The eyes glazed over. Pak was dead.
A pressure switch! That was why the bomb had been suspended over the water. It could be jettisoned easily, possibly with the non-suicidal PRR gunmen being told it would be detonated by a simple timer after they’d had a chance to escape. Probably the idea had been to use the minisub to plant the thing if there was time. Then arming the pressure switch would be like a direct trigger, detonating the bomb as soon as the button was pushed. In either case, having the bomb detonate deep underwater would be certain to cause maximum damage to all of the bottom installations in this part of the North Sea.
He’d set it to detonate at eighty something. Eighty what? The water in this part of the North Sea averaged forty fathoms… about 240 feet. Murdock frowned. Pak was North Korean… and the Koreans measured everything in meters.
Eighty meters?
That would be 248, almost 250 feet.
Oh, God! Could it actually be that simple? Had Pak miscalculated… and armed the bomb to explode eight feet deeper than the water around the Bouddica Complex? Murdock sagged back against the crane’s support, suddenly weary. That bastard Murphy had been up to his old tricks on both sides of the battle this time.
He dropped from the cab and started walking back toward Mac and Inge. Other helicopters were approaching now, with more troops, with NEST personnel, with medics and doctors.
Roselli met him. “I just heard about Inge.”
“She’ll be all right,” he said. She’s got to be.
“Yeah, she’s tough. They’ll have her on a medevac chopper in another few minutes. What’s the word on Pak’s bomb?”
“He said there was a pressure switch, set for eighty meters.” Murdock managed a weak smile. “I think he miscalculated. The water’s not that deep here!”
Roselli laughed. “Ha! That’s a good one! All that high-tech, and the son of a bitch forgot to check his depth charts!”
The moon, just past full, was rising over the southeastern horizon, enormous and silver, its light casting cool illumination across the sea.
The moon…
And with a terrible, icy certainty, Murdock knew that he was wrong, that Pak had made no mistake, that the bomb deposited moments ago at the base of Bouddica Alpha was still very much alive and very, very dangerous.
“This is Eagle Leader!” he shouted over his mike. “I need to talk with a senior man with the complex! One of the civilians!”
There was a confused rustle of sound over the net. Then an unfamiliar voice came on. “Uh, this is John Brayson. I’m the senior facility manager. What can—”
“Mr. Brayson! How deep, exactly, is the water underneath Bouddica Alpha? Do you know?”
“Of course,” Brayson’s reply came back, sounding a trifle hurt. “Two hundred forty-seven feet. That’s the average depth, of course—”
“And what’s the variance from tides?”
“Tides? Oh, well, that depends of course—”
“Damn it! How high are the fucking tides out here?”
“Between low tide and high, they average five meters,” Brayson said. “About fifteen, sixteen feet. Of course, with a storm surge, they can be—”
Murdock cut him off, switching to the main tactical channel. If the moon was just rising, it ought to be close to low tide here. Murdock cursed himself for not checking the local tide tables before leaving on this op, but there’d been so much else to think about. If it was low tide now, the water must be somewhere in the neighborhood of 240 feet or so, maybe a little less.
Six hours after low tide, however, the moon would be high in the sky, the bulge of water raised by the moon’s once-daily passage across the heavens would pass Bouddica from east to west, and the water would be deeper.
With the water reaching a high-tide depth of perhaps 254 feet.
It was impossible to get a precise time without some fairly accurate tables at hand. High tide did not always keep lockstep with the moon, but lagged behind by as much as three hours, depending on the location. Wind and weather could raise tides higher, or knock them down. The position of the sun could amplify them into spring tides, or restrain them as neap tides.
But it was a safe guess that somewhere between two and four hours from now, the water beneath Bouddica would reach 248 feet—80 meters — and Pak’s atomic bomb would detonate.
Murdock opened a channel. “This is Eagle Leader. The bomb is armed, repeat, armed. Colonel Wentworth!”
“I’m here, Eagle Leader. Go ahead.”
“I suggest you start evacuation immediately. Get everyone off the complex and at least ten miles away.”
“Roger that.”
“I don’t know how long we have… but I’m going to find out. Somebody track down some deep-diving gear for me, fast!”
Roselli touched his shoulder. “Make that two sets, L-T.”
“This’ll be a solo dive, Razor.”
“Like fuck it will! What’s the first rule of BUD/S?”
Swim buddies. You never hit the water without a partner.
“Besides,” Roselli added, “it’s gonna be dark down there. You’ll need an extra set of eyes… and hands.”
Murdock thought about it, then nodded. There was no denying Roselli’s logic. In any case, he’d be no safer up here than he would 240 feet down.
“Okay, Razor. Looks like we’re dive buddies. Let’s get rigged out.”
Skeeter Johnson had been listening in over the tactical channel. “Hey, Skipper?” he called on the SEALs’ channel. “This is Skeeter! Wait for me! You’re gonna need a bus to get you down!”
“Negative Skeeter,” Murdock’s voice shot back. “I’d be blind in the bus, and it’d take too long to get the SDV powered up and moving. Besides, the life support won’t be compatible. I’m using some of the diving gear here on the platform. You can bring our dry suits across, though.”
Johnson scowled. He was being left out of this op, and he didn’t like that one bit. Sure, sure, everyone had a job to do, but he and Jaybird had been parked with the satellite gear, while Murdock, Mac, and Razor pulled the actual sneak-and-peek on Alpha. And it was a good thing they’d been posted here too. At one point during the battle, two tangos had come charging across the bridge. Whether they’d been fleeing the battle or coming over to secure Bravo for some other purpose was unknown; Sterling and Johnson had opened up on them from ambush, knocking both off the catwalk and into the sea. If the radio gear had been left unguarded…
But the battle was over now, with little chance of wandering tangos coming this way. Damn it, he wanted to get in on this!
He was pretty sure that the choice of personnel had been deliberate on Murdock’s part; Murdock, Mac, and Razor were all long-time members of Third Platoon’s Blue Squad, while he and Jaybird were relative newcomers. Murdock had probably arranged things so that the men who knew each other, their moves, their habits in combat would all be working together.
It was safer that way, with less likelihood of someone getting pegged by friendly fire.
But this was different. Murdock needed him.
“Do you read me, Skeeter?” Murdock’s voice came. “Send Jaybird across with our dry suits. You stay put!”
“Uh… roger that. I copy.”
He exchanged a dark glance with Sterling, who was already gathering up the SEALs’ gear, then sat down to wait.
Bouddica was almost embarrassingly well stocked with diving gear. There were suits of every possible kind — wet suits, dry suits, hot-water suits, even a few of the bulky, heavily armored “Jim suits” that looked like a cross between an old-fashioned hard-hat diving rig, medieval suits of armor, and the suits worn by astronauts on the surface of the Moon.