Why are these things hidden?
"That is a very good question, Freddie. Do you understand the concept of enemies and friends?"
These are opposites. Enemies are people who wish harm to us. Friends are people who support us. I do not understand why people wish to harm.
"It's complicated," Stephanie said. "People are not like you, Freddie. They are not logical all the time. They are emotional and that is a human trait. Our work is to find out things our enemies don't want us to know, so we can prevent them from harming us. You have helped me many times in my work. Now that you are awake, it will be much more fun."
Fun?
Stephanie smiled. It was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning Nick and the others watched the submarine rescue drama playing out on the wall monitor, eyes glued to the screen.
A lot had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Beijing had intervened and persuaded Chairman Yun to allow the rescue attempt. Yun had made a pompous speech, claiming the compassion of the seas overrode the despicable violation of North Korean waters by the warmongering Americans. The reality was that China had offered a carrot and stick.
The carrot came in the offer of supplies to help with the floods and early winter weather that had devastated North Korea's agriculture and food supply. North Korea was once again facing famine and Beijing had pointed out how grateful his people would be to their Great Leader if food was provided. The Chinese neglected to mention that most of the aid came from the Russian Federation. They were already at work re-labeling supplies arriving from Moscow.
The stick was a veiled threat to intervene with military force if Yun fired on the Americans. Veiled it may have been, but Yun understood that China meant business. Only a fool would have refused, and whatever else he was, Yun was no fool. He gave in. But his ego had taken a massive blow that would cause consequences no one could have foreseen.
On loan from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, the submarine rescue ship Chiyoda had arrived on the spot where California had gone down. Normally an American rescue vehicle would be flown in and transported to the nearest port, where it would be loaded onto a submarine and taken to the rescue site. Japan had offered the Chiyoda and President Rice had been quick to accept. Time was critical. Any survivors aboard the sunken vessel wouldn't last long.
If there were any survivors.
The Japanese ship carried a dedicated deep-sea rescue vehicle, Angler Fish 2. The DSRV was capable of reaching depths of up to five thousand meters. Deep-sea scans showed California lying a little less than nine hundred meters down.
Three different images split the monitor screen at Project HQ. The left-hand side showed the live satellite feed from overhead. The middle of the screen was tied into cameras on the rescue vehicle. There was no audio, but Nick and the others could see what was happening. The right-hand side relayed an image from an ROV launched from Chiyoda to record and observe from outside the DSRV.
The satellite showed Chiyoda holding station over the sunken sub, protected by a US Navy escort that included two cruisers fitted with missiles. A dozen North Korean warships circled the operation, like hungry sharks.
The live shot from the rescue vehicle was further divided into two views. One came from a front mounted camera and showed the choppy surface of the Sea of Japan as the vehicle was lowered into the water. The other looked back from the control compartment into the rest of the vehicle.
"They'd better get a move on," Lamont said. "Weather looks bad. There's a front moving in and it can get pretty rough out there."
"Too bad we can't hear what's going on," Ronnie said.
"At least we can see it," Selena said.
The DSRV submerged and started down. Two large batteries drove the enormous propeller at the rear and operated all of the vehicle's systems. A pilot and copilot sat in the control sphere in front. Two more spheres made up the rest of the vehicle and could carry up to twenty-four rescued personnel at a time.
As the DSRV descended, the remote vehicle followed along with it. The view darkened until one of the operators switched on lights that cut through the blackness of the water. The ROV followed suit. The water was murky, dark and unforgiving.
"It shouldn't be long now," Stephanie said. "They'll have a sonar fix on the sub."
"I'll bet Yun would love to get his hands on it," Lamont said. "Nuclear tipped cruise missiles? Hell, he'd give his right nut for those."
"That's one way of putting it," Selena said.
Nick pointed at the screen. "There it is."
A shape emerged from the darkness, caught in the glare of the lights. California had come to rest lying on her keel and tilted to starboard, stern down on a shallow slope.
Selena put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, my."
The wreckage was recognizable as a submarine but from the sail aft the hull was a mass of crumpled metal. It looked like a child's toy that someone had stepped on. The sides of the sail were caved in. Forward of the sail, the sub appeared damaged but mostly intact. Thin streams of bubbles rose upward from the wreckage.
"Holy shit," Ronnie said.
"Someone could still be alive," Selena said. "If they were in the bow…"
"Best place to be for a rescue," Lamont said. "The main emergency escape hatch is forward. The way that sub is damaged, there's no other way out."
Angler Fish 2 maneuvered into position. She needed to line up exactly with the escape hatch and lock on. Once sealed to the deck, opening the sub's escape hatch would be the moment of truth. A second hatch would prevent water from entering the DSRV if the submarine was flooded.
The propeller stirred silt and debris from the bottom, clouding the view.
Strange to be sitting here in a warm, comfortable room, Nick thought, while those poor bastards are under nine hundred meters of freezing water. God, let at least some of them be okay.
The thought startled him. It had been a long time since he'd thought about praying or asking God for anything.
The view from the camera on the ROV showed Angler Fish 2 hovering over the bow of the sunken submarine.
"They're lining up with the emergency hatch," Lamont said. "From what I can see, it looks undamaged. That's good news. They should be able to get a clean seal on it."
As he said it, the DSRV settled against the hull and latched onto a series of eyes located around the hatch. It stopped moving. The interior camera showed one of the operators get up and move to the center sphere.
"What happens now?" Selena asked.
"There's a skirt on the chamber that lines up with the escape hatch. Once they've got everything lined up, they pump it out and the pressure outside keeps a watertight seal against the hull," Lamont said. "Then they'll equalize the pressure between the DSRV and the sub."
"How do they open the emergency hatch?"
"That's the tricky part. There's a wheel on the outside of the emergency hatch and a special tool to turn that wheel. If the sub is flooded, the water pressure can create real problems when they open it. There's a space called an escape trunk under the hatch. It holds six to eight men at a time."
"That's not very many," Selena said. "Why is the space so small?".
"It's designed to be pressurized. If the sub wasn't so deep, survivors could suit up and make it to the surface through the hatch, once the pressures were equal. Last man in the group would close the hatch. Anyone left inside would drain the trunk and repeat the whole process until the last man was off the boat. But in this situation, they're too far down for that."