Ready, he engaged the thrusters and began the long winding journey.
The walls to either side were covered with clams and mussels, anemones and deep-sea coral. Lobsters and crabs worked around the boulders, waving and clacking claws at the stranger in their midst. Other life fled from his lights: schools of silver-bellied fish darted in unison and vanished in a blink, bloodred octopi swept away in panicked clouds of murky ink, and winged black skates shuffled deeper into the silt.
Momentarily awed by the marine life around him, Jack continued gliding along the canyon. Over the next hour, using his sonar and compass, he navigated the maze as best he could, wending a zigzag path.
Circling around a seamount, he dove into a long narrow canyon. It was perfect. Side channels and offshoots branched away, but ahead was a straight shot to his target.
He checked his watch. Four hours till noon. He was cutting it close. Gunning the thrusters, he shot into the channel. It was this sudden burst of speed that saved his life as the rock wall to his right suddenly exploded.
Caught from behind, the sub’s stern catapulted upward, flipping the Nautilus end over end and slamming it into the far cliff.
Jack gasped, his head cracking against the dome. The Nautilus scraped down the rockface, rolling. A sickening metallic scrunch sounded as something tore away from the sub’s undercarriage. One of the xenon lamps burst with an audible pop, casting shards of thick glass.
He fought to keep his seat, praying for the inner shell of titanium and bulletproof acrylic to maintain its integrity. Even a single seam rupture at these depths would implode the sub in a nanosecond, crushing the life from him.
Working the foot pedals, he righted the sub. His visibility was zero as he hovered in a cloud of silt and sand. Through his hydrophones, a hollow tumble of rock sounded behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he could just make out a collapsed wall of boulders.
He craned his neck up. Beyond the top of the seamounts the silt cloud was clearing as swifter currents swept it away.
Overhead, he spotted his attacker.
Another sub circled like a shark. Cigar-shaped with stubby wings, it prowled along, hunting. He knew this vessel.
The Perseus—the Navy’s newest submersible, as deadly as she was sleek. The admiral had shown him the specs on the night of the sabotage. She was twice the vessel the Nautilus was: quicker, able to dive deeper, more maneuverable. But worst of all—she had teeth.
Jack spotted the dorsal fin of this titanium Great White.
A stacked array of minitorpedoes.
With a twitch, Jack flicked off the remaining lamp of his sub. Darkness collapsed over him. Through the murk above, a weak beam of light sought him out, circling and circling overhead.
The hungry predator hunted its trapped prey.
8:02 A.M., Deep Fathom
Charlie paced the small confines of his lab, mumbling to himself. “The idea could work….” He had run the calculations over and over again, and tested the crystal several more times.
Still, he remained unconvinced. Theory was one thing. Before he was ready to commit to his plan, he wanted to consult with Dr. Cortez at the sea base. But time was running out, and Charlie had no way of checking in with the geophysicist. They were dependent on the sea base calling there.
Leaning back over the computer, he tapped a button, and a three-dimensional globe of the Earth appeared on the monitor. A hundred small X’s orbited the planet. They moved slowly in a complex ballet. Off to the left a radiating wavefront of tiny lines edged minutely toward the center of the screen, toward Earth. It marked the front edge of the solar storm blowing their way. Charlie checked the upper right-hand corner, where a little clock was counting down the time until collision with the upper atmosphere.
Four hours.
The dance of X’s around the globe were based on real-time data from the Marshall Space Flight Center, monitoring the incoming wavefront and extrapolating how it might affect the satellites in orbit.
Charlie placed his finger on one of the small X’s.
A knock on his door interrupted him. Lisa said, “Charlie, we have a call from Karen.”
Charlie straightened with relief. “Thank God! It’s about bloody time, mon!” He popped the disk of his latest data from the computer’s zip drive and dashed out the door.
He found Lisa and Miyuki gathered in front of the professor’s portable supercomputer. He immediately sensed the tension in the room. Neither woman looked happy.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Lisa, coming around the table.
On the screen, Karen had heard him and answered, “I was calling to see if you had heard from Dr. Cortez.”
Charlie bent in front of the camera. “What do you mean? Why not ask him yourself?”
“Because this morning I’d heard he’d gone topside during the night, and I’ve heard no word since. I had hoped he contacted you.”
“No. Not a word.” Charlie assimilated the information. “I don’t like this. With Dr. Cortez AWOL, maybe we’d better rethink things on our own. Just in case. Jack’s already left in the sub. I’ll patch you to the Nautilus so you two can coordinate on getting your ass out of there.”
Karen’s image flickered. “Maybe we’d better. The last scientists are due to leave in an hour, leaving me alone with David’s second-in-command. If there’s gonna be a rescue, it’ll have to be soon. But what about the pillar? What are we going to do if we don’t hear from Dr. Cortez?”
“Pray we do. Pray he’s been too damn busy making arrangements to save the world to bother updating us.” But even Charlie knew that such a prayer was unlikely to be answered. “Listen, Karen, I’ve been working on something, something we might try. Let’s all keep in close contact from here.”
“I’ll try, but it’ll be difficult. Lieutenant Rolfe is below assisting in the launch of the next sub. I feigned an urgent need to go to the bathroom to make this call.” She checked her watch. “And I’m running out of time. I should be getting back down there.”
“Then let me patch you through to Jack.” Charlie turned to Miyuki.
The professor hit a button and spoke aloud. “Gabriel, can you patch this line to the Nautilus.”
A pause. “I am afraid I cannot comply. There appears to be some sort of interference.”
Karen’s brows knit with worry, then her image flickered, giving way to static, which ate the rest of the transmission.
“Gabriel, get her back!” Charlie ordered.
“I am afraid I cannot comply. There appears to be some sort of interference.”
Before Charlie could ask for clarification, the sound of someone running down the stairs drew his attention.
Robert’s voice came over the tiny intercom speakers, “We’ve got—”
“Company,” Kendall McMillan finished as he burst into the room. “Two ships, military, circling around from both sides of the island.”
They all moved toward the stairs except Miyuki, who remained at her computer, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m not abandoning Karen,” she called to him. “I’ll keep trying to reach her, let her know what’s happening.”
Charlie nodded. “Do your best. But if we’re boarded, hide that computer. It may be all that stands between us and the end of the world.”
He climbed to the stern deck of the Fathom and watched a long ship sweep around the southern coast of their little islet.
An air horn blared from its deck, followed by a message. “Prepare to be boarded! Any resistance will be met with deadly force!”
McMillan stared. “What are we going to do?”
“We have no choice,” Charlie said. “Not this time. We surrender.”
8:14 A.M., Neptune base
Karen tried typing in Gabriel’s address again. Still no answer. Checking her watch, she pushed out of her seat. She could delay no longer without risking suspicion. She frowned one last time at the computer. The abrupt end to her conversation with the Deep Fathom threatened to send her into a panic.
Crossing to Level 2’s ladder, she climbed down, her mind still on the communication glitch. As she reached a leg down to the next rung, her ankle was grabbed and yanked.
She squawked and fell from the ladder.
Rolfe caught her, clamping her upper arm. “What took you so long?”
Karen swallowed, avoiding his accusing stare. She forced a tremor into her voice; not all of it was feigned. “It…it’s…”
“It’s what?”
She glared at him. “It’s my time of the month, if you must know!”
Rolfe’s face grew a shade more ruddy. It seemed even these tough SEAL-trained assassins did not care to know about such fine womanly details. “Okay then, but stick by my side. We’re just about to launch the last shuttle to the surface.”
Karen did not like the sound of that. Last shuttle…What about her?
Rolfe led her to the docking bay’s control station. He gazed through the window, then spoke into the thin-poled mike. “All set, Argus?”
Karen peeked through the window. The pilot and the last two scientists, both crammed into the rear passenger compartment, were locked into the sub.
“Systems green. Ready for launch,” the pilot radioed.
“Pressurizing.” Rolfe poked a large blue button, initiating the docking bay system.
Karen watched. As soon as the pressures equalized, the outlet pipes opened and water poured into the bay, quickly swallowing up the sub. She studied it all intently. Without Dr. Cortez here, she might need to do this herself.
All morning long she had dogged Rolfe’s steps, learning by quiet observation how the base operated. It was all user-friendly, thanks mostly to this compact control station. A bank of four monitors showed external views from all around the station. An additional two monitors for the ROV robots rested above a pair of joysticks. The remainder of the panel was devoted to the docking bay itself.
She watched the seawater level rise past the tiny porthole observation window. As the bay filled, a glint of metal caught her eye. Something small floated loose in the docking space. She dismissed it as some mislaid tool and returned her focus to the sub. Across the bay, the pilot tested the sub’s thrusters, floating up from the deck.