The Abyss Read online

  They would send other builders to the Montana, of course, to study the structures, the guidance and control systems, the torpedoes, the missiles, the warheads that could destroy the world. But this was secondary work. They had already discovered the principles of our machinery and electronics.

  The most vital information was the data collected by the first wave of builders. And included in that original data was the mind of a certain sonarman named Aaron Barnes, who wasn't really inside his body when he died, who was in fact alive in a house on Floyd Baker Boulevard in Gaffney, South Carolina, where a baby nursed and a woman smiled at him and said, Good thing you come home, Ary, cause I was about to tell Junior his papa was Kareem. Good thing you come home 'cause supper be almost ready and no way all us can finish this mess Mama's cooking without you sucking down your share, you hear me?

  Does that make any sense to you, me telling you that Aaron Barnes wasn't really there? I tell you this - it made a hell of a lot of sense to the builders, once they figured out how to understand the way our brains worked. A person's body being in one place, while he thinks his real self is back home where his best memories are kept, why, that was the natural way of life to them. If all they'd found were minds full of thoughts of struggling to stay alive - or filled with despair and self-blame, like Captain Kretschmer's - if all they'd found were thoughts of here and now, then to them we would have been mere animals, nothing more. They would have dealt with us like animals.

  But they found Aaron Barnes, a man who had put himself in another place, outside his own body. It wasn't all that clear to them. They couldn't watch our thoughts unfold like a movie or a book, they couldn't be sure of what they found. But Aaron Barnes, dead, gave them a glimmer that human beings might be alive in the sense that the builders themselves were alive. Barnes never knew it, but his being on that sub and dying there, thinking the way he did, it was just enough to give the builders hope that perhaps they could share this planet with us.

  On the surface of the Caribbean Sea, the Montana's emergency buoy bobbed up and began sending out radio signals.

  Chapter 5

  Civilian Asset

  When the Pentagon finds out that an emergency buoy from a nuclear sub is singing its heart out somewhere, the bureaucracy shakes itself and discovers, like a bear coming out of hibernation, that it's actually capable of moving fast. This is partly in the hope that by acting quickly, the men might be saved. But in the cold reality of nuclear strategy, the loss of the men would not be half so damaging to the United States as loss of the code books and electronic intelligence, the warheads and guidance systems. Even a dead sub is a prize the presumed enemy would give a lot to get their hands on. So whether the crew is breathing or not, the sub has to be found and protected while the situation is sized up and further decisions are made.

  Within fifteen minutes of the buoy's signal, a ship with bottom-scanning capability was sent out from GITMO - the base at Guantanamo - along with enough escort vessels to secure the site from enemy observation and interference. It took a while to get to the Montana, since the group had to pretend to be heading somewhere else, to avoid Cuban reconnaissance. Once they got there, though, they did their work quickly and well. The scanning ship made several passes, towing a camera and side-scan sonar, when it was finished, the military was able to put together a mosaic photograph of the Montana.

  The sub was located at twenty-one hundred feet, resting nearly on its side on a narrow shelf in the wall of the Cayman Trench. The hull had obviously been breached; the military knew that there was no chance at that depth for anyone to have survived more than a few minutes. They didn't tell that to any of the civilians, of course - government officials would move much more quickly if they thought there might be lives to save, even though the codebooks and warheads required even more urgency.

  Immediately there was talk of bringing the old Glomar Explorer out of mothballs. The Hughes Corporation's huge floating crane had lifted a piece of a Soviet sub out of the Pacific more than a decade before. Since then the government hadn't been able to use it - the operation's cover as a commercial gig was blown in the press, so that now whenever the Glomar moved, everybody assumed it was really on a CIA or military operation. But cover or no cover, the Glomar could do the job. Trouble was, she was on the West Coast. It would take months to outfit her and bring her around. The Russians couldn't be expected to sit there and wait politely until the U.S. had finished all its efforts to raise the Montana. Something had to be done immediately to secure the most sensitive contents of the sub.

  The Navy had deep-submergence rescue vehicles - DSRVs - designed for the job. The trouble was, the composite pictures showed that the Montana had rolled, and now was tilted more than forty-five degrees, which would keep a DSRV from locking onto the hull properly. Even if the Navy could improvise some way to use them, the DSRVs simply weren't available. The one in Norfolk was in drydock undergoing repairs from a minor training accident. The one in San Diego couldn't possibly get there in time, not with Hurricane Frederick bearing down on the spot where the Montana lay. Within twenty-four hours the Navy group protecting the site would have to disperse for the duration of the storm - taking any DSRV with them.

  Complicating everything was the fact that no one could guess why the sub had sunk. Was it an enemy attack? No enemy sub was known to be in the area - but there had been a flash of light and heat from the newest Russian spy satellite only a few minutes before the Montana's buoy sent out its signal. Could there possibly be a connection? The satellite was in a polar orbit, and at the moment it flashed, it had been directly over Venezuela - close enough, in global terms, that it might well have done something to the Montana.

  "Done what?" demanded the President. "A sub-killing satellite? If such a thing is possible, why don't we have one in development? I hope I don't sound combative, but Senator Nunn is going to ask me that question and I'd better know the answer."

  "We don't think it's possible," said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "But we don't know it's impossible, either."

  "It's coincidence," said the CIA chief. "There's no plausible connection between the burst from SL-420 and the Montana going down."

  "You don't know any more than we do," said the Secretary of Defense. "For all you know the Russians are watching us and laughing. They could have timed it so the hurricane would sweep us out of there tomorrow."

  "If they did it," said the President, "it means they have the ability to track our subs from space." That remark was followed by heavy silence. They all knew that would be an intolerable situation, leading to the toughest decision for a President since Harry Truman had to decide about dropping the A-bomb on Japan. Only this time, the other side wouldn't roll over and play dead.

  "What matters now," said the Navy chief, "is that we don't have the capability to get anything in there that will help us accomplish damage minimalization before the storm."

  "Damage minimalization consists of what?" asked the President.

  "In Phase One," said the Navy chief, "we extract codebooks, electronic intelligence, guidance systems, and any information about what caused the sub's loss."

  "And of course rescue survivors," said the President.

  "That goes without saying," said the Navy chief. "When we've cleared the sub, we either secure the area until we can raise it, or, if it looks like the Russians have figured out what we're doing and plan to interfere in a major way, we go on to Phase Two, Three if necessary."

  "Which is?"

  "Prepare to blow it off the shelf and let the Cayman Trench take care of security on what's left."

  "But we can't do any of that, is that what you're telling me?"

  "I'm telling you we can't get our own assets in there before the storm."

  "Whose assets do you have in mind?" asked the CIA chief. He didn't know of any foreign power in the area that had equipment that would do the job, and it would be a real slap in the face if military intelligence had uncovered such information when the CIA h
adn't.

  "American," said the Navy chief, easing his mind. "A civilian asset, of course. Benthic Petroleum is running an experimental underwater drilling operation twenty-two miles away from the site. We could bring them in under the storm, put a team of SEALS on board, and they could have the Montana secured and stripped before the hurricane's gone."

  "I thought Deepcore required an umbilical," said the CIA chief. It was his way of letting everyone know that he knew all about Benthic's experimental underwater drilling station. "The Benthic Explorer is the mother ship, isn't it? We can't expect them to ride out a hurricane, can we?"

  "The umbilical is flexible and far stronger than it would ordinarily need to be," said the Navy chief. "And the Benthic Explorer is designed to withstand some pretty bad seas. But - "

  "Nothing can stand still in the water during a hurricane," said the President. He had served on a carrier in his youth, and had gone sailing every summer all his life - he knew what could and could not be done on the water.

  "Right," said the Navy chief. He was about to make that very point, but so much the better if the President realized it himself first. "The designer allowed for that. If it gets really bad, Deepcore can cut loose from the umbilical and survive on its own for four days while the Explorer moves out of the hurricane's way and then comes back in behind it. Not that any of us would enjoy being on board the Explorer tomorrow, with the heavy seas she'll have to navigate, but these oil companies wouldn't let their profits depend on rigs that can't deal with hurricane season in the Gulf."

  "The real question," said the Secretary of Defense, "is whether Benthic will let us use their rig."

  "They will," said the President. "I'll see to that."

  "You think these oil-company bastards are so patriotic they'll respond to their nation's call?" asked the CIA chief.

  "I think they wouldn't want the publicity if word got out that Benthic had refused to help us rescue an American submarine crew," said the President. "If there's anybody the American people love to hate more than politicians, it's corporations." They all laughed. The Navy might know the sea, but the President knew politics, and from Washington, at least, politics looked far more dangerous.

  "That asshole told the President what?" It didn't occur to Lindsey that she was talking to the president of the resource development division of Benthic Petroleum, and that the asshole she was referring to - the CEO - had the power to cut off her whole Deepcore project whenever he felt like it. "You can't just stop drilling like that and take off on some wild goose chase!"

  "Yes we can," said Deeter. "It's the best P.R. Benthic could possibly get. Big oil company is still a loyal American enterprise, always at our nation's beck and call."

  "Why don't they use their own goddamn divers?"

  "I don't know." Deeter was trying to be patient. "I don't know anything about it."

  "You break off the drilling just as we're about to get to contract depth, and you don't know anything about it?" Her tone of voice was full of withering contempt, as if she thought Deeter was the most spineless fool ever to head a division of a major international corporation. Of course he wasn't. You don't get to the division-president level of a company like Benthic unless you've got a steel rod of ambition up your ass. But Lindsey measured people by a much simpler measure. If they were helping her get her work done, they were bright and good. If they were getting in the way, they were slime.

  The secretaries listened, marveling. No one ever spoke to Deeter except in the most respectful tones, as if he were God. And here was this project engineer, for heaven's sake, talking to him as if he were a third-grader who just wet his pants on the playground. "There goes her Christmas bonus," whispered one of them.

  But Deeter wasn't the sort of person to let his pride get offended when it wasn't helpful. "The Navy asked if we had somebody who knew Deepcore inside out - how it's made, what kind of pressures it can stand. I told them that McBride has the specs on the Explorer, but our project engineer - "

  "I hope you don't think I'm going to get on the phone and give some Navy pinhead all the information I sweat blood over for the last five years."

  "No," said Deeter. "I think you're going to get in the fastest helicopter the Navy has here in Houston and go out to the Benthic Explorer, at which time you will give some Navy pinhead anything he asks for, up to and including your pretty little head."

  That was different. She was going out there. She'd be on the spot. Maybe she could even stop them from making some half-wit mistake that would destroy Deepcore. "All right," she said. "When do I go?"

  "You're already gone," said Deeter. Then, because he couldn't resist cutting her down to size, just a little, he added, "If you're on your period, you'd better borrow tampons from the secretaries, because the helicopter's on the roof and they've already waited longer than they said they would."

  It wasn't until she was sitting inside the Navy chopper that she realized how Deeter had insulted her. Pretty little head my ass, she thought. And he no doubt meant the sexual innuendo as well. Not to mention the insulting remark about tampons. She assumed that Deeter must talk this way to all women. It never occurred to her that he never did; that her arrogant attitude had goaded him beyond endurance.

  Fuming inwardly, she looked around at the others in the chopper with her. There were a couple of chopper crewmen, keeping to themselves when they weren't busy with something. The only other passengers were four soldiers. Or sailors, who could tell? What were they doing here, anyway? Her escort? They wore an insignia she didn't recognize - a trident on their left breast pockets. They weren't young kids, either. They looked older. Almost ageless, and their faces were hard. No, not hard. Just empty. They didn't seem to show any emotion at all. It made Lindsey extremely uncomfortable whenever she was in a situation that she didn't understand completely. Were they part of this secret operation? Were they there to control her? Or did they just happen to be on this helicopter? She had to know who they were, so she'd know what to expect from them.

  They had sidearms. "What are you, Marines?" she asked.

  "SEALs," said one. And then, because she obviously didn't recognize the term, he explained. "It's an acronym. Sea, Air, and Land. Navy. Not Marines. I'm Monk."

  "Are you going to the Benthic Explorer, too?" she asked.

  Monk said nothing. Nor did he look around for someone else to answer her, or for permission to answer her. It was eerie, the way none of them so much as flinched in such a way as to tell her who was in command.

  Then a man who had been facing away from her turned on the bench to face her. "We're going to the Benthic Explorer. You are the one who's going to the Benthic Explorer 'too.' You are not essential to this mission. You've already cost us eight minutes in unnecessary delay."

  That was all. He made no threats, he did not raise his voice, and yet she felt as though she had just been whipped. She almost apologized, almost started explaining about how bad the traffic was in Houston today and she got to the Benthic Building as soon as it was humanly possible. But she caught herself in time. This walrus or seal or whatever he was might think he was in command, but no one was ever in command of Lindsey but herself.

  Kirkhill was loving it. He made damn sure he was the one to talk with Commodore DeMarco, overall commander of the naval operation, when he made radio contact from his approaching helicopter. Kirkhill didn't want anybody else talking to the Navy. It's my job to make sure everybody cooperates, Kirkhill told himself. I've got to get the word directly, so I can pass it along without screw-ups. Damn lucky thing I happened to be doing an on-site management audit of the Benthic Explorer this week.

  The fact was Kirkhill just plain loved being in the center of something that actually mattered. Sure, searching for oil and testing the new underwater drilling platform mattered, but he knew - and so did everyone else - that the real work was going on down in Deepcore II, at the bottom of the Caribbean. Up here in the mother ship, all they had to do was caretaker work. He was on the fringes, clo
se enough to see what was going on, but too far off to have any effect on it.

  It wasn't that Kirkhill wanted glory. He suspected, as most men do, that if it came right down to it, if a hero was called for, he wouldn't be able to find any hero-stuff inside himself. Even now, the Navy wasn't here for the Benthic Explorer itself, it was here for Deepcore, at the other end of the lifeline. But for a few minutes an important military operation was being funneled right through Kirkhill's hands. He was damn well going to get as many of his own fingerprints on it as he could.

  Of course, the secrecy was so thick that Kirkhill didn't know much more than the fact that Benthic had ordered him to put his vessel completely at the disposal of the Navy, as long as it did not compromise the safety of the crew. He had his guesses, though, and they weren't far off. There aren't all that many reasons the Navy could need a deep-water undersea craft on an emergency basis. If he could guess on the basis of what he knew, he'd better make sure his people knew even less. So the men who actually ran the topside part of Deepcore's work - McBride, the drilling operations supervisor, and Bendix, the crew chief - were told only to stand by and wait for further developments. "And above all, don't talk about this to anyone."

  Only a moment ago, Bendix had cleared the choppers to land on the Explorer's deck. In an hour, maybe less, the approaching hurricane would make such heavy seas that no helicopter could possibly land, but these had gotten here with such perfect timing that the choppers from GITMO and the one from Houston arrived almost at once.

  Now Bendix and McBride stood on the bridge of the Benthic Explorer, watching as the Navy helicopters spewed out armed invaders and mysterious equipment. Kirkhill was down there greeting everybody as if they were all coming to a party and he were the host.

  "Pretty easy not to talk about this to anybody," said Bendix, "since I don't know anything to talk about." Seeing the way the military seemed to be taking over the deck, shoving the Explorer's crew out of the way, Bendix foresaw a lot of problems he'd have to deal with right away. Doubtless with that asshole Kirkhill looking over his shoulder the whole time. "This could be ugly."