Pandemic

by Scott Sigler

  The control room’s speakers carried the chatter between the diver and the Brashear’s crew.

  “Diver One, status? How you doing, Tom?”

  “Diver is okay,” came back the answer. “Goddamn cold down here, feeling it in my joints right through the suit. Request permission to start cutting.”

  “Permission granted, Diver One.”

  Seconds later, the screen blared brightly. Clarence looked away.

  The diver’s awkward high-pressure diving suit made him look like a cross between a morbidly obese man and a heavily armored beetle. Five round, blue segments made up each arm, connected together by oscillating rings that allowed limited movement. There weren’t even hands, just blue spheres tipped by black pincers.

  The legs were similar to the arms, all connecting to a white, hard-shelled torso, as did the bulbous helmet. A boxy red backpack housed the oxygen supply and CO2 scrubber, which could give the diver up to forty-eight hours of life support. An ADS rig was one of the few things that could make a space suit look dainty by comparison.

  The suit was far too bulky to fit through any of the Los Angeles’s external hatches. Cutting directly into the nose cone might put the alien artifact at risk. The diver would use an underwater torch to cut through the hull of the torpedo room, then move through that wider space into the nose cone.

  The bright light faded from the screen.

  “Diver One, cut complete. Removing hull.”

  Clarence saw a large, oval piece of metal drop away from the submarine’s curved hull and thump into the lake bottom, kicking up a slow-motion cloud of flotsam.

  “Diver One, proceed into the torpedo room.”

  “Roger that, Topside. Moving into the torpedo room.”

  Clarence inched closer to the screen.

  Almost immediately, the diver’s light revealed three uniformed corpses that hung motionless in the water. Rigor held arms away from bodies, as if the dead were waiting to give someone a hug. There was at least some animal life at this depth — even though no fish were visible, the ripped flesh of hands and faces betrayed their presence.

  “Topside,” the diver said, “you seeing this?” His voice sounded tinny. Clarence could hear the man’s breathing increase.

  “Roger that, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Nobody said it was going to be pretty. You’re almost there. Just get the job done.”

  “Roger,” the diver said. “Moving in.”

  Clarence could imagine the diver’s stress. Nine hundred feet below the surface — a depth that would kill him without the suit — he was surrounded by corpses while violence and uncertainty swept across the ship above him. The diver, Tom, he had to have giant balls of steel.

  Technically, Clarence was the current representative of the scientific team. If needed, he had an override button he could hit and speak directly to the diver. If any major issues popped up, Clarence could route the diver-cam view to Margaret’s heads-up display, let her decide what needed to be done.

  The dive master’s voice sounded loud and clear in the speakers. “Diver One, move forward through the torpedo room to the nose-cone airlock.”

  “Roger that, Topside.”

  “Diver Two,” the dive master said, “position yourself at the entrance point and maintain safety of Diver One’s umbilical.”

  “Diver Two, confirmed,” came a third voice, the voice of a woman.

  Of course they were using a safety diver. Oddly, that made Clarence nervous — the Brashear only had two ADS 2000 rigs. If something went very wrong on this dive, there was no way to get another person down to the wreck without flying in additional suits. Even on a rush order, that might take a day or more.

  “Topside, Diver Two,” the woman said. “Feeding Diver One’s umbilical.”

  The ADS onboard air meant the divers didn’t need air tubes. What they did need, however, was a communication cable a thousand feet long — if Tom cut his on some jagged piece of wreckage, the Brashear would lose his visual and audio signals.

  On the screen, Clarence saw racks of long, gray torpedoes. A body sat there, ass on the deck, back against one of the racks, chin hanging to chest as if the man was only taking a catnap.

  “Topside, Diver One,” the diver said. “I have reached the nose-cone airlock. It’s open.”

  Clarence looked at the sub’s schematics. The nose cone had a small external airlock, for loading material from the outside directly into the negatively pressurized minilab, and it also had an internal airlock, allowing the science crew to enter the lab from the ship proper.

  “We see it, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Proceed.”

  The images on the screen blurred: the diver turning, slowly pulling in the slack on his umbilical cord. He turned again, then stepped through the airlock door into the small area beyond.

  The room looked tilted, of course, about a thirty-degree slant down and to the right. Every wall had racks. Most of the racks were empty — they had been meant to hold small, airtight cases, cases that now bobbed against the ceiling. The cases held various scientific equipment: microscopes, voltage meters, hardness-testing kits and a dozen other devices that might help in identifying alien material.

  “Topside, no bodies here, room is empty,” the diver said. “Moving toward the objective.”

  He turned to the right, his light moving past the empty racks.

  Clarence saw something. He slapped at his “override” button.

  “Wait! Look left again!”

  The dive master’s voice came back angry and impatient. “Who’s on this goddamn channel?”

  “This is Agent Clarence Otto. Sorry. Listen, Tom … I mean, Diver One … can you turn to the left again?”

  The dive master spoke again. “Diver One, stand by! Agent Otto, this is dangerous work. We finish the recovery first. Diver, stay with the mission par—”

  A no-bullshit female voice cut in. “This is Captain Yasaka. Facilitate any and all requests of Agent Otto, as long as those requests do not compromise diver safety.”

  Clarence waited through a short but uncomfortable pause.

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” the dive master said. “Diver One, do as Agent Otto asked.”

  “Roger that, Chief,” Tom said. “Diver turning left.”

  The image on the screen slewed left again.

  “Look down,” Clarence said.

  The diver did. The image of a black shoe appeared.

  “Just a shoe,” Tom said. “It’s stuck in some kind of brown stuff, looks like sediment has leaked in through a crack somewhere.”

  Clarence remembered when Murray had come to his house, remembered the picture drawn by Candice Walker.

  “Move closer,” Clarence said. “Pan up a little bit.”

  “Diver moving closer,” Tom said. “I don’t … wait, I think there’s a foot in that shoe, and the leg is buried in the … oh my God. Are you guys seeing this?”

  “Uh … roger that,” the dive master said. “Stand by.”

  Clarence leaned closer to the monitor. Wedged between a pair of equipment racks was a body. Unlike the sitting-down-and-napping body in the torpedo room, however, this one was encased in something, something attached to the hull, the deck, even crusted up over the equipment racks. Tom’s light played off of a brown, bumpy surface that covered the unknown sailor’s torso and half of his face while leaving the mouth and nose unobstructed. The right eye stared, wide and forever frozen open. A left hand stuck out from the brown mass, fingers curled in a talon of death, just a bit of blue shirtsleeve still visible. Clarence saw a second left hand — there were two people in there. At least. Just as in the drawing made by Candice Walker.

  “Diver One to Topside, what the hell is this?”

  Tom’s voice sounded ragged, like he was becoming overwhelmed.

  “Ignore it, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Proceed to your objective. Tom, stay cool.”

  Clarence could barely blink, barely breathe. Tom again turned right, toward t
he room’s main storage locker. It looked like a horizontal, flat-topped freezer, the kind usually kept in a basement, only this one was military gray instead of the white. Inside, Clarence knew, was the soda-can-sized object the Los Angeles crew had collected days earlier.

  Tom moved slowly toward it.

  On the locker, a tiny keypad glowed green — it had its own power supply, which was obviously still functioning.

  “Topside to Diver One, great work, we’re almost home. Prepare to enter access codes.” The dive master read off the sixteen-digit code. Tom read it back. Clarence saw Tom extend his suit’s pincer hand. The pincer ended with a stiff rubber stud, small enough to press the keypad digits.

  The last button drew a beep from the crate, audible over the speakers. The keypad’s glow shifted from green to orange.

  The crate’s lid slowly rose on a rear hinge, pushed up by steel pistons on either end. The diver’s lights shone on a small, black, cylindrical container. It wasn’t much bigger than a travel mug.

  Hidden inside of that, a piece of an alien spacecraft.

  “Topside, Diver One, I see the objective.”

  “Visual confirmed, Diver One. Retrieve the objective and then exit the vessel.”

  The hard blue spheres — inside of which were Tom’s hands — reached into the crate, toward the objective. The black pincers opened wide, ready to grab the black tube, then paused.

  “Diver One to Topside, I know I was briefed that this is safe, but … well, are you sure?”

  “Diver One, retrieve the object,” the dive master said. “It’s safe, Tom, just don’t pretend you’re making a James Bond martini, okay?”

  Tom actually laughed, a sound thinned by the electronics but still full of a grateful relief.

  “Yeah, shaken not stirred, you got it.”

  The diver’s pincers closed on the container, rubber grips locking down on the curved, black surface. He lifted it free of the storage locker.

  “Topside, Diver One — objective acquired.”

  Something black darted across the screen, a split-second flash that made Clarence think of snakes, worms, eels.

  The image on the screen shifted, blurred, the diver turning as fast as he could.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tom’s voiced peaked his microphone, making his words crackle with static.

  “Diver One, calm down,” the dive master said, his tone cool and collected — of course it was, he wasn’t the one in a dark tomb nine hundred feet below the surface, surrounded by dead bodies.

  Clarence’s hands clenched into involuntary fists. He wanted to reach down and somehow grab Tom, drag the diver to safety.

  The image skewed as Tom turned, looking for the source of that unknown movement. His lights lit up the same empty shelves and slightly bobbing boxes, the same motionless dead men covered in crusty brown.

  “Topside, Diver One — I think I saw something moving in here, maybe a fish. Moving to exit the … it’s on my suit! Goddamit, there’s not supposed to be—”

  The screen turned to white noise.

  “Diver One, status?”

  No answer.

  Clarence closed his eyes, tried to stay calm. So close … what had happened?

  He heard the dive master’s disembodied voice in the control room’s speakers. “Diver One, status? Talk to me, Tom.”

  There was no response.

  “Diver Two, we’ve lost contact with Diver One,” the dive master said, his voice still supremely composed, infuriatingly so. “Proceed inside immediately to Diver One’s location. Move forward with caution — it’s possible Diver One tripped a booby trap.”

  “Topside, Diver Two, entering the sub.”

  The dive master continued to calmly issue orders, sending the remaining UUVs to the Los Angeles and getting rescue divers into the water.

  The image on Clarence’s screens shifted from static to the entrance hole and then the torpedo room, the view of Diver Two’s camera nearly an exact replay of what Diver One had seen just minutes earlier.

  Suddenly, the image shook violently, filled with bubbles and bits of falling metal. The diver slewed right, making the view tilt.

  “Topside! Large explosion in the nose cone! Wreck is unstable!”

  “Diver Two, exit immediately. Repeat, exit immediately.”

  Clarence heard the diver scream, saw a flash of something coming down from above. The image slewed the other way, the horizontal now vertical and the vertical horizontal as the diver fell to her side. He heard a crunching sound, painfully loud in the speakers.

  “Diver Two, get out of there,” the dive master said, his voice at last carrying a shred of urgency, a hint of emotion. “Exit immediately.”

  “Topside … I’m stuck … oh my God, my visor is cracked, water is coming in, get me help, get someone down here—”

  Another crunch far louder than the first, then, no sound at all.

  The sideways view didn’t waver. The diver had been crushed, but her helmet camera remained on, continued to send signals up the umbilical to the Brashear far above.

  Clarence sagged back in his chair. He felt cold, distant, as if it were all happening somewhere else. Two divers dead. Both ADSs destroyed.

  And, worst of all, the artifact was still down there.

  DAY FOUR

  FOREIGN POWERS

  Murray hated the Situation Room, but at least that felt comfortable, felt familiar. The president’s private sitting room didn’t feel familiar at all. He’d been here twice before, both times to deliver bad news to former presidents; the kind of news that couldn’t wait until morning.

  The room could have been in any house, really, any house of someone with money and status. Murray and Admiral Porter sat on a comfortable couch. Murray knew he looked wrinkled, disheveled — he’d been napping on a cot when the news had come in. His staff had brought him fresh clothes, but he’d done little more than throw them on. Porter, of course, looked neat and pressed, not a wrinkle on his uniform.

  The sitting room was right next to the president’s bedroom. Blackmon seemed sleepy, which was no surprise — she’d been woken up only fifteen minutes earlier.

  “An explosion,” she said. “What was the cause, Admiral?”

  “Unknown at this time,” Porter said. “Possibly sabotage, a booby trap left by the infected crew of the Los Angeles.”

  Blackmon’s tired eyes turned to Murray. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s a possibility, Madam President,” Murray said. “Once the LA’s engines blew, the infected crew could assume that sooner or later divers would come down to retrieve the artifact. Booby traps fit the mentality of the infected, to some degree, although the infected would be most interested in spreading the disease. The explosion was definitely internal, however, which does make crew sabotage the most-likely cause.”

  He stood — slowly, his aching hips and a stabbing pain in his back keeping him from doing it otherwise — and handed the president a photo taken by one of the Blackfish UUVs. The front end of the Los Angeles had blown open like some cartoon cigar.

  Blackmon studied it. “Admiral, would that destroy the artifact?”

  “Possibly,” Porter said. “The last report from the diver said he had removed it from the main, hardened storage locker. If that is accurate, it’s doubtful the smaller container holding the artifact itself could have withstood such an explosion.”

  Blackmon set the picture in her lap. “When will we know for sure?”

  “Another ADS is en route,” Porter said. “It will be at least twelve hours before we can get a person down there. The UUVs have scanned the area, but found no sign of the container. Considering the damage, that’s not surprising.”

  She looked at the photo again. “Could it have been survivors? The Los Angeles also had one of those deep-sea suits, did it not? That, or someone in an air pocket? Or could the disease modify human biology enough for people to survive down there?”

  Porter shook his head. “Not likely
. At that depth, the pressure is twenty-eight times that of sea level — nitrogen narcosis would quickly kill anyone not locked into a sealed area or wearing an ADS. Those suits have at most forty-eight hours of life support, and the Los Angeles sank four days ago. Any normal human being in that crew is definitely dead.”

  Porter looked at Murray to answer the final part of the question.

  “The disease can change physiology, but not to that extent,” Murray said. “Pressure is still pressure, Madam President.”

  She nodded. “All right. Now for the obvious question — could this have been a deliberate attack by foreign agents, allowing them to seize the artifact?”

  Murray had known that question was coming. Truth be told, he wanted to hear the answer himself.

  Porter thought carefully before responding.

  “It’s absolutely a possibility, although less likely than the booby trap. Recon flights are out around the clock. Coast Guard ships have been called in to patrol the five-mile perimeter around the task force. It is highly doubtful any sub could swim undetected beneath that perimeter, and nothing on the surface could get past it unseen. The Pinckney reported no sonar sightings, nothing was detected by the UUVs and ROVS, and neither of the deceased divers reported anything unusual until they entered the nose cone.”

  Murray wasn’t a naval expert, but Porter seemed confident in the measures taken.

  Blackmon eased back in her chair. “So, sabotage,” she said. “That’s the most likely answer. But if something did get through our lines …”

  She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.

  “Every agency is on alert,” Porter said. “Homeland, TSA, everyone. Not that this changes anything — they’ve been on alert since the Los Angeles went down.”

  Murray had his doubts. Anyone talented enough, resourceful enough, to snatch an artifact from nine hundred feet down — right out from under the nose of the U.S. Navy — would have no problem getting past airport security, or just putting the thing on a truck and sending it to Mexico.