Читаем Terminal Run полностью

Hammerhead’s BRA-44 BIGMOUTH antenna protruded from the blue waves like a telephone pole in the middle of the sea. Instead of the unit interfacing with the battle network through the Comm Star satellite, or to the Internet orbital server network, the antenna transmitted a time-varying frequency to the commercial InterTel cell phone satellite. The antenna was connected on the upper level of the operations compartment to a remote unit wired into the V.I.P stateroom, receiving the transmission from the satellite phone belonging to Admiral Kelly McKee.

It took several minutes for the conference call to go through to the Office of Naval Research, the Directorate of Deep Sea

Submergence, and the Naval Underwater Science Center, and to McKee’s and Patton’s staff members. When the officers were all present, and the tape recording was uploaded to their connections, McKee ordered them to get him an answer in twenty minutes to the question: what the hell is the hammering sound? The ship remained at periscope depth, waiting for the return call, and when it came, Rear Admiral Huber, Director of Deep Sea Submergence, spoke on the other end.

“It’s our unit, Admiral,” he said. “An emergency percussion beacon installed in the Mark XVII Deep Submergence Vehicle, such as the one in the special operations compartment of the Piranha.”

“We need a rescue plan.”

“Admiral, we don’t have a deep submergence rescue vehicle capable of rescuing them. They’re trapped inside an HY-100 steel hull, and even if we could cut through it, we don’t have a hatch to mate to on the Mark XVII, and we don’t have the ability to execute a heavy lift to pull the DSV out. But we have a source with the capability, and they have a unit close by, two days’ transit from your position, three at most.”

“What source? A civilian salvage operation?”

“Um, no, sir. The Royal Navy.”

“Go ahead, Admiral Huber.”

“We’ve got to do this in two phases. Phase one is to locate the wreck precisely and communicate with the hull. There may be no survivors down there at all. Our DSV Narragansett is being scrambled there now on a transport plane. She’ll be at the wreck site in a few hours. We’ve lined up a commercial vessel to take her there and support her initial dive. We should know by sunset the status of the Piranha. Assuming the news is good, we’ll need to ask the British team at the sinking site of the City of Cairo to re task and come to the Piranha gravesite. The City of Cairo was their ship, and they wanted to salvage it using the Explorer II and the deep diving submersible, the Berkshire, which was built in case of a British submarine wreck. The submersible can cut through thick steel with a pressurized torch and a diamond-particle injection. It has heavy-lift capability to remove heavy objects from a debris field. It has a separate diving chamber with a variable adaptable docking collar in case they need to rescue submariners from a hull where there is no escape trunk.”

“Why would they do a merchant salvage mission with a Royal Navy sub rescue craft?”

“It’s practice for a sub rescue mission.”

“So this dry of Cairo salvage is purely a practice drill?”

“Not quite, Admiral. The City of Cairo was a small British ocean liner, eight thousand tons, four hundred fifty feet long, a two-piper, at sea in 1942 going from Bombay to England with three hundred souls on board, half of them crew and half passengers. She was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat, U-68.”

“But why would the Brits want to salvage an old rust bucket tramp steamer cut in half by Nazi torpedoes?” McKee asked.

“Because before it sank it was loaded with three million ounces of silver in two thousand boxes of silver coin.”

“Ah.” The admiral nodded. “Okay. So how do I get the Explorer II here?”

“You’ll have to call the mission commander, Peter Coilings worth, personally, Admiral. He’ll be giving up a silver hunt on your say-so with no details, with his own government lining up against ours.”

Ten minutes later, the stateroom door opened just as McKee was re dialing the Pentagon.

“Sir, we may have a detect on the Snare, east of here at periscope depth,” Karen Petri said, her expression finishing her sentence — hang up the phone so we can go deep and pursue. But McKee needed to get to the Explorer II and get her on the way to the sinking site.

“Get Judison in here,” he snapped to Petri, still looking at the phone so he could dial.

Judison ran into the room a moment later, while the Pentagon operator attempted to complete a UHF connection to the HMS Explorer II.

“Sir, we’ve got a narrowband detect at two-fifty-four hertz, bearing two nine five. We’ve got to give chase.” The large captain was winded from his dash up the ladder from the middle level.

“Send out a UUV or several to the bearing,” McKee ordered. “And launch a Mark 8 Sharkeye downrange, but keep this ship at periscope depth, right here.”