Talebov had insisted that it was the mariner’s duty to aid a stricken vessel. Oberstev’s position was that they had a higher duty. And Oberstev was supported by Admiral Orlov and Chairman Yevgeni.
As the submersible swung out over the side of the ship, Oberstev and Talebov, Sodur trailing behind, walked back toward the superstructure. They would monitor the mission from the combat information center.
“I am optimistic, Captain Talebov. Far more so this morning.”
“I wish that I shared your mood, General.”
“We have the charts the Americans sent to us. We have the updated sonar contacts discovered by the Winter Storm. The search narrows, Captain.”
“You should not trust the American charts,” Sodur interrupted. “They intentionally mislead us so that they can steal our prize.”
Oberstev looked out at the sea, huge waves that crashed against the hull, spewing white foam, and causing the massive ship to heel and dive.
He looked back at Pod-Palcovnik Sodur and asked, “How would you like to go for a swim, Colonel?”
Thomas had boarded the Bronstein by way of a breeches buoy catapulted from the frigate to the research vessel.
She was wearing long johns under her jumpsuit and a blue parka with the MVU logo, but the bouncing breeches buoy had dipped her to within a few feet of the surface, and she had been drenched from the knees down. She shivered as she stood on the bridge with Captain Dewey, a refined black man who wore thin gold-rimmed glasses. There was also some reporter named Overton present.
“Captain, the Los Angeles is already down fourteen hundred feet! With every minute we delay, it goes deeper.”
“Our job, Miss Thomas, is to stand by for possible survivors.”
“There aren’t going to be any goddamned survivors if you don’t act!”
“Miss Thomas, I take my orders from CINCPAC, just as you are supposed to do. I admit that I don’t know what sanctions will be taken against you, but I am certain there will be sanctions if you do not get under way immediately. Your ship is under command of Admiral Potter.”