Fire Ice nf-3 Page 4

  Logan stepped through a short passageway slightly wider than his shoulders and indicated a small padded platform behind the two chairs in the control station. "That's normally where I sit during operations. It's all yours today. I'll take the copilot's seat. You've met Dr. Pulaski," he said to the pilot. "He's a marine archaeologist from the University of North Carolina."

  The pilot nodded and Logan slid into the right-hand chair beside him. In front of him was a formidable array of instruments and video display screens. "Those are our 'eyes,' " he said, pointing to a row of television monitors. "That's the bow view from the sail cam on the front of the sail."

  The captain studied the glowing control panel and after conferring with the pilot, he radioed the support ship and said the sub was ready to dive. He gave the order to submerge and level off at one hundred feet. The pump motors hummed as water was introduced into the ballast tanks. The rocking motion of the sub ceased as she sank below the waves. The sharp bow pictured on the monitors disappeared in a geyser of spray, then reappeared, looming dark against the blue water. The crew checked out the sub's systems while the captain tested the UQC, an underwater wireless telephone that connected the sub with the support ship. The voice from the ship had a drawling, metallic quality but the words were clear and distinct.

  When the captain was assured all systems were go, he said, "Dive, dive!"

  There was little sensation of movement. The monitor pictures went from blue to black water as the sunlight faded, and the captain ordered the exterior lights on. The descent was practically silent, the pilot using a joystick to operate the diving planes, the captain keeping a close eye on the deep-depth gauge. When the sub was fifty feet above the bottom, Logan ordered the pilot to hover.

  The pilot turned to Pulaski. "We're in shouting distance of the site we picked up with remote sensing. We'll run a search using our side-scan sonar. We can program a search pattern into the computer. The sub will automatically run the course on its own while we sit back and relax. Saves wear and tear on the crew."

  "Incredible," Pulaski said. "I'm surprised this remarkable boat won't analyze our findings, write a report and defend our conclusions against the criticism of jealous colleagues."

  "We're working on that," Logan said, with a poker face. Pulaski shook his head in mock dismay. "I'd better find another line of work. At this rate, marine archaeologists will be doomed to extinction or to simply staring at television monitors."

  "Something else you can blame on the Cold War."

  Pulaski looked around in wonderment. "I never would have guessed that I'd be doing archaeological research in a sub designed to spy on the Soviet Union."

  "There's no way you could have known. This vessel was as hush-hush as it gets. The amazing part is that the ninety-million-dollar price tag was kept a secret. It was money well-spent in my opinion. Now that the navy has allowed her to be used for civilian purposes, we have an incredible tool for pure research."

  "I understand the sub was used in the Challenger space shuttle disaster," Pulaski said.

  Logan said, "She retrieved critical parts so NASA could determine what went wrong and make the shuttle safe to fly. She also salvaged a sunken F-14 and a missing Phoenix air-to-air missile we didn't want anyone getting their hands on. Some of the stuff involving the Russians is still classified."

  "What can you tell me about the mechanical arm?"

  "The manipulator works like a human arm, with rotation at all the joints. The sub has two rubber wheels in the keel. It's not exactly a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but it allows us to move along on the seabed. While the sub rests on the ocean floor, the arm can work a nine-foot radius."

  "Fascinating," Pulaski said. "And its capacity?"

  "It can lift objects up to two hundred pounds."

  "What about cutting tools?"

  "Its jaws can cut rope or cable, but they can also hold a torch if the job is tough. As I said, very versatile."

  "Yes, evidently," Pulaski said. He seemed pleased.

  The sub had been moving in a classic search pattern, back and forth in a series of parallel lines, like mowing a lawn. The monitors showed the seafloor moving beneath the submarine. Vegetation was nonexistent.

  Logan said, "We should be closing in on the location we spotted from above." He gestured at a screen. "Hul-lo. Looks like the side scan picked up a hit." He turned to the pilot. "Resume manual control and bring her down around twenty degrees to port."

  With gentle bursts of the thrusters, the NR-1 glided on a shallow angle. The battery of two dozen exterior lights illuminated the sea bottom with a sun-bright intensity. The pilot adjusted ballast tanks until the sub achieved neutral buoyancy.

  "Hold steady," Logan said. "We're coming into visual contact with our target." He leaned forward and peered intently at the screen, his features bathed in the blue-green light. his the sub moved forward, bulbous shapes appeared on the screen, singly at first, then in groups.

  "Those are concentrations of amphorae," Pulaski said. The clay jars for wine or other liquid cargo were often found on ancient sunken ships.

  "We've got the still and video cameras making a three-dimensional record for you to analyze later," the captain said. "Is there anything you'd like to retrieve?"

  "Yes, that would be wonderful. Can we bring up an amphora? Maybe from that pile."

  Logan ordered the pilot to put the sub on the bottom near a pile of clay jars. The four-hundred-ton vessel touched down like a feather and rolled forward. The captain called for the retrieval crew.

  Two crewmen came forward and lifted a hatch in the floor behind the control area. Beneath the hatch was a shallow well. A trio of four-inch-thick acrylic viewing ports in the floor offered a view of the bottom. One man squeezed into the space and kept watch so the sub wouldn't run into the pile of jars. When the targets were within reach, the sub stopped. The manipulator arm was housed in the forward end of the keel box. Using a portable control panel, the man in the well extended the arm and worked the jaws. The arm rotated at the shoulder.

  The mechanical hand gently grabbed a jar around the neck, lifted and placed it in a storage basket below the bow. The arm was retracted and Logan ordered the crew to raise the sub off the bottom. While the sub made another photo run, Logan called the support ship, described their find and said they were about to surface, then ordered the sonar turned on to locate the support ship on the surface. A measured ping-ping echoed throughout the sub.

  "Prepare to surface," Logan told the pilot. Dr. Pulaski was standing directly behind the captain's chair. "I don't think so," he said.

  Preoccupied with the task at hand, Logan was only half listening. "Pardon me, Doctor. What did you say?"

  "I said we're not going to the surface."

  Logan spun his chair around, an amused expression on his face. "I hope you didn't take my bragging about the ability to stay down for a month at face value. We only brought enough food for a few days."

  Pulaski slipped a hand under his windbreaker and pulled out a Tokarev TT-33 pistol. Speaking calmly, he said, "You will do as I say or I will shoot your pilot." He brought the weapon around and placed the muzzle against the pilot's head.

  Logan's eyes focused on the gun, then darted to Pulaski's face. There was no hint of mercy in the rock-hard features.

  "Who are you?" Logan said.

  "It makes no difference who I am. I will repeat this only one more time. You will follow my orders."

  "All right," Logan said, his voice hoarse with tension. "What do you want me to do?"

  "First, switch off all communications with your support ship." Pulaski watched carefully as Logan clicked all the radio switches off. "Thank you," he said, checking his watch. "Next, inform the rest of the crew that the sub has been hijacked. Warn them that anyone who comes forward without permission will be shot."

  The captain glared at Pulaski as he got on the internal communications system. "This is the captain. There is a man with a gun in the control area. The sub is now und
er his command. We will do what he says. Stay out of the control area. This is not a joke. Repeat: This is not a joke. Remain at your posts. Anyone coming forward will be shot."

  Startled voices could be heard coming from the aft section, and the captain issued the warning a second time to make sure his men knew he was serious.

  "Very good," Pulaski said. "Now you will bring the sub up to the five-hundred-foot level."

  "You heard him," Logan said to the pilot, as if reluctant to give the direct order.

  The pilot had been frozen in his chair. At Logan's command, he reached for the controls and pumped water from the variable ballast tanks. Working the planes, he elevated the sub's nose and moved the NR-1 upward with short bursts of the main propulsion. At five hundred feet, he leveled the sub off.

  "Okay," Logan said. "Now what?" His eyes blazed with anger.

  Pulaski glanced at his watch like a man worrying over a late train. "Now we wait." He shifted the gun away from the pilot, but kept it leveled and at ready.

  Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Logan's patience was wearing thin. "If you don't mind, could you tell me what we're waiting for?"

  Pulaski put his finger to his lips. "You'll see," he said with a mysterious smile.

  Several more minutes passed. The tension was suffocating. Logan stared at the sail cam monitor, wondering who this man was and what he wanted-and the answer was soon in coming. A huge shadow moved beyond the sharply pointed bow.

  Logan leaned forward and peered at the screen. "What the hell is that?"

  The shadow glided under the sub like a monstrous shark coming up for a belly bite. A horrendous metal clang reverberated from one end of the sub to the other as if the NR-1 had been slammed by a giant sledgehammer. The vessel shivered from the shock and rose several feet.

  "We've been hit!" the pilot yelled, instinctively reaching f for the controls.

  "Stay where you are!" Pulaski barked, bringing his gun to bear.

  The pilot's hand froze in midair and his eyes stared at the overhead. Those in the sub could hear scraping and dragging as if big metal bugs were crawling on the hull.

  Pulaski beamed with pleasure. "Our welcoming party has arrived to greet us."

  The noise continued for several minutes before it stopped, to be replaced by the vibration of powerful engines. The speed dial on the control panel began to move even though no power had been given to the thrusters.

  "We're moving," the pilot said, his eyes glued to the speed indicator. "What should I do?"

  He turned to the captain. They were up to ten, then twenty knots and still accelerating.

  "Nothing," Pulaski answered. Turning to Logan, he said, "Captain, if you would give a message to your crew."

  "What do you want me to say?"

  Pulaski smiled. "I think that is fairly obvious," he said. "Tell them to sit back and enjoy the ride."

  3

  THE BLACK SEA

  THE SIXTEEN-FOOT ZODIAC inflatable boat sped toward the distant shore, its flat bottom thumping against the wave like a hand beating a tom-tom. Hunkered down in the bow, hands clutching the lifeline to keep from being bounced out, Kaela Dorn looked like a finely carved figurehead. The spray that splashed over the blunt prow stung her face and her dusky features dripped with water, but she turned away only once, and that was to yell at the man who knelt in the boat with his hand on the tiller.

  "Mehmet, crank this thing up, crank it up!" She made circular motions with her hand as if she were twirling a lariat.

  The wizened Turk answered with a toothless grin that was wider than his face. He goosed the throttle and the Zodiac porpoised over the next wave and slammed down with even greater gut-wrenching force. Kaela reinforced her grip on the lifeline and laughed with delight.

  The two men jouncing around in the boat like dice in a shaker were less enthusiastic. They held tight to keep from being thrown into the sea, their teeth clacking with every jolt. Neither passenger was surprised to hear Kaela tell Mehmet to kick up the speed. After three months of working with the young reporter on the Unbelievable Mysteries television series, they were accustomed to her recklessness. Mickey Lombardo, the crew's senior member, was a short, thickset native New Yorker with arms made powerful from hefting sound and light equipment in and out of every conceivable means of transport around the globe. A wave had extinguished the cigar clenched between his teeth seconds after their wild ride began. His assistant, Hank Simpson, was a blond and muscled Australian beach boy Lombardo had nicknamed "Dundee."

  When they'd first learned that they would be working closely with the beautiful reporter, neither man could believe his good luck. That was before Kaela had led them through a dung-filled bat cave in Arizona, down the rapids in the Green Hell of the Amazon and crashed a voodoo ceremony in Haiti. Lombardo said Kaela was living proof of the old axiom: Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. She'd turned out to be a cross between Amelia Earhart and Wonder Woman, and their libidos had diminished in direct proportion to their growing respect for her audacity. Instead of regarding Kaela as a potential conquest, they now guarded her like a precocious kid sister who had to be protected from her own impetuousness.

  Lombardo and Dundee could hardly be classified as shrinking violets themselves. The crews that worked for Unbelievable Mysteries had to be physically fit, aggressive in pursuing a story and preferably brain-dead. The cable TV series had a high turnover and injury rate. With its emphasis on high-risk adventures, the series was tough on production crews – in fact, the misadventures of the crews, rather than their main assignments, often became the topic of each episode. It was the logical continuation of the "true-life" adventure inspired by the success of the Survivor series and its clones. If a reporter or technician were swept into the sea or pursued by cannibals, it made for a better story. As long as a crew didn't lose expensive equipment, management didn't care how hazardous working conditions were.

  They had arrived in Istanbul a few days earlier to launch a search for Noah's ark. The ark was an overworked cliche that even the supermarket tabloids had consigned to the back section with Elvis sightings and the Loch Ness monster, so Kaela had kept a sharp eye out for other leads in case the ark story didn't pan out. Their first day, while Kaela was looking for a fishing boat to take them into the Black Sea, she'd struck up a conversation with a colorful old Russian seaman she met on the docks. He had served on a Soviet missile sub and told her about an abandoned submarine base, even drew her a map showing the base's location in a remote comer of the Black Sea, after hinting that a gift of money might refresh his failing memory.

  When Kaela approached her colleagues and excitedly poured out the story of the abandoned Soviet submarine base, they lost no time planning a side trip. The sub base might make a good backup if the search for Noah's ark fell apart, as it probably would. The fishing boat had been hired to take them to a rendezvous with a research vessel from the National Underwater and Marine Agency.

  Captain Kemal, the boat's owner, was paid by the day, and said he knew of the sub base and would be happy to go there before they hooked up with the NUMA vessel. However, the fishing boat had engine trouble as they neared the base and the captain wanted to turn back to port – he'd had a similar problem before and it would take only a few hours to fix it once he had the part – but Kaela had persuaded him to drop her and her crew off and come back for them the next day. Mehmet, who was the captain's cousin, had volunteered to run them ashore in his Zodiac.

  Now, the Zodiac was approaching a wide beach that rose gradually to a ridge of sand dunes. The waves grew higher and closer together, and Mehmet reduced their speed to half. The old Russian sailor had said that the base was underground, near an abandoned scientific station, and they would have to search for telltale air vents. Kaela wiped the water from her sunglasses and squinted toward the grassy hills, but saw no sign of human presence. The countryside was bleak and desolate, and she began to wonder if they had bitten off more than they could chew. The bean counte
rs at U.M. frowned at unproductive expenditures.

  "See anything?" Lombardo shouted over the buzz of the outboard.

  "No billboards, if that's what you mean."

  "Maybe this isn't the right place."

  "Captain Kemal says this is it, and I have the map from the Russian."

  "How much did you pay that scam artist for the map?"

  "One hundred dollars."

  Lombardo looked as if he had sucked on a lemon. "Wonder how many times he's sold the same map."

  Kaela pointed toward land. "That high spot over there looks promising."

  Thut!

  Kaela jerked her head back at the weird sound. Then she saw the ragged hole that had opened in the rubberized fabric a foot to the right of her head. She thought one of the many patches on the inflatable's skin had popped off from the beating the Zodiac was taking, and she turned to tell Mehmet – but the Turk had risen from his kneeling position, an odd expression on his face, his hand clutched to his chest. Then he crumpled as if the air had gone out of him and pitched overboard. With no hand to steady the tiller, the boat went broadside and was caught by an incoming wave. The breaker lifted the boat at a sharp angle, then it was caught by another wave and flipped over, spilling the passengers into the sea.

  The sky whirled over Kaela's head, then cold water shocked her body. She went under a few feet, and when she came up, sputtering, to the surface, the lights had gone out. She was under the overturned raft. She ducked her head and came up in the open. Lombardo's bald head bobbed up, then Dundee surfaced.

  "Are you okay?" she yelled, swimming closer.

  Lombardo spit out the remnants of his cigar. "What the hell happened?"

  "I think Mehmet was shot."

  "Shot? Are you sure?"

  "He grabbed his chest and went over the side." With Lombardo following, she swam over to the front of the boat. "This is where the first bullet hit a second before the second one got Mehmet."