“There was, of course, quite a bit of radiation released. Given the prevailing currents that run northeast, some of that is going to brush along the coasts of Iceland, Eire Land and England. What the effect will be is hard to say at this point although there’s no doubt fisheries throughout that area will be affected negatively.”
“Affected negatively?” Dane didn’t bother to wait for an amplification. “In other words, we don’t know much more than we did before eight nuclear bombs were exploded. Mind telling me exactly where we’re going?” he asked.
Sin Fen still had her laptop open and her almond eyes shifted their gaze from it to him for a second before returning. She type in a command and then showed him the screen. A ship was displayed. “That’s our next stop.”
“What is it?” Dane had never seen anything like it.
A massive ship was in the middle of an empty sea, a large wake indicating it was moving. A huge derrick took up the entire center of the ship, towering over it. Two helicopters sat on a landing pad on the stern, dwarfed by the derrick, giving an idea of how large the ship was. There was room on the pad for the Chinook they were on to land with some to spare.
“It's the Glomar Explorer,” Sin Fen said.
“A navy ship?”
Sin Fen shook her head. "It was built in 1973 by Howard Hughes for the CIA."
Dane saw the long arm of Foreman involved in that somehow. “To do what? Oil exploration?"
"The cover story that Hughes gave the press was that the Glomar Explorer was built to mine minerals off the ocean floor. That’s even what he told the people building it.
“It was constructed at York, Pennsylvania and is over two hundred meters long. Hughes spent about four hundred million of the government’s dollars on the thing without the taxpayers knowing about it. And that was in 1973 dollars- A recent refit just cost over six hundred million. To get it to the Pacific, they had to sail it around South America because it wouldn't fit through the Panama Canal.
"While the ship was built on the east coast, a companion craft was built in California called the HMB-1, Hughes Marine Barge. It's about a hundred meters long and built like an underwater aircraft hanger.
"The barge and the ship work together when needed. While the Glomar is the surface platform, the HMB-1 is submergible. It's got a giant claw, remote TV camera and lights. It can dock with the Glomar in the well of the ship underneath the derrick.
“The Glomar and HMB-1 were actually built to be part of a secret CIA mission called Project Jennifer. The purpose of that project was to recover a Russian submarine that had gone down in the Pacific with all hands. They went after the sub in 1974.”
“Did they recover it?”
“Part of it,” Sin Fen acknowledged. “The claw grabbed hold and they started bringing it up, but the submarine broke. They only got about a forty foot section. Enough to recover some cipher codes and manuals. Along with two nuclear torpedoes.”
“Why would they spend that much money to get a Russian submarine?” Dane asked. “Our technology was ahead of theirs. There isn’t much we could have learned.”
“Recovering the cipher codes for the Soviet fleet was the priority,” Sin Fen said.
“How long between the Russian sub going down and the Glomar pulling up that piece?”
“A year and a half.”
“Then recovering the cipher codes is bullshit,” Dane said. “The Russians would have changed their ciphers the day after they lost the sub.”
“But the CIA still had tapes of all the classified traffic that had been transmitted using those codes while the sub was still sailing,” Sin Fen said. “Even going back and breaking year and a half old transmissions can still reveal a lot of intelligence about fleet operations.”
Dane glanced out the porthole at the open ocean. “The cover story was undersea mining,” he said. “And the story you’re telling me is that the CIA wanted to recover a Russian submarine for the cipher codes. Now, tell me the real reason the Glomar Explorer was built.”
Sin Fen closed the laptop. “You are very distrusting, aren’t you?”
“I’d be stupid not to be,” Dane said.
Sin Fen nodded. “I apologize. Old habits die hard. I am so used to lying and telling cover stories. Working with Foreman all these years, not knowing what the gates were, we had to be very careful. We also had to manipulate people to do what we wanted without ever letting them have a hint what the real reason for their actions was or it was most likely they would not do what we wanted.”
“Like sending my recon team after a downed spy plane in Cambodia,” Dane said.
“Yes, but there was a downed spy plane,” Sin Fen said.
“Downed because it was flying a mission for Foreman, concerning the Angkor gate, not supporting our war effort in Vietnam,” Dane noted. “And he wanted more than just the black box from the plane recovered- he wanted my team and his man, Castle, to check out the gate on the ground.”
“Please believe that our motives are good although our means might be deceptive.”
“Right,” Dane said in such a tone that Chelsea lifted her head and regarded him with her golden eyes for a few seconds, before pushing her head against his knee, earning a scratch behind the ears. “Back to the Glomar,” Dane said.
“The real reason for the Glomar Explorer was to recover the Russian submarine.”
“But why did Foreman want the Glomar to do that?” Dane asked. “He was never interested in old cipher codes or Russian subs, was he?”
“He was interested in submarines when they went through a gate,” Sin Fen said. “This particular vessel disappeared for a week in 1973 during passage through the area known as the Devil’s Sea off the coast of Japan. The Russian Navy got a bit excited about losing a nuclear armed sub as you can expect.
“Then the submarine suddenly appeared a week later, exactly where it had disappeared as if nothing had happened. Except it wasn’t answering any radio calls. Then, less than an hour after reappearing, it goes down in very deep water. Too deep for the Russians to rescue anyone or even recover anything from the wreck with the technology that was available at that time.”
“But not too deep for Foreman to try,” Dane said.
“Correct. He was able to get the CIA to fund Glomar on the possibility of getting those cipher codes and classified manuals. Give the navy an idea what the Russian nuclear submarine capability was. Plus he got Howard Hughes to help. Mister Foreman has always been very good at getting wealthy individuals in the private sector to aid his cause.”
“Did Foreman learn anything from the wreckage he did recover?”
“What Foreman was really interested in was the nuclear power plant and the nuclear weapons. The Glomar wasn’t able to get the power plant and he only recovered two of the fourteen nuclear weapons it had on board.”
Dane waited.
“Some of the nuclear weapon berths were empty,” Sin Fen finally allowed.
“Meaning the weapons were removed from the sub.”
“Correct. And the two weapons recovered had been worked on.”
“Worked on?”
“Casings taken off. Parts removed.”
“That helps explain how the nukes from the Wyoming were aimed, fired and detonated,” Dane noted.
“Indeed it does,” Sin Fen said.
“What else?”
“You are persistent, aren’t you?” Sin Fen didn’t wait for an answer. “They recovered some bodies off the Russian submarine.”
“That’s to be expected.”
“Not these bodies,” Sin Fen said. “There were a total of eight in the section recovered. Four were Russian crewmembers. The other four- well, three were Japanese and one was, as near as could be determined, an American.”