by Don Keith
“Hey, Doc,” the Irish roustabout yelled over to McDougal. “We only got twenty percent on the battery charge. We ain’t got time for no lollygaggin’ about, you know.”
McDougal checked her watch. They had less than three hours.
“Well, we sure as hell don’t have time to bring her up for a battery charge,” she noted. “Reckon we go with what we have and not what we wish we had.” She pointed at a Chinese screen monitoring the emergency pinger from the trapped submersible. “Feed those coordinates into the UUV. We need to tell the Raptor where to look.”
It took almost half an hour for the well-rested UUV to travel from its former nesting place over to the coordinates coming from the emergency pinger. Once the Sea Raptor was in the area, it took another twenty minutes for it to dive deeper and locate the bottomed DSV.
Smith and O’Donnell huddled around McDougal’s monitor. Sun Ryn stood off to one side. This was now Smith’s show. Along with his crew and the American military. He would stand by to do whatever he needed to.
The compressed video being sent up from the Sea Raptor was noisy and barely in focus after traveling over six miles through saltwater. Still, they could make out the orange and white DSV, and could tell it was canted over onto its port side. As best they could determine, it appeared that at least two of the propulsors were badly mangled and the sub’s steel outer hull had a number of scrapes and deep dents.
Something had slapped the vessel around pretty good. And that did not bode well for the condition of the three men aboard.
McDougal carefully maneuvered the UUV around to the bow of the DSV and nudged her a bit closer. They could all then see a dim light shining out from the front viewing port. The video was terribly fuzzy, making it almost impossible to see anything through the thick transparent material of the viewing port.
“I see movement!” McDougal yelled excitedly. “Somebody’s still alive in there!”
O’Donnell, ever the contrarian where McDougal was concerned, piped up with, “Nothing but a bad picture. You’re just seeing what you want to see. That’s shifting silt is what that is.”
“Shifting silt my ass! That’s…”
Rex Smith interrupted her hot retort. “Children, we can duke this out later. Right now, we got an hour to get that thing sprung loose and on the way to the surface.” The researcher squinted at the monitor. “And for what it’s worth, I thought I saw movement, too. Maybe even somebody waving.”
The little UUV slowly circumnavigated the downed DSV, looking from all angles. Sun Ryn finally stepped in closer so that he could see his trapped charge. The grainy video made it difficult, but to his eye, the damage looked minimal. That is, except for the lost propulsors.
Then Sun spied the tow link to the MRV, the attachment that had been hauling the load of gold. The shackle was badly mangled. The tow cable disappeared into the mound of debris.
Sun touched the screen, pointing to a spot on the video image. “Right there. That is at least one of the problems. The mineral recovery unit will be on the other end of that cable. It is almost certainly buried under all that rock and mud. And likely weighed down with a load of gold.”
O’Donnell called out, “We got another problem, Doc. We’re down to ten percent charge. Don’t forget, at five percent, the emergency power protocols kick in and she’ll start to shut down to preserve essential power.”
Everyone in the room looked at O’Donnell. The Irishman had a deep frown on his face. “At that low power level, there would only be enough juice to get the Sea Raptor herself to the surface. Not a hitchhiker. And all the other sensors and auxiliary systems, like the video and the manipulator arms, would have automatically shut down to shunt every available amp to the propulsion system.”
Despite O’Donnell’s update, McDougal continued to maneuver the little UUV around until she could deploy an arm to reach out and grab the tow cable shackle. Then she could at least attempt to pull it free.
No. It was quickly apparent that the shackle was jammed shut and would not open.
“Hey, remember the lower port manipulator has a cable cutter attachment,” O’Donnell reminded her. “In fact, you’re the one who insisted it be added. Maybe you can finally get some use of that waste of time and money.”
“Not a waste. That was added to be able to cut cable. Fishing line. Anything we might get snagged on,” McDougal said. “I don’t know if…”
Sun Ryn interrupted her. “Please be aware that is three-centimeter high-tensile-strength steel in that cable. Made to pull heavy loads. I am sorry. I do not believe you will be able to cut it.”
McDougal grimaced but continued to manipulate the joystick controls on the console.
“Don’t happen to have a cutting torch on me right now,” she offered.
Then she swapped controls on manipulator arms and swung the lower port arm into position. Delicately, she began closing the grip of the cable cutter, biting down on the cable. The teeth of the device had just come into contact with the cable when a loud alarm bleated, startling them all as they quietly watched McDougal doing her delicate maneuvering.
The five-percent-power warning. Sensor screens went to their “failed system” outputs. The video screen went dark.
McDougal yelled, “Manual override the protocol!”
But O’Donnell was already flipping through control pull-down menus on the computer terminal. He clicked the mouse and the screech of the alarm stopped.
“Manual override in place,” he reported. “Sandy, hurry up or we’ll lose everything. I don’t know how long we have before the battery cells go below minimum voltage. We’ve never abused her this way before.”
McDougal closed the grip more on the cable cutter. She grasped the manipulator in a vise grip, as if her pressure on the controls would help the blades cut through the steel miles below them. “Mitch, I’m giving it all the close pressure I can muster. Let me know if the claw position is making any dent in it. And when it is fully closed.”
“It’s bit into the bastard just a tad. But still only at three centimeters.”
Not a person in the room breathed. The research ship rocked gently in the sea swells. O’Donnell fairly whispered the next reading.
“Two centimeters.”
Either the cutter was making progress, or the blades were simply skewing against the hard cable, giving a false reading of its progress.
A red light flashed on the control panel and an especially loud alarm bell sounded. O’Donnell silenced the alarm bell with a slap of a switch.
“Low cell voltage warning on the starboard battery,” he reported. “One centimeter on the cutter.”
“One centimeter.”
Brrrnnnggg! Another raucous warning.
“Low cell voltage alarm on the port battery now. She’s spent. She’s spent, Sandy.”
Every screen went dark. McDougal looked up. Sweat poured from her forehead and down across her chin. There were tears in her eyes.
“Dammit, Mitch. We lost it. We were so very close.” She glanced at her watch and wiped away drops of perspiration from its dial face. “And we still had fifteen minutes of air.”
Sun Ryn stepped over to one of the Fendouji control panels on the other side of the compartment.
“We can only hope you got all the way through the cable when we lost power.” He flipped a couple of switches. “The vessel has some natural buoyancy, but we can help her if she is free of the cable. Just in case. It is our only hope. And I doubt the men down there would begrudge our trying.”
Sun opened a little cover and flipped a switch.
“Help?” McDougal and O’Donnell asked in unison.
“There, that shifts control of the Fendouji to us and simultaneously initiates an emergency surface.” He checked a digital clock on the wall of the compartment. “From that depth, if my mental calculations are correct, it would take about ten minutes for the Fendouji to transit to the surface. Assuming, of course, that she is freed. And I choose to so assume. I sug
gest we all go out on the main deck to watch. It should be quite exciting.”
Mitch and Sandy looked at each other. Slight as it was, there was still a chance.
The group moved outside onto the deck, stepping into the bright late-afternoon sunlight. It felt good. The control room had deliberately been kept cold. Everyone watched the sea around them, unsure where the DSV might surface. If it ever would.
But the deep, blue sea was empty and undisturbed. Nothing to the horizon in any direction except for the three ships, clustered together, as if holding hands for a homecoming.
Nothing. Eight minutes. Nine minutes. Ten minutes had passed and still nothing. McDougal and O’Donnell exchanged a mournful glance, no interest in sparring for the moment. It had been a long shot from the beginning. A literal shot in the dark.
McDougal fought to hold back tears. The worst thing was that she had seen movement inside the little stranded submersible. Somebody alive in there. Someone whose hopes were raised when Sea Raptor showed up, lights shining.
But it was not to be.
Then someone at the north rail let out a whoop.
“I see something! Look! Out there!”
A half mile to the north. It was an orange and white shape shooting impossibly high out of the water, and at an impossibly upward angle. Broaching like a freed whale. The thing splashed back down and bobbed on the surface. They could just make out its tiny sail.
A pair of RHIBs shot out from the Zhang Jian just as the MH-53 helicopter spooled up and pulled away, headed off to the little mini-sub. The King Stallion was there almost immediately and began hovering ten feet above the sub, its rotor wash kicking up a storm of sea spray. Four divers stepped off the back ramp of the helo and dropped into the water. They were still struggling to inflate a float collar around the sub when the RHIBs arrived on the scene. It took the divers several minutes to undog and open the damaged access hatch. They had just pulled out the two unconscious men when the hastily rigged float ring failed.
Without the buoyancy, the capsule, which was already flooding through the open hatch, quickly sank back into the sea like an unleashed boulder. As if the vessel really preferred being down there in the dark deep.
But the survivors were out and the divers clear. The two rescues—all two dead weight, not conscious—were quickly hoisted up to the helicopter for the flight back to Pago Pago and medical attention.
Back on the Zhang Jian, everyone cheered and slapped each other on the back. Mission accomplished.
Mitch O’Donnell and Sandy McDougal joined hands, looked into each other’s grinning faces, and then danced an especially spirited Irish jig, even without the proper fiddle-and-pipe accompaniment. Then the two fell easily into each other’s arms, held each other tightly for a long while, not really caring what anybody thought about the two usual adversaries embracing.
Then they kissed. Long and deeply.
When they finally pulled apart, Sandy looked up, staring deeply into Mitch’s eyes.
“I told you all along the auto shutdown routine should cut power at two percent, not three,” she scolded.
“And you know this battery technology can get awful nasty under load with insufficient voltage available!” he shot back.
They were still chirping at each other—but holding hands—as they went below with the others for a celebratory round of drinks.
Epilogue
President Stan Smitherman slammed the phone down with such force, it bounced right back off its cradle and to the Oval Office floor.
“Tan Yong is a conceited, overblown, two-faced ass,” he growled, primarily at Secretary of State Sandra Dosetti. “The son of a bitch is demanding that we release those two ships down in Tonga and pay reparations for damaging the one and sinking their sub. And he wants me to make an apology at the United Nations! All because he and his henchmen got caught trying to steal my gold!”
Dosetti struggled to suppress a smile. Smitherman was doing a fine job of backing himself into a corner. One from which he could never escape without serious political damage. Meanwhile, her backchannel efforts to become the candidate to replace him on the ticket immediately after his poll data plummeted were looking better all the time.
“Stan, calm yourself before you have a stroke. Remember what the doctor said about your blood pressure. You sure don’t want the voters to know those particular numbers.” She waited a beat for him to stop ranting, close his eyes, tap his temples with his fingertips, and calm himself down. A tactic he had certainly learned from that Tibetan shaman he had employed and moved into his own quarters at Camp David, all to help the president relax. A bit of trivia Dosetti already had placed with key leakers, poised to share with the press. That quirky move alone would give her Texas and Iowa. “Now, why don’t we just play hardball with Tan Yong. Voters love that shit. Remind the Chinese that we now have in custody the people in his regime who were trying to make off with the gold for themselves. Make sure they know that this whole affair was almost certainly a coup attempt, at least based on what they are telling us.”
“Yeah, about that,” Smitherman replied, the scarlet starting to return to his face. “He is demanding that we repatriate both of the Yon brothers. ‘My most trusted military leaders,’ he called them. Says he’ll back off Taiwan if we do.”
“And?”
“I’m going to agree to that. We can spin it that we stood up to the Chinese over Taiwan and they blinked. And we make a big deal out of having sent the Chinese packing without any shooting on our part. Nobody will have to know about that trigger-happy submarine jockey and the lost PLAN sub, right? If anyone complains about our giving back the brothers, they were just criminals that we extradited. That’ll play pretty damn well in Peoria.”
“No one cares about Peoria anymore. It has to play on Wall Street and in the media,” Dosetti reminded him. “The gold?”
“We blame that all on King What’s-his-name. Never could get that guy’s name right. Anyway, it’s all his fault. We could have gone in there and gotten a reasonable portion of it, provided thousands of jobs in the process, and shared the wealth with the world’s emerging nations. You know, piping water to the Sahara. Building toilets in the Congo. Right? Hell, we’ll get the press office to figure out the right angle.”
Smitherman paused to take a big drink from the whiskey-and-water on his desk. Angling for leverage. He was back in his natural element. But Dosetti knew those same leakers to the press would soon share the fact that Smitherman was stone-cold drunk every night by the time he went to bed. “In the meantime, we need to figure out how we’re going to pay for all the campaign airtime and social media crap we contracted for when we thought we could tap into all that gold. I’ve got calls in to a couple of PACs that…”
Dosetti settled back in her chair, hardly listening. Her conversations with her Wall Street backers and the party leadership were going to be even more interesting than she had previously hoped.
And to think, only a few months ago, she was angling only for the senate or vice-presidency. Now? Now the whole enchilada was hers to gobble up.
Ψ
Jon Ward slid from the driver’s side seat of the rental car. His son, Jim, climbed out of the passenger side, stretching out the kinks from the short but cramped ride from the airport. But before either could complain any more about the dearth of full-size rental cars at Daniel K. Inouye International, they heard somebody yelling their names.
Tom Donnegan came bounding out the door of his house and charging toward them down the driveway. He grabbed both his visitors in a massive, three-way bear hug.
“Lord God a’mighty, it’s about time you two war-horses showed up to pay homage!” He stepped back and looked the younger Ward up and down. “Jim-boy, you’re looking a little peaked and underweight. How in hell you gonna save the world if you’re so weak and scrawny? I figure you need some of Louise’s cooking. Woman’s been in the kitchen since she heard y’all were coming.” He turned to Jon Ward. “Hey, where’s the
smartest and best-looking one in the family?”
“She’s on the twenty-hundred United flight from SFO,” Ward answered as they walked toward the front door. “I was hoping we would have time to sit out on your lanai, sip some mai tais, and swap stories until it’s time to swing back down to the airport and collect her and her six suitcases of stuff.” He pointed at his subcompact rental. “We’ll need to borrow your Land Rover to haul it.”
“Sounds like a plan. Papa Tom’s Uber Service, open for business.”
After a stop with more hugs with Louise Donnegan, the three made their way out onto the lanai and its spectacular view of Pearl Harbor. A submarine was making its way past Ford Island, outbound. Donnegan peered through his mounted telescope, told them the sub’s hull number and name and its likely destination and mission. The man still clearly kept up with the comings and goings in his beloved US Navy.
They settled in with their drinks, a platter of pu-pus, and idle catch-up conversation until Tom Donnegan finally asked the question they all knew was coming.
“How did that whole China thing turn out?”
Jon Ward took the lead. Papa Tom may have retired, but he still held his clearance status and was often consulted, not just by Jon, his successor, but others throughout naval intelligence.
“Looks like the Chinese are pulling back, pretty much with their tails between their legs. The three remaining subs are steaming on the surface, northbound. They should be somewhere off Luzon about now. Their research ship, the Zhang Jian, is being released and heading back toward Shanghai. We are holding the Pearl Moon, pending charges in the International Court. From all the prancing around in DC, I expect that we will probably let them go, too. It’s an election year coming up, you know, so I’d say the president and the appropriate cabinet members will do whatever it takes to look good on the nightly news. And make sure nobody knows the rest of the story.”