Deep Time
Page 36
Eighteen hours before Hopper was scheduled to make port, Banfield was in a sour mood as he sat in his elevated captain’s chair on the bridge and stared across the vast Pacific. He paid no attention to idle comments from Lt. Ed Gardner, the officer of the deck. Suddenly an unusual movement a quarter mile dead ahead of the ship caught his eye. He set down a mug of black coffee and squinted but couldn’t identify what he saw.
“What the hell is that?” he snapped, and snatched his personal Steiner binoculars from beside the GPS.
Gardner was instantly at his side, raising his Navy-issue glasses. He pointed to where the water was growing more agitated. “The way the water’s riled up, it could be a sub about to surface, but none of ours is anywhere near here.”
“That’s no sub,” Banfield growled. Now he saw that a patch of water a hundred yards ahead of Hopper, wider than several football fields, was sending spouts high into the air. The surface of the patch had transformed from deep blue into silvery froth.
“I’ve never seen anything like that. I’d swear a hole is opening in the ocean ahead of us. Helmsman, hard right turn. Now!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Hopper heeled hard to starboard as she began a perilous high speed turn. Pounding forward through the swells at twenty six knots, she couldn’t turn nearly fast enough to avoid what was ahead.
Banfield knew it was too late.
The End
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About the Author
Rob Sangster is an award-winning author, Stanford lawyer, political appointee in Washington, D.C., newspaper columnist, sailor, rock climber, and has traveled in 110 countries so far. He and his mystery-writer wife divide their writing time between Memphis and the wild coast of Nova Scotia.