“Very well.”
He got up from his chair and crossed to a console, taking the headset of the man sitting there.
“This is General Oberstev”
“My name is Dane Brande, General, and I’m one mad son of a bitch.”
“Brande?”
He looked to Talebov, who said, “The American vessel Orion.ˮ
“Yes, Mr. Brande. We ought to have thanked you for your chart…”
“Are you really the head honcho?”
“What?”
“Are you calling the shots, Oberstev?”
He finally got a grasp on the idiom. “Yes.”
“Well, I’m tired of the goddamned games being played in Moscow and Washington,” Brande told him. “Do you want that bastard off the bottom or not?”
Oberstev expelled his breath in the same amount of time it took him to make his decision. “I want it up, yes.”
“Is it hot?”
“Hot?”
“Is it supercritical?”
Oberstev mulled over the question. An easy question, a difficult answer.
This decision was made. To hell with Vladivostok.
“It may be, Mr. Brande.”
“Traitor!” yelped Janos Sodur.
“Just a minute, Mr. Brande.” Oberstev turned around until he found Alexi Cherbykov. “Colonel, would you place Colonel Sodur under arrest and confine him to his cabin? I’m sure Captain Talebov will provide a guard.”
“At once, General,” Cherbykov said, grinning his approval.
Leonid Talebov said to the duty officer, “Senior Lieutenant, call the master-at-arms.”
Sodur made violent protests, accusations, and promises as he was led from the combat information center.
“I am back, Mr. Brande.”
“Have you located the rocket, General?”
Oberstev again looked at the plotting board. “I am afraid not. We have found the left booster.” He read off the coordinates.
“That’s it?” Brande asked.
“Also the right booster. It is at five thousand, three hundred and five meters of depth, at coordinates two-six, one-nine, five-seven North, one-seven-six, one-zero, three-one East.”
“That’s great!” Brande said. “It gives us a track to follow.”
“Yes, we think so, too. Pyotr Rastonov has been working on it.”
“In a minute, let’s put him on the air with our Larry Emry and let them work together.”
“Very well,” Oberstev said, “it is a good idea.”
“Now, tell me about that modeling program.”
This Brande seemed very forceful, but Oberstev found himself responding with all he had learned from Piredenko.
“The majority of the individual trials show the rocket taking an abrupt turn to the right immediately after it entered the water?”
“That is correct, Mr. Brande. Apparently, to the computer, the odds are in favor of the rocket’s fins locking into a tight right turn.”
“Damn,” Brande said. “I wish we’d known that sooner.”
“They are only odds,” Oberstev reminded him.
“But they’re all we’ve got to play with,” Brande countered.
And General Oberstev had to agree.
Bent over the radar, her forehead pressed to the hood, Dawn Lengren said, “There’s so many, Curtis. I can’t tell which one is the Orion.”
Aaron was at the helm, fighting to keep the bow aimed into the oncoming waves. The windshield wiper slapped back and forth with irritating regularity, but it did not help much. The rain sluiced off the glass, making forward vision wavery. He had the foredeck spotlight on, but it only showed him one towering wave after another.
It was cold. There was no heater on the flying bridge, and both he and Dawn were wrapped in parkas. Dawn had a blanket over her shoulders also.
Dawn’s stomach did not seem to be affected by the turbulence, as it had been by alcohol, but the rest of his family were all below, sick as dogs. Donny Edgeworth had been heaving his guts for most of the night.
It had not turned out quite as he had envisioned. For some reason, Aaron had expected a calm fleet of boats, all circled around his own as he spoke over a loud hailer. He had foreseen the culmination of his natural ministry. People listening to his logical discourse with awe. The television cameras recording sound bites for the six o’clock, the eleven o’clock, and posterity.
His scripts were scattered around the bridge, wet and smudged.
The reality was mayhem and chaos. There were ships all around, but he could not see them. They zigzagged all over the place. Several times, he had damned nearly run into fishing boats.
According to the radio, there were a lot of Commonwealth and U.S. ships present, but they had only seen the one. Somehow, in fighting the sea, he had lost track of both Brande and Mark Jacobs.
Still, he felt fortunate for the contact with the Navy ship. He knew Wilson Overton’s column, and thought that the reporter would give him a fair shake.
It did not always happen that way. Reporters could be bitchy, especially the television reporters.
And, too, Aaron thought that his conversation with Over-ton had helped to clarify his thinking.
He knew what he must do.
Chapter Sixteen
They had set up their own communications net including the Timofey Olʼyantsev, the Kane, the Bartlett, and the Orion.
And excluding CINCPAC and Washington, after Brande had responded to a radio call from Adm. David Potter.
“What do you want, Admiral?” Brande snapped at the microphone. His rage was taking a long time to dissipate, mainly because he did not want to let go of it.
He was in a chair at the workbench operations center in the laboratory with Larry Emry on his right and Mel Sorenson, who had relieved Polodka, on his left. Most of the ship’s crew and expedition team were present, sitting and standing as close as possible to the sources of information.
Emry was talking on the comm net with Rastonov and Cartwright while Brande listened to Potter.
“Brande, I’m going to put a dive team from the Kane aboard your ship. They’ll crew the next dive of the DepthFinder.”
“Like hell they will.”
“Listen, Brande, you’re a civilian. We’ll let people who are paid for it take the risk.”
“Tell that tale to the assholes in Washington, Admiral. If your people try to board my ship, I’ll shove them back into the sea.”
“Brande…”
Switching off the frequency, Brande picked up the phone.
“Bucky, get me the asshole.”
“Chief?”
“The Unruh guy.”
Emry tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re getting a data transfer from the Russians right now.”
“What data, Larry?”
“All of the modeling scenarios.”
“We can handle it with these machines?”
“No,” Emry said. “They’re dumping directly to the mainframe in San Diego. I need to have the satellite channel dedicated to me.”
“I’ve got one call to make, Larry, then it’s all yours.”
A minute later, the phone rang.
“Brande? This is Carl Unruh.”
“Did you dig that hole yet?”
“Not yet,” Unruh said.
“Forget it for now. Do you carry a lot of weight, Unruh?”
“Physically, yes. Politically, maybe.”
“I want you to get on someone’s case and round up as many radiation protection suits as you can find in Hawaii. Put them on an airplane and airdrop them to us.”