by Greig Beck
“Cut the cable, cut the cable!” Sam yelled at the winch.
“No time,” Wade shouted. “Need a blowtorch.”
Whatever had hold of the Theodore gave another surge, and the ship tilted even more. The Archimedes now hung at an angle of forty-five degrees. Sam screamed as she fell from her seat.
Wade pointed at her. “Strap in.”
She climbed back into her seat. “You too,” she yelled back at him as she slid in, grabbing for her belt.
Theodore’s winch cable hummed from the tension, and, before their eyes, two crewmembers went over the side. The ship was starting to be dragged sideways in the water, and then it caught on a small swell and lurched again.
Wade got up on all fours. “Gotta shut the hatch, I think we’re going over.” He backed up and then vanished.
Sam felt like she was in a dream. We’re going to go over, he had said. “Oh my god. What’s got hold of them?” she wondered as a ripple of fear ran up her spine.
The deck titled again and, through the bubble glass, she saw more people hitting the railing, hard, and some cartwheeling over the side.
“They’ll drown,” she whispered, not really believing what she was seeing. The Alvin was now swinging free from its cradle, suspended from its drop cables. Whatever had hold of them continued to tug and pull, and gradually managed to bring the side of the ship down into the waterline.
“Jesus, the deck hatch isn’t closed.” Andy’s words spun Sam’s head to the main deck hatch where the crew had been lifting equipment in and out. She knew what would happen when the ten-foot square dark hole began to fill with water. Behind her she heard Alvin’s heavy titanium hatch close with a solid thunk, and then heard Wade fall and curse.
She didn’t turn to him, couldn’t, because she was transfixed by what she saw. The deck, now vertical, began to flood with water – it poured into doorways and open hatches. Many of the crew had abandoned ship, but she knew that many more would still be below deck, trapped, and finding it impossible to navigate in a topsy-turvy labyrinth.
Vaguely she heard Captain Douglas sending out a distress call as the deck slid lower into the water. The hatches were filling and the railing was underwater; it’d be over soon.
“We’re sinking.” Andy’s eyes were wide, and his face pale, making his freckles stand out.
“Yes,” was all she could reply.
There was an almighty tug on the cable, and then the ship flipped over. They hit the water, and the deck came down over the top of them, like being smothered by a massive steel cliff. Bright sunshine became deep blue shadows in a blink.
Sam and Andy were jerked about in their seats, but Wade, still loose, was thrown down into the cabin console. He yowled with pain, but still managed to crawl to his chair, and, using one hand, throw the belts over his shoulders.
He winced and held his ribs. “We gotta take control; let out some line, or we’ll be anchored to the Archimedes as she goes down.” He pointed. “Andy, bring everything online, pronto. Sam, feed out the cable, and I’ll try and get us out from underneath the deck.”
The three pairs of hands worked furiously on the controls. The console lights glowed in their faces now they were underneath the ship, and Sam looked up briefly to see the horrifying sight of some of the Archimedes crew trying to swim out from under the stricken body of the ship.
The vessel rapidly filled with water and then, like a long steel leviathan, it began its slide into the depths, nose first … and they were going with it.
She managed to gain control of the Alvin, and Andy had also programmed the winch holding them to feed out more cable. Meanwhile, Wade was testing the submersible’s propulsion.
The cable continued to unwind.
“How much?” Andy asked.
Wade didn’t look up. “Not too much – give us a hundred feet; any more, and …”
The metal loops of the cable coils began to tighten over them.
“Shit.” Andy cut off the feed.
“Goddamn it, McCarthy, we’re hooked up.” Wade lunged forward, looking out and up at the deck that was now their roof. “She’s going down, and we’re along for the ride.”
Bubbles and debris started to rush past them as they picked up speed. Cables were wound across their cockpit bubble and wrapped around the entire armor-plated craft. It was a bit like Alvin was a fly caught in a steel web.
“Oh god.” In the fading light, Sam could see some of the Archimedes crew also hooked up in the deck debris, being taken to their grave. She looked away, not wanting to imagine the agonized expressions on their faces – drowning was a horrible way to go, holding your breath until your lungs felt they were on fire and about to burst, and then involuntarily your mouth opening as your brain demanded oxygen, demanded a lungful of cool, clean air, and instead pulled in the thick cold water.
Sam ground her eyes shut. She had worked her entire life around, in, and below the water. She had never really thought about drowning. But now, the fear of it completely engulfed her.
She realized she was holding her breath, and she shook the thoughts away. “Cable is tightening; we’re not going anywhere.” She grimaced.
Wade exhaled loudly. “Until we shoot free, we’re gonna have to wait it out.”
“Until when?” Andy asked.
Wade’s jaws clenched. “Until the cable loosens, or we can untangle it, or a freaking mermaid saves us; I just don’t know yet, Andy.”
“Those poor people,” Sam whispered as human bodies started to float up past their window, eyes and mouths gaping open. Some of the crew were still vainly trying to swim back to the surface, already hundreds of feet above them.
“Hopefully, they got the lifeboats away,” Wade said. “I’ve worked with Captain Douglas before; he’s one of the best in the business.”
“Not anymore,” Andy said, staring out through the toughened glass.
There was a thump, and the tumbling form of Captain Douglas bounced past them. His eyes wide and unseeing, his mane of gray hair floating around his head like seaweed. Sam noticed his shirt was pulled out of his pants, exposing a round belly, and it seemed to rob the man of his last shred of dignity.
She looked away, and they sat in silence for a few moments, before she looked down at her consoles. “We’re now at 500 feet; we’re losing the light.” She turned. “Switching on external lamps.”
“Okay; until we get to the bottom there’s—” Wade jerked upright. “Andy, give me an overview of the sea bottom topography here, now!”
Andy’s hands flew and he began to read the screen data. He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Wade, we’re coming down right on the lip.”
Wade bared his teeth. “On the shallow side, or the abyss side?”
Andy grimaced as he analyzed more screen information. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Can’t tell, can’t tell.” He looked up. “Topographical sonar says we’re coming down on the edge … right on the edge.” He turned slowly. “But does it matter where we come down?”
“Damn right it does,” Wade shot back.
“No, I mean …” Andy shook his head. “It only matters where the Archimedes comes down. If it goes over, we go over.”
Sam rechecked their depth. “Now at 725 feet and accelerating to a drop rate of 500 feet per minute – way too fast.”
“Not up to us,” Wade said. “Bottom is around 2400 feet here, if we land on the top of the cliff. If not, then kiss your ass goodbye.”
They began to hear pops and squeaks coming from the glass above. “Will Alvin’s bubble cope with the rapid descent?” Sam looked up at the superstructure.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Wade snorted softly. “But on paper the borosilicate glass should be fine.”
There was a sudden flashbulb-like glare and then the deep thump of an explosion from somewhere inside the Archimedes that made them all jump.
“I’m guessing that was the engine room,” Wade said softly.
Andy looked up from his screens. �
��If it’s any consolation, Theodore’s winch was torn free, so whatever turned us over is now gone.”
Sam exhaled. “Thank god for that.”
Wade turned to her. “What do you think it was, sperm whale?”
No, not at all, she thought darkly. She gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah, probably.”
Wade nodded. “Well, whatever it was, good riddance.”
They continued sailing silently on down into the depths. From one angle of their view port, they could see they were lashed to the side of the Archimedes, like Ahab had been lashed to the side of the Great White Whale in Moby Dick. On the other side, there was nothing but the inky blackness of the deep ocean, so dark that it could have been the vacuum of space.
Sam sat in silence, staring out at the darkness until she felt the chill start to creep in.
“We’re going to need the heaters soon.”
Andy nodded. “It’s down to fifty degrees outside, and we’re only at 1400 feet. It’ll drop the lower we go.”
The sounds of the Archimedes’ airtight compartments being compressed whined and squealed outside, and Sam couldn’t help thinking it sounded like the moans of a dying sea monster. She knew they were falling to a depth too deep to do a realistic salvage on the big vessel, but not too deep to get to them. There was always hope.
“What are our options?” She finally whispered.
“Option one to one hundred is we need to get free of these damned cables,” Wade said. “Once we do that, then we can rise in Alvin to the surface. And even if we can’t do that, and can only release the cables over the bubble, we can still pop the escape pod.” Wade leaned forward to look around at the cables hugging them. “Once we settle, I can use the claws to try and pick them free.”
“Unless we miss the cliff edge, and don’t settle until we hit the bottom of the trench.” Andy sighed.
“Yeah, well, if we do that, we’ll never hit the bottom, will we?” Wade’s brows snapped together. “We’ll be paste long before that. For Chrissakes, just think positive for once.”
“Yeah, like that’ll help,” Andy muttered.
Sam felt the tension rise. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” She held up both hands, fingers twined. “You try too, Andy.”
Andy snorted, but nodded to her and held up one hand with fingers crossed. “Yeah, okay, sorry.”
They continued to glide downwards into the dark, lashed to the side of the stricken ship. Sam had a horrible thought that if the Archimedes struck nose down, and then toppled onto its deck, they would be entombed under hundreds of tons of immovable steel. They’d be pressed deep into the seabed ooze and no amount of salvage would ever set them free.
Sam wondered how long the special glass would hold the water and pressure at bay – a century, a millennium, more? Maybe one day an alien race would find them, three preserved bodies entombed in a glass sphere on the bottom of the ocean. They’d be exhibited in some alien museum as grotesque prehistoric oddities.
Five minutes later, Andy unfolded his arms and leaned forward.
“Bottom coming up. Now, you can really keep those fingers crossed, Sam.”
“They still are,” she said softly and leaned forward, trying to see something, anything, in the darkness.
Alvin was dotted with lights, but they did little against the walls of blackness surrounding them so Wade flicked on the strobes. There was nothing for several moments, and then she saw a vast plain of silky gray that ended at a definite edge, which the lights refused to illuminate.
“The trench cliff.” Andy groaned like he was lifting weights or trying to will their submersible and its massive sea anchor, the Archimedes, to come down on the up side. “Going to be close.”
“Brace,” Wade said quickly, as the nose of the big ship struck the silt. It continued to plow into the ooze for roughly twenty feet, and a huge cloud rose in the water around them. The ship stuck like a spear for several seconds and loose debris rushed past them to join it on the sea bottom.
“Wait for it …” Wade breathed.
Sure enough the Archimedes began to tilt …
“Oh shit, no,” Andy said.
… toward the trench.
It was a slow motion drop as the long steel vessel moaned and groaned and then fell onto its side. Of the 400 feet of ship, a little more than half remained on the lip of the trench and, ominously, the remainder hung over the void. Unfortunately, that remainder bit was where the Alvin was lashed.
They were frozen. Andy sat with both hands up as though waiting to catch a fly ball, Sam’s lips were pulled back from gritted teeth, and Wade sat with mouth open and eyes wide. Sam wondered if, like her, her crewmates were holding their breath.
“Have we stopped?” Sam asked in a small voice.
Andy looked down at his console. “At 2397 feet, structural integrity intact.” He sat back and exhaled. “Yeah, we’ve stopped, and we’re okay for now.”
“Okay, that’s good, I guess,” Wade said.
They continued to stare but there was nothing to see as the silken ooze from the huge ship’s landing had created an impenetrable cloud that even the strong strobe lights couldn’t penetrate. Wade switched off the lights.
“We preserve power, for now.”
“And then?” Sam asked.
“When the proverbial dust settles, we try and free ourselves. But I’m betting that distress signal Douglas sent has already been picked up, and as the Archimedes has a Voyage Data Recorder, rescue ships will be able to locate us.” He groaned and shifted in his chair.
“You okay?” Andy asked.
“Yeah, but I might have busted a rib or two when we went over. Hurts like a bitch. I’ll be fine, once we’re topside.” Wade grimaced and looked around. “Okay, we have water, and even some emergency ration dried protein bars – that’s good. We have air for forty-eight hours – that’s not so good. And we have power for forty hours unless we close down a lot of the juice usage. Unfortunately it’s the damn heaters that use a lot of the power. But we turn them off, we’ll suffer from hypothermia.” He leaned forward. “Outside temperature is thirty-two degrees. This steel and glass shell will transmit the cold in at us in minutes.”
Sam nodded, and then had a morbid thought. “And transmit our warmth back out.”
“Huh?” Andy turned.
She stared, as if in a trance, out at a world that looked like it was filled with swirling smoke. “In the deep, creatures hunt by chemical signature, thermal, and light attraction. We’re giving off all three.”
“So what?” Wade frowned.
“Theodore had all their lights turned off when they were coming up, remember?” she said softly.
“Yeah, and?”
“They were being chased.” Sam tried to think through the implications.
“But you said it was a sperm whale, right?” Andy leaned around Wade. “Right?”
“Yeah, a sperm whale. That’s what it must have been.” She sat back, staring at the smoky water. She knew it wasn’t what Chloe had screamed in her dying seconds. She sighed.
“This silt cloud will clear soon, and then we’ll see.”
CHAPTER 11
El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, Northern Baja California Sur, Mexico
Captain Anguilar stood on the deck of the covered patrol boat. At the wheel was a single pilot, who sat at ease now, waiting on his next order. Anguilar had a walkie-talkie in one hand, and craned his neck to look up as the sliver of moon disappeared behind a cloud, pitching them into total darkness. It made the large steel diving watch on his wrist stand out with a green glow.
Anguilar’s two teams of Cuerpo de Fuerzas Especiales – Mexican Special Forces Corps divers – were performing training exercises about twenty miles out from the El Vizcaíno nature reserve where they wouldn’t be interrupted or observed. Their work made use of the latest covert technology, and it was not for public consumption, especially as everyone was a damned cameraman these days.
He had twelve operatives sp
lit into two teams, each aboard high-speed inflatable craft, simply called Duck-1 and Duck-2. Further out, there was the hulk of a larger boat. The objective of the teams was to each take turns approaching, boarding, and securing the ship. The hulk was empty, but loaded with sensors and surveillance gear above and below the water – it would give him all the data he needed on the effectiveness of his teams.
The winners got to go back in. The losers got to keep doing it over and over until Anguilar was satisfied, while he got more and more pissed off for the inconvenience.
He checked his watch, judging it was time, and lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Duck-1, you’re up, in three-two-one, go.”
He heard over the comm. link the sound of splashing, mirrored by the fainter sound of it coming across the glass-still ocean surface. He went below to his own personal command center. The first six team members would be traveling down about twenty feet below the surface, and then moving in an arrow tip formation to the hulk.
His room glowed with electronics, but the door and blackout curtains shielded the light from outside. He was keen to see if the hulk’s surface sensors picked up the gas bubbles from their new rebreathers. Normal exhalations were expelled to hit the surface as a trail of bubbles. But the new scrubbers filtered and compressed this down to micro bubbles that came to the surface more like alka seltzer than a clue to a diver’s presence. On paper, his teams were as noiseless and invisible as warfare technology could make them – he’d know soon enough whether the sensors agreed.
Anguilar leaned forward to adjust a monitor. He had several cameras on the hulk’s deck focused on the water. Using a mix of thermal, starlight, and telescopic lenses, their sensitivity was far more accurate than any puny human eye.
He angled one of the deck cameras toward where the Duck-2 team waited in the dark, not talking, focused and eager for their turn at storming the boat. He smiled grimly; these guys were competitive as hell, and as hard as iron. Duck-1 team wanted to leave Duck-2 in their wake, and Duck-2 wanted to wipe the floor with the first team’s results.