20
At thirty degrees Fahrenheit and ten atmospheres of pressure, the water column along the lip of the Devil’s Finger was desolate but clear and utterly black except for the high-intensity lamps of the demolition team. To the amazement of the youngest and fittest SEALS, encased in the relative luxury of the ASDS and the Sea Sprite, Matt Charon’s ceaseless activity and immutable vigilance seemed driven by strength of will alone.
The high-capacity tanks on Charon’s pressurized JIM suit had allowed him to stay at depth for nearly the past six hours straight and ten of the previous twelve.
In the same amount of time, five different men, including Stimson, had taken a shift in the second JIM suit before it was taken back to B-82 with a damaged regulator. Before allowing the second suit to be taken away, Charon had insisted its air tanks be scavenged, refilled and removed, then left where he could commandeer them if necessary. He resolved he would not surface again until the task was finished, even if it meant having someone lower another set of air tanks down to him.
Inside the bulbous suit, Charon was insulated from the cold, detached from the fatigue that penetrated every pore of his sweat soaked skin.
He was dimly aware of the suit’s bulky resistance to movement as he clambered along the fringe of the Devil’s Finger. The slow, steady bottom current tugged at his body, threatening to topple him over, but his mental focus negated any sense of distance traveled. He had by now traversed enough seafloor to equal three crossings of the five-mile distance between B-82 and the leak. This was an incidental consideration to Charon; it was merely what needed to be done to achieve his objective. If he needed more adrenaline he need only think of the sinister ache in his scrotum that never ceased, and his rage gave him all the energy he needed.
As the underwater operation progressed, Charon positioned himself as the leader of the unit in charge of burying the canisters as well as the one wiring the primacord. Because of the depth involved and the limited availability of practical dive equipment, the SEAL pairs had necessarily taken to working in shifts. There was no question that fatigue came quickly on the long, uneventful trips from the surface, or in wrestling the disagreeably tight joints in the ungainly pressurized suit, yet one mistake while planting the C-4 canisters could also mean immediate death for someone. Several of the younger men tried to mimic Charon’s bravado and endurance, offering to stay longer in the ASDS or the Sea Sprite, but Charon warded them off. What they interpreted as concern for their individual safety was merely another aspect of his need for control as long as no single unit stayed down for too long, the chances that anyone would deduce what he was really up to would be considerably reduced.
As each pallet of canisters was lowered to the bottom, it was Charon’s task to designate their placement along the fault line. He could carry no maps with him, only the image of the seismic profiles he had committed to memory. Each time he moved along the lengthwise axis of the trench he had to mentally place himself relative to the bathymetry he knew would help him most. As his lamp passed over each feature on the seafloor, the compass and positioning sensors in his helmet immediately translated his tracks to chart coordinates. Krail noted the progress of the planned array from aboard the Hawkbill, relying principally on the information Charon relayed (or did not relay) to him, while Charon himself needed to keep the actual array carefully laid out in his mind’s eye.
Once the manipulator arms of the submersibles had burrowed the canisters into position, Charon coordinated the SEAL divers who wired them together. Since the wiring was completed in stages, Charon was the only person who could fully know how the entire array would detonate once the trigger circuit was connected. As far as Krail or any of the men in the submarines could know, the array was being assembled exactly as it had been planned in the communications van.
Charon alone knew that when the trigger was activated, the array would produce the expected unexpected result with scientific precision. At a burn rate of twenty-one-thousand feet per second, the shit was going to go down very fast. What Krail and the others could not possibly know on their piecemeal shifts was that Charon had placed nearly twice the agreed-upon explosive force along the south ridge of the Devil’s Finger, the end closest to B-82. The canister teams also had no idea that these southernmost charges were wired to detonate first. The canyon walls would come down as planned, but as only Charon knew, the overload of charges at the south end of the array would generate a domino effect along the fault line that would course straight through the footprint of B-82’s GBS. By the time anyone realized the detonation had gone awry, the rig would be lost and Matt Charon would be a wealthy man.
With a little luck, they might even plug the damn leak too.
“One pallet left,” a voice came over his headset. It was the pilot of the ASDS, which, like the Sea Sprite, had been fitted with special manipulator arms to guide the charges to the seafloor.
“It’s Miller Time, Commander. Why don’t you take a break and let us finish up?” It was at least the sixth time, spurred by similar sentiments from both Krail and Stimson, that the pilot had reiterated the request. “One pallet left,” Charon echoed, as if that were explanation enough.
He had been counting down for fifteen pallets, or seventy-five canisters, each carrying the destruction potential of twenty HEX torpedoes. He could wait as long as it took for “one” to become two thirds “one-third,” then “done.” It would then remain only for the wiring unit to connect the canisters into an array that would unite all this brutal explosive force into a single, massive detonation that would fell the trench.
“Suit yourself,” the pilot’s voice came back, just cheerfully enough to crawl under Charon’s skin. “We’re dropping this off and heading for the bar.”
“Fine with me. The nearest one’s about seven hundred miles to your rear.”
The last of the canisters was set into place and activated nearly three hours ahead of schedule, in part because of the SEALS’ unparalleled endurance, in part because of Charon’s bullish restrictions on shift changes. The ASDS crew quickly added the final charges to the rest of the array, following the wiring scheme that Charon relayed to them.
With the array set, all that remained was to run the primacord trigger the length of the fault line, back to the rig, where the detonation would be dispatched.
“We were gonna stick around and help you with the spool,” the pilot of the ASDS called over to Charon. “But you probably want to carry it back to the rig yourself.” Loaded with primacord, the spool weighed nearly eight hundred pounds in air, one-sixth of that underwater.
“Why? Don’t you ladies think I could?” Charon said, his relief allowing a trace of humor to slip into his familiar growl.
“Any doubts of that vanished about four hours ago, sir,” came the pilot’s amused reply. “Climb on and we’ll give you a lift.”
Charon checked the wrap of the primacord around the package of mixed explosive, then slowly maneuvered up and onto the ASDS and checked the primacord’s release mechanism on the spool. The three quarter-inch line played out smoothly, and Charon tapped his metal hand on the vessel’s hull to indicate the set. The sub’s impellers whined to life, easily lifting both the spool and Charon off the bottom, then glided south toward B-82.
The realization that the array was finally set sent a wave of relief through Charon’s body. He closed his eyes, listening to the chatter coming through the headset: Sea Sprite to Stimson, Stimson to Rushmore, the ASDS to B-82, Krail’s high-strung baby-sitting from his sonar laden nest aboard the Hawkbill.