Arctic Floor

by Mark Aitken

  ‘If you morse the SOS, will they come?’ said Gallen.

  ‘They might.’

  Gallen nodded. ‘Okay, let’s start on that then.’

  In the Marines they taught the officers to keep the men’s minds busy when death was close. If things looked hopeless, only action of some sort created hope; to let people dwell on the inevitable was to invite madness and hysteria.

  ‘Okay, Aaron,’ said Gallen, ‘while Hansen’s sending the message, you and I are going to find a way to get that reactor out of the hole.’

  ‘We’re screwed, Gerry,’ said Aaron, his eyes glazing over. ‘What does it matter now? ‘

  ‘Bunch of assholes are gonna blow the Arctic apart,’ said Gallen. ‘That matter enough?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but—’

  ‘So we’re gonna stop ‘em!’

  Aaron shook his head. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘So God made me American.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 66

  Most of the lights were doused to save electrical power and the temperature had plummeted by the time Gallen decided it was safe to explain his next move. They were wrapped in the rustling foil of exposure bags and Aaron’s nose was running freely with the cold.

  Hansen had tapped out his morse SOS with the handpiece trigger and they’d picked up some crackling return signals. The traffic had gone back and forth for half an hour and the best Hansen had picked up was No submersible—Coast Guard close.

  Gallen felt the cold leach into his bones and he wondered where the Israelis had gone, what their plan had been.

  The window to make a dash for the surface was gone. They wouldn’t have made it anyway but at least they would have been heading in the right direction. Now Gallen had to find a way to raise his idea.

  ‘Aaron, you know about these reactors, right?’

  ‘Correct,’ said the American, with a sniff.

  ‘So you’d be able to tell what the Israelis did with the thing and maybe fix it?’

  Aaron slowly turned to face Gallen. ‘Fix it?’

  ‘Let’s walk it through,’ said Gallen. ‘The Israelis pretend to be environmentalist filmmakers for ArcticWatch; they con their way into Martina Du Bois’ little media operation with the intention of ejecting the nuclear reactor, sabotaging its cooling system and dumping it into a large oil caisson where, when it finally malfunctions and melts down, it is guaranteed to bore straight down and cause the utmost damage. If this Gakker . . .’

  ‘Gakkel,’ said Hansen, his eyes closed. ‘Gakkel Ridge.’

  ‘If this Gakkel Ridge is as volatile and as volcanic as Hansen says, then the reactor burning a hole into it is likely to lift the lid on these super-pressurised gases—who knows what happens to an entire sea floor?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Aaron. ‘So?’

  ‘So they have to be doing something with the reactor and the technician is obviously their saboteur. When we turned the lights on the Ariadne Two, who you see in there?’

  Hansen interrupted. ‘Glad you mentioned that, Gerry. I counted one man and one woman.’

  Gallen smiled at Aaron. ‘Annoyed me too.’

  Aaron sat up slowly. ‘What the fuck are you getting at? ‘

  ‘Tell him, Hansen.’

  ‘He’s saying that the Israelis’ third man—probably the nuclear technician—is still in the self-contained security capsule around the reactor.’

  ‘Why would he be there?’ said Aaron, now fully awake.

  ‘Where else is he?’ said Gallen. ‘Ain’t on the Ariadne. Weren’t in that submersible. Yet he went down with the film crew.’

  ‘They left him there?’ said Aaron, wide-eyed at the idea. ‘Inside the reactor?’

  ‘Wanna find out?’ said Gallen.

  Aaron shrugged and Hansen fired the batteries.

  After two rounds of the sea bed, limping along on the power of the bow thruster, they descended slowly on to the caisson, where Hansen allowed the Sea Otter to rest, balancing on the lip.

  ‘Usually the man in your seat controls the winch,’ said Hansen to Gallen, flipping a bank of switches which made a small TV monitor in the ceiling in front of Gallen light up as the downward-pointing floodlights went on.

  On the TV screen they could see the concrete tube descending into the gloom, the top of the reactor visible at the bottom of the caisson.

  ‘This is the hard part,’ said Hansen. ‘Drop the winch hook over the U-bolt, which is maybe thirty metres down.’

  Using his left hand, Hansen reached sideways and showed Gallen the winch lever. Grabbing it, Gallen focused on the TV monitor as he let out the hook. It shimmied through the white light towards the top of the reactor.

  Tweaking the monitor, Hansen gave Gallen a close-up as the hook got closer. As it landed, Gallen slowed it, but the monitor showed it had landed about eight inches to the bolt’s two o’clock.

  The electric motors whined and Hansen shifted the Sea Otter slightly. The hook dragged back so it was flopping over the U-bolt. Pulling the winch cable up a few inches, the hook lazily slipped over the U-bolt and broke free.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Gallen, lowering the hook once more.

  ‘You’re almost there,’ said Hansen, peering into the TV monitor.

  Gallen breathed through his nose and gently eased the hook down through the illuminated water. Letting it flop on the U-bolt, he then raised it slightly. The thin point of the steel hook touched on the side of the U-bolt and he thought it was going to slide off again. But the torsion of the winch cable made the hook twist slightly and it slipped under the U-bolt as Gallen raised the winch.

  Breathing out, realising he’d been clenching his jaw, Gallen pulled back on the winch controller. ‘Do we have enough power to raise this?’ he asked Hansen.

  ‘No point in saving power now, Gerry,’ said the master. ‘Where do you want it?’

  ‘On the sea bed, standing upright,’ said Gallen, and the Sea Otter started squealing with the strain of lifting the nuclear reactor.

  Five minutes later, Hansen put the Sea Otter on the sea floor, the pale blue reactor sitting beside it like an outhouse.

  ‘Now what?’ said Aaron.

  ‘We gotta talk to Mr Technician,’ said Gallen.

  ‘It muggy in here?’ said Aaron, rubbing his neck. ‘Or is it just me?’

  ‘Oxygen levels are coming down.’ Hansen pointed at the emergency tank gauge. ‘Another ten minutes and then we go to BIBS.’

  ‘Can we scan all the radio frequencies?’ Gallen asked.

  ‘Only the low frequencies work in water,’ said Hansen. ‘And even then, that technician can receive but not transmit.’

  ‘We can’t have a two-way conversation?’

  ‘No,’ said Hansen. ‘We do all that with umbilicals.’

  ‘Umbilicals?’ said Gallen. ‘You mean, like a line plugged in?’

  Hansen nodded.

  Aaron sparked up. ‘The reactor had comms when it was on the Ariadne. It must have a plug in.’

  They looked out to where the reactor sat in the Sea Otter’s lights. If someone was inside that capsule, he was the only chance to correct any sabotage.

  ‘We got a comms line that could plug into that reactor?’ said Gallen.

  Hansen nodded. ‘Sure. We have a line that plugs into the junction box on the top of this sub—it would fit in the box on the reactor.’

  ‘But how are we going to connect them?’ said Aaron, who’d unzipped his coveralls.

  Gallen wondered about the technician; the Israelis’ covert operatives—even the pointy-heads—usually had some military background. Some of Israel’s best scientists and engineers may have taught in the universities, but they were attached to the IDF.

  He looked at Hansen, whose face was glowing red. ‘You got a hammer, or a spanner?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the Swede.

  ‘Why not bang out one of your morse signals on the hull?’

  ‘Think the technician will understand?’

  Gallen smiled. �
��He’s sitting in a capsule with a malfunctioning nuke at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and his friends have split. I think he’ll want to talk.’

  ‘What’s the message?’ said Hansen, folding down a bulkhead-mounted tool box.

  ‘Try something like: Mission’s over—restore reactor to safety.’

  Hansen crawled forward with a large crescent wrench and looked out one of the four portholes at the reactor capsule. Then he started tapping.

  ‘What now?’ Aaron rasped.

  ‘We’re gonna work out how to get into that thing,’ said Gallen.

  Aaron’s eyes widened. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gallen, the idea forming as he spoke. ‘But that thing’s not twenty feet away. Can’t just let it blow, can we?’

  Aaron looked away, a beaten man. ‘We’re all gonna die, way down here where no one even knows where we are, and you still want to fight? Shit, Gerry! ‘

  Gallen smiled. ‘Like my daddy said: never stay down on the ice.’

  ‘Spare me the hockey homilies. What are we gonna do?’

  ‘If I can get into that reactor, can you tell me what I have to do?’

  ‘Depends on what the technician’s done,’ said Aaron. ‘If they took Negroponte’s security card, then my guess is they’ve made a manual override.’

  ‘To stop it cooling itself?’

  Aaron shrugged. ‘It’s what I would do.’

  ‘How do I undo it?’

  ‘You’ll need the card.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Do another manual override.’

  ‘And if the card isn’t there?’

  ‘We’ll need manual override codes, which are probably held in one of the security safes on the Fanny Blankes-Koen. I’d say Florita’s state room.’

  ‘It would be too complicated for me,’ said Gallen, giving Aaron a look.

  ‘No way,’ said the spook, realising what Gallen was thinking. ‘I can’t go out there.’

  ‘I’d be with you, Aaron.’

  ‘No, you don’t get it,’ said Aaron, eyes pleading. ‘I’m phobic. Just the sight of all this water and the darkness—I couldn’t do that.’

  A big Swedish hand swung back and grabbed Gallen’s shoulder. They all froze: in the silence of the deep, the faintest sound of tapping bounced against the steel hull.

  For thirty seconds they waited as Hansen pushed his ear to the hull between the forward-facing portholes.

  ‘He’s telling us he wants to get out of there. He wants to know where’s the take-off?’

  ‘Tell him to revert the reactor to safety,’ said Gallen.

  Hansen tapped on the hull with the wrench, a mournful rhythm between two vessels of doomed men.

  The taps came back, more urgent than before. ‘He says he doesn’t have the card. He doesn’t have codes for a manual override.’

  ‘Well—’ started Gallen, but Hansen’s hand went up for silence as another, longer message was tapped out.

  Hansen sat back, wiped sweat from his glowing face. ‘The meltdown has started. He’s roasting alive, the equipment is too hot to touch.’

  ‘Okay, I’m going in,’ said Gallen. ‘Let’s brainstorm a bunch of ideas for the manual override codes. What would a dude like John Negroponte use as the security codes?’

  ‘You think it’s his?’ said Aaron. ‘Why not Florita? It was her baby Negroponte was the help.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘How long’s the code?’

  ‘Eight digits, typically,’ said Aaron.

  ‘Aren’t we overlooking something?’ said Hansen, who looked like a man on the verge of angina pectoris.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like, there’s no divers lock on the Sea Otter,’ said the old mariner. ‘There’s no way out there. Even if there was, there’s dry suits and helmets, but no scuba rigs. I told you, there’s only the BIBS.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t tell you how this is going to happen,’ said Gallen, looking out at the reactor, seeing shimmers of heat coming off the top. ‘We’d have to vote. And it would have to be unanimous.’

  ‘Vote on what?’ said Hansen.

  ‘On turning this Sea Otter into the divers lock,’ said Gallen. ‘We flood her slow, equalise the pressure, and then I go over there with as many extensions on the BIBS as we can find, and I shut that sucker down.’

  Aaron and Hansen stared at him like men who’d finally seen a pig fly

  ‘You want to flood this submersible?’ said Aaron in disbelief. ‘So we all die?’

  ‘Yes, but we stop that reactor melting down.’

  ‘Holy shit, Gerry,’ said Aaron. ‘You’re not in the Marines now.’

  ‘Well, we’ll die anyway, right?’ Gallen said. ‘We can try to do something, or we can slowly peter out, like goldfish on the carpet.’

  ‘I’m in,’ said Hansen. ‘I’ll get the dry suits and the BIBS. You two decide how to shut down the reactor.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Aaron, as Hansen crawled aft, ‘weren’t we going to vote?’

  ‘Thanks for thinking of me, but no need for that, son,’ said the Swede as he rummaged. ‘I’ve spent all my life on the ocean—I’m not letting these people blow up the sea bed.’

  ~ * ~

  The dry suit fitted okay and the helmet seemed to have a proper seal. The BIBS mouthpiece only just fit inside the helmet and Hansen sealed the join around the hoses with fast-setting silicon gel and strapped it all down with heavy-duty duct tape of the type used on oil rigs.

  The BIBS system usually comprised two hoses that ran from the tanks and met at the regulator dangling in front of the mouthpiece. Hansen had rigged three BIBS hose sets to one another, bolted together at the regulators, giving Gallen a theoretical umbilical of seventy-five feet. They figured it would be long enough.

  ‘So that’s it?’ said Gallen, peering at Aaron. ‘Florita’s birth date. We got any back-up on that?’

  ‘That’s the best guess I can do on an eight-digit code,’ said Aaron, who took occasional puffs on his BIBS mouthpiece.

  ‘And once I’m in manual override?’ said Gallen, wanting to get out there.

  ‘A number of square buttons on the control panel will light up red,’ said Aaron. ‘You push the one that says Safety reset, okay? ‘

  ‘What does that do?’

  ‘It triggers every safety protocol. Even if it senses sea-water inundation, it can shut itself down and self-seal. So don’t hit any other button, just Safety reset.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Gallen. ‘I would make a speech, but I’ve already used fifteen minutes of the BIBS air.’

  They looked at each other, knowing this was it. Gallen’s legs shook slightly and he tried to clear his head. Stay focused.

  ‘It’s been fun,’ he said, extending a hand to Hansen, who shook it like a Viking.

  ‘See you on the other side, my friend.’

  ‘Save a seat for me,’ said Gallen. ‘I drink Millers.’

  Aaron stepped up, putting put both hands on Gallen’s shoulders. ‘Shut that sucker down, Marine!’

  ‘Aye, aye, boss,’ said Gallen. ‘Let’s fill this tub.’

  Standing under the main hatch, Gallen controlled his breathing as Hansen opened the valves and a sound started that could have been static on TV or a running brook. The foot wells in the cockpit filled first, rising rapidly as they were all left alone with their thoughts.

  The air rasped and gurgled inside Gallen’s helmet, the BIBS system not designed for what he was about to make it do. The most likely outcome was the BIBS failing, becoming snagged or breaking, and Gallen drowning before he ever got a shot at the reactor.

  The water lapped at his knees and it had risen to Aaron’s chin as he sat in the cockpit. The spook turned to look at him; Gallen saw the man’s terror—but also a man determined to stay calm as they all went to their deaths. He gave Aaron a thumbs-up and a wink but the face remained unchanged: the light had gone out. Aaron was shutting down with the cold.

  Gallen turned his attention
back to Hansen, who was going to give him the signal when the pressure inside the Sea Otter equalised with the ocean. The engineer’s lights left a strange red glow as the water rose, the incredible cold strapping itself around Gallen’s legs and then torso, like a python trying to squeeze the life out of him. He gasped as the water level hit his chest, Hansen and Aaron still alive in the hellish frigidity judging by the bubbles rising from their regulators.