Chapter Six
Kaylene Thomas met the Orion as she returned to her home port of San Diego. Brande and Dokey had landed hours before, but Brande had only called her from the airport to report that fact, then said that he and Dokey were headed for the San Diego campus of the University of California.
She stood in the open warehouse bay of Marine Visions’ dockside storage facility, wishing she were 600 feet down in the dome of Harbor One, part of which was her own creation. She should be there as the new turbines, which produced electricity from spinning their blades in the undersea currents, were moved into position on their steel mounts and brought on-line.
One of the nine original turbines had broken down irrevocably after two years of use, and fourteen new turbine-generators were scheduled to replace the originals. The new models, designed and fabricated by Dokey, Otsuka, Roskens and Mayberry, were constructed of stainless steel and carbon-fiber plastic and should last a great deal longer than the originals.
That was where she should be, Harbor One, doing the job she was hired to do. Instead, she was delivering food.
Food for which a magnificent bill would arrive within thirty days.
Around her, the MVU staffers she had cajoled into working late lounged on top of crates or on the dusty cement floor. There were seven of them, all males, and they looked slightly beat after unloading the trucks. Doug Vahrencamp, newly hired to work on the mining project, grinned at her. He was in his mid thirties and handsome in a red-haired way, like Van Johnson. He was unmarried and interested in her. She had turned down two of his dinner invitations because, to her way of thinking, anyone who worked for Marine Visions did not have much in the way of a future.
She picked up her cellular phone from the crate beside her and dialed a familiar number and ordered five pizzas and two cases of beer. MVU people thrived on late hours and beer and pizza.
Switching the phone for a walkie-talkie, she depressed the transmit button. “Orion, this is Mike Victory.”
“Go ahead, Mike.”
“Did you top off tanks, Mel?”
“Right up to the caps, Kaylene. You have any idea what’s up yet?”
“We’ve got a gang here to load you as soon as you’re alongside, Mel. Full replenishment of pantries and refrigerators.”
“That’s three months’ worth,” Mel Sorenson, captain of the Orion, told her.
“We just do what we’re told. Plus, we’re stocking up your replacement parts and batteries. We’ll load SARSCAN, too. Did you run systems checks?”
“Sure did, on the way in. Everything’s in apple pie order, darlin’.”
“Engines?”
“Super good. We’re ten thousand hours away from overhaul. Kaylene, you haven’t answered my question.”
“You did hear the news?”
“I heard,” Sorenson said. “That’s it?”
“I don’t know. You read between your lines, and I’ll read between mine.”
“You sure, darlin’? If that’s it, I don’t like it a damn bit.” Thomas did not like it, either, and she was not yet certain how she would react when Brande broke the news. No, that was wrong. She knew exactly what her response would be, and it disheartened her as much as it relieved her.
Thomas sighed as the research vessel eased into the pier, her cycloidal propellers deployed and stabilizing her. The twin-hulled ship was particularly beautiful to Thomas, who fell in love with practically any marine craft.
She was going to miss it.
Cmdr. Alfred Taylor sat in the wardroom with his executive officer, Neil Garrison. They were both attacking pork chops and slippery green peas, washing them down with tall glasses of milk.
They had eaten silently for ten minutes, each of them digesting the contents of the message broadcast to the Los Angeles from the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.
“What’s your best estimate, Neil?”
“I had Jorgenson run it, and I haven’t double-checked his numbers, but it looks like another thirty-five hours. Something over eleven hundred nautical miles. We’re tapped out at thirty-three knots, Skipper.”
“And what do we do when we get there?” Taylor asked.
“Find the damned thing, I guess. That’s what CINCPAC wants us to do.”
“Deep, deep,” Taylor said.
“I know. I don’t give us much of a chance, but I told Chief Carter to make sure his sonar equipment was in first-class shape.”
“Knowing Carter, it will be.”
“We could get lucky, maybe. Say it didn’t drop into some ravine that shadows the sonar signal.”
“I won’t count on it,” Taylor told him.
“Me, either.” Garrison chewed silently for a full minute. “What about the crew?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, Neil. I think we should tell them.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Garrison agreed. “It’s not like we had a choice, of course, but I’d want to know the water could be irradiated.”
“Maybe it won’t be,” Taylor suggested. He knew he was grasping at straws.
“That’s something else I don’t think we can count on.”
“How come we run all over the Pacific inside the same can with a D2G reactor and we have to worry about some puny thing the Russians lost?”
“Iʼm a naval engineer, not a philosopher, Skipper.”
“You suppose the guy who lost this thing is a philosopher, Neil?”
Avery Hampstead remembered he had promised Adrienne that he would attend a wrestling match she had arranged in New York City. Pulling a pad of Post-it-Notes close, he jotted himself a reminder to call her and cancel.
He hated to do it. He also hated wrestling matches, but he thoroughly enjoyed watching Adrienne making money the old-fashioned way. Conning people out of it, as it were. There were not many Hampsteads with her elan and guts.
It was still light on the other side of the porthole window, but all he could see were the tops of fluffy white clouds. Behind them, night would be creeping up.
Hampstead had been about to see Brande and Dokey off from Belle Chasse in his chartered Gulfstream when he thought about what he would be doing back in Washington. He would be sitting in his office, talking to a select group of people on the phone for the next couple of weeks.
And he had quickly decided that he could talk on the phone from anywhere.
From here, for instance.
He picked up the telephone receiver from the table in front of him and asked the radio operator to connect him with Langley on a secure transmission.
“Will do, sir. Do you need some coffee back there?”
“Any time you have a chance, that would be great,” Hampstead told him.
He felt guilty, all by himself in the main cabin of the C-20B VIP transport. It was operated by the Air Force’s 89th Military Airlift Wing, and it had a crew of three and thirteen empty passenger seats. He wondered which reporter would get hold of the voucher and crucify him in the press.
The phone buzzed softly and he picked it up.
“Your call, sir.”
“Thank you. Carl, are you there?”
“I’m here,” Unruh said. The scrambler made his voice a little tinny.
“I wasn’t sure I’d catch you in.”
“My couch is soft. I know it well. Where in the hell are you, Avery?”
“I’m not sure. But I’d bet most of the way to Hawaii, I think.”
Unruh did not seem surprised that Hampstead would head for the scene of the crime. “Did you talk to Brande?”