CHAPTER 51
Penny left Chiffrey and walked the deck for a while until she came to the Bluedrop in its cradle. After the minisub had surfaced on that terrible day, she had sat with her father until it was clear he would be fine, but then had retreated to the cabin. Since then, she had avoided him completely.
She wasn’t sure about everything Chiffrey had told her, but she did need to speak to her father, even if it was the last thing she wanted right now. After staring at the Bluedrop for a while longer, she just started walking, letting her legs take over until she found herself standing in front of her father’s improvised quarters in a storage room. She knocked.
“Not now, please.”
“Dad, it’s me.”
A brief silence, then he opened the door.
“It’s time we cleared away the debris,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
He gave her the stern face that he sometimes used, until a rare look of sadness came into his eyes. “Yes, a job that takes two,” he said. “Come in.”
“Dad, I didn’t come here to blame you.”
“As they usually say, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But none for you on this one, and I seem to have taken far more than my fair share. I should have listened, and I didn’t. I am so sorry.”
“Matthew wanted to go, I know that. He might have been taken even if he hadn’t gone down. At this point, there’s no reason to think that’s impossible.”
“I should have considered more, should have been more…careful.”
“Your least favorite word, but that’s not who you are, we both know that, and we know nothing is going to change on that score. So let’s dispense with the contrition.”
“That’s laying it on with a trowel, don’t you think?”
“It’s the truth.”
“And this from the daughter who is always saying, ‘You don’t know me.’”
“I don’t have to know you to accept what you do and will keep doing. And I didn’t come here to spar.”
He paused and considered with that bemused manner that never quite left him, even in dire circumstances. He wasn’t going to answer, so she added, “What’s important is getting Matthew back.”
“Of course.”
“Then if it’s obvious, why aren’t we doing anything? Chiffrey needs us to look like we have a game plan soon, so he can bring a bird back to his handlers. Otherwise they’ll move in and we may lose our only chance to find Matthew.”
“I know, he filled me in,” her father said. “And they’ll likely give us the boot when we get enough results for them to take over, whether we have found Matthew or not. They want to be free to plunder whatever it is down there.”
“There isn’t anyone else we can turn to.”
He nodded. “I’m afraid in this case, the devil you know really is better. So let’s get Chiffrey in here.”
He used the intercom to call the bridge. “Emory, is that you? Good. See if you or someone can locate our lieutenant and have him come to my cabin, please.” He clicked off before Emory had a chance to question him.
She did her best to catch him up on the conversation she had just had with Chiffrey. When he arrived, she was happy to see that he didn’t fake surprise at being called in. Her father motioned him to the stool, but before he even sat down Chiffrey said, “We’re agreed that what we all have in common is seeing Matthew safe again, but I have people to convince that we are doing everything possible to find out what is going on here. I’d like to know what’s your take on this, Doctor Bell. What should we do next?”
“Are you ready to listen?” her father said.
“Always ready.”
“All right then. We’ve seen how easy it is for a warship to be disabled. We’ve now seen what can happen with a submersible—even the disabling of its occupants. Even…well, we still don’t know what really happened down there.”
“I need to give them options.”
“First, send the warships away.”
“Well…”
“That is an option, and a good one. This forward-leaning stance can only be seen as provocative and is only complicating the situation. If need be, you have the means to move in quickly. They have their satellites to keep an eye on us.”
Chiffrey sighed, did his ear scratching routine, and said, “Not a string I can pull, sorry. We need a plan. Options they can accept.”
“Lieutenant, I’m a scientist so I am always looking at the best way to get the most results with the least cost. Not so much because of economics, but simply because it takes so much work and time to get anywhere and there is neither to waste.”
“I trust your judgment on that completely, but the scientific mission is not the only fish frying on the grill. I’m here to serve you and advise you and to see that we stay within the boundaries of acceptable risks.”
“I appreciate that,” her father said.
“Then I hope you can appreciate that in any other situation, the reasonable thing to do now would be to pull back the Valentina. And even in our present circumstance that might make more sense than just sitting here in the crosshairs doing nothing, which we are at the moment. I can’t sell that. If you have any specific strategies in mind, now’s the time to lay them on the table.”
“Lieutenant,” her father said, “Matthew needs our help. If we can find him, he might well be the loose cord to the whole tangle.”
“Penny and I have already agreed on that.”
“And if we can’t crack this soon,” her father said, “what about him?”
Before Chiffrey could answer, Malcolm appeared at the hatchway.
“Sorry to interrupt. Ah, Lieutenant, we just had a call from the Navy, from Admiral Stassen, I think he said. Or maybe Stetson, like the hat.”
“You mean Statsen.”
“Right. He needs you to call him immediately. On your satphone. He specifically requested that.”
Chiffrey’s gaze seemed to fix in space for an extra moment, then he smiled, but barely. He said, “You’ll have to excuse me.”
“Very well,” her father said. “Let me know when we can meet again.
“I certainly will, Doctor. Again, please excuse me.”
Penny watched him make his way out of the cabin, a little too quickly. His people had never before called and left a message like this. They wouldn’t have now unless it were extra important. She turned to her father and let out a breath.
“I hope that’s not more trouble,” her father said. “In any case, your old Dad needs to attend to some business, dear, and it’s a bit of a stroll to the head from here.”
“Afterwards, you can move back into your cabin.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I’m fine in here.”
“No arguments,” she said, raising her eyebrows like swords drawn. “There’s plenty of extra room in the women’s quarters now that Mary’s gone, and that’s where I should be anyway.”
“Well, then. Thank you.”
She gave him a long hug and said, “Let me know when Chiffrey surfaces again, okay?”
“Have a feeling that won’t be necessary.”
After moving out of the cabin and stowing her gear under the first empty bunk she saw in the women’s quarters, Penny ran into Becka on the foredeck. Becka was telling her that she had identified three more known amino acids in the tissue sample when her voice trailed off. Penny turned and saw Chiffrey marching towards them. He looked pale, and when he was almost to them, he froze as if he hadn’t seen them at first. His usual innocent face was gone, and what had replaced it made her chest tighten. Fear. Held in check, but it was there. He did not bother to establish rapport.
“I have some news for Penny, and I’m afraid I need to talk to her alone.”
Becka stiffened a little. “Don’t let me keep you.”
They watched her as she walked away, hurrying a little as she rounded the bulkhead.
“Bad news,” Chiffrey said. “Really bad. I’d like to keep it from the crew for a while longer. I ju
st gave your father and the Captain a quick rundown, and I want to fill you in as well.”
“Matthew?”
“No. Two of our submarines have disappeared.”
“You had submarines in the area?”
“They were standing well off, twenty kilometers at least from the circle’s perimeter.”
“You never mentioned submarines specifically. Were they armed?”
“They are Navy attack submarines, so of course they are armed. But they were not moving any closer and they certainly were not attacking.”
“Then what were they doing?”
“At the exact time of their disappearance, we don’t know. In this present situation, they have been making contact every six hours, which is unusual. Generally, they maintain almost complete radio silence. In any case, they both missed their call.”
“How do you know it isn’t just some kind of communication problem?”
“They had specific orders to surface if they had communications or any other kind of problems. We’ve had aircraft on patrol continually searching for hours now, and AI augmented satellite surveillance. Nothing.”
“Couldn’t it be some kind of interference in the communication frequencies, maybe from the dome? Perhaps they—”
“Excuse me. They didn’t find the subs, but they did find something. All these vessels are equipped with an emergency buoy. The system is extremely hard and reliable, like the black boxes aircraft carry.”
He held out a pen as if it were a submarine and motioned the action with his other hand. “If they have an accident—and can’t reach the surface—the buoy can be released on a line, and it rises like this and then begins transmitting a radio signal when it reaches the surface. It will self-release in catastrophic circumstances. They received a brief signal from one of these buoys and they found it. The line was severed, and it was drifting freely. This doesn’t leave much room for doubt. Between the two, there were three hundred and eighteen men onboard. As far as Command is concerned, at best they are trapped on the bottom. At worst, lost. They’re searching the area where they found the buoy but haven’t found any sign of them.”
“Maybe the buoy malfunctioned.”
“Then where are the subs? The odds they both had problems at the same time are not even worth talking about.”
“You push a stick in a hornet nest, and this is what you get.”
“You’re just defending out of habit. You were right, before, to say this thing is dangerous. And I’m sorry, but you do have to hear this now: your idea seems to be we just quarantine this whole section of the Pacific and never come within two-hundred kilometers of it again, hoping, I suppose, that whoever or whatever is down there in that goddamn thing leaves us alone. No effing way.”
She stared him down, but he was not going to back off. She took a few breaths and said, “I never said never. You’re inferring things in a situation where all the rules have been changed. Pulling back for a short time would be wise, and it’s something you should consider. We can’t just be apes, shaking a stick at what we fear.”
“Even if you’re right, unless they can account for those subs and their crew soon, they are not just going to pull back to sit and wait.”
“Do you have any confidence they can be found one way or the other?”
“Thank you for your concern. We absolutely will not stop until we find them, but it could take days or weeks or longer. All those men have people that care deeply about them. Wives, children. Mothers and fathers.”
He paused for a moment. “Look, I haven’t given up hope. No one has. It’s still possible they are alive, but we’ve spent years making these vessels extremely difficult to locate, so it won’t be easy.”
“When is your deadline?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“Then they’ve already begun ramping up for some kind of assault, haven’t they?”
“The subs could still make contact before the time is up. If not, or if we find some sign such as debris or bodies, the Navy and other forces will approach the dome. If they are attacked or compromised in any way, they will take it out.”
“What makes you believe they can do that?”
“I’m not at all sure they can. Listen, there were some higher-ups who wanted to go in long ago, and with this, it’s now unanimous. Those men on the subs may all be dead now, and maybe because of me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He paced back and forth, then looked at his watch as if waiting for a sign. He looked out at the sea then back at her. “I asked them to let us try one more time to make contact. Before this situation gets out of control.”
“And it will, if they move in.”
“Already is, truth to tell. Only thing we have left is to throw a Hail Mary pass. Otherwise, it’s the locker room for us, and they send in their own team.”
Some of the anger she had been directing at Chiffrey, ever since he had arrived, should probably have been aimed at the source of these decisions. He was trying to play both ends against the middle, perhaps, but now he himself had become the middle and was being squeezed like a fender between two ships.
“Okay,” she said, “What does Captain Thorssen say? And my father?”
“I gave them two options. Wait twelve hours and then have the Valentina escorted out of the area. Or wait twenty-two hours, and then we’ll all be choppered out. If we leave the Valentina here, they’ll provide a crew to move her out of harm’s way. You civilians all have the option of disembarking by air any time from now on. You can be out within the hour.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
“Your father and Captain Thorssen told me the same thing, but after I tell everyone their options, there may not be enough hands left to crew the ship.”
He scanned the horizon again as if watching for an adversary. “This was already working its way to the top of everyone’s pile, but with the subs missing, it’s now a flashing red light. For the president, the secretary of defense, all the intelligence agencies. If you’ll remember what I said before, it takes time for things to filter up, but they have, and we’re in full-blown crisis mode now. No one here can tell me why or what the dome is hiding, so I have nothing to offer Command.”
“All right, I get it.”
“Not quite. Until now, we had a standoff of sorts, and no one had been hurt. Losing two attack subs is not just another inexplicable incident to be pondered. They were both fairly new, but proven. We are talking the absolute standard in hardened, hidden, and therefore almost unassailable, assets. Anything that can take them out must be assumed absolutely lethal.”
Penny looked at Chiffrey’s hands. The blood was draining out of his fingers from gripping the rail so tightly.
She understood. “They see the loss of the subs as the first shot already fired.”
“Exactly, and they want to make sure the next shot is theirs because it may be the only one they get. We have to move fast, and there will be no reprieve this time. Use what little time we have left wisely.”
He turned and walked away without another word, perhaps the clearest indication of the seriousness with which he took events as they were unfolding. They had to come up with something, and she now saw the only thing it could be.