Chapter 10
Kurt knew he had a problem when the ROV turned back toward him.
By accelerating away and moving back under the ice, he hoped to shake off the pursuit.
This water was dark; he’d shut off all his lights and made a hard right turn.
Without sonar to track him, a few hundred yards would be enough to make him invisible.
Running at full speed for a couple of minutes, he thought he might have slipped free. But as the water around him brightened unnaturally, he knew he’d been found.
Switching to the rearward-facing camera, he saw a set of powerful lights blazing away in the dark behind him. The submersible following him had brought its own illumination to the party. Its high-intensity work lights sat out wide on a pair of posts, like the eyes or antennas of some giant insect.
To Kurt’s dismay the ROV was gaining on his sleek craft. It closed in on him slowly, pulled even beside him, and then swung toward him, aiming for the stern and the thruster exhaust port.
Kurt pushed the controls downward, dropping the Otter below the attacker’s depth.
The attacker crossed directly above the canopy, close enough for Kurt to see the Chinese flag painted on the bottom.
The machine was bulky and square with several robotic arms that looked like claws.
It was larger than the Otter, but what it gave away in streamlining, it made up for in power.
Without the need to carry an occupant, it carried larger batteries, a more powerful motor, and instead of an impeller, used a pair of adjustable propellers.
As Kurt watched, the submersible moved ahead of him and then swung back at him, charging like a bull.
This time Kurt was able to escape it by rising above it. He waited until the last second and angled to the right, snapping off one of the ROV’s extended arms and the portside lighting pod.
The shattering bulbs sent an electric blue flash through the water as they failed, and Kurt allowed himself to grin. One more attack and the giant insect would be blind in the dark. He chose a course away from it, watching on the screen as it turned to follow once more.
At first it seemed to be dropping back, but soon gathered steam and began closing the gap once more.
Kurt figured he could swing to the right and then back around to the left and clip that last lighting pod, then go on his merry way. He set up the move. “Just a little closer.”
Once again Kurt found his eyes in the wrong place. As he watched, the first ROV come at him, a second one hit him from the side. It had approached with its own light off in a coordinated attack.
Kurt was thrown against the bulkhead of the submersible, banging his head and shoulder. He would have been tossed to the deck if there was any room in the Otter to fall. As it was, he found himself disoriented, wedged between the pedestal and the curved hull plating.
He struggled in the cramped, dark space to get back onto the pedestal. As soon as his hands reached the controls, he put the Otter into a steep climb. It was an old submariner’s instinct. Anytime you hit something, head for the surface as fast as you can.
—
Traveling upward toward the ice, Kurt had a second to assess the damage.
The second ROV had rammed him in the side, like a dolphin attacking a shark by slamming into its gills.
Warning lights flickered and a pressure alarm sounded, indicating a leak somewhere.
A second warning chirped, indicating the battery pack had been damaged.
Kurt looked around for water coming in, but found none in the cockpit. He checked the damage-control screen and learned that the number two battery pack had gone instantly to zero percent power. That pack was on the left side, directly behind him. Precisely where the attack had hit home.
He’d lost half his power and was taking on water. The tiny sub was compartmentalized, but there was no guarantee the bulkhead dividing the two battery packs would hold.
Flicking through the camera views, he could see the two ROVs positioning themselves for the kill. His only chance was to lose them in the ice. He continued up, getting as close to the ice as he dared, and then leveling off. Now he raced along beneath it, heading for one of the inverted ridges.
The ROVs came up after him, closing in until Kurt weaved behind a jumbled downward thrust of ice.
He ran along beside the jagged arrangement, remaining close, and scraping it several times. A gap appeared and he darted through it and continued to run.
He quickly found another pressure ridge and ducked behind that one. Moments later he was able to drop down and pop up behind a third ridge.
It was like flying across and through upside-down hedgerows. Kurt grew quickly used to it; he even sensed a rhythm to the way the ridges were arranged.
He felt he had an advantage in the ice. Human reactions to the constantly changing surface would have to be quick.
The ROVs would have to process the situation with limited experience.
And they would have to be cautious. It only took one bad move for them to slam into an outcropping of ice, and perhaps one wrong turn for them to lose track of him.
With growing confidence Kurt checked behind him.
To his great irritation, the ROVs were right there, following at a distance, stalking him.
Up ahead an inverted pyramid-shaped jumble of ice loomed.
Kurt went right for it. He cut close to it and then looped all the way around the obstruction before continuing on his way.
Only now did Kurt realize how the ROVs were tracking him. He was trailing a long stream of bubbles from the rupture in the side. It might as well have been blood in the water or smoke from a damaged aircraft. He would never get away with that stream of air trailing out behind him.
Wondering how much air was left, he double-checked the damage-control screen.
The computer told him he had twenty minutes of air and power for about thirty minutes of high-speed travel.
Neither one of those would be enough to make it back to the pickup point.
Not with the ROVs tracking his every move.
All he’d end up doing was leading the Chinese to Joe and the helicopter.
Kurt had always been the type of man to face facts quickly. In this case there was no way home, but word still had to get out. And that meant he had to surface and send Joe on his way.
He considered looking around for a skylight, but that would be relying on a stroke of good fortune that had so far been missing.
Instead, he glanced at the internal navigation system and turned back toward the Chinese icebreaker and the only place he could possibly reach that would allow him to surface.
On board the Chinese ship, the change in direction took everyone by surprise. The salvage leader figured out the new heading first. “The exhaust trail leads back toward us now.”
“It has to be a ruse,” Li said. “No one in their right mind would come back toward the danger.”
“Have the ROVs follow the trail,” Gushan ordered. “Don’t guess.”
Li glared at him, but said nothing.
The ROVs turned and followed the steady stream of bubbles collecting under the ice. Before long they caught sight of their quarry again.
“It’s heading directly at us,” the captain said.
“Why?” the admiral asked. “Could it be armed?”
Gushan said nothing. He wasn’t sure, but they would soon find out.
As Kurt closed in on the Chinese ship, he figured he needed to do two things at roughly the same time.
First, he needed to send a message to Joe, ordering him to get off the ice and fly back to the Lyra and alerting him to the Chinese plan and their empty net.
Second, he needed to get out of the Otter without the Chinese spotting him.
He’d make the radio call first, in case he didn’t have time for a second move.
As he raced along at full speed, the navigation console began warning of excessive battery drain. This course was taking him back into the current. It was a major strain on the remaining battery pack, but it played to the Otter’s one true advantage.
The big, squarish ROVs—which had been assisted along by the current as they chased Kurt—were slowed far more than the streamlined NUMA sub as they drove straight into it.
Kurt watched their lights fade as they fell back. Soon there was just a dim glow. And then nothing. But he was still trailing those damned bubbles.
As he approached the opening, daylight poured in.
He cruised out from under the ice, realizing he would be easier to spot directly, but harder to follow now that the bubbles had a chance to escape through the open water into the air above.
Kurt hoped he’d be able to do the same thing.
He turned away from the Chinese ship and followed the cut northward toward the pole.
At the same time, he brought the Otter up to the surface.
Free-floating ice drifted above him here and there. He could use that to his advantage.
He cruised beneath a small wolf pack of growlers surfacing on the other side. He continued north, raising the Otter’s antenna to make the call.
“Base, this is Otter,” he said. “Contact with the Chinese confirmed. High probability they were waiting for the EAGL. Runway and subsurface netting suggest they intended to land it and then push it off the ice into the water, where it could be taken apart at a shallow depth and then disposed of. Additional investigation unnecessary. Aircraft is not present. All scout teams return to the boat and await further orders. I repeat, all scout teams return to boat.”
The message had been sent. Kurt hoped both Joe and the Chinese had heard it.
He doubted it would do much, but if the Chinese happened to think the Americans were here in numbers, they might be less aggressive.
And if they believed the Americans were backing off and returning to their boat, they might just decide to leave him alone.
He figured that last hope was a long shot. And that meant he had to roll the dice one more time.