'We've got a little time to go,' says the hatchet-faced foreigner.
'A little ... '
'Until we learn whether or not you've gotten away with it.'
'What are you smoking, man? Of course we've gotten away with it!' Murph has materialized from the upper decks like a Boston-Irish ghost, taking out his low-level resentment on the Brit (who is sufficiently public-school English to make a suitable whipping boy for Bloody Sunday, not to mention being a government employee to boot). 'Look!
Submarine! Submersible grab! Coming up at six feet per minute! After the break, film at eleven!' His tone is scathing. 'What do you think the commies are going to do to stop us, start World War Three? They don't even goddamn know what we're doing down here — they don't even know where their sub went down to within 200 miles!'
'It's not the commies I'm worried about,' says the Brit.
He glances at Cooper. 'How about you'
Cooper shakes his head reluctantly. 'I still think we're going to make it. The sub's intact, undamaged, and we've got it — '
'Oh shit,' says Steve.
He points the central camera in the grab's navigation cluster down at the sea floor, a vast gray-brown expanse stirred into slow whorls of foggy motion by the dropping of the ballast and the departure of the submarine. It should be slowly settling back into bland desert-dunes of mud by now. But something's moving down there, writhing against the current with unnatural speed.
Cooper stares at the screen. 'What's that'
'May I remind you of Article Four of the treaty?' says the Brit. 'No establishment of permanent or temporary structures below a depth of one kilometer beneath mean sea level, on pain of termination. No removal of structures from the abyssal plain, on pain of ditto. We're trespassing: legally they can do as they please.'
'But we're only picking up the trash — '
'They may not see it that way.'
Fine fronds, a darker shade against the gray, are rising from the muddy haze not far from the last resting place of the K-129. The fronds ripple and waver like giant kelp, but are thicker and more purposeful. They bring to mind the blind, questing trunk of an elephant exploring the interior of a puzzle box. There's something disturbing about the way they squirt from vents in the sea floor, rising in pulses, as if they're more liquid than solid.
'Damn,' Cooper says softly. He punches his open left hand. 'Damn!'
'Language,' chides Duke. 'Barry, how fast can we crank this rig? Steve, see if you can get a fix on those things. I want to peg their ascent rate.'
Barry shakes his head emphatically. 'The drill platform can't take any more, boss. We're up to force four outside already, and we're carrying too much weight. We can maybe go up to ten feet per minute, but if we try to go much above that we risk shearing the string and losing Clementine.'
Cooper shudders. The grab will still surface if the drill string breaks, but it could broach just about anywhere. And anywhere includes right under the ship's keel, which is not built to survive being rammed by 3,000 tons of metal hurtling out of the depths at twenty knots.
'We can't risk it,' Duke decides. 'Keep hauling at current ascent rate.'
They watch in silence for the next hour as the grab rises toward the surface, its precious, stolen cargo still intact in its arms.
The questing fronds surge up from the depths, growing toward the lens of the under-slung camera as the engineers and spooks watch anxiously. The grab is already 400 feet above the sea floor, but instead of a flat muddy desert below, the abyssal plain has sprouted an angry forest of grasping tentacles. They're extending fast, reaching toward the stolen submarine above them.
'Hold steady,' says Duke. 'Damn, I said hold steady!'
The ship shudders, and the vibration in the deck has risen to a tooth-rattling grumble and a shriek of over- stressed metal. The air in the control room stinks of hot oil. Up on the drilling deck the wildcats are shearing bolt- heads and throwing sixty-foot pipe segments on the stack rather than taking time to position them — a sure sign of desperation, for the pipe segments are machined from a special alloy at a cost of $60,000 apiece. They're hauling in the drill string almost twice as fast as they paid it out, and the moon pool is foaming and bubbling, a steady cascade of water dropping from the chilly metal tubes to rain back down onto its surface. But it's anyone's guess whether they'll get the grab up to the surface before the questing tentacles catch it.
'Article Four,' the Brit says tensely.
'Bastard.' Cooper glares at the screen. 'It's ours.'
'They appear to disagree. Want to argue with them'
'A couple of depth charges ...' Cooper stares at the drill string longingly.
'They'd fuck you, boy,' the other man says harshly. 'Don't think it hasn't been thought of. There are enough methane hydrates down in that mud to burp the granddaddy of all gas bubbles under our keel and drag us down like a gnat in a toad's mouth.'
'I know that.' Cooper shakes his head. So much work! It's outrageous, an insult to the senses, like watching a moon shot explode on the launch pad. 'But. Those bastards.' He punches his palm again. 'It should be ours!'
'We've had dealings with them before that didn't go so badly. Witch's Hole, the treaty zone at Dunwich. You could have asked us.' The British agent crosses his arms tensely.
'You could have asked your Office of Naval Intelligence, too.
But no, you had to go and get creative.'
'The fuck. You'd just have told us not to bother. This way — '
'This way you learn your own lesson.'
'The fuck.'
The grab was 3,000 feet below sea level and still rising when the tentacles finally caught up with it.
The rest, as they say, is history.
1: RANDOM RAMONA
IF YOU WORK FOR THE LAUNDRY LONG ENOUGH, eventually you get used to the petty insults, the paper clip audits, the disgusting canteen coffee, and the endless, unavoidable bureaucracy. Your aesthetic senses become dulled, and you go blind to the decaying pea-green paint and the vomit-beige fabric partitions between office cubicles. But the big indignities never fail to surprise, and they're the ones that can get you killed.
I've been working for the Laundry for about five years now, and periodically I become blase in my cynicism, sure that I've seen it all — which is usually the signal for them to throw something at me that's degrading, humiliating, or dangerous — if not all three at once.
'You want me to drive a what?' I squeak at the woman behind the car rental desk.
'Sir, your ticket has been issued by your employer, it says here und here — ' She's a brunette: tall, thin, helpful, and very German in that schoolmarmish way that makes you instinctively check to see if your fly's undone. 'The, ah, Smart For two coupe. With the, the kompressor. It is a perfectly good car. Unless you would like for the upgrade to pay'
Upgrade. To a Mercedes SI90, for, oh, about two hundred euros a day. An absolute no-brainer — if it wasn't at my own expense.
'How do I get to Darmstadt from here?' I ask, trying to salvage the situation. 'Preferably alive?' (Bloody Facilities.
Bloody budget airlines that never fly where you want to go.
Bloody weather. Bloody liaison meetings in Germany.
Bloody 'cheapest hire' policy.) She menaces me with her perfect dentistry again. 'If it was me I'd take the ICE train. But your ticket — ' she points at it helpfully ' — is non-refundable. Now please to face the camera for the
