Уильям Мейкл - Operation - Siberia

Sean spun around from watching them work with the JSL (just far away enough that he couldn’t hear what Slipjack was saying to Toro) and practically hurled himself the six feet to the mic and started talking almost before he had depressed the button: “Kat! Thank God! I thought you had gone off the deep end!” He winced at his own choice of words.

“I’m okay. I’m alive. Had me a little freak-out there.” She sounded more with it, but hardly one hundred percent. “Honey, I’m just hanging in the dark. There’s nothing to see, not even dinosaurs… and directly below, there’s the vents. Maybe the dinos are nearby, maybe they can sense me…”

“Don’t worry about that, honey—you’re not deep enough to give off a heat signature strong enough to attract them, anyway. So just forget about anything except my words, okay?”

“Okay.” With that one-word response, she sounded again like the researcher who had first gone down in the submersible.

“Okay, excellent. The cable is… not operational. We can’t haul you up with the winch, and we can’t even get you any deeper—not that we would—but never mind—I’m coming down to get you.”

“Sean, it’s okay. I know the risks every time I go down.”

“Jesus, honey, no—I said, I’m coming down right now .”

“I’m at three thousand feet, Sean! What are you going to do, put on some swim fins and a snorkel? I can still get some data, even if we can’t find your prehistoric beasts—”

“No! Just hang tight”—again he regretted his turn of phrase—“and I’ll be there in plenty of time. I’m using the JSL .”

“ That piece of [buzz]? Don’t you dare, Doctor Muir—we don’t both need to die! Somebody on the ship sabotaged the cable. Don’t give them a chance to mess with the JSL and murder you, too.”

“Don’t say murder , Kat. Number one, you’re not going to die; and number two, I’m coming to get you and bring you up . Just keep your mind on that, okay? You’ve got to have two hours of oxygen left. I’ll make it in plenty of time.”

“I love you, Sean. I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. We got this. And I love you, too, so much. And if I have to die to save you, that’s a fair deal to me.”

“Well, it’s not to me! ”

“All right, then, we’ll both live. How’s that?”

“Roger that. Okay, fine, go suit up and get down here already.”

“On it.” He motioned for Mickey to come off the bridge. “Mick, you’ve got the comm, all right? Talk to her, keep her calm, and keep reminding her that I’m on my way.”

“You got it, boss. And good luck—we know you can do it.”

Sean nodded at that and got his ass over to the winch crew setting up the submersible, which looked like nothing more than a 1950s science-fiction robot. He squeezed into his wetsuit and stowed his air tank and regulator inside the JSL . There was no real reason he’d need them—or be able to use them—unless and until he got Kat near the surface and opened D-Plus to get her out. The extra equipment was fine, anyway; he’d take a load of anvils on board if it would help him get down there. He froze. Why in God’s name didn’t I think of this earlier?

“Holy shit! Mickey, tell her to jettison her ballast, every bit of it, right away!” He literally couldn’t believe he hadn’t remembered to tell her to do that in the first place. Everybody on board must have thought he was a complete shithead who didn’t care whether his wife lived or died. Not that he cared much about that right now.

Mickey relayed the message, and the last thing Sean heard before Slipjack helped him into the JSL was her response of “Roger that.” It gave him the tiniest peace of mind, which was better than nothing.

Slipjack got him ready and was about to screw the hatch shut but stopped and looked Sean in the eyes. “Go save your wife. Save our Kat.”

Our Kat? But Sean nodded, holding back the desire to say, Why in the hell do you think I’m sitting in this thing? but he could hardly blame the crew for loving her. She was so good to everyone, always smiling and working as hard as anyone else. Sean saw her occasional tantrums and tears, but that was the difference between a husband and a coworker on a research vessel.

Slipjack screwed on the hatch and stepped back. He and Toro and Vanessa exchanged thumbs-ups with Sean and then with one another when each of them took their assigned positions to deploy the A-frame and crane to lower the submersible into the sea.

Excruciatingly slowly, they lowered the JSL . So slowly he would surely never get down in time to Kat, who was breathing the last of her air, waiting for him, so far away.

Inside D-Plus , Katherine quickly hit the necessary switches and buttons to release the ballast. She’d done it a hundred times in submersibles; the ballast was just seawater, but water actually made for better ballast than any other material, and it didn’t shoot a lot of garbage into the ocean they all loved, like the old-school kind did.

But neither of the hatches on the sides of the submersible opened to release the ballast. D-Plus was still as weighted down as she was at launch, when the hatch worked perfectly to let the seawater in and allow the dive to happen in the first place.

She didn’t panic, though, didn’t enter any kind of fugue state like before. She just went through the steps again, more slowly and carefully this time.

It didn’t make any difference.

The hatch wouldn’t open, and of course there was no way for her to get out at this depth and open them manually with the fail-safe tool. “You’re just going to have to lift me with my ballast,” she said into her headset.

She kept in contact with Mickey up on the surface, but radio waves traveled more slowly the deeper one went—which was why a deep-sea submersible like D-Plus was connected to fiber optics for data and video and lines for voice and other communications. These lines were encased in armored steel and were supposed to be as close to indestructible as possible. That was because fail-proof systems were essential in extreme environments like those Sean and Kat were aiming for with this expedition. Supposed to be indestructible. At least, that was if no one with specialized knowledge—and some kind of motivation, obviously—got to them when no one was looking.

But delay or not, saboteur on the loose or not, Mickey on Piranha II kept the video and other sensors tightly focused on the line that was all that was keeping Kat on D-Plus from sinking, fatally, to the bottom. If she had been able to jettison the ballast—which was done with the push of exactly two buttons and a switch—it would have made Sean’s job of grabbing hold of the cable just above D-Plus with the JSL ’s clamp-like “hands” and bringing her up much easier.

Easy wasn’t happening in this FUBAR situation anyway, but trying to bring up D-Plus loaded down with ballast might be impossible for an ancient gadget like the JSL . Sean would jettison his own ballast when he got to her, so at least he would retain some buoyancy.

As was always the case in their line of work, they’d just have to go with what was even infinitesimally possible and make it a dead-certain reality.

It was obvious that rescue of D-Plus —and, more importantly, Katherine—fell into this category. No one could blame him for failing, but everyone still would. He still would. He needed to show everyone that he could do this, save the day. Mariners were an odd lot who might call off the next dive “because of weather,” since they were empowered to make the final decision. Theoretically, this took into consideration the science team’s input, of course; but the professional sailors on board knew that, outside of a storm forcing waves over the deck, the scientists would always choose to dive. Thus, oftentimes the “consideration” of the scientists’ opinions meant “seeming to listen and then doing what real men and women of the sea thought right and proper.” So it was best to avoid discomfort in the sailing crew.