Murdock reached the minisub’s stern a moment later, straddling the horizontal wing that mounted two propeller cowls, one to the left, the other to the right. He fed the end of the line through the starboard cowling. For a moment, the prop wasn’t turning, and he kept stuffing the line through the narrow space at the front of the shroud.
Then the engine switched on, the line was reeled in… and with a grating squeak, the propeller stopped.
The port-side prop spun furiously, spinning the sub like a top. Murdock was knocked clear. Roselli, he saw, was free of the thing’s grasp, but hurt, clutching his arm as a cloud of dark blood spilled into the water. The sub kept turning, swinging about to face Murdock, arms descending. Whoever was piloting that thing — it had to be Chun — was good. Even on one screw, she was keeping the sub trim and balanced, pivoting the bow left and right as she pursued her next victim. The sub, Murdock saw, was equipped with small, high-pressure thrusters. Even with one prop out, she could still maneuver that thing.
Damn!
He ducked left, avoiding a stroke from one snapping claw. If he could foul the second propeller… but he would have to swing back and find the dangling line again, and he didn’t think that Chun was going to give him the luxury of time. He backpedaled, and the sub advanced. The lights were blinding, almost mesmerizing. Each time Murdock tried to shift left or right, up or down, the sub matched him, coming closer. Possibly he could get inside the reach of its arms and cling to the hull, but then what? A fast ascent might kill him; at least it would keep him away from the nuke, which had to be Chun’s plan.
The lady was going to stay here, taking on all comers, until the damned thing exploded.
Murdock was just about out of options. If he could find something lying in the mud, a piece of chain, a length of pipe, anything, he might have a chance. As it was…
The whale shape came in from the left, arrowing straight toward the submarine’s starboard side. Its blunt nose struck just below the conning tower, a ringing crack that seemed to echo off the seafloor and the BGA bottom structures nearby.
The bus! Johnson and the bus! The crazy idiot had disobeyed orders and brought the bus down, swinging in at top speed and ramming the North Korean sub.
He felt weak.
Somehow, he managed to stay focused. The submarine was in trouble; he could hear a thin, high wailing coming from it, could see the stream of bubbles trailing from a nasty-looking dent beneath the conning tower. The pressure hull had cracked; water must be blasting into the interior, propelled by a pressure of 120 pounds per square inch. The bubble stream grew bigger, more insistent. The sub’s interior space would be filling with water now, squeezing the air inside to a fraction of its former volume.
As the sub slowly settled toward the bottom, motors and thrusters silent now, he wondered if Chun was still alive.
No. She couldn’t be. Not after the near-explosive compression of the tiny sub’s cabin.
It took nearly ten more minutes to find the bomb, half buried in the silt about where they’d expected to find it. It took another ten minutes to find the cut-off length of line; by that time, the cold was penetrating Murdock’s dry suit so badly that he was shaking violently. It was all he could do to drag himself onto the blunt, upper end of the bomb, thread the nylon through the shackle eye, and tie a knot. His first attempts failed… but he kept at it, and at it… It would have been impossible without Johnson, who held the SDV steady to keep its forward light on the job; Murdock could never have tied that knot in total darkness.
He was having trouble breathing, and the ends of the knot kept slipping from numb and unresponsive fingers. “Damn it, Johnson, let’s have some light here.”
“I’ve got the light full on you, L-T.” The squeaking voice was almost impossible to understand.
“Say… again. Say… again. You’re breaking up.” Damn! He almost had it that time! Angrily, he stopped and pulled off his gloves, feeling the icy water flood up his arms. If he could finish the knot before he lost all sensation in his fingers entirely…
It took him a long time to realize that the problem was not with Johnson’s light… but with his brain.
Somehow, he managed not to pass out until after the knot was tied, a good sturdy fisherman’s bend that any Navy boatswain’s mate would have been proud of.
EPILOGUE
“So what happened after I passed out?”
His voice still sounded funny, chirping like the voice of a cartoon chipmunk. The recompression chamber had been charged with heliox, to avoid the complications of high-pressure nitrogen.
He looked around, taking in his surroundings. Johnson and Roselli stared back from bunks on the other side of the claustrophobic chamber, grinning like maniacs. A Navy corpsman, wearing a mask so that he could come and go in the high-pressure environment without having to decompress himself, was taking a blood pressure reading on Johnson. Roselli’s arm was swathed in bandages. Murdock was still feeling groggy after the effects of nearly drowning. His chest hurt; his throat felt raw and dry. The last thing he remembered was his vision going, just as he’d tied off the knot.
He’d awakened here.
“Here” was one of several recompression chambers in service aboard the BGA oil platform, kept ready for just such emergencies with the commercial divers on the facility.
MacKenzie was peering in through the porthole at him. “You can thank Skeeter for saving your ass. He parked the bus, climbed out, double-checked on your boatswain’s mate skills, you’ll be glad to hear, and then dragged you back to the sub. Stuffed you in the cargo compartment and drove you straight to the surface.”
“The bomb?”
MacKenzie jerked a thumb upward. “Already safe on board. The NEST and EOD guys are giving it the fine-tooth treatment. Unless one of them sneezes or something, I think we’re going to be okay.”
“Ha ha.”
“Don’t sweat it, L-T. They told me it was a very simple detonator, easily disarmed just by jamming a piece of wood through the firing device. You might be interested, though, to know that the water depth when they started hauling it up was two hundred forty-six feet. I’m real glad you remembered your knot-tying lessons from boot camp.”
“I didn’t go to boot camp.”
“OCS then.”
Murdock didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if the line had parted.
“So how long have I been out?”
“About twenty-four. It was touch and go there for a while. Cold water, though, can keep a man’s brain on ice. They say you were probably clinically dead for several minutes. Any memories of heaven?”
“Nothing. I must’ve been out and missed it all. Damn.”
“Maybe next time.”
“What about Roselli?”
“Aw, enlisted men don’t rate a chauffeur, L-T. You know that.”
“Sterling and I were already on our way down,” MacKenzie said. “Met him at about eighty feet and brought him the rest of the way up.”
“His arm’ll be fine,” the corpsman said, his voice muffled by the mask. “But I do recommend against his trying to armwrestle submarines in the future.”
“Hey, I’ve sworn that off,” Roselli said. “From now on, I’m sticking to mermaids.”
“Them you might be able to handle,” Murdock said, grinning.
“Speaking of which,” MacKenzie said, “there’s someone here who wants to talk to you. In fact, she threatened to shoot anyone who got in her way… ”