Nighthawk

by Clive Cussler

  “I can see it from here,” Emma said. “The frame around the retrieval container is snagged on the wreckage.”

  Kurt moved the sub forward and then backed up again, trying to pull free. But it was no use. The Angler was hooked.

  A third try did nothing to free them, and the wreckage around them began to brighten as the peripheral light from the Typhoon reached the area.

  Kurt had no choice. He rotated the thrusters and forced the Angler back into the wreckage, crashing down and shutting everything off.

  “What are you doing?” Emma asked, in shock.

  “Hiding,” he said. “It’s the only choice we have.”

  The light around them grew brighter, filtering through gaps in the airframe like morning sun through high windows. The throbbing sound of the Typhoon’s thrusters grew until the submarine appeared directly above them, rotating slowly until it was aligned into the current once again.

  The maroon hull was marked with long scars of corrosion and algae while the lighted gap of the cargo bay shimmered with a sterile white glow.

  Two divers in hard suits traveled up toward it, ascending with smaller pieces of debris in their nets and vanishing into the flooded hold. A moment later, the huge bucket reappeared. It traveled on rails in the cargo bay ceiling, stopping and locking into position almost directly above the Angler.

  “This is not good,” Emma whispered.

  Kurt couldn’t have agreed more.

  The bucket remained stationary for what seemed an eternity, its clamshell jaws opening slowly and locking into position. Finally, with nothing more than a pitiful squeak, it began to drop.

  There was no mistaking its destination. The huge bucket was dropping straight for the wreckage pile and the NUMA submersible hiding in it.

  17

  The outstretched jaws of the retrieval bucket plunged downward, crashing into the wreckage surrounding the Angler. Metal screeched as it was torn and twisted. A cloud of silt erupted from the impact site and the Angler tilted over to one side.

  With the teeth of the bucket embedded in the silt below, the powerful hydraulic struts activated. The jaws were forced together, burrowing through the silt, until they slammed shut beneath the heap of tangled metal.

  The powerful winch in the Typhoon’s cargo bay was engaged and the steel cables pulled taut, straining against the suction created by the sediment. The resistance didn’t last. With a sudden lurch, the latest collection of wreckage was pulled from the seafloor to begin its journey upward.

  Watching from the outside, the divers in hard suits saw nothing to differentiate this load of material from any other. It was just another stack of twisted metal being hauled away, with a long trail of silt pouring from the gaps and streaming in the current.

  As the bucket neared the opening in the Typhoon’s hull, a maneuver called the shake was performed. The ascent was halted and the jaws were opened a few inches. The tension on the cable was released and the bucket allowed to fall several feet before being stopped.

  Each time the crane operator shook the bucket, a new cloud poured from the bottom. After several shakes, there was little sediment left. The jaws were closed once again. The winch was reactivated and the load drawn into the cargo bay.

  Once it was fully retracted, the bucket began to move horizontally. At a predetermined position, it stopped and dumped the latest pile of wreckage on the inner deck.

  Inside the Angler, Kurt and Emma were thrown about. They remained in their seats. When they were finally dropped inside the Typhoon, both of them were amazed to be alive. The claws had gone under and around them. The hull hadn’t been punctured or even scratched; the acrylic of the canopy was free of cracks.

  “Look at the size of this hold,” Emma said, gazing around.

  “Used to be the missile bay,” Kurt said. “In their original configuration, Typhoons carried twenty-four extremely large ICBMs. The largest ever deployed to sea.”

  As Kurt spoke, he got his bearings. The bay was filled with water, which could be pumped out once the heavy doors were closed. At the moment, they were facing aft and tilted over at a thirty-degree angle. To get free, they’d have to rise up, make a U-turn and then dive out through the opening. Assuming, of course, that they could get free.

  Leaning across the cockpit, Kurt spotted the offending piece of wreckage. “I think I can cut us loose.”

  “Better be quick,” Emma said. “There’s not much wreckage left down there.”

  Kurt moved an acetylene torch into position. At the touch of a button, it snapped to life. He brought it up against the bent metal spar that had snagged them. The flame burned bright blue and the metal flared, red and molten, dropping away in burning fragments.

  As he worked, the Typhoon repositioned itself and the retrieval bucket descended once again.

  Emma watched the gearing above them spin. The cable let out for several seconds and then came to a rather abrupt stop. “Now would be a good time,” she urged.

  Kurt continued to burn through the length of metal, watching small bits melt and fall off. It seemed to be taking forever, as if the metal was made of something other than aluminum.

  The gearing above began to spin as the cable was reeled in to bring the next load of wreckage on board.

  “Hurry, Kurt,” Emma urged.

  “I’m cutting as fast as I can.”

  The torch finished its cut and a large triangular piece fell away. The Angler was free.

  Kurt switched over to the throttle, tilted the thrusters and poured on the power. The Angler rose up out of the junk pile, shedding metallic debris and the coating of silt it had acquired.

  Once they were above the wreckage, Kurt spun the submersible in a half circle and accelerated toward the open gap at the end of the cargo bay. They reached the edge, dove downward underneath the bucket just as it shook loose its next great cloud of silt.

  Momentarily blinded, Kurt kept the throttle wide open. When they emerged on the far side, they were in the clear, headed for the darkness and safety beyond.

  Sitting in the operations room of the Typhoon, Captain Victor Tovarich of the Russian 1st Salvage Flotilla watched the operation unfold on several screens, each linked to cameras on the underside of the Typhoon. An additional screen was divided into four quadrants and displayed the video feed from cameras mounted on the divers’ hard suits.

  He was proud of his men and his great machine but anxious to complete the project. He turned to his second-in-command. “Progress report.”

  “Eighty percent of main wreckage recovered,” the officer replied.

  “Any sign of the Nighthawk?”

  “No, sir,” the officer replied. “I’m afraid not.”

  “It has to be here,” he said, walking over to the monitor to study the grainy picture that was coming in. “We know they had it in their grasp.”

  “Permission to speak freely?” his First Officer said.

  “Of course.”

  “If the Nighthawk is not with the bomber, we should stop wasting our time on this recovery and get back to searching for the American craft.”

  Tovarich resisted the urge to smile. His First Officer was a charger. He wanted the glory that came with plucking the American space plane off the bottom. He wasn’t alone. “I share your desire, Mikael. But they’ve decided in Moscow that this craft is a priority.”

  The officer nodded.

  “Besides,” Tovarich added. “It could still be here. There was always a chance that the pilots managed to hold on to the Nighthawk even as they lost control.”

  “A blind man’s chance of catching a sparrow.”

  “Perhaps,” Tovarich agreed. “Only an airman could come up with such a plan. We should salute their bravery. Which reminds me, we’ll need to search the wreckage in the cargo bay and recover the bodies.”

  He reached over and tappe
d a button, switching one of the monitors to an internal camera view. “Have one of the divers report to . . .”

  Tovarich froze midsentence. Something on the screen caught his eye. A flickering light: fire. His first concern—that they’d brought something combustible on board—vanished as the firelight snapped off, but his confusion grew worse as he saw movement in the wreckage. “What in the name of . . .”

  Tovarich watched in disbelief as a white submersible with a broad red stripe rose out of the tangled metal and spun around. It came forward, heading right toward the camera, and then dove out through the open cargo bay doors, but not before Tovarich noticed the letters NUMA prominently displayed on the top of the submersible.

  Rushing to the tactical section of his control room, Tovarich grabbed the sonar operator. “We have an uninvited guest out there,” he said. “American submersible. Find them!”

  The sonar operator worked feverishly, pressing the earphones to his head and listening for the tiny, electric-powered submersible. With all the background noise, it proved impossible.

  “It’s no good, Captain. Too much interference from the salvage team and the thrusters.”

  Tovarich turned to the navigation officer. “Thrusters off. All stop. Shut down the salvage operation.”

  The positioning thrusters were turned off and the vibration they produced began to fade. As the Typhoon began to drift, the work outside came to a halt as well. No one dare move.

  “Anything?” Tovarich asked.

  The sonar operator continued searching. Finally, a signal emerged.

  “Small craft,” he said. “Bearing zero-four-five. Depth seven-fifty and rising.”

  “I want a positive range-and-firing solution,” Tovarich said.

  The tactical officer looked surprised. “Sir?”

  “That’s my order. Lock on and fire!”

  Out in the dark, racing as fast as they could and heading for the surface, Kurt and Emma listened through the hydrophone as a strange silence grew up in their wake. “They’ve shut down the thrusters,” Kurt said. “It means they’re listening for us.”

  He considered shutting down as well and drifting on the current, but if he did that, the Russians would just resort to active sonar and would find them eventually. The only way to be safe was to reach the surface. He doubted the Russians would do anything once they were out in the open.

  He angled the nose of the sub higher and watched as the depth went below seven hundred feet. They still had a long way to go when the sound of the Typhoon’s main engines coming back to life reached them.

  The heavy pinging of a sonar sweep caught them seconds later, followed by the sound Kurt was dreading: a sudden rush of compressed air as a torpedo was thrust into the water to track them down and destroy them.

  18

  The NUMA submersible was maneuverable, but not very fast. Certainly not in comparison to the torpedo homing in on it.

  “Use this to control the hydrophone,” Kurt said, placing Emma’s hand on a large dial. “Keep it focused on the torpedo. We need to hear it coming if we’re going to have any chance to avoid it.”

  “Torpedo?”

  “Shouldn’t have told you that,” Kurt said.

  A different kind of sonar found them next: rapid clicks with short intervals and a higher-pitched sound.

  “It’s locked onto us,” Kurt said.

  They’d put about a mile between themselves and the Typhoon by the time they were discovered. At that distance, and considering the comparative speeds, they might have forty seconds before getting obliterated.

  “Can you take evasive action?” Emma said.

  “We’re making eight knots,” Kurt said. “Nothing we do would be considered evasive. But we’re not out of options.”

  He reached past Emma to the cargo controls. “If we can create a diversion, we might survive.”

  Kurt had loaded the flight recorder into the right-hand cargo container. But the left-hand container was filled with nothing of real value, just junk from the wrecked bomber. Pressing one button, he unlocked the clasps that held it to the side of the Angler. Turning a pair of valves to full open, he inflated a pair of yellow bags attached to the container. The rush of bubbles drowned out all noise for several seconds and the bags expanded like hot-air balloons. They rose toward the surface and lifted the cargo container free.

  At almost the same instant, Kurt blew the air from the ballast tank and pointed the submersible straight down, hoping the wall of bubbles and the ascending cargo container would draw the torpedo off course.

  For several seconds, the water was too turbulent to hear anything, but as the disturbance cleared, Emma refocused the hydrophone. The sonar pings from the torpedo had changed pitch, becoming weaker.

  “It’s headed for the container,” Kurt said. “It’s lost us.”

  He kept the nose of the submersible pointed down and the throttles full open, trying to put as much distance between the torpedo and themselves as possible.

  “It’s still going to hurt when it explodes,” Emma said.

  She wasn’t wrong. Ten seconds later, a white and orange flash lit up the dark water as the torpedo obliterated the cargo container. The explosion caused a shock wave that slammed the Angler and sent it tumbling end over end.

  With his ears ringing, Kurt stabilized the sub. “Now to make them think they hit us.”

  He shut down the thrusters and blew the ballast tanks. The little sub righted itself and began moving upward, headed for the surface propelled by buoyancy alone.

  “I’m borrowing a play out of the old U-boat textbook,” Kurt said. “They would make their escape after the depth charges went off because the water was so turbulent, it was impossible for sonar to hear through for several minutes.”

  “Won’t they just ping us again?” Emma asked.

  “Maybe,” Kurt said. “But I’m betting they’ll just listen for wreckage first. And it’ll be a while before the water settles down enough for them to hear anything. By then, I’m hoping to be on the surface and out in the bright light of day.”

  The elevator ride picked up speed as the last drops of water were forced from the tanks. Kurt and Emma sat in silence, eyes locked on the slowly unwinding depth gauge.

  “Anything?” the Typhoon’s captain asked.

  The sonar operator was listening, but all he could hear were the bubbles and cavitation left over from the explosion. It had rendered the passive sonar temporarily useless.

  He waited and listened, keenly aware of the captain standing over his shoulder.

  “Well?”

  “Bubbles,” the sonar operator said. “A moderate volume of released air traveling toward the surface. That would indicate a hit.”

  “Any wreckage?” Tovarich asked.

  “Wreckage?” the tactical officer said. “Captain, that torpedo is designed to take out warships and American attack submarines. There won’t be enough left of that submersible to qualify as wreckage.”

  Tovarich understood, but he was a cautious man. “Humor me,” he said. “Use the active sonar. I want to be sure.”

  The sonar was adjusted, another ping was released and the return echo examined. The results astonished everyone on board. “Target zero-six-one,” the sonar operator said. “Depth one hundred and twenty feet and headed for the surface.”

  “Can we get them before they get there?”

  The tactical operator made a few quick calculations. “No, sir,” he said. “They’ll be up top before we can fire.”

  Tovarich hesitated. He had standing orders not to allow any interference in the salvage, but he’d also been given similar—and now conflicting—orders to keep the mission clandestine. “They know too much,” he said finally. “Load and fire. And, this time, you’d better not miss.”

  19

  Joe Zavala sat in the cockpit of the
Air-Crane as it rested quietly on the helipad near the bow of the Reunion. Captain Kamphausen was in the crane operator’s seat, working the winch controls and reeling in a long section of cable. At the far end was a jury-rigged contraption Joe and the Reunion’s engineers had built to pluck Angler off the bottom of the sea.

  “Are you sure this electromagnet is going to work?” Kamphausen asked.

  “I used the best coils from your main generator,” Joe said. “With the power from the Air-Crane’s aux unit, it should have plenty of power.”

  Still believing the Angler might be stuck on the bottom, Joe’s plan was to find the submersible with the side-scan sonar, lower the magnet down on a cable and stick it to the steel hull of the sub. That done, he’d reel them in.

  Kamphausen, who’d worked cranes for half his years at sea, would do the honors while Joe piloted the Air-Crane. He shut down the winch as soon as the final length of cable wrapped itself around the drum and the magnet locked in place. “Now all we have to do is find them,” he said.

  Before Joe could reply, a deep, echoing thud reached them from the port side. Joe turned to see a momentary bulge on the surface of the sea. The circular displacement rose up and then fell back, releasing a tower of white water and foam from its center.

  “Looks like someone else found them first,” Kamphausen said.

  Joe turned around and rushed through the preflight in record time, hitting the starter and getting the rotors moving above them. “Kurt and Emma must be on the move.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because there’s no other reason to shoot at them.”

  “At least we don’t have to get them off the bottom,” Kamphausen said.

  “I have a feeling they’re still going to need our help,” Joe said.

  As Kamphausen clicked his seat belt and the rotors flicked past at ever-increasing speed, Joe pulled on a headset and changed the frequency on the number one radio. He’d sent one of the small boats out on the water trailing the side-scan sonar and trying to pinpoint the location of the Angler without giving it away to the Russians. “Survey 1, did you catch that?”