‘Take your hand off the trigger.’
Gallen did as he was told, and the jaws released their quarry. But the latent momentum spun the Sea Otter on its axis even as Hansen tried to reverse thrust it out of the way. As inevitable as gravity, the Sea Otter spun sideways into the lip of the concrete caisson, bouncing off it into the mud.
‘Christ,’ said Aaron, his panting suggesting he was close to full panic.
Above them the other sub shrieked to the edge of the caisson and they watched in horror as the arms pulled sideways and the reactor simply disappeared from view, dropping silently into the hole in the sea bed.
The white sub reversed back again and Hansen got the Sea Otter clear of the mud, but something was wrong.
‘We travelling in a circle?’ said Aaron as they accelerated into the deep.
‘We lost the main prop,’ said Hansen. ‘We’re travelling on bow thruster power only.’
‘Where’s the other sub gone?’ Gallen peered at the sonar screen.
‘Behind us,’ said Hansen as the Sea Otter swept in a wide arc, the lights illuminating the stunning emptiness of the Arctic depths.
As they came around to face the white sub, Hansen’s tone changed. ‘My God!’
The cockpit was suddenly filled with light and as the white sub descended on them they raised their forearms to stop the blast of light into their eyeballs. The Sea Otter shook as it was rammed and pushed backwards.
‘It’s on top of us,’ said Hansen. ‘Feels like they have a grip.’
‘A grip!’ yelled Aaron. ‘Why? What are they going to do?’
The Sea Otter was pushed back into the mud, where the two vessels became stationary, the whining and whirring of the electric motors sounding ominous in the rising sediment.
A grinding sound came from the roof and then there was a loud tear and the white sub was reversing away into the black, something hanging from between its articulated jaws.
‘What’s that?’ said Gallen, pointing.
‘That’s our antenna,’ said Hansen, sounding defeated.
‘For what?’ screeched Aaron.
‘For the UQC,’ said the Swede. ‘That’s the radio gone.’
‘Can we get to the surface?’ Aaron asked.
‘I don’t think we have the thrust,’ Hansen replied. ‘It could take four hours with just the bow thruster. We have two hours of air, including the emergency tank.’
‘Is there any way we can talk to the Fanny on this?’ said Gallen, holding the radio handpiece.
‘The UQC is an underwater system that relies on the antenna,’ said Hansen. ‘I can try a morse signal.’
‘You do that,’ said Gallen. ‘How long we got?’
‘Two hours on emergency air and about fifty minutes each on BIBS.’
‘BIBS?’
‘It’s a face mask and air bottles — one per person, usually used in emergency decompression.’
‘It’s like a scuba rig?’ said Gallen.
‘It’s not supposed to be. It only reaches as far as the bottles.’ Hansen jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
‘If you morse the SOS, will they come?’ said Gallen.
‘They might.’
Gallen nodded. ‘Okay, let’s start on that then.’
In the Marines they taught the officers to keep the men’s minds busy when death was close. If things looked hopeless, only action of some sort created hope; to let people dwell on the inevitable was to invite madness and hysteria.
‘Okay, Aaron,’ said Gallen, ‘while Hansen’s sending the message, you and I are going to find a way to get that reactor out of the hole.’
‘We’re screwed, Gerry,’ said Aaron, his eyes glazing over. ‘What does it matter now? ‘
‘Bunch of assholes are gonna blow the Arctic apart,’ said Gallen. ‘That matter enough?’
‘Well, yeah, but—’
‘So we’re gonna stop ‘em!’
Aaron shook his head. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘So God made me American.’
CHAPTER 66
Most of the lights were doused to save electrical power and the temperature had plummeted by the time Gallen decided it was safe to explain his next move. They were wrapped in the rustling foil of exposure bags and Aaron’s nose was running freely with the cold.
Hansen had tapped out his morse SOS with the handpiece trigger and they’d picked up some crackling return signals. The traffic had gone back and forth for half an hour and the best Hansen had picked up was No submersible — Coast Guard close.
Gallen felt the cold leach into his bones and he wondered where the Israelis had gone, what their plan had been.
The window to make a dash for the surface was gone. They wouldn’t have made it anyway but at least they would have been heading in the right direction. Now Gallen had to find a way to raise his idea.
‘Aaron, you know about these reactors, right?’
‘Correct,’ said the American, with a sniff.
‘So you’d be able to tell what the Israelis did with the thing and maybe fix it?’
Aaron slowly turned to face Gallen. ‘Fix it?’
‘Let’s walk it through,’ said Gallen. ‘The Israelis pretend to be environmentalist filmmakers for ArcticWatch; they con their way into Martina Du Bois’ little media operation with the intention of ejecting the nuclear reactor, sabotaging its cooling system and dumping it into a large oil caisson where, when it finally malfunctions and melts down, it is guaranteed to bore straight down and cause the utmost damage. If this Gakker…’
‘Gakkel,’ said Hansen, his eyes closed. ‘Gakkel Ridge.’
‘If this Gakkel Ridge is as volatile and as volcanic as Hansen says, then the reactor burning a hole into it is likely to lift the lid on these super-pressurised gases — who knows what happens to an entire sea floor?’
‘Okay,’ said Aaron. ‘So?’
‘So they have to be doing something with the reactor and the technician is obviously their saboteur. When we turned the lights on the Ariadne Two, who you see in there?’
Hansen interrupted. ‘Glad you mentioned that, Gerry. I counted one man and one woman.’
Gallen smiled at Aaron. ‘Annoyed me too.’
Aaron sat up slowly. ‘What the fuck are you getting at? ‘
‘Tell him, Hansen.’
‘He’s saying that the Israelis’ third man — probably the nuclear technician — is still in the self-contained security capsule around the reactor.’
‘Why would he be there?’ said Aaron, now fully awake.
‘Where else is he?’ said Gallen. ‘Ain’t on the Ariadne. Weren’t in that submersible. Yet he went down with the film crew.’
‘They left him there?’ said Aaron, wide-eyed at the idea. ‘Inside the reactor?’
‘Wanna find out?’ said Gallen.
Aaron shrugged and Hansen fired the batteries.
After two rounds of the sea bed, limping along on the power of the bow thruster, they descended slowly on to the caisson, where Hansen allowed the Sea Otter to rest, balancing on the lip.
‘Usually the man in your seat controls the winch,’ said Hansen to Gallen, flipping a bank of switches which made a small TV monitor in the ceiling in front of Gallen light up as the downward-pointing floodlights went on.
On the TV screen they could see the concrete tube descending into the gloom, the top of the reactor visible at the bottom of the caisson.
‘This is the hard part,’ said Hansen. ‘Drop the winch hook over the U-bolt, which is maybe thirty metres down.’
Using his left hand, Hansen reached sideways and showed Gallen the winch lever. Grabbing it, Gallen focused on the TV monitor as he let out the hook. It shimmied through the white light towards the top of the reactor.
Tweaking the monitor, Hansen gave Gallen a close-up as the hook got closer. As it landed, Gallen slowed it, but the monitor showed it had landed about eight inches to the bolt’s two o’clock.