by Rob Sangster
Chapter 34
July 30
8:30 a.m.
Aboard Challenger
JACK LOOKED DOWN and saw Drake on Challenger’s deck waving imperiously for the pilot to bring the helo in.
“No way I’m landing,” the pilot declared. “Damn wind is gusting all over the compass. Besides, I’ve seen pizzas bigger than that landing pad.”
Gano, sitting next to the pilot, took off his headphones and shouted, “Don’t be a pussy. My grandmother could put us down here, and she’s blind as a mole.”
The pilot hovered just above the pad, still wary. Then a wave lifted the ship’s stern, banging the pad into the helo’s skids. The pilot instantly cut power and settled. Drake’s men rushed up and secured it to the frame with chain tie-downs.
Drake ran to the pilot’s door. “Go get some coffee in the galley. You’re on the clock until I say you can go.”
The pilot shook his head. “Nobody said this was a layover. I’m heading back right now.”
“Then unfasten those tie-downs yourself, and see if you can take off before this bird slides over the side. Might be even harder if my ship happens to make a sharp turn and heel over about that time. Up to you.”
That was the end of that argument.
Jack and Gano jumped to the deck and walked to Drake’s side. As soon as Drake saw the third person climb out of the helo he turned to Jack. “I didn’t say you could bring a woman. This is no damn cruise ship.”
“This is Molly McCoy from Astoria.”
“I don’t care if she’s Annie Oakley. I don’t want—”
“She put herself in danger by getting the information I gave you about Chaos. We owe her.” He didn’t intend to debate her presence with Drake. She was a fact on the ground.
She’d showed up first thing in the morning and demanded to come along. Both he and Gano had tried hard to talk her out of it. She’d stayed in their faces, insisting she had the right, reminding them that she’d come through when they needed her, and the future of her hometown was at stake. She’d made it clear that if they ever wanted help from her again, they’d let her on the helo. They’d given in.
Drake grunted. “This dive is going to take a few hours,” he said to Molly. “Stay out of the way of my crew.”
Events had moved fast since yesterday when Drake had laid out his remarkable theory that this hydrothermal vent had been the site of the origin of life on Earth. Two hours after that conversation, Challenger had hauled anchor and gotten underway for a point fifteen miles east of the Chaos platform.
Jack had stayed behind because the Armstrong Air Force Base lawsuit had reached another critical point. That meant he and Debra would have to work late into the night. Since phone and email could be iffy on Challenger, he’d stayed in Astoria.
When they’d finished the work, he brought her current on the information he’d gotten from the guys Molly had delivered, and about his conversation with Drake. He’d waited until the end to tell her that he’d hired a helicopter to take him and Gano to Challenger.
“Drake and I will dive to Barbas’s operations on the seabed and take photographs as proof of what he’s doing.”
Instead of the objection he expected, she’d said, “Make sure that helicopter has room for me.”
The thought of her being on Challenger so close to Barbas and his attack helicopters gave him a knot in his stomach. The same had been true with Molly, but she’d been right in front of them, hands on her hips. But if he raised his fears with Debra, she’d say she felt the same about him. So he took the easy way out.
“We go airborne just after dawn. You can’t get here by then. Even if you could, there would be nothing for you to do aboard Challenger.” He started to say that the Armstrong case needed her, but bit his tongue before he ate sand on that one.
“Look at it this way,” he said. “There’s no one else I’d rather have at my side, but the President and the Vice President never fly on the same plane. We shouldn’t be on Challenger at the same time.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched out. “Reminding me you’re going to be in danger is a really crappy analogy. Good thing you do better in court. Okay, since I can’t get there in time, be in touch as soon as you’re back.”
Late as it had been, he’d had a hard time getting to sleep.
Hearing his name called by Lou Potter brought him back to the present. He saw Pegasus hanging above the starboard deck amidships with a ladder leaning against her. She looked ready to go. As he and Steve approached the sub, Lou held up a digital Canon camera.
“I want a few photos of you two in front of Pegasus,” he said and snapped several shots.
Drake climbed the ladder and swung himself into Pegasus’s cabin. Jack was about to follow Drake when Lou put his hand on his shoulder and spoke softly. “Keep a close eye on Steve while you’re down there. One minute he’s on an unbelievable high because of the life-form samples we’ve collected. The next minute, he’s cursing Petros Barbas for threatening the hydrothermal vent. He’s not himself, so watch the gauges, especially time underwater and air supply. One mistake will kill you.”
Not what he needed to hear. He respected Drake as a scientist, but he choked a little at descending seventy-two feet in a carbon fiber coffin with a captain who was “not himself.”
He climbed into the cramped cabin beside Drake and listened to various systems powering up. The quartz dome sealed itself with a hydraulic hiss before the davits swung the craft out over the ocean swells. It hit the surface with a thump and swayed sharply as it washed up and down waves. Then salt water swept up the sides of the dome, and they were under. To his psyche, it felt less like a controlled descent and more like they were sinking.
Schools of fish parted to let Pegasus pass, seemingly indifferent to the strange creature in their midst. He had the impression he was inside the world’s largest aquarium. Remembering the eerie experience of looking into the eye of a sperm whale on their first dive, he kept a sharp watch. When they dropped below the sun’s penetration, the environment felt more threatening.
Because of his disagreement with Drake about Molly, he decided to start a conversation on a topic Drake would like.
“I want to follow up on what you said yesterday about this”—he was tempted to say your—“hydrothermal vent. You said the microbes there might tell us about life on other planets. Gano interrupted and cut you off.”
Drake, focused on the flickering screen, didn’t look at him. “It’s basic. I want to prove that we have to define ‘life’ much more broadly and consider that it can exist in a wider range of conditions than we believe now. We need to break away from what we think we know and open our minds. Evidence is all around us. Here’s an example. In 1998, a Princeton geoscientist discovered that bacteria could thrive in pockets of hot water miles underground, much deeper than anyone thought possible. Then he discovered roundworms, more complex than bacteria, that lived in the same environment. That was a game-changer. It meant we should start searching for deep subsurface life, not just here but on other planets. When it was bacteria, I was interested. Now that its multicellular life, I’m hooked.”
“But when we speculate about life elsewhere in our solar system,” Jack said, “we’re thinking about whether conditions exist that would support life forms we’re familiar with here.”
“And that’s a mistake. In the past, Mars had huge active volcanoes and, perhaps, HTVs. Water once flowed on the surface. There may still be water deep in the interior in high temperature, low-oxygen conditions. So if we search deep beneath the surface, I would expect to find life on Mars in the form of bacteria thriving on chemical energy.” He paused to touch the screen, inputting new instructions.
“When I identify other forms of life and demonstrate the transition from non-life to life, we’ll have to stop believi
ng that life can only thrive in environments like the surface of the Earth and a mile or two above or below it. We’ll recognize that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. My hydrothermal vent is going to teach us about life throughout the galaxies. I’ll bet my life on that.”
Drake’s word “obsessed” seemed on target. Time to bring him back from outer space.
“Are there other HTVs like this one?”
“Ever since the big mining companies learned there are deposits of valuable metals and minerals around HTVs, they’ve been on the hunt. No one has found anything like this one.” His eyes scanned the screen. “We just passed six thousand feet. Won’t be long now.”
Jack watched the numbers flash past until they slowed and then stopped at 7,180 feet.
“All right, Barbas, you son of a bitch, we’ll see how much more damage you’ve done. Computer. Globe lights on.” The sub became the center of a 360-degree circle of light, hovering maybe three hundred yards from the mining operation. The section of devastated seabed seemed twice the size it had been a week ago, a raw and ugly sight. Jackhammers and pile drivers pounded away. Small tractor-like robots hunting for metallic nodules moved along invisible lines like disciplined beetles. Beams from tiny spotlights on their “heads” swung across the debris, creating a bizarre patchwork. He half expected the robots to turn in unison and focus on Pegasus.
The crusher, five hundred yards or more away, squatted in the middle of the machines like the head of a giant octopus waving its arms. As it crept forward, jets of refuse poured out its rear and disappeared into the dark.
“Time to start filming,” Jack said.
Drake touched three circles on the left border of the screen. “Done.”
The place was so depressing that Jack wanted to move on to film the methane hydrate site and the place where the “tank” was drilling into the HTV. He turned to make that suggestion and saw that Drake’s face was flushed, his expression grim. He was barely breathing.
Drake shook his head. In a quiet voice he said, “Time to go to work.”
His right hand dropped to the console between them and pushed one of the two red-tipped buttons. A whoosh followed immediately. Jack saw a torpedo speeding through the water toward a dozen backhoes. Seconds later, the relatively small explosion turned them into twisted scrap. Then the percussion wave slammed into the sub, driving her bow up thirty degrees. His ears rang. As soon as the bow dropped, Drake guided Pegasus a few degrees to starboard and pushed the other button. That torpedo smashed into the side of the crusher toward its front. Again, the bow jerked up and fell. The sound was even louder.
“Computer. Stop,” Jack shouted. “Computer. Stop firing.” When nothing happened, he realized it must be programmed to respond only to Drake’s voice.
Another touch on the first button, and the third torpedo was on its way to the back half of the crusher. This time he heard the sub’s hull groan when the percussion wave added to the already crushing pressure of the great depth. He saw the steel shell of the crusher peel outward, revealing a tangle of ruined motors and pulleys.
Drake looked around the site, apparently satisfied there were no more targets worthy of destruction. He also seemed indifferent to the stress he’d put Pegasus through or how close he’d come to killing both of them. His rage at Barbas for threatening his origin-of-life quest had turned him into a vengeance machine.
Since this site was monitored, Barbas would know that Drake and his sub had slaughtered his cash cow. He’d go nuts. Then a much worse thought struck Jack. Barbas would also deduce that the sub had to return to a base, and that that base was Challenger. That’s where he’d strike. That’s where Molly and Gano were waiting.
Chapter 35
July 30
5:00 p.m.
Aboard Pegasus
“YOU CRAZY BASTARD!” Jack shouted at Drake. “Now Barbas will send those Russian helos to sink Challenger.”
“Bullshit. Challenger is in U.S. territorial waters. Barbas didn’t dare touch us before, and he won’t this time. Besides, I have four RPG launchers aboard now, and my men know how to use them. If those helos get close enough, we’ll blow them out of the sky. If he even breaks a window on Challenger, I’ll attach mines to the supports of his goddamn monstrosity and send it to the bottom. That madman asked for this.”
“You have to warn your crew. Tell them to get weapons ready and take cover.”
Drake made contact and gave instructions, saying nothing about the destruction he’d just caused.
“You didn’t tell them to head for shore at flank speed.”
“No point. Challenger can’t outrun a helicopter, but if she left now we’d never catch her. We’d run out of air and power. That’s not an option.”
“You’re sacrificing your crew and my friends to save your own skin.”
“I’m telling you they’re safe. You’d do the same thing if you were in charge, which you aren’t.” He slowly cruised the length of the ruined mining site for a closer look. Satisfied, he said, “Now we’ll visit that drilling site, or whatever it is, and collect some more photos. Computer. Globe lights off.” He must have logged in the coordinates of the methane hydrate drilling site, because he directed Pegasus ahead without hesitation.
Jack thought about Barbas. He’d be in a murderous rage. With income from gold and minerals cut off, he’d throw everything into extracting methane, and he wouldn’t wait. Without turning his head, he glanced at Drake and tried to get a reading. Drake’s eyes were intensely focused on the screen and—holy shit, he’d started breathing slower again.
Jack knew what was coming. Drake’s lust for revenge still burned. Despite the danger of attacking the methane hydrate drilling rigs, that’s exactly what Drake intended.
In the pitch darkness, Jack felt Pegasus slow. The cabin seemed unbearably hot. He had to do something—and fast. He tried to remember the sequence in which Drake had fired the three torpedoes at the mining site. Which red-tipped button had he pushed first?
Pegasus stopped. “Computer. Globe lights on.”
The multiple drill rigs were less than fifty yards away, about forty-five degrees off the starboard bow.
Jack thought that the first whoosh had come from his left. Drake had fired twice more, alternating tubes. The torpedo cued up to be fired next should be controlled by the right button.
Drake directed Pegasus into a slow turn to starboard. His hand started down.
Jack couldn’t block both buttons, but if he was wrong . . . he covered the button on the right.
Drake’s hand dropped on top of his. Jack knocked it away hard.
“What the hell—”
Jack punched the right button. Whoosh. Without waiting, he pushed the left button. Another immediate whoosh.
“Stop!” It was a screech.
Jack knew there was one live torpedo remaining so he depressed the right button. Nothing happened. He pushed harder. Nothing. Drake’s fingers clawed at Jack’s wrist, but Jack depressed the button again as hard as he could. Whoosh.
Drake screamed in anger and grabbed awkwardly for Jack’s throat. Jack drove his left elbow backward into Drake’s face but not with full force. Drake blocked it. They faced each other, panting, stalemated.
In the bright lights, he saw that the multiple drill rigs were intact, the three torpedoes speeding farther away in the frigid ocean. Then he saw what had changed in the past week. Two shiny, twenty-foot long cylinders had been added to the system, and the flexible marine riser that ran up toward Chaos had been replaced with one double its size. The outflow of methane must be increasing. Previous failures hadn’t stopped Barbas from moving ahead. The drill site appeared lifeless, but Jack knew the action was taking place far below.
Maybe he’d just made a terrible mistake by preventing Drake from destroying this equipment. Maybe it could have been
knocked out of commission for a while without destabilizing the methane hydrate. Get real! That was wishful thinking. Using the torpedoes had been too big a risk for a possible short-term gain. The only way to stop Barbas’s machines was to stop Barbas himself. Mutual hostility was thick in the cabin. Each of them had done what he thought he had to do. And, even though the torpedoes were gone, this dive wasn’t finished.
“Take some photographs of this site,” Jack said, “then direct Pegasus to the place where they’re drilling into the HTV. We both need to see that.” He tried to sound commanding, because if Drake refused, he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Drake, seeming shocked by the turn of events, touched several points on the screen and took the photos. Jack used his cell phone to take some of his own even though quality would be bad. Pegasus turned to port and speeded up.
When they reached the third site, Jack saw that the long barrel-like snout of the “tank” was butted solidly against the HTV. Something was connected to it that hadn’t been there last week. It looked like a small chem lab inside a glass sphere.
“They’re extracting bacteria and microbes from inside the HTV,” Drake said in a weak voice that had lost its usual gruffness. “That sphere is on a tether so it can detach and be hauled up. I’d like to ram it, but I can’t risk it under this pressure. I will get him for this.” With that, Drake inclined Pegasus upward.
After both of them withdrew into themselves, Jack had another insight. Drake must still be worried that Jack was secretly working for Barbas. That’s why he had Lou photograph them together about to get aboard Pegasus on the way to torpedo Barbas’s operations. He could use those photos to convince Barbas that he and Jack were in it together. That would make sure Jack had to fight with him against Barbas. Well, he’d never doubted that Drake knew how to play hardball. In fact, he admired him for it.
Now they had to worry about the Ka-52 gunship that would blast Pegasus the second she broke the surface.