Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4)

by Michael C. Grumley

  Once they were alone in the room, the admiral silently studied Belov with the same look of revulsion. Tables had indeed turned, in a short matter of weeks. Until just recently, Belov had been one of the Defence Ministry’s most prominent insiders. A trusted ally to the country’s political elite and Russian military. No, more than that. A veritable hero, with a secret capable of returning Mother Russia to its former glory, and more.

  And while Belov may not have fully understood how his status had changed so suddenly, he certainly understood why. Russia, quite simply, was on a razor’s edge of utter economic collapse.

  Their nation had been hit hard by the global devastation now spreading throughout dozens of major economies around the world. Russia was the planet’s second largest producer of oil, the most ubiquitous commodity on Earth and the very cornerstone of the entire Russian economy. A commodity whose recent massive oversupply glut and falling demand was now crushing the country to depths never before seen in modern history.

  Now, like China, Brazil, Venezuela, and a host of others, Russia had found itself unable to stave off the unrelenting economic destruction within its own borders, where all manners of civilized life were systematically disintegrating. And nowhere was that more evident than in the Russian military.

  Belov’s fall from grace was not due to a calculated decision on anyone’s part. It was driven by sheer desperation, within a government that was quickly splintering. Dima Belov’s dire situation resulted from the conclusion of many desperate politicians that he had squandered nearly a billion Rubles on what amounted to little more than a pipe dream. Whenever governments fractured and began to collapse, the resulting behavior was desperation and blame, promptly followed by condemnation. This time, it was Belov who found himself on the receiving end.

  Now, as his eyes met the admiral’s, he stepped forward, moving to a dark leather chair and lowering himself into it. The irony was that Admiral Koskov was just as deeply involved in the mission as he had been. But judging by his demeanor, the man was quickly working to separate himself from the mess…by sacrificing Belov.

  Behind the desk, Koskov glared through a thick air of tension. When he finally spoke, his voice was deep and grave.

  “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

  Belov showed no reaction. Instead, he kept his hands lowered, still trembling from fear. Belov had few cards, and he was determined to play them as carefully as possible. “We were in this together.”

  The admiral shook his head as if batting the thought away. “No. I provided you resources. Nothing more.”

  They both knew it was a lie. “We convinced the Ministry together. We were both there.”

  Belov’s first card. Yet he had to be careful not to sound as though he were trying to pull Koskov down with him.

  “I provided assistance.”

  “And we both explained the risks.”

  “Which did not include instigating a war.”

  Belov shook his head. “The Americans blame us for something we didn’t do. It’s something we could not have foreseen.”

  Koskov did not answer.

  “The truth is, the American’s wanted it to be us. They wanted a reason. But it was the Chinese who destroyed their ship. You and I are not the only ones to know this.”

  “What we know and what matters are two different things,” Koskov responded. “It does not change the fact that a billion Rubles have been spent chasing ghosts. A billion Rubles which our country needs.”

  Belov cleared his voice, keeping his eyes on the admiral. The first card was useless. He moved to the next. “The money can be recovered.”

  Now a slight curl formed in the corner of the admiral’s mouth. It was an empty promise. They both knew Belov was almost broke, having been nearly wiped out from the collapse of the economy. There were many to blame but few who could be made an example of.

  Belov was one of them. And while the man was playing the victim now, Koskov knew how dirty he truly was. And how shadily his fortune had been made. Belov was no victim. He was a snake, caught in a trap of his own making.

  “I cannot help you.” With that, the admiral’s eyes rose above the man’s head, searching for one of his men.

  “Wait,” Belov said. “Wait!”

  The admiral coldly dismissed him. “You requested a meeting, Dima. I gave it to you. It is now over.”

  He was out of time. Belov quickly leaned his tall frame forward and reached inside his suit jacket. It was now or never. “It’s not over.”

  Sharply, he pulled out a large piece of paper and unrolled it. With his right hand, he slapped it down on the desk in front of Koskov.

  The admiral’s large eyes dropped to glance at it. “What is this?”

  “A picture.”

  Unamused, the admiral glared across the desk. “A picture of what?”

  “Of it!”

  Now the heavier man’s eyes narrowed and looked more closely. “Do not play games with me, Dima.”

  “No games.”

  “All I see is an oil rig.”

  Belov nodded. His life would hang on his next sentence so he spoke the words carefully. “The Forel is gone…but the discovery remains.”

  The pause in the admiral’s expression seemed endless, while Belov waited. Finally, the admiral exhaled slightly. The change in his demeanor was slight, but his voice was unchanged. “No. It’s over.” He slid the paper back toward Belov.

  “It’s there.”

  “On an oil rig? I think not. Your desperation has failed you.”

  “Not on the rig,” blurted Belov. “Below it!”

  This time, the admiral’s dark eyes changed. They darted back to the picture, and very slowly, he reached for it again.

  “You’re lying.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Belov watched as the admiral studied the picture again. He raised his head dubiously. “How do you know this?”

  “It’s a decoy.”

  The admiral glanced up but said nothing.

  “My source has confirmed that there is nothing wrong with that rig. The Americans have commandeered it.”

  “What source?”

  “The SVR,” Belov lied. The SVR was the modern successor to the KGB, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Belov’s source was decidedly not the SVR. But it didn’t matter. Convincing Koskov, however, did.

  “And what is below it?” the Admiral growled, bringing the picture up to his eyes for a closer look.

  “Something important.”

  Before the Admiral could ask another question, Belov retrieved a second picture. This one was a headshot. “This man was spotted in Georgetown shortly before the Forel was destroyed. Brazilian intelligence has traced him to a murder in São Paulo. They have also put him on the mountain before the thermobaric blast.”

  Koskov peered across the desk. Every government on the planet knew about the explosion now––one that leveled the top of an entire mountain peak. “So what,” he said. “So the man is dead.”

  Belov shook his head. “He’s not dead.” He paused for effect. “He is alive and on that oil rig.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Now.” Belov’s eyes were unblinking. His face perfectly still and composed. He could not give the slightest hint that his last comment was nothing more than a guess.

  The admiral took a deeper breath and stared again at the photo. It was a dated driver’s license of a much younger Steve Caesare, sporting a mustache and partial smile.

  After leaning back in his chair, the admiral crossed his arms, still doubtful. “If what you say is true, then what? What do we do with this oil rig?”

  He had him. At that moment, Belov’s hands finally stopped trembling. He raised them to his knees and spoke forcefully.

  “We take it! While it’s still unprotected!”

  14

  The Valant’s large and somewhat aging hull cast a wide shadow over the clear blue ocean water, the swells rolling beneath it. The warm North
easterly breeze whistled slightly as it swirled past the massive steel columns, holding the structure upright and steady.

  In the control room, situated beneath its heavily smudged glass ceiling, an anxious Will Borger was accompanied by an equally anxious Les Gorski. Together they watched a live video feed of the morning’s dive with apprehension. The mapping of the alien ship’s upper hull was complete, leaving the team to now venture deeper into more dangerous territory. Most of the lower hull rested below the surface layer of coral at depths beyond the reach of standard SCUBA systems, requiring the unique expertise of Les Gorski and his team.

  The practice of “deep diving” was far more perilous than that experienced by even the best recreational divers. Even worse, special equipment, meticulous procedure, and relentless training were all that stood between deep water divers and a watery grave. These lower depths were so alien to the human body that men survived only by inhaling hypoxic breathing gasses to stave off the deadly effects of oxygen poisoning.

  In recreational diving, any one of a dozen problems could threaten a diver’s life. But in deep waters, it took only seconds for a single mistake to become fatal.

  “Are we ready?”

  The voice of Steve Caesare rattled over the speaker, sounding like a long-distance telephone call. His diving “hat” was a helmet invented by Gorski himself. Chrome in color and sporting a hexagon shaped faceplate, the helmet included two large hoses on either side which circulated the gasses to and from the rebreather. The diving hats were completely self-contained and still allowed for free two-way communication. But with sound quality that was notably degraded.

  Borger looked behind himself and up at Gorski who had one elbow propped on an arm and a hand covering his mouth. Gorski was silently working through the numbers. Depth, pressure, time, and rate of ascent. The men should have a little over twenty minutes to explore before ascending back to a safe depth. Plenty of time before their next piece of equipment arrived.

  Without taking his eyes off the monitor’s video feed, Gorski nodded.

  “We got a steady signal from all three of you, plus the camera. We’re ready when you are.”

  “Roger that,” Caesare replied, after a slight delay. The camera feed from one of Gorski’s divers, Jake Corbin, swept between them with its bright LED light showing their obscured faces as they stared back into the camera from behind the helmet portal.

  The camera caught the last of Caesare before he raised his gloved hand and motioned downward. “All right. Descending now.”

  Air suddenly erupted around them and surrounded the men in a curtain of rising bubbles. They were obscured for just moments before beginning to sink. It would take the men several minutes just to reach their new depth with each second being monitored carefully by Borger and Gorski. All the while, outside, several more engineers worked the feed lines to keep the thick umbilical cables moving at the same rate of descent. Too much slack could cause entanglement below the surface and too little would slow their descent, wasting precious time.

  The second of Gorski’s men, Alan Beene, checked his dive computer. “Eighty feet.” The number matched the depth on Borger’s monitor.

  Gorski’s new “hat” design had recently undergone a technological leap of its own. By adding an uplink to the back of the helmet, a diver’s wrist-sized computer could transfer its information wirelessly, piggybacking on the audio transmission. It was a clever design, which increased the electrical draw on the tiny computer only modestly.

  “Slow and steady,” the older Gorski said, almost in a whisper. His concern didn’t originate from anything related to the men themselves. They were skilled divers, including Caesare. Instead his worry was of the unknown. SCUBA diving was wrought with danger, below the surface where it took time to return safely to the top. Anything from equipment malfunction, to rapid air depletion, to unpredictable physiological effects could spell trouble for anyone. At deeper depths, those dangers were radically increased. Pressure, and by extension compression, caused strange things to happen to the human body. Things that provided precious little margin of error if something went wrong.

  Gorski had lost two men on a rescue dive several years before. On that dive, a sudden lateral shift in a damaged sub’s position caused his men to become trapped. The worry quickly turned to panic when the men were unable to move, held tight by their tethers. Turning to desperation as their heliox gas was slowly depleted, the men eventually succumbed to the inevitable. Their voices, and ultimately their final screams of helplessness, would remain in Gorski’s ears forever. Along with the anguish of being able to do nothing to help them.

  Sounds he prayed he would never hear again, but feared he someday would. Because in an environment humans were never meant to tread, it was little more than wishful thinking to truly escape fate.

  Beene called out their depth again as they passed 150 feet. The camera remained fixed on the side of the dark hull as the faint, remaining traces of ambient sunlight began to fade. Soon the only light was from their camera’s LED bulbs.

  Against the hull, awash in that light, a small speck of red followed the men lower. A laser pointer tracked their every inch in three dimensions and transmitted the data above––like a high-tech equivalent of a tape measure. This one was much more sensitive, tracing the size, shape, and curvature of the hull down to a thousandth of an inch.

  “Two hundred feet.”

  “Okay,” Caesare’s voice responded. “Let’s slow it up.”

  A deep burst of noise sounded as air was redirected into their BCD’s, causing the passing hull to slow before coming to a gradual stop.

  “You guys still with us?” Caesare asked.

  Borger nodded. “Yep, still here. Everything is reading fine.”

  Caesare peered at his dive computer and nodded in slow motion. “Same here.” He kicked with his fins and moved out of the way of the camera, which was still focused on the hull. “No change in appearance,” he noted.

  He moved in closer, together with Beene, and reached forward. Brushing his hand across the surface elicited the familiar glowing trail behind it.

  “No change there either.”

  Gorski cleared his voice. “How much farther down?”

  A moment later, the camera pivoted and pointed down into the darkness. In the glow of bright light, the wall could be seen, descending until it disappeared into pitch blackness.

  “Damn, this thing is big.”

  Beene moved in and touched the wall after Caesare.

  “No indication of where it ends. Looks like at least another couple hundred feet, if not more.”

  Above them, still standing behind Borger, Gorski noticed something on the monitor and leaned forward. He peered at the readings from their dive computers. When his eyes returned to the video feed, the camera was panning back to the hull and caught Beene in the frame.

  “Stop!” Gorski suddenly bellowed into the desk’s microphone. “Beene, don’t move!”

  The sound of his voice crackled back over the speaker. “What? What is it?”

  Gorski was quiet, still studying the screen. “Corbin, pan away and then back to him.”

  A moment later, the frame of the live video moved away into blackness and then back to the figure of Beene with the dark hull behind him.

  “Turn off the camera’s light.”

  “You want me to turn off the light?”

  “Affirmative,” nodded Gorski through his dark glasses. “But keep the camera on Beene.”

  Floating next to the men, Caesare watched as the bright LED lamp went off a second later, leaving only the smaller lights on their helmets. Darkness quickly closed in around them.

  The helmet lights illuminated only their immediate area and left their umbilical lines moving eerily behind them.

  Gorski’s voice continued through their headsets. “Now, Beene, turn toward that hull again. Then back.”

  Beene did so, wondering what Gorski was getting at. He turned back slowly to look at t
he dark wall, then back at the others.

  Gorski’s voice came again. “Do you guys see it?”

  Caesare nodded. “Yes. His helmet’s light is dimming.” He floated in closer. “Try it again.”

  Beene repeated the movement, turning his head closer to the wall and back again.

  This time, Caesare spoke to Gorski. “We couldn’t see it with the brighter lamp on.”

  “That’s not all,” Gorski replied. “Beene, how much battery are you seeing on your dive computer?”

  He looked down at his wrist. “Ninety-two percent.”

  “Same here,” Gorski confirmed. “Now put your hand on the wall again.”

  Beene complied, reaching out and pressing against the gray metal. He kept it there for a long time, watching as thin green lines rippled out from his gloved fingertips.

  “Okay, now what does your battery say?”

  Beene pulled his hand back and looked at the reading. “Eighty-nine percent.”

  On the Valant, Borger watched the same number decrease on his screen and twisted around to Gorski. “Whoa.”

  “Let’s make sure it’s not a faulty unit,” Gorski frowned. “Mr. Caesare, if you please.”

  In the video, Caesare glided forward to the wall and reached out his own hand. After several long seconds, both Borger and Gorski watched the power gauge from Caesare’s battery begin decreasing.

  “Same thing.”

  Borger nodded from his seat and said what every one of them was thinking. “That thing is sucking energy right out of your units!”

  Without the slightest hesitation, Les Gorski leaned past Borger toward the microphone and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “All three of you get to the surface. Right now!”

  15

  It took almost thirty minutes for the men to reach the surface, where they were helped out of the water onto a wide platform. It was large and made of thick stainless steel grating, creating a deep resonating echo when the men dropped their equipment. An old utility elevator ran up the inside length of one of the oil rig’s giant pillars, requiring the men to take turns returning to the rig’s operations level.