“I still don’t,” Decker said.
Warhaftig chuckled. “So court-martial me,” he said.
“You have a man on the inside, don’t you?” Decker said. “Within the Israeli government, in the intelligence services.”
Warhaftig looked out at the DSV and nodded. “He got us a copy of the tape,” he said. “But we couldn’t tell you. That’s why I took your pictures. But when we realized your facility, we began to feed you information bit by bit, and staged that robbery in Tel Aviv as a cover for our man. Then we recruited Hassan.”
“We?”
“Yes. I was in contact with him too, but he preferred to deal with you. What I couldn’t get out of you, he did. He had no choice but to cooperate. You know what we could do to him if we wanted to — detention, deportation. And, frankly, it was better for Jusef if he worked through you, rather than through more official channels. I thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Otto.” Decker started to leave but Warhaftig held him back.
“Good luck,” Warhaftig said. He stuck his hand out.
Decker was standing in the rain. It was washing down his back. He looked down at Warhaftig’s hand. Then, finally, he shook it. “Thanks for everything,” he said. With that he turned and ran across the deck.
Swenson and Speers had already climbed up into the DSV. Decker could see her golden hair disappearing through the hatchway. He clambered up the narrow ladder, slipped through the hatch, and waved once more at Seiden and Warhaftig who were standing in the rain on the deck below. Then he closed the hatch, and the Alvin was hoisted slowly up and over the side, down into the waves.
“God help them,” Seiden said as the submersible faded out of sight.
“God help us all,” Warhaftig whispered back.
The Rêve de Chantal steamed slowly south, toward Venezuela. Topside, the Gambian, Momodou Marong, was fishing with a hand line, his shirt off, and a huge cigar dangling precariously from his lips.
Suddenly, he heard what sounded like distant thunder. He looked up but the sky was clear, dotted with stars. The noise grew louder. The Gambian stood up and looked across the rail to starboard. He could see whitecaps in the moonlight flowing evenly into the great bay of Bathsheba on the island of Barbados only a mile or two away. Then the freighter seemed to lurch as if she’d run aground. Marong looked back toward the shore. The sea was pulling back. It was retreating from the beach. The freighter yawed and rolled. He held on to the rail. His fishing line drew taut. He let it go and ran across the deck.
In the distance, off the port beam, Marong could see what appeared to be a great white wall of water, rising higher and higher as it approached the freighter at a frightening speed. It rose above the tallest boom, above the highest mast or funnel. It seemed to block out the entire sky, and then it was upon him, bursting his body like a great balloon against the bulwark, lifting the freighter up and over until she rolled and rolled submerged onto the island, coming to rest at last, a twisted wreck of steel and wood and dying flesh, more than a quarter of a mile inland.
Chapter 45
The Alvin descended slowly into the black Atlantic. The water in the upper column was fairly turbulent but this, Speers assured them, was relatively normal. The mega-tsunami was still two hours distant.
During the descent, Swenson and Roger Speers briefed Decker on the history and capabilities of the DSV. Originally constructed in 1964, the submersible was 7.1 meters long and 3.7 meters high, with a cruising speed of approximately half a knot. Despite her age, the DSV remained a state-of-the-art submersible, thanks to a host of reconstructions and numerous improvements over the years. Constructed of 4.9 centimeters of titanium, the hull could tolerate pressures of up to 208 centimeters OD, allowing two scientists and a pilot to descend to depths of more than 4,500 meters for more than 70 hours.
Generally, a support or “mother” ship called the Atlantis accompanied the vessel. In this case, due to time constraints, the USS Stanfield was going to have to serve this role, catching the acoustic pulse the DSV emitted every three seconds through the frigate’s transducer array. Everything about the voyage had been rushed and, during the descent, Speers and Swenson fretted about the compromises they’d been forced to make.
Generally, when working at maximum depths, it took about two hours for the DSV to reach the ocean floor, and another two to surface. The four hours of working time during a Day On Station (DOS) was crammed with carefully planned experiments, photography and sampling by scientists using the vessel’s three twelve-inch diameter view ports, four video cameras, two hydraulic robotic arms, and a sample basket mounted on the prow. To ensure maximum productivity within this narrow timeframe, scientists spent weeks, sometimes months, preparing for a voyage before setting out to sea. A preliminary cruise plan was drawn up, including a complete dive profile, equipment requirements and descriptions (dive by dive), as well as navigation requirements.
“We haven’t done any of these things,” said Swenson, shaking her head. “We’re basically winging it.”
“We have no choice,” said Decker.
Swenson frowned and looked out through her view port. Despite the quartz iodide and metal halide lights mounted on the hull, there was nothing to see as they descended slowly through the depths. “I know that,” she said tightly. Then turning to Decker she added, “But I’m a scientist, John, remember? Experiments are all about the preparation. Developing a hypothesis and a way to test it.”
“Either we succeed and save millions of lives, or we don’t. I don’t mean to be glib, but that about sums it up.”
Speers chuckled to himself. “How long you guys known each other?” he said.
“None of your business,” they snapped in unison.
“Not long,” added Decker sheepishly.
“Just asking.” Clearly Speers had hit a nerve and he turned back to the console. “The guys at WHOI did a good job with the bomb mount,” he said, changing the subject. “With the sample basket gone, we should have no problem maneuvering. How big did you say those blowouts are?”
Swenson sighed. Speers had already asked this question twice before. “Some are as wide as fifteen hundred meters,” she replied, “fifty deep and up to five thousand meters long.”
Speers whistled. “Must have been a pretty big explosion to make that kind of hole. How were they formed?”
“Gas upwellings, in all probability, but we don’t really know for sure. A couple of years ago a team from WHOI and Duke University towed a SUBSCAN — a seafloor and sub-bottom imaging system — about two thousand kilometers along the shelf. They also took some sediment core samples using a gravity core.”
“Two thousand miles!” said Decker. “That’s a lot of coastline.”
“It wasn’t linear, of course. The ship traveled back and forth over the study area in a pattern called ‘mowing the lawn.’ Then they built a grid of overlapping data sections to create a final image. Gas has a characteristic signal,” Swenson said, “that commonly shows up as a bright, high-amplitude reflection obscuring any deeper signals. The data showed that the entire area is charged with gas, and we suspect the cracks are a system of large depressions along the edge that were formed by gas erupting through the seafloor. These layers look like the remnants of an ancient delta that reached out far beyond the current coastline during the last ice age. Sea levels were much lower then than they are today. The samples the team recovered included silty clay, sand and gravel from the bottom, and these are consistent with deltaic settings. Where these deposits are absent, the gas simply percolates harmlessly to the surface.”