Leap - 02 (29 page)

57

An emergency situation aboard a ship filled with a trained military crew was far different than one filled with civilian tourists.  The first instinct of the tourists was usually fear, followed by screaming.  On a Navy boat, the first instinct was remembering the drill.

In less than fifteen seconds, the nearby crew had reached the tubular storage containers on each side of the stern.  The seals were immediately broken and lids lifted up to reveal the inflatable life rafts packed inside.  From the center of the stern deck, the Chief Mate was barking commands, watching each side remove and prepare to lower the rafts.  The drill required the rafts be out in two minutes.  The Bowditch crew would do it in a minute and a half.

Clay motioned to Commander Lawton and together they ushered Alison and her team to the front of the line.  After the rafts were lowered over the side, the civilians were corralled toward the ladder and instructed to descend over the outside of the ship.  Alison went last, but when she cleared the edge, she stopped and looked at Clay curiously.  He hadn’t moved.

“John?”

Clay moved to the ladder and lowered his voice.  “Get in the raft, Alison.  I’ll be right behind you.”

Her face grew anxious, and she stared at him for what seemed like a long moment.  But the others climbing onto the ladder forced Alison’s progress.

Clay smiled.  “Don’t worry.”

Alison was nearly shoved down the ladder by the others scrambling past and Clay disappeared from view.  It was only when she was out of sight that he turned and ran.  He had to get to the science lab.

Clay had barely reached the ladder in the center of the first deck when he saw Captain Krogstad descending from above.  The rest of his crew from the bridge followed closely behind him.  Krogstad spotted Clay and promptly stepped aside when reaching the bottom, allowing the rest of his men to pass. 

“Get those life rafts in the water!” Krogstad called after them.  He looked at Clay.  “Clay, come with me.”

“Where to?”

“We’ve got men below deck.”

Clay nodded in acknowledgement, immediately running after Krogstad.  The plant would have to wait.

Together the two rushed down a nearby ladder to the second deck.  The entire length of the walk was solid metal.  The oversized doors they passed along the starboard side housed various maintenance equipment and tools.  The largest was the ship’s condenser, which created fresh water from vapor, and could still be heard running when Krogstad and Clay passed it.  Much of the power was still on.

The next ladder led down to the quarterdeck and was already submerged in water.  They slid down and splashed up to their waists.

The dark surging water was ominous.  Debris from the destruction floated everywhere they looked.  Much
of it were chunks of plastic and other materials, but some were larger pieces of metal, twirling on end, with only the tip exposed above the water.  The sheer power of the surge kept the objects eerily suspended far above the bottom.

“HINES!” called Krogstad.  “HINES, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Clay turned around and repeated the call back toward the stern.  After a brief pause for listening, they both called out again, louder.

There was no sign of anyone.  The only sound was the merciless seawater surging around them and rising quickly.

They continued calling, eyes straining through the dim light.  Both men could feel the limits of the thin oxygen, supplied only by the openings from the decks above.  They called again, searching more frantically as the cold water reached their chests.

Hines was gone.

The rising water and its increasing weight on the port side caused the ship to suddenly list again.  Both men instantly steadied themselves with the ladder, but the listing did not stop.  The ship continued to roll, passing thirty-five, then forty degrees.

Clay and Krogstad scrambled awkwardly back up the ladder to the second deck, trying to make their way up the catwalk.  As they reached the next ladder, the momentum of the roll reached the critical forty-five degrees, and all hell broke loose.

Outside, water no longer constricted by the tall sides of the ship’s hull rushed in over the edge of the top deck, down into the ports and stairwells.  The incredible deluge swept with it everything from the deck that was not nailed down and, in some cases, even those that were.

58

Chao watched calmly from the deck of his ship as it passed within a kilometer of the Bowditch.  He’d never seen a ship destroyed up close before.  It was fascinating.

His dark eyes watched the devastation unfold as the Bowditch suddenly began to roll, tipping its port side down below the water line and allowing a massive curtain of water to cascade over the top.  The destruction was fantastic.

He turned his eyes to the half dozen life rafts floating away from the stern.  Several figures could be seen still trying to get off the ship in time but were instead swept away by the deluge.  The rest were desperately trying to paddle away from the enormous stern that was turning upside down right in front of them.

There was no sympathy in Chao’s gaze, just observational curiosity.  He didn’t care whether any of them lived or died.  Death was a fact of life.  Some just met their end sooner than others.  Although deep down, Chao did feel a spark of gratification as the largest empire in the world was caught completely off guard again.

The front of the Bowditch was sinking faster now as the flow of seawater into its damaged bow continued to outpace the rest of the ship.  The forward section of the main deck was already underwater, and it continued its slide beneath the heavy waves that would soon entomb it, forever.

The sudden roll of the Bowditch took everyone by surprise.  Alison jumped to her feet and screamed, watching the sea wash over the side of the ship and envelope the last of the crewmembers still on its stern.  “NO!”

Alison had been clinging to hopes that Clay and the Captain would still appear on deck and make it out in time, but any hope she had left was instantly washed away with the last of the crewmembers.

She stood in the raft, motionless, watching the last of the giant waves pour over the end of the stern.  No.  It wasn’t possible. 
It wasn’t possible!  Clay was still aboard!

Alison’s bottom lip began to tremble as Kelly stood up behind her and wrapped her arms around Ali’s shoulders.  Tears began to well up.  She felt the hands of Chris and Lee each slip into hers and squeeze gently.

Behind her, Borger watched, completely stunned.  The moaning of the ship’s steel hull and the roar of the receding water was all that could be heard.  No sirens.  No horns.  No calls for help.  Nothing.

An overwhelming sense of dread silenced everyone, as the reality of what had just happened settled over the survivors.  It was a sickening feeling of death.

It took less than ten minutes for the last of the Bowditch’s gray hull to slip silently beneath the waves.  All that was left behind by the last bit of the stern was a gentle turbulence in the water.

In the distance, Borger watched Chao’s corvette disappear to the south.  The moment was punctuated by the sound of Alison weeping openly on Kelly’s shoulder.

The survivors watched solemnly as dozens of small craft could be seen leaving Georgetown, heading for them.  It was comforting but did nothing to ease the misery.

What did help came just a moment later: a loud sound behind them.  Almost in unison, more than one hundred and twenty heads turned around and spotted the distant object.  Alison had to wipe the tears from her eyes to see clearly.  When she saw it, she knew exactly what it was.

On the horizon was the unmistakable white hull of a ship she had been on before.

It was the Bowditch’s sister ship,
Pathfinder
, commanded by Captain Rudolph Emerson.  The sound the survivors had heard was a long steady blast from the Pathfinder’s horn.  With engines roaring, Emerson and his crew were charging south as fast as they possibly could.

59

Captain Emerson stood stoically inside the Pathfinder’s bridge.  They had been running hard all through the night and had received the Bowditch’s final distress call just minutes earlier.  Still, Emerson was stunned at what he saw: six life rafts, bobbing helplessly on the distant swells, surrounded by an ocean of debris.  Nothing else.

The Bowditch was
gone
.

“All hands,” he barked into his microphone.  “I repeat: all hands, report to the main deck and prepare to receive passengers!”

He dropped the microphone to his side and with steely blue eyes took in the scene through the giant window as they slowly approached. 

“Get me Admiral Langford.”

Langford’s head hung low with both hands on his desk.  After a long pause, he collapsed into his chair.  He hung up with Emerson and switched back to the other line.  When he spoke again, his voice was very different than it had been just two minutes ago. 

“Mr. President,” Langford’s tone was as heavy as his heart.  “The Bowditch has been destroyed.”

The call fell silent for several long seconds.  When the President’s voice spoke again, it was only one word.

“Survivors?”

Langford nodded.  “Yes.  But I don’t know how many yet.”

The White House had been wrong.  They’d underestimated the lengths the Chinese would go to protect their discovery.  Commander Lawton had said it was something countries would fight over, and she was right.  Which meant the potential of this new plant was every bit as accurate as she claimed, maybe more.  It wasn’t a fluke, or a mistake, or anything else the President’s cabinet had suggested.  It was something so powerful that the Chinese had just started a
war
.  And given how quickly they did it, he wondered to what lengths the second most powerful nation on earth was really willing to take it?

President Carr and everyone involved had prevented Langford from doing anything until it was too late, all in an effort to avoid conflict.  And by doing so, they had incited something far worse.

The point was not lost on anyone on Langford’s call.  They had been wrong and those on the Bowditch had paid the ultimate price.

“Are you still there, Admiral?”

“I am.”

“Good.”  The President’s voice was clear and sharp.  “I want you to listen carefully.  As of this moment, I authorize you to send whatever forces you need.”

Langford did not answer.  He remained staring at the wall.  He had ordered Krogstad to stop the Chinese corvette, even if it meant ramming it. 
Christ, all of this was his fault.

“Did you hear me, Admiral?”

Langford blinked out of his daze.  “Yes.”

“All right,” said Carr.  The President then addressed his Chief of Staff.  “I want my entire security team on a call in fifteen minutes.”

The rescue was swift and smooth.  The Pathfinder’s rear platform had a lower height due to the remote control rovers with which they frequently experimented.  After relocating two large cranes on the platform, it served as the boarding point for the Bowditch’s survivors.

As one person after another was pulled up to safety, the expressions of thanks were everywhere.  Yet, when Alison finally climbed off the last raft, she displayed no such expression.  Her look was one of complete devastation.

Emerson spotted her and pressed through the crowd that was growing quickly.  “Where’s Clay?”

The Captain’s expression melted when Alison burst into tears.  Behind her, a black and blue Chris Ramirez frowned at the Captain and shook his head slowly from side to side.

Emerson couldn’t hide his disbelief. 
Dear lord, we lost Clay! 
He barely noticed when the rest of Alison’s team approached and surrounded her.  Emerson blinked several times, still stunned.  Finally, he asked the second question.  “And Captain Krogstad?”  He was met with nothing but silence.

The muscles in Emerson’s jaw clenched angrily. 
If he still had a warship, he would have gone after that damn sub. 
But he didn’t.  Both gradually and reluctantly, he accepted his primary objective: the safety of the survivors.  And for better or worse, the submarine appeared to be gone.

Even though the Pathfinder was a little smaller than the Bowditch, its crew managed to accommodate everyone by clearing space in the infirmary and mess hall.  It was tight, but within an hour, everyone had been checked out.  Emerson’s medical staff reported only a few more injuries.

However, the bodies of the Bowditch’s crewmembers that drowned in the deluge were still being recovered, hefted aboard, and bagged.  It was a painfully somber picture.

Alison and her team were sitting in a corner of the crowded mess hall as Will Borger came through the gray steel door, scanning the room.  When he spotted them, he hurried through the crowd.  His bright Hawaiian shirt stuck out like a beacon. 

“Ms. Shaw.”

Alison peered up at him through puffy red eyes but said nothing.

Borger stopped and abruptly considered what he was about to say.  He chose his words carefully.  “Someone wants to talk to you outside.”

She lowered her head almost as if she hadn’t heard him speak.  “I’m not in the mood,” she whispered.

Borger was hurting as much as they were.  He’d worked with Clay for years and had the highest regard for him.  He was an incredible officer.  Clay was smart, resourceful, and always treated people with respect.  Even more than that, he was an amazing friend.

Borger could see that Alison was devastated but he persisted.  “Ms. Shaw.  It’s important.”

Alison looked up again with irritation.  But before she could reply, Borger cut her off.

“Trust me.”

She rolled her eyes and looked at the others, then rose slowly.  Frankly, she didn’t care if it was the
President
outside.  With a silent huff, she followed Borger back through the throngs of people.  Kelly, Chris, and Lee followed in single file behind her.

Brushing past people as she pushed her way through felt surreal.  Everyone Alison passed was talking in low voices about the Bowditch or Captain Krogstad.  But she didn’t hear anyone talking about Clay.  Most of them probably hadn’t even noticed him onboard.

Where the crowd became too thick, Borger reached back and gently guided her at the elbow.  He leaned forward and forced their way through, seemingly in a hurry.

Once outside, Alison stopped and looked around.  “What?”

“This way.”  He led them all up along the port side of the ship until they were within twenty feet of the bow, where he turned back and addressed them.  “Captain Emerson was just about to give the order to head for Georgetown when we saw them.”

“Saw who?”

Borger grinned and nodded over the side of the ship.  When the group of four spread out and peered over, they were all shocked to see Dirk and Sally in the waves below, staring up.

Alison’s eyes widened and she gasped.  “Sally!  Dirk!”

Both dolphins kept their heads above water and spoke back with a series of whistles and clicks.

As excited as Alison was to see them, a look of disappointment instantly replaced her momentary joy.  She hadn’t thought about their Prowler boat until now.  She scanned the horizon but found nothing.  It must have sunk as well.  After all, it was still tied to the Bowditch at the time of the attack.

“The servers,” she said.

Lee knew what she was thinking the minute she looked out at the water.  “The servers were on the Prowler.  So was the vest.  There’s no way to talk to them.”

Defeated, Alison watched silently as the dolphins continued speaking.

Chris, who hadn’t said anything, watched them too, curiously.  After about fifteen seconds of listening, he turned to her.  “Ali, are you noticing anything with Dirk and Sally?”

She turned to him listlessly.  “I don’t know.  What?”

Chris went back to watching them.  “Don’t they seem a little excited to you?”

“I guess so.”

“No, I mean
unusually
excited.”

“Maybe they’re hungry.”

Chris’ eyes narrowed on her and he bumped her in the shoulder intently.  “I’m serious.  Look at them.”

Trying to concentrate, Alison watched both dolphins.  She couldn’t understand them without the IMIS system, but she had grown familiar with some of their sounds.  Her brow furrowed as she listened closely.

Dirk suddenly disappeared underwater, but Sally continued talking just as quickly.  Something wasn’t right.

Lee noticed the exchanges between Ali and Chris.  “What is it?”

“They’re trying to talk to us.” 

“No kidding.”

Chris was still looking down at the water.  “I think they’re trying to tell Alison something.”

“But we don’t have the servers.”

Borger cocked his balding head and ponytail.  “What kind of servers do you need?”

“It’s not just the hardware,” Lee replied.  “It’s the data.  Without that, we can’t do any local translations.”

Borger thought a minute.  “Do you have copies of the data?”

“Of course, but it is back at the lab, on IMIS.  The production system.”

“Do you ever connect remotely?” asked Borger.  “Like with a tunnel?’

“All the time.  But the amount of data we’re talking about would take forever to copy remotely.  Especially out here on a boat.  If we tried to copy it over satellite, we’d be retired long before it finished, and by then we wouldn’t remember why we needed it.”

Borger grinned at the joke.  “Well, that may be true over commercial satellite networks.  But the military satellites are lower in orbit, and consequently, much faster.”

“How much faster?”

“
A lot
faster.”

“Well, I don’t think it can do a hundred megabits.  And that’s pretty much what we’d need for a live feed from the main system.”  Lee almost turned away but noticed that Borger was still thinking.

After a moment, Borger leaned closer and lowered his voice.  “I think I might be able to do it.”  He winked at Lee.  “But you can’t tell anyone.”

It took less than thirty minutes for Borger to bundle the satellite channels into a single connection with enough throughput capacity.  The easy part was then passing the signal through his laptop to an underwater speaker and microphone they’d borrowed from the Pathfinder’s engineering crew.   By establishing an encrypted tunnel into the lab back in Puerto Rico and with the higher speed of his satellite connection, no processing of data had to happen on Borger’s laptop.  Instead, the processing would all happen directly on the giant IMIS system itself. 

The tradeoff was that Borger had secretly commandeered most of the satellite network’s capacity, which meant a lot of other military users would be scratching their heads for a while, wondering why the system had slowed to a standstill.  Borger was hoping they would be done by then.

Outside, Alison and Chris had managed to get Sally and Dirk to come around to the Pathfinder’s stern with its lower deck.  Sally was still speaking rapidly, and Dirk had returned after disappearing several times.  He seemed…agitated.

Lee and Borger approached with Borger carrying his laptop.  “Okay,” Lee announced.  “We’re ready.  This may be a little kludgy, but it should work.  We’ll need to talk through Mr. Borger’s laptop.  The translations are going to be slower too because of the satellite connection.  So, we may need to be patient.”

Alison watched Dirk suddenly disappear again.  Each time it was for a longer duration.  “Anything else?” 

“Yes,” replied Lee.  “Speak slowly.  And assume there’s no voice recognition on our side.  There’s too much background noise out here.”

Alison and Chris nodded at each other.  Behind them, Captain Emerson quietly approached to observe.

Borger placed his laptop down carefully on one of the ship’s large storage compartments.  The faded metal stood nearly waist high and approximately eight feet from the edge.  Lee stepped in next to him and looked up at Alison.  “Ready to turn it on?”

Alison turned back to Sally, who was still talking excitedly less than ten feet further out.  “Hit it.”

Behind her, Lee activated the software and the familiar translation screen came up.  The colored, dancing lines that represented IMIS’ translation process with intersecting data points came up on the display.  The computer’s system log data appeared in a second pane.   As soon as the application started running, the “Translating” button began flashing on the screen.  IMIS was instantly taking in the sounds from Sally.

In their lab, most of the translations to and from the dolphins happened very fast, especially since much of their language had now been identified.  But the new delay over the satellites meant it would take longer for IMIS to spit Sally’s words back out into English.