by Bob Finley
He was startled by how hot the water was. It felt as if he'd just fallen into an out-of-control sauna. As soon as he broke surface, he quickly gulped in what was by now almost superheated air. In a very few minutes, he knew that the air in the cavern would be completely unbreathable and would cook his lungs even if he tried. There was a massive explosion somewhere that blew a firewall across the cavern and straight at him. This was not the place to be.
He porpoised and swam for his life under the VIKING, realizing how weakened he had become. It took a few seconds for him to understand that something was trying to drag him back to the surface. There must be an air bubble trapped inside the daypack full of diamonds. In three seconds he ripped it off his shoulders and shoved it away. Millions of dollars’ worth of precious jewels were useless to a dead man. He ran out of air ten feet from the hatch, but getting inside was his only chance of survival. He desperately pulled himself along, the salt water savagely stinging the burns on the palms of his hands. When he got to the hatchway, he forced his right palm against the ID scanner and held it there. He was beginning to black out when the hatch slid aside. He clawed his way into it and thrust his head and shoulders through into the sweet, cool air of the submarine. His gasping, rasping reply to Yoko's challenge was not accepted and, for a moment, he was afraid she’d gas him according to security procedures. If she did so before he got inside, he’d pass out and would be gassed every time she sensed that he was conscious. And he and the submarine would die inside a volcano. Another first.
But his breathing mercifully returned and he was able to speak normally enough that Yoko recognized him. Finally, he summoned the strength to drag himself inside.
"Yoko, seal the hatch."
"Certainly." There was a hiss and the hatch slid shut.
"Yoko, submerge and stand by to get under way."
He heard familiar sounds as the computer carried out his commands. He made his way shakily to the command sphere and fell into the seat. He reached out wearily and triggered the seat to slide forward and lock into position. The water outside the big glass sphere was murky and dirty looking.
"3-D navigation, Yoko."
The wrap-around monitors to his front and sides came to life. He flipped off the side-scanning sonar monitors. In a pool or a tunnel, he wouldn't need to see what was there, just know how far away it was. A huge explosion overhead slapped the surface of the pool and its downward pressure drove water out of the pool and through the tunnel to the outside. Then the backwash sucked water back up through the tunnel and shot it back into the cavern. All of which caused the VIKING to first be driven deep into the pool and then surge wildly upwards, almost breaking the surface. By now, Marc was sure that the surface in that inferno was hot enough to damage his ship, so he fought the controls like he was riding a bad-tempered Brahma bull. He had to keep the acriliglass sphere from crashing into the rock wall of the vertical shaft in water so littered with debris that he couldn’t even see the walls. When the up-down surge subsided, he realized that if another surge happened while he was in the tunnel, his ship would be torn apart in seconds. And with the obviously escalating violence of the volcano, another one similar to or worse than the last one was just a matter of moments away. It was time.
He blew emergency ballast to sink the ship as quickly as possible. The fathometer, with the scale rolled back, dropped rapidly through 50, 60, 70 feet. The water began to clear, with most of the debris floating nearer the surface of the pool. Though the term ‘pool’ no longer applied. The pinger sounded, warning him that the belly of the ship was 20 feet from the bottom. He slowed the descent and brought her to hover 90 feet down and clearance bow and stern of ten to fifteen feet. Glancing quickly at his monitors and sonar, he saw that he was a little off center in the shaft, nearer the tunnel entrance.
"That's just fine, darlin'. Just less distance to cover."
He brought her into a bow-down position and bumped the throttles. The sleek ship slid forward into the downward-sloping tunnel and increased speed to three knots. He cut on his external spots as backups to his sonar and could see that he had about twenty-five feet clearance on each side of him. But he know that the really critical clearance was the tall stabilizer at his stern. He flew the ship closer to the floor until there was only about four feet of space between her belly and the hard magma. That left him maybe seven or eight feet clearance on the stabilizer. He turned on the stabilizer camera as well, figuring the more eyes he had, the better the chance he had of getting out of here in one piece.
"Kim, you made it look so easy going in," he murmured.
There was a thunderous stutter of explosions behind him that he felt as much as heard, like lying on the ground with mortar rounds dropping around him. The low-frequency shock waves transmitted through the water and compressed in the tight confines of the tunnel shook his bones and vibrated his whole body.
"Ohhhh, here it comes. Here it comes!!" He braced himself in his seat and grabbed the controls in a tight-fisted, white-knuckled grip, and none too soon.
In seconds the VIKING was shoved from behind, trying to rise to the ceiling. Justin fought her bow down, over-compensating and almost driving her into the floor. But she was still accelerating in quantum leaps. In just seconds he'd gone from what he'd thought was a fast 3 knots per hour to 15 and he knew somehow that this was just the wind-up pitch. Already, he was jerking the great ship around the tunnel as he tried to correct for the violent surges pushing her first this way, then that. The gauge hit 22 knots. The walls were whizzing by as the ship rode the rising pressure wave. He lost the stabilizer camera, probably shredded against the roof. He figured he had no more than ten seconds before it got worse. Much worse. There was only one hope.
"Yoko! Take control of the ship!"
"Say when, boss." Yoko's voice was pleasant and infuriatingly calm.
"When!! When!!"
"I have the helm," Yoko announced, as if she were calling him to dinner.
He shoved himself deeper into his chair and grabbed the chair arms. And discovered he’d been wrong. He hadn’t had ten seconds. It was more like six.
The next eight seconds were terrifying. It was a thousand times worse than the first roller coaster he’d ridden. He...and the ship...were slammed from side to side and up and down, with the bow yawing back and forth until he was surprised she didn't try to turn completely around and run backwards. For the second time in his life he felt seasick. He somehow remembered an old school science movie by somebody named Moody, where, with high-speed photography, the viewer rocketed through some canal somewhere at the speed of sound. Except this was real. This was life or death...his! More times than he could count, and far more than he wanted to remember, just an instant before crashing into the wall, Yoko's impossibly quick recovery dragged both him and the ship back to another second’s survival.
Then the volcano went for a field goal. A hundred thousand tons of glassine plug fell into the lava dome of what had been first a volcano, then Centinela Seamount and, most recently, New Victoria, the shortest-lived ‘country’ in history. And the pressure created when the plug hit the rising pool of water inside the dome was like lighting off a cannon. The pressure blast that shot down that long tube drove the VIKING like a bullet out of a rifle barrel. With a hundred feet of tunnel left to go, Justin's wide-eyed glance fell on the speed gauge just as it rolled past 90. But, when the real shock wave hit, and he was pile-driven back into his seat under the force of several g’s, he closed his eyes. He didn't remember closing them. But, neither did he remember being fired out of the mouth of that tunnel at just over 120 miles per hour, either.
At 88 feet per second, he was a quarter mile out before he opened one eye. And a half-mile out when he took his first breath since before they’d cleared the tunnel. By then, Yoko had the ship well under control and was running for the open sea.
"Yoko."
"Yes, Captain."
"You are fantastic! I can't believe you got us out of there alive! You'r
e the greatest!"
"Thank you. Tell me again about the fantastic part."
Justin laughed. Then he laid back and roared, tears coming to his eyes. It felt good.
"Yoko, in recognition of your remarkable performance in the face of impossible odds, and for courage above and beyond the call of duty, I hereby promote you to Captain Emeritus. Congratulations."
"Thank you again, Captain. How does my new rank compare to yours?"
Justin laughed again. "I'm just barely ahead of you, and after that demonstration, I'm not even sure about that."
"Yes, sir. Would you like the helm back?"
"You're doing fine." He glanced down and read 110 on the meter. "Take us out another two miles and circle us into a holding pattern at about, say, thirty knots. Oh, and keep an eye out for traffic. The area's crawling with ships, including submarine traffic."
"Aye, sir."
Marc smiled. With Kim's programming and Yoko's blossoming artificial intelligence, you never knew what she was going to say next. He kicked his command chair back and flipped off the seat restraint. But that's as far as he got before a chill stood the hair up on the back of his neck. He froze. That warning sign had saved his life more than once, and he trusted it.
A second later he knew they were right again.
Chapter 99
In the Command Information Center, everybody who could get near enough to see the monitors was watching the minisub drama. Among them were the ‘newsies’, as the CNN reporter and her cameraman had been dubbed by the ship’s crew. Jerry-the-cameraman had gradually insinuated himself into a front row advantage. Jackie-the-reporter looked like an appendage growing from Jerry's left shoulder. She hovered over him, coaching in his ear, as she directed where and what Jerry's camera saw as surely as though she were personally aiming it. It was what made her good at her job, the intuitive sense of what image best told the story she wanted her audience to see and hear.
"Sir, the target is passing one-six-zero-zero feet."
"Thank you. Sonar, please put audio through the speakers."
"Aye, sir. Opening audio channel...now."
The hollow, static sounds collected by the towed array astern came up on the ship's PA. The noises of the not-so-silent sea filled the ship.
"Captain, may I ask a question?" Jackie Darlington's voice came meekly...for her...out of the semi-darkness.
"Officially?"
"If that’s alright."
"It isn’t."
"Then may I ask the question unofficially?"
"Yes, you may. Just make sure it stays that way. What’s the question?"
"I don’t want to seem ghoulish, but wasn’t this sub supposed to be crushed at fifteen hundred feet?"
In the gloom she couldn’t clearly see his face, but she could see his profile as his head slowly swiveled in her direction. For a moment he didn't speak.
"The sea is unpredictable, Ms. Darlington. As are the frail machines of man. Sometimes they both amaze me."
A tiny smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.
"A non-answer?" she thought. "Or the resigned answer of an old warrior who’s seen too much and trusts nobody completely?"
"Have you ever considered the political arena, Captain?"
It was his turn to smile ever-so-slightly, even though...or especially because...he knew she could barely see his face.
A groan came from the speakers, protracted and staccato, like a noise from some unseen sea creature. Then a sharp, explosive CRACK!
"Sounds like polar ice ‘talking’," Carruthers muttered to his executive officer, who nodded in agreement.
"Sir, sonar reports the probability of an air tank imploding, possibly the life support system on the sub."
The Captain said nothing, nor did he move. Darlington whispered in the cameraman’s ear and the camera swung in the Captain's direction, the zoom lens swiveling. Jerry reached up and tapped a gain switch, so the camera would automatically compensate to a brighter image. He smiled to himself. The money he’d spent upgrading his equipment was well worth it. The expression on the officer’s face was a study in conflict.
"Good stuff," he thought with satisfaction, before swinging back to the monitor.
"It won’t be long now," Jackie heard off to her left.
"Get ready! Zoom in on the monitor, but be ready to back off in a hurry to get reactions. Okay?" Her whispered instructions were acknowledged with the merest nod from the man down whose neck she was breathing.
"I’m already there," he said in a voice so low she almost didn't understand him.
"Captain, we have a short-wave radio transmission from the TRAP team," the CommSpec called in controlled excitement from the other end of the crowded room. "They’re requesting immediate pick-up!"
"Is the source verified?" the Captain demanded.
"Yes, sir. Transmission is open-channel, but code’s a match and voice print confidence is 97%."
"Acknowledge receipt. Find out where and how they want pick-up."
"Coming through now, sir. They say they'll be topside, with five hostages, in ten minutes, max, sir. They also report that the terrorist leader has apparently escaped in a miniature submarine."
"Five? They're missing one," Jerry Carruthers set aside the minisub for the moment. "Are the hostages alive?"
"I asked, sir. They say it depends on whether the hostages survive the ascent. They’re coming out the same way they went in."
"Alright. Number One. Let's kick the tires and light the fires! Tell the Air Boss I want choppers in the air in one minute. I want divers in the water in three. Launch air cover when the choppers are clear. I want those people dripping wet and on my deck in twenty minutes. Comm, advise all other shipping in the area to stand clear immediately."
The room was instantly alive with a dozen simultaneous conversations and people rushing in and out on myriad missions. Jerry was panning the whole room, working the crowd.
The noises from the almost-forgotten speakers cut through the intense activity. The shrieking of tortured metal and what sounded like a bad sound track of a creaking door from a horror flick penetrated the room. Jackie Darlington almost shoved Jerry and his camera back around to the monitor. His hands flew over the adjustments and he half-crouched in concentration.
Later, Jackie would think back about how muffled the actual implosion of the little submarine’s glass sphere sounded. It was as if someone wearing gloves had suddenly clapped their hands together. And that was the end of it. As the pieces sprayed into the blackness 1793 feet below them...she'd looked at the digital readout, and made sure Jerry captured that image on the camera’s memory chips...the submarine, already insignificant in the vastness of the sea, simply ceased to be a viable sonar target and disappeared except for a little scatter. The red dot on the monitor winked out and only the image of its spiraling descent was left on the screen. And then it, too, disappeared as the data stream was interrupted. The monitor went blank. Jerry swung his camera back to the crew’s faces. Eyes visibly clouded over as each person dealt in his own way with the yielding of a life...even that of an enemy’s...to the two-and-a-half miles of cold darkness below their feet. The moment stretched out.
"Alright, people," the Executive Officer's voice brought them back to reality, "let’s make it happen!"
And happen it did. With practiced precision and the melding of thousands of military professionals into one, single-minded purpose. The bow of the George Washington came majestically into the wind as the rescue choppers lifted off and the first fighter flying cover for the operation lined up at the catapult. The matter of the minisub passenger’s death bringing on nuclear destruction all over the world, starting with them, was no longer the priority. If it happened, it happened. They’d be the first to know. But, in the meantime, they were here to get a job done.
Chapter 100
Fifty-five seconds after lifting off the deck of the George Washington, the SH-3H Sea King helicopter was circling the spot where the communications
tower had stood above the terrorists' fortress. 73 feet long and weighing in at almost 10 tons, its 62 foot rotor and 625 mile range meant it could stay on station as long as necessary and lift whatever it needed to from the turbulent sea below.
Half her size, two SH-2F Seasprites had been first on the scene and, in one 220-feet-per-second, wave-eating pass each, had obliterated the tower, taking out the Mk-30 surface-to-air missile site, cameras and docking platform in two rocket salvos. Now they hovered, one high, one low and 300 yards away, still loaded with missiles, torpedoes and what was left in their rocket pods. On adrenaline highs, the two crews were hoping to be called back in.
High overhead, a flight of 4 F-15R’s kept vigilant watch over the rescue operation, hoping for their chance to get into the action.
The pilot of the Sea King stared down past his co-pilot at the wave tops, as the big Sikorsky leaned into its clockwise holding pattern, knowing that somewhere down there were 11 people struggling toward the surface and depending on them to lift them to safety.
"Ironman, this is Swansong."
"Ironman, Go ahead."
"Ironman, Swansong is on station and holding. Have you had any reports yet on surface conditions?"
"Negative, Swansong."
"Roger. Be advised that there seems to be steam or smoke, white in color, rising from the surface in several places down there...six, maybe eight different sources. And the surface looks kind of strange."
"Roger that, Swansong. The assault team advised that the volcano below you has gone active and they had active lava inside the structure. What you're probably seeing is escaping gases or lava escaping underwater and boiling the water into steam."
"Ironman, are you advising that our flight and mission are at risk from an eruption?"
"Swansong, Ironman. Stand by one on that information."
"Swimmers on the surface!" The crew chief called over the commset from his vantage point in the big, open hatch on the midships starboard side. "I have three...now five, no, six, seven..."