The captain shifted his gaze to the laptop screen. “I believe he’s up in the wardroom, talking to your company on the satellite phone. COMPACFLEET is busy signing promissory waivers, to make sure that you guys get paid in case we break your Mouse prototype, or lose it somehow in the rescue attempt.”
Ann nodded and turned back to the laptop.
“You didn’t sign on for any of this,” the captain said. “We understand that. You come out here to run some tests, and the Navy shoves a rescue mission in your face. We know you’re not ready, and we know that your equipment isn’t ready either.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “But, right now, your Mouse Mark-I is the only game in town.”
Ann nodded absently. “I understand, Captain.”
“I’m sure you do,” said the captain. “But I’d like to hit one more quick point before you get too far into this.”
Ann looked up and found that he was staring at her again.
“I know you’ll do your best,” he said. “But there are a lot of ways that this operation could go sour. There hadn’t been any communication with the
Ann nodded slowly. This was not quite turning into the Go-Navy pep talk she’d been expecting.
“We don’t know what kind of damage that submersible has taken,” the captain said. “They could be flooding, or running out of breathable air. If their electrical system has failed, they could die from hypothermia. The ocean temperature at three thousand feet is just a hair above freezing. Twenty four hours is a long time to go without heat, especially when your only clothes are light duty coveralls.”
He looked back to the laptop screen. “If they had an electrical fire, they might even have burned to death, or died from smoke inhalation.”
Ann rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. “Are you trying to cheer me up, Captain?”
The corners of his mouth turned up — the ghost of a rueful smile. “No. I’m just telling you that the odds of success are not in our favor. Everyone in the chain of command knows that. The Navy will take the heat if things don’t work out. You’re not going to be left holding the bag.”
Ann nodded. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate that.”
She turned back to the laptop. Yeah, right. For all of his noble words, Captain Eagle Scout would throw Ann and Sheldon to the wolves about two milliseconds after the shit hit the fan. That was the way these guys worked. When something went wrong, they went hunting for a scapegoat.
She scanned the screen. Mouse still hadn’t reported in. She’d give it another minute or so, just to be sure. But she was grasping at straws. This rescue, if you could even call it that, was over.
CHAPTER 7
The flashlight shook in Charlie Sweigart’s hand, the dull circle of yellowish light bobbing and jittering spasmodically as another uncontrollable wave of shivers wracked his body. He tried to thumb the
The batteries rattled inside the body of the flashlight. The light grew marginally brighter for a few seconds, and then dimmed again. The glow seemed pitifully small and weak in the tomblike blackness of the submersible. The
The submersible lay on its starboard side, heeled over about thirty degrees, its bow slightly elevated by the rising slope of the Aleutian trench. The odd tilt put the chairs at the wrong angle for sitting. The only stable position was sort of a leaning crouch, with feet braced against the deck for support.
The angle of the deck wasn’t just a matter of discomfort. The fifteen hundred pound lead ballast plate built into the bottom of the submersible was designed to drop vertically from a form-fitted recess in the keel. But the canted deck pushed the weight of the ballast plate to one side, putting some massive amount of lateral torque on the emergency release mechanism.
Charlie had fought with the release handle until his hands were raw. The latches were too far out of alignment. The release mechanism was hopelessly jammed, and — along with it — their chances of getting the
The shakes running through Charlie’s body were nearly convulsive now. His teeth were chattering so hard that he thought they might shatter. He clamped his jaw shut and forced himself to override the tremors in his muscles.
When he had regained a measure of control, he pointed the dwindling beam of the flashlight toward the open faceplate of the secondary electrical bus. Like every other surface in the cockpit of the little submarine, the open doors of the access panel were beaded with moisture — water vapor from their breaths, condensed out of the air by the cold.
That was how they were going to die. Charlie knew that now. The cold. Of all the ways they could die down here … drowning … asphyxiation … implosion … they were going to freeze to death. He would never have predicted that.
At the current rate of consumption, the emergency air flasks would probably last another two days. The hull was holding pressure. There were no leaks, and no escaping air. But the heaters had died along with the electrical system. Without the heaters, the cold water surrounding the
There was irony in that too. The cold was going to kill them, but they weren’t technically going to freeze to death. The core temperatures of their bodies were well down into the range of hypothermia now, more than cold enough to kill them. But they wouldn’t quite freeze. When the cold had sucked the last of the life from their bodies, they would hover in a lethally refrigerated state just a few degrees warmer than the temperature of ice. Not quite popsicles. More like …
Charlie shook his head, sending throbs of pain through his bruised cheek and battered forehead — both still tender from their collision with one of the instrument clusters during the accident. He was losing focus again, his mind wandering down blind alleys; another symptom of hypothermia.
He forced his eyes to focus on the relay panel below the electrical bus, trying to locate the bundle of wires that he’d just been tracing with his eyes.
“Turn off the light.” It was Steve’s voice, floating out of the darkness somewhere behind Charlie.
“I can … fix this,” Charlie said. His speech felt halting and strange. “Just give me … another few … minutes. I can find … the problem.”
“Turn off the damned light,” Steve said again. “And get that stupid dog out of here.”
Charlie didn’t turn off the flashlight. He could feel another round of tremors coming on. “Dog? What … dog?”
“The one in your pocket,” Steve said. “And don’t think I can’t hear you. I’ve got your ass set for speed- dial.”
Charlie’s eyes lost focus on the wires. He blinked several times and tried to will them to work properly. “What … What in the hell … are you … talking about?”
“He’s hallucinating,” Gabriella said. It was the first time she had spoken in over an hour. She was shivering so violently that it was difficult to understand her words. Charlie could hear her teeth chattering.
“Late… stage… hypothermia,” she said. “His… brain is starting to… shut down.”
