Deep Time

by Rob Sangster

  Chapter 36

  July 30

  5:00 p.m.

  Chaos platform

  THE ADMIRAL’S BRIDGE was Petros’s favorite space on Chaos. From his pivoting chair he had a panoramic view, but he wasn’t enjoying the view today. Bad news poured in from all sides. Managers had been forced to cut rates over and over at his resorts. One of his cargo ships had been looted in Dar es Salaam. And he’d just had to let his beloved mega-yacht go at a $35 million loss. Worst of all, the line of credit he’d drawn down was being called. If the merciless buzz started against him in Manhattan and Athens, his enemies would start carving him to pieces

  He might hold on until world economies improved, but only if he made this methane hydrate deposit pay off. Nothing else mattered.

  “Mr. Barbas, this is Watch Officer Sardelis in the Information Center. Please answer, sir.” The voice was a wail coming through the wall speaker behind him.

  “Stop shouting! If you don’t have a damn good reason for bothering me, I’ll have your ears cut off.”

  “Please come down here right away, sir. I don’t know what to do.”

  He knew panic when he heard it. “I’m on my way.”

  In the Information Center on the 02 level, Sardelis was standing wide-eyed in front of a fifty-inch computer monitor. When he saw Barbas, he jumped back and pointed at the monitor. The screen was frozen on a scene Barbas had observed many times—his mining operation on the seafloor. Even in the murky water, the robot work force and the crusher/grinder were visible in the beams from the head lamps.

  “Sir, this is the—”

  “I know what I’m seeing.”

  “I ran the recording back for you. I’ll start it now.” He touched the control in his hand and stepped even farther away.

  The robot crew jerked into motion, executing their tasks based on computer programs he’d paid millions to have written.

  “There, sir, on the left side.”

  It was a very small submarine with a sleek design and no identifying markings. An intruder. Then the unthinkable happened. It fired a torpedo that obliterated a line-up of his ore movers that had cost him $1.5 million apiece.

  “You bastards,” he snarled at the image on the monitor.

  The submarine fired a second torpedo that came almost straight at the camera mounted on the crusher. The camera lens couldn’t see the impact, but the picture on the monitor wobbled. The torpedo had obviously smashed into the crusher.

  If his anger were a weapon, the submarine would explode on the spot. Instead, it fired at the crusher again. Seconds later, the video feed quit. Sardelis melded into a corner of the Information Center.

  “Sardelis, is crushed ore still coming up to the platform?”

  “No sir, and—”

  “What else, for Christ’s sake?”

  “The robots were controlled from inside the crusher building. We can no longer direct them. So”—he clearly wanted to stop and get away—“the remaining robots will continue in whatever direction they were going until they run out of power.”

  Petros couldn’t get any words out. In less than one minute, his revenue flow from mining had been destroyed. That meant that the methane—A terrible thought hit him.

  “Pull up the video feed from cameras at the methane hydrate drill rig.”

  “Yes, sir, but the lights there are turned on only when we’re installing new equipment, so I don’t think—”

  “Do it anyway.”

  “It will take a minute to scroll back to approximately the same time period.”

  Scroll back. What is he talking about?

  “I have it, sir.”

  The camera lens saw the drill rigs and the risers. It also saw the powerful light source, a ring of globes mounted on the same submarine.

  He knew what was coming. More torpedoes. The end of his empire. He saw a torpedo exit the sub at high speed and gritted his teeth. Only his anger kept him from looking away. Then the torpedo disappeared into the darkness. The sub still wasn’t lined up facing his equipment when a second fired, again into the darkness, and a third. No explosions.

  While the sub’s lights still illuminated the area, he saw that the drilling template, its tubes and wiring, and his new methane storage tanks were still intact. He scoffed at so-called miracles, but something inexplicable had just happened.

  Why hadn’t they demolished that site too? Maybe the sub’s captain stumbled into this place and didn’t understand what he was seeing. His mind turned to Renatus’s site next to the HTV. Had they found it? Destroyed it? It had no cameras, so monitors wouldn’t answer that. He also didn’t care. He had a new priority. Destroy everyone connected with that submarine.

  Sardelis edged a little closer. “Do you want me to scroll back for another look at the mining site?”

  “Scroll back?” With a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, he asked, “How old is what we’re looking at?”

  Sensing another eruption coming, Sardelis’s shoulders hunched inward. “Sir, the cameras record nonstop. Nothing ever happens, so the protocol is to review the feed every four hours to make sure the robots are functioning properly.”

  “The events we just saw, how long ago did they take place?”

  Sardelis referred to an instrument and said, “Three hours and thirty-one minutes, sir.”

  He concentrated his thoughts on the attacker. It was a very small sub and probably slow, so it had to have a mothership not far away. His helicopter scouts had reported a ship named Challenger in the area on and off for the past week. In fact, he’d sent one of his helos to intimidate it to keep it away from Chaos. It had gotten the message and left. Challenger, he knew from the research he’d had done, was owned by Steve Drake, whose passion for hydrothermal vents was well-known. Conclusion: the sub owned and almost certainly captained by Drake was on its way back to Challenger right this minute.

  He yanked the phone off the bulkhead clip and punched in a number. “Dravos, this is an emergency. Get one Ka-52 and one transport chopper airborne. Search until you locate Challenger. Have the transport chopper do a fly-by to look for a small submarine on the surface. If you see it, sink it. It may also be on Challenger’s deck. If it’s there, sink Challenger. If you don’t see the sub at all, take no action until you do. Use missiles from over the horizon. I want that sub and its crew eliminated without warning. Keep me informed.”

  He didn’t care about Challenger or its crew. It was Steve Drake who had drawn first blood. He would kill him for that. He glanced at Sardelis. When this was over, he’d have him locked in the brig for a month.

  Back on his Admiral’s Bridge, he stood and stared at the ocean in shock. There was something else he had to do. “Renatus, report to the Admiral’s Bridge on the double.”

  RENATUS STEPPED back after watching the replay on the computer monitor, pupils sliding up and down as he calculated the consequences, immediate and far-reaching, of the destruction of the mining equipment. He clasped his hands so tightly the fingertips turned white. His body trembled. “You must destroy that submarine.”

  “I’ve already given that order.”

  “I have ideas that will improve the mining site when you rebuild it. That will take—”

  “Forget it. You’ve overlooked something obvious. Since there are rich deposits all around that HTV, it logically follows that the richest depository of gold and silver must be in the HTV itself. That’s why I’m going to put all thousand feet of that HTV through a rebuilt crusher. I’m also going to excavate as deep as I can into the vent below the seabed. I might even drop bombs down the son of a bitch’s throat to open it up.”

  Watching Renatus, whose body language he’d come to know well, he had the eerie sensation that Renatus’s mind was no longer fully present, that part of it was running background programs in a separate
reality. “Renatus, give me a status report on the methane hydrate project.”

  When Renatus finally said, “I have good news,” his voice had as little inflection as one of his robots. “I’ve devised a new method of delivering focused beams of heat in a rotating pattern directed on each methane hydrate deposit. That should destabilize the methane hydrate just enough to release the methane without causing a violent eruption. I’ve loaded my algorithms into the computers, and all of the equipment is in place.”

  “Excellent. Get started.”

  “I need more lab tests to get temperatures and length of heat stimuli exactly right. My first field test below the seabed produced a major methane burp. The next two started small tremors. The fourth test was larger and produced an earthquake and tidal wave.”

  “But you’ve improved the technique with every test. Remember that a few lives lost are nothing compared to the benefits from capturing the energy locked in methane hydrate.”

  “True, but if you make this operational now, there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll create a massive tsunami. Give me a little more time, and you’ll be Midas.”

  Was success really that close? Or was Renatus jerking him around like that goddamn Strider had tried to do? If he could just get a respectable flow of methane going, he could fight off his creditors until the big strike came in.

  That made him think about how close that sub had come to wiping out the methane site. How had Drake found either one of those sites? Why had he attacked them? Whatever the answers, he’d die for what he’d done. Even if sending the big helo to sink Challenger led to an investigation, no one would dare challenge him after he got the methane flowing.

  He stepped closer to Renatus. “There is no more time. You have two hours to finish your on-board tests. If you’re not ready to go after that, I’ll use the settings you’ve programmed into the computers and implement them throughout the entire methane extraction system.”

  “You can’t—”

  His temper flared. No one dared tell him he couldn’t do whatever he wanted.

  “I can, and I’m going to.”

  He looked at Renatus to see how he was taking the ultimatum. He sensed the last thing he expected. Not anger. Not defiance. He sensed fear.

  Chapter 37

  July 30

  5:30 p.m.

  Aboard Challenger

  PEGASUS POPPED UP like a dolphin, then buried her bow underwater and surfaced again before stabilizing. Jack immediately scanned the sky. No choppers in sight. The sub slid into its sling and was hauled aboard. The hydraulic lock hissed as it released the quartz dome. Drake stood in the cockpit shouting orders at his crew. Jack understood the compulsion that had made Drake fire those torpedoes. It was almost a mental illness, but the consequences were likely to be horrendous.

  As soon as Pegasus was secure and he and Drake were on the deck, Gano and Molly joined them. “Tell us about it,” Gano said.

  “No time for that,” Drake barked. Then he yelled to the pilot of the rented helicopter, “Warm up your engines and stand by.” His brusque tone broadcast that he was holding back a lot of anger that could easily explode.

  “Gano, you and Molly meet me in the cabin,” Jack said. He saw Gano’s eyes register that something must have gone badly wrong.

  He walked over to Drake, who was talking with the helo pilot. “Steve, I’m going to the cabin to talk with Gano and Molly.”

  “Talk in the helo. All three of you are outbound.”

  “It has to be now, because you have to be there.” Maybe it was his tone, maybe it was curiosity, but Drake scowled and followed him to the cabin.

  When they were gathered, Jack said, “Everything has changed. Steve fired three torpedoes and destroyed Barbas’s mining operation. The methane hydrate drilling site is still intact.”

  “You jackass!” Gano said quietly. “Barbas will trace the sub to this ship.” He paused. “Then he’ll send his attack helicopters to use us for target practice.”

  “Not in U.S. territorial waters,” Drake said, “and I’ve already given orders to lay in a course for Seattle. Don’t worry about it.”

  Gano stepped forward and looked down at Drake. “Those choppers can fly ten times as fast as Challenger can pound through the waves. You’ve sacrificed all of us because you got a hard-on for Barbas. I ought to throw your ass off the stern.”

  Drake didn’t flinch. On his own turf, he wasn’t about to back down. “Not bloody likely,” he said, and reached for a short piece of line resting on a table and tied the ends together with a complex knot. He jerked it to make sure it held, but it flew apart, sending his fists wide. He glowered at Gano.

  Jack knew how he’d feel if Debra were aboard Challenger right now. He’d join Gano in pitching Drake over the side. “Knock it off,” he snapped. “Because of those torpedoes, Barbas has lost his mining income, but he still has the methane hydrate operation. Now that he’s cornered, he’ll go after it like a wild man.”

  “The last time he tried that,” Molly said, “he started a tsunami. He wouldn’t risk doing it again.”

  “He will, because”—Jack looked at Drake—“we’ve made him even more desperate. Debra had one of our CPAs conduct an investigation of Barbas’s financial condition. Major revenue sources are down, and he’s been eating up a several-hundred-million-dollar line of credit. As soon as he misses a couple of payments, that line will be called. He has to go after the methane or go under.”

  “Even if that means sinking Chaos?” Gano asked.

  “He’s not worried about that,” Drake said. “A massive methane burp could threaten the platform, but a tsunami wouldn’t form until it was miles away.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Jack said. “Barbas will risk destroying the platform. He will risk triggering a tsunami. So the only way to stop what he intends to do is to take him down personally.”

  “Kill him,” Drake said.

  “How are we going to do that?” Gano asked. “Invite him aboard for cocktails?”

  “The odds against us are terrible, but we have to board Chaos and take it over,” Jack said. The words came out so easily, but that platform was a fortress. Thinking about its size and weapons and guards gave him a knot in his gut and made him doubt his sanity.

  He was also telling them they had to launch a preemptive strike, attack Barbas because he was probably going to do something that might be disastrous. From his years of teaching law, he knew that, between nations, preemptive strikes were condemned. Between individuals, they were almost always illegal. When some politicians had declared preemptive strikes acceptable, he’d opposed them. In this case, he thought it was the only way. Yeah, which was what everyone else claimed in their own situations.

  “To do that,” he said, “we need the ore carrier Palinouros to take us there. Problem is, it won’t sail for Chaos for two more days. Molly, Heinz told me that sometimes he’s called out to Chaos ahead of schedule. That happen often?”

  Molly had been hanging back. Now she stepped into the circle. “Those ore carriers sail past Astoria day and night. Nobody pays attention. They make off-schedule runs, but there’s no way to predict whether Heinz might head out early.”

  “Two days could be too late. I’m going to try again to reach Gorton and get him to get the Navy involved, maybe even an air strike.”

  “The President?” Molly sounded incredulous.

  “I called Gorton last night to warn him about Barbas, but got his assistant instead. He said Gorton wasn’t taking calls and doubted he could get a message to him. That’s why I have to try again.” He placed the call to the private number and waited, throat tight, hoping he’d hear Gorton’s voice on the other end.

  “Corte here, Mr. Strider.”

  “Mr. Corte, did you get my message to the President?”

  “Negotia
tions in the conference room went on most of the night. No one not already in the room with President Gorton is going to get in until . . . well, period. However, I wrote down your message and passed it into the room in a sealed envelope. The President hasn’t responded.”

  “Corte, I don’t care whether the man is sitting on the crapper or in conference with the Pope. You have to get this call through to him.”

  “One minute, sir.” Silence, then, “I just checked the Pope’s schedule, sir. He’s in South Africa at this moment. As for the other—”

  “Knock it off, Corte. The danger I told you about yesterday has escalated. Now I have photographs that show equipment that can trigger an earthquake and tsunami that could devastate the west coast from San Francisco to Alaska. Give me a secure email address, so you can get those photos to the President.” He listened and took it down in his left-handed scrawl.

  “I’ll have your photos printed,” Corte said.

  “The photos are a smoking gun, but they won’t mean anything to the President unless he understands what the ‘gun’ is. I have to talk with him immediately. He should have the Secretary of Defense on the line as well.”

  “If they take a break, I will hand them to him. If he tells me to, I’ll call you back.” The connection went dead.

  Damn. What if Corte knew he couldn’t get through but wasn’t willing to say so? If he did get through, Gorton might once again exercise his uncanny ability to make the wrong decision in an emergency. Even if Gorton agreed there was a problem, he might refuse to attack a foreign-owned platform in international waters. Gorton always made the choice that was politically safest for him. This time, that could be fatal.

  He handed Drake the email address. “Send the photos immediately, and then have someone contact Palinouros for me.”

  “I’ll go tell Lou to do both.” Drake said. “I’ll give you this, Strider, you’ve got brass balls.”

  It was good Drake thought so, but he felt more like his balls were in a wringer.

  After Drake left, Gano said, “Just in case we get to Chaos before Armageddon, what will we do then?”