Chapter 18
Had the President asked Kurt where to look next, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He was out of ideas. Joe might have said the Bahamas or Hawaii or anywhere near the equator. At this point, they seemed about as likely to find the EAGL in the tropics as in the Arctic.
Having been briefed about the Russian deployment and given an update on the Chinese icebreaker, Kurt found the icebreaker a more pressing concern.
Not surprisingly it had finally abandoned the crumbling runway and left its icehouse station behind.
But the ship wasn’t heading back to China, instead it had come grinding southward through the ice and out into the Barents Sea.
“Where is she now?” Kurt asked.
He was standing on the bridge with Joe and the Lyra’s captain. A radar specialist, helmsman, and a couple of other crewmen stood by.
“Ahead of us,” the captain said, taking over the radar console. “About thirty miles out. They’re basically matching our course, but at a slower speed. In a few hours, we’ll be close enough to shake hands.”
“Front-running us,” Joe said. “Hoping to come across the plane before we do.”
“Makes more sense than looking behind us,” the captain said.
Kurt had to agree with that. Truthfully, there wasn’t all that much left of the signal line to search.
They’d covered seventy percent of it now.
By using the drones and the towed array sonar, they’d cleared a ten-mile-wide swath without finding any sign of the plane.
By noon the next day they’d have covered the whole area.
Although, at this point the Chinese would have covered it before them.
Racking his brain for an answer, Kurt looked over the chart. Just beyond the end of the signal line lay a group of desolate islands named Franz Josef Land, the largest and closest of these being Zemlya Georga.
At first blush, Kurt could imagine the hijackers making for the shallow waters of the island. If they didn’t have a ship to pick them up, ditching the plane close to shore was the next best option. With a little luck they could put it down close to the beach and then swim—or row a lifeboat—ashore.
But there were still problems with that plan.
For one, the signal line ended ten miles from Zemlya Georga, not a thousand yards from the beach.
More important, the only people on those islands were Russian military personnel.
If the plane had landed near the islands, it would have been seen on radar.
In which case the Russians wouldn’t be scouring the Norwegian coast for it. He asked the others for their opinions.
Joe put it like this. “If the hijackers wanted to go to Russia, they could have just gone to Russia.”
No matter how many times he thought it through, Kurt was certain they were missing something. Somehow, it seemed, all three nations were missing something.
“Let’s get a message off to Washington,” he said. “Have the NSA, or whomever picked up this crash signal, confirm that it couldn’t possibly extend all the way to Zemlya Georga.”
The captain nodded. He’d get it sent through NUMA’s comm network. “In the meantime, stay the course?”
Kurt thought that made the most sense. “Might as well. And when we catch up to the Chinese, we can ask them to give us the Otter back.”
As the captain spoke with the helmsman, the intercom chirped loudly. “Sonar room to bridge,” Gamay Trout’s strident voice announced. “I think we have a visitor.”
The captain deferred to Kurt, who responded quickly. “What makes you say that?”
“We’ve been picking up stray images,” Gamay said.
“We thought they were glitches in the side scan, but a diagnostic check ruled out any malfunction. Something has been crossing the beam close to the sonar sled, blocking it for a second and then vanishing. It’s happened three times.
The screen is clear now, but I doubt it will be that way for long. ”
“Reel the sled back in,” Kurt said. “We’ll search using the underwater drones.”
Joe used a console on the bridge to tap into what Paul and Gamay were seeing. The sled had cameras on board, but running dark, there was little to see in the water. Still, as they watched, something appeared in front of the lens and grew rapidly larger.
“Get it back on board.”
“I’m trying, but it’s a half mile behind us.”
Kurt looked at Joe, wondering how long that would take to reel in. “Three or four minutes,” Joe said. “We’re pulling against the ship’s wake.”
Kurt pressed the intercom button. “Get the lights on,” he told Gamay. “We need to see what’s out there.”
—
Down in the sonar room Gamay was working feverishly. She was maneuvering the sled in a back-and-forth motion while drawing it in on the cable. She put the lights on and panned the cameras.
“There,” Paul pointed out. Something gray cut through the frame from right to left. It moved too quickly to see.
Gamay swung the camera around hoping to follow it. She caught a brief glimpse of it before it vanished into the darkness. A freeze-frame showed it to be an arrow-shaped metallic object, more like a stealth fighter than any submersible she’d ever seen.
“What the heck is that?” she asked.
“Definitely not a flying fish,” Paul said.
As the camera searched for a target, another flash went by, and then a second and a third, the last two almost beyond the range of the lights.
“Three against one,” Paul said.
“Not good,” Gamay replied.
At Gamay’s touch the camera continued to swing, sweeping back and forth and ultimately detecting something directly ahead.
A shape appeared out of the darkness, speeding directly at the sonar array.
She pushed the controls to the side, but the towed array was designed to be stable, not maneuver like a speedboat.
It turned late and slow. The approaching shape closed in.
It was visible for a second before the image glitched and went blank.
“What happened?” Kurt asked over the intercom.
“Impact,” she said dejectedly. “Collision.”
“Is the sled still functioning?”
She tried a couple of commands, got no response. There was no data coming through. “The sled is down,” she announced, spitting the words in disgust. “I’m sorry. I tried to bring it in.”
“Nothing you could do,” Kurt told her. “Is it still on the line or did they break the cable?”
“We’re still pulling it in.”
“Cut it loose,” Kurt said. There was great urgency in his voice. “Cut it loose now.”
Without questioning Kurt, Gamay released the towed array into the depths. “Bye-bye, sonar system. We hardly knew you.”
—
Up on the bridge, Kurt spoke to the captain. His voice was filled with urgency. “Get the ship to full speed, turn hard south, then run flat out.”
“Why?”
“Those are military drones,” Kurt said, recalling a briefing he’d attended months ago in Washington.
“They’re called penetrators. They’re designed to puncture a ship’s hull without an explosion.
The Chinese use them to attack ships crossing their so-called nine-dash line.
Then claim the sinking vessels ran aground on rocks and reefs that don’t exist.”
The captain snapped his fingers at the helmsman, who pushed the wheel over to the right while moving the engine handle to full forward.
The ship began to throb as its powerful gas turbine engine revved and the propellers churned the sea. It had only just begun to turn when a slight impact reverberated through the ship and up through the bridge.
Alarms went off almost instantaneously. Lights flashed on the damage-control panel.
One of the crewmen scanned the screen in front of him tensely. “We’re detecting water in compartments three and four,” he announced. Those compartments were almost directly under the bridge.
Another thud followed. Duller and farther back. And then a third that was barely detectable. By now half the control panel was flashing red and yellow lights.
“Flooding in compartment ten,” the crewman added. His voice was noticeably more tense. “Additional flooding in the engine room.”
Klaxons sounded throughout the ship. The captain rushed to the damage-control station. He looked stricken at what he saw.
“How bad is it?” Kurt asked.
“We’ve got flooding in four compartments, all on the port side. Including the engine room, which is a large space.” The captain’s eyes darted back and forth as he scanned the data and came to a conclusion, then looked up. “If we don’t stop it quickly, the ship will roll.”