White Death nf-4 Read online

  Zavala was the son of Mexican parents who had waded across the Rio Grande, settling in Santa Fe. His oil-stained mechanical genius was the stuff of legend around the halls ofNUMA, and he could re- pair, modify or restore any kind of engine ever devised. He had spent thousands of hours as a pilot in helicopters and small jet and turbo- prop craft. His assignment to Austin's team had proved a fortunate pairing. Many of their assignments would never become public knowledge, but their wisecracking camaraderie in the face ofdan- aer masked a steely determination and a competence few could rival.

  Austin calmly regarded Becker with piercing blue-green eyes the color of coral under water. He was not unsympathetic to Becker's plight and deflected the Dane's fury with a broad smile. "Sorry for being flip. I should have explained immediately that the rescue ve- hicle is on its way."

  "Should be here in about an hour," Zavala added.

  "There's a lot we can do in the meantime," Austin said. He turned to the captain. "I need help unloading a piece of equipment from the chopper. Can you spare a few men with strong backs?"

  "Yes, of course." The captain was relieved to be doing something at last. Moving with crisp efficiency, he dispatched his first mate to round up the work detail.

  At Austin's direction, the grunting crewmen lifted a large wooden crate from the helicopter's storage compartment and set it down on the deck. Using a crowbar from the helicopter, Austin pried the top off the box and peered inside. After a quick inspection, he said, "Everything looks shipshape. What's the latest on the situation?"

  Captain Larsen pointed to the bobbing buoy that marked the sunken cruiser. While Austin and Zavala listened intently, Larsen provided a quick summary of the collision and sinking.

  It doesn't make sense," Austin said. "From what you say, they had plenty of sea room."

  So did theAndrea Doria and the Stockholm/' Zavala said, refer- ring to the disastrous sea collision off Nantucket.

  Becker mumbled something about SOS criminals, but Austin ig- nored him and concentrated on the business at hand. "What makes you so sure the captain and his men are still alive?"

  We were doing a whale population survey not far from here when we got the call for help," Larsen said. "We dropped a hy- drophone over the side and picked up the sound of someone tapping an SOS on the hull in Morse code. Unfortunately, we can only re- ceive, not send, messages. However, we determined that there were thirteen men, including Captain Andersen, trapped in a pocket of air in the forward bunkroom. The air is foul, and they were in the early stages of hypothermia."

  "When did you last hear from them?"

  "About two hours ago. It was essentially the same message, only

  the tapping has become much fainter. Toward the end, they tapped out the same word over and over." "What was it?"

  Desperate.

  Austin broke the grim silence that followed. "Did you get any other equipment down to the ship?"

  "The Faroese Coast Guard called the NATO base on Stremoy. They contacted the NATO submarine rescue network minutes after the cruiser went down. Those ships you see out there are mostly from Scandinavian countries. We've been acting as the interim mother ship. A Swedish vessel should arrive soon with a rescue ve- hicle, but like the others, it's useless in this situation. It's set up to res- cue men through a submarine rescue hatch. We've been able to pinpoint the cruiser's location two-hundred-sixty feet down, but be- yond that, for all our technical ability, we're only spectators at a dis- aster in the making."

  "Not necessarily," Austin said.

  "Then you think you can help?" Becker said with pleading eyes.

  "Maybe," Austin said. "We can say better after we see what we're up against."

  Becker apologized for his earlier abruptness. "Sorry I flew off the handle. We're grateful for your offer to help. I owe a special debt to Captain Petersen. After we were hit and there was no doubt the cruiser would sink within minutes, he made sure I had a place in a lifeboat. When he learned others were still below, he rushed off to help them and must have been trapped when the ship sank."

  "He's a brave man. All the more reason for saving him and his crew," Austin said. "Do you have any idea of the ship's position on the bottom?"

  "Yes, of course. Come with me," the captain said. He led the way

  to an electronics lab off the main deck. The room was equipped with computer monitors used for remote sensing projects. "This is a high- resolution sonar picture of the LeifErifyson," he said, indicating the image on a large monitor. "As you can see, she is lying at a slight angle on an inclined slope. The crews' quarters are here, one deck below the mess area, a short distance back from the bow. Obviously, air was trapped here." He circled a section of hull with the cursor. "It's a miracle they're still alive."

  "It's a miracle they may wish never happened," Becker observed glumly.

  "Tell us about the compartment."

  "It's quite large. There are bunks for two dozen crewmen. It's reached by a single companionway through the mess hall. There is also an emergency hatch."

  "We'll need specific details about the bunkroom, particularly the location of pipes, conduits and structural supports."

  The captain handed over a file. "The navy department faxed this material to us in anticipation of the rescue attempt. I think you'll find everything you need. If not, we can get it to you quickly."

  Austin and Zavala studied the ship's schematic layouts, then went back to the sonar image. "There's only so much we can learn from pictures," Austin said finally. "Maybe it's time I went for a swim."

  "Good thing you brought your swimsuit," Zavala said.

  "It's the new Michelin model. Guaranteed to wow the ladies."

  Becker and the captain wondered if they had stumbled into the company of madmen. They exchanged puzzled glances, then hurried to keep up with the NUMA men. While Zavala sketched out their strategy for Captain Larsen and Becker, Austin supervised the four strapping crewmen as they moved the crate until it was under a boom. They unwound cable from the crane, then Austin ran it into the big box and gave the signal to start the hoist.

  The bright-yellow figure that rose from the crate was nearly seven feet tall and looked like a robot in a fifties sci-fi film. The cast alu- minum arms and legs did indeed bulge like those of the Michelin Man, and the helmet resembled an oversized fishbowl. The arms ended in pincers like those of an insect. Four small fans protected by circular housings projected from the elbows and the back of the arms.

  Austin rapped his knuckles against the unit pack attached to the figure's back. "This is the latest in Hardsuit technology. This model can operate at depths of two thousand feet for up to six hours, so I'll have plenty of leeway. Mind if I borrow a short ladder? I'll need an experienced boat crew in the water, too."

  The captain dispatched his first mate to carry out the requests. Austin stripped off his windbreaker, pulled a heavy wool sweater over his turtleneck jersey, and yanked a black navy watch cap down over his ears. The suit broke at the waist into two sections. Austin climbed the ladder and eased his body into the bottom pod. Then the top section was attached, the lifting line attached, and the boom slowly lifted him off the deck.

  Using the suit's radio, which was the same frequency as the ship's handsets, he called a halt when he was a few feet above the deck. He moved his arms and legs, aided by sixteen hydraulically compen- sated rotary joints. Then he tried out the manually operated manip- ulators at the end of each hand pod. Finally, he tried the foot-pad controls and listened to the whirr of the vertical and horizontal thrusters.

  "All systems go," Austin said.

  The atmospheric diving suit, or ADS, had been developed to pro- tect divers from intense ocean pressures while allowing them to carry out tasks of relative delicacy. Despite its humanoid shape, the Hard- suit was considered a vehicle and the diver referred to as its pilot.

  With Zavala supervising the operation, the boom pivoted over the water. Austin swung back and forth like a yo-yo at the end of its swing. Seeing
that the launch crew had its boat in the water, he said, "Lower away."

  The cable paid out and Austin dropped into the heaving swells. Green froth surged over his helmet. The boat crew detached the cable fastening, and Austin sank like a stone for several fathoms, until he adjusted the suit to neutral buoyancy. Then he played with the thrusters, moving up, down, back and forward, then into a hover. He took a last look at the pale surface glimmering above him, switched on the lights on the chest section, mashed the vertical con- trol pad and began his descent.

  5

  UNAWARE OF THE events unfolding more than two hun- dred feet above his head, Captain Petersen lay in his bunk and stared into the darkness, wondering whether he would freeze to death or suffocate first from lack of oxygen. It was purely an intel- lectual exercise. He was beyond caring how the end came. He only hoped that it arrived soon.

  The cold had drained most of his energy. Every labored breath of carbon dioxide that he and his crew exhaled made the air less able to sustain life. The captain was drifting off into the comatose state that comes when the will to live ebbs like the lowering tide. Even thoughts of his wife and children could not pull him back.

  He longed to reach the numb stage that might cushion his aches and pains. His body still harbored enough life to sustain his misery. His tortured lungs launched into a coughing fit that triggered a throbbing in his left arm, broken when he'd been thrown against a bulkhead. It was a simple fracture, but it hurt like hell. The groans of his crewmen reminded Petersen that he was not alone in his dis- comfort.

  As he had a dozen times already, the captain ran through the col- lision in his mind, and wondered if he could have avoided it. All had been going well. A dangerous confrontation had been avoided, and the Sea Sentinel was being escorted out to sea. Then without warn- ing, that crazy circus-painted ship had veered toward the cruiser's ex- posed side.

  His frantic order to bear off had come too late. The tortured sound of tearing steel had told him that the wound was fatal. His naval training had quickly come into play. He'd given the order to aban- don ship and had been supervising the launch of the lifeboats when a sailor ran up and said that men were injured below decks. Petersen hadn't hesitated. He'd left the lifeboat launch in the hands of his first mate and hurried to aid his men.

  The night watch had been asleep when the LeifErilsson was hit. The Sea Sentinel's bow had penetrated the hull behind the sleeping quarters, sparing the crew from instant death but injuring some men. Petersen dashed into the mess hall, then half-tumbled down the companionway and saw that the uninjured were tending to their comrades.

  "Abandon ship!" he ordered. "Form human stretchers."

  The ship was sinking at a stern-down angle from the weight of the sea that poured in through the gaping hole. Water flowed into the mess hall, then down through the open hatch into the bunkroom, cut- ting off escape. Petersen climbed partway up the ladder, slammed the hatch shut and spun the wheel that locked it tight. Then the ship lurched as he was descending, and he slammed against the bulk- head, losing consciousness.

  It was a fortunate accident because he didn't hear the horrible moans and creaks the ship made on its fatal plunge to the bottom. And his limp body wasn't further injured when, moments later, the cruiser slammed into the soft mud. Even so, when the captain awoke in the darkened cabin, it was to an even more terrible sound, the cries of his men. Soon after he regained consciousness, a beam of light had stabbed the darkness and revealed bloodied and pale faces among the jumbled bunks and sea chests. The ship's chef, a short, round man named Lars, called the captain's name.

  "Over here," Petersen croaked.

  The flickering light came his way. Lars crawled up beside Pe- tersen holding an electric torch.

  "Are you all right, Lars?" the captain asked.

  "Some bumps and bruises. My fat protected me. How about you, sir?"

  Petersen managed a wet laugh. "I'm not so lucky. Broken left arm.

  'What happened. Captain? I was sleeping." 'A ship slammed into us."

  "Damn," Lars said. "I was having a sweet dream of good things to eat before I got tossed from my bunk. Didn't expect to see you down here, sir."

  "One of the crew said you were in trouble. I came to help." He struggled to get up. "I'm not much help sitting here. Can you give me a hand ?"

  They fashioned an improvised sling from the captain's belt and went around the cabin. With the help of a few men who hadn't been severely injured, they tried to make those less fortunate comfortable. The damp, biting cold was the worst immediate danger. They might be able to buy time, Petersen thought. The bunkroom had a supply of immersion suits used for cold-water protection if the ship went down.

  It took awhile to round up the suits, which were scattered through- out the cabin in bags, and to get the injured men into them. They slipped on their gloves and pulled down the hoods. Then they rounded up spare blankets and clothes and wrapped themselves in several layers.

  With the cold temporarily held at bay, Petersen turned his efforts to the air problem. One of the aluminum lockers held breathing de- vices to be used in case of fire or other emergency. These were passed around. They, too, would buy time. Petersen decided to use up their canned air first because it was purer than the air in the cabin, which was making the men sick.

  Petersen formed tapping crews for the same reason POW officers allocate duties to maintain morale. The men took turns using a wrench to rap SOS on the hull. As one man after another tired of the job, Petersen continued to tap away, although he wasn't sure why. Bored with the SOS, he began tapping out messages describing their plight. Eventually, he tired and rapped the bulkhead whenever strength allowed, which wasn't often. Then he stopped altogether. His thoughts turned from rescue, he shut his eyes, and once more he began to think of death.

  Using the marker buoy line as his guide, Austin sank into the depths feet-first and slightly angled forward, like an old hard-hat diver being lowered at the end of an invisible air hose. Dancing rainbow shafts lanced the water like sunlight streaming through stain-glass windows. As Austin plunged deeper, the water filtered out the col- ors and the twilight abruptly turned into a violet night.

  The powerful halogen lights mounted on the front of the Hard- suit caught snowy motes of marine vegetation and nervous schools offish in their beams, but before long, Austin was dropping into the benthic levels, where only the hardiest offish lived. At two hundred feet, his lights pick out the cruiser's masts and antennas, then the ship's ghostly contours materialized.

  Austin hit the vertical thrusters and slowed to a stop at deck level. Then the horizontal thrusters whirred, and he cruised along the hull, rounded the stern and came back to the bow. The ship lay as shown in the sonar picture, at a slight angle on the slope, with the bow higher than the stern. He studied the ship with the intensity of a medical examiner inspecting the autopsied body of a murder victim, paying particular attention to the triangular gash in the side. No vessel could have survived the giant bayonet wound.

  Seeing only twisted metal beyond the jagged opening, he moved toward the bow again. He approached within inches of the hull, feel- ing as dwarfed as a fly on a wall, leaned his helmet against the steel plating and listened. The only sounds were the hollow noise of his breathing and the whirr of thrusters as they kept the suit at a hover. Austin pushed off several feet, came around, goosed the horizontal thrusters and let his metal knees slam into the ship.

  On the other side of the hull, Petersen's half-closed eyes blinked fully open. He held his breath.

  "What was that?" a hoarse voice said in the darkness. Lars had been huddled on the bunk next to the captain's.

  "Thank God you heard it, too/' Petersen whispered. "I thought I was going mad. Listen."

  They strained their ears and heard tapping on the outside of the hull. Morse code. Slow and measured, as if the sender were struggling with each letter. The captain's eyes widened like those of a cartoon character, as he translated the rough taps into letters.
<
br />   P-E-T-E…

  Austin was cursing the awkwardness of communicating. At his di- rection, one of the crew had attached a specially adapted ball-peen hammer to his right hand manipulator. The mechanical arm moved with agonizing slowness, but by concentrating all his resources, he finished tapping out one word in Morse code.

  …ERSEN

  He stopped and put his helmet against the hull. After a moment, he heard dots and dashes clunked out in reply.

  YES

  STATUS

  AIR BAD COLD

  HELP SOON

  A pause. Then, HURRY

  SOON

  Petersen called out to his men that rescue was imminent. He felt guilty lying. Their time was about to run out. He was having a prob- lem focusing. It was getting harder to breathe, and soon it would be impossible. The temperature had plunged to below zero, and even the immersion suit couldn't keep out the cold. He had stopped shiv- ering, the first sign of hypothermia.

  Lars interrupted Petersen's drifting thoughts. "Captain, can I ask you a question?"

  Petersen grunted in the affirmative.

  "Why the hell did you come back, sir? You could have saved your- self."

  Petersen said, "I heard somewhere a captain is supposed to go down with his ship."

  "This is about as far down as you can go, Captain." Petersen made a gargling sound that was as close to laughter as he could muster. Lars did the same, but their strength soon left them. They made themselves as comfortable as they could and waited.