Terminal Run

The senior chief led Deahl to the Chinese commanding officer. It was strange, Deahl thought. With his eyes shut, a blanket over him, and an IV needle in his arm, the Red officer looked as innocent as a sleeping child. Hardly the devil that Deahl had imagined. It was just war, Deahl told himself. If not for the war, this guy probably had a house and a wife and kids, an annoyed squadron commander, a ship that needed maintenance, a crew that needed leadership, and all the other headaches of life. In a way, Deahl realized he had more in common with the Chinese officer than he did with a typical civilian back home.

“Thanks, Senior,” Deahl said. “Inform me when any of them regain consciousness.”

Deahl walked down to the control room and addressed the officer of the deck.

“Keep steaming north until we find Battlegroup Two,” he said. “And be damned careful of any more Chinese submarines.”

23

Commander Rob Catardi shivered beside the atmospheric control panel. The analyzer had good news for them on carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, but the problem was oxygen, which was at 19.9 percent and falling fast. The oxygen bleed valve was fully open, and not a molecule of gas was coming out. Catardi had pulled out the piping manual for the DSV and checked the oxygen system, hoping for a shutoff valve between banks for the command module and the larger cargo module, and to his joy, there was a cross-connect shutoff. He followed the piping in the overhead until the stainless-steel pipe penetrated the command module bulkhead. Right before the penetration he found the shutoff valve. It was open, and the system was empty. He opened and shut the valve four times, but there was no response. It was obvious that they would suffocate down here. In ten hours, when the rescue craft arrived, they would be unconscious.

They had paced themselves for the arrival of the rescue DSV, but this wasn’t over when it got here. It would have to slice through the two-inch-thick steel of the Piranha’s hull, and grab on to and remove a plate above the DSV. One mistake with the removed plate, and it would fall and crush them. The rescue submersible would have to weld the docking collar onto their DSV, then cut into their hull and tunnel through all the cables and ducts and piping, which would contaminate the atmosphere with toxic chemicals from burning cable insulation There was a week of work to do before they could get inside the DSV, and by the time the rescuers got in-hull, the surviving crew of the Piranha would all be long gone.

Even if they had plenty of oxygen, the cold would get them. Catardi could see his breath, and there was nothing here to keep him warm except a few survival blankets, most of which he’d given to the others before they fell asleep in the frigid command module.

Catardi had always wondered whether he would want to know in advance of his death, or whether it would be best to be blindsided. He had once thought that he’d like five minutes, so he’d see it coming, enough time to say goodbye perhaps, but not so much warning that he would be gripped in fear for days on end. But this warning was more than five minutes. He probably had ten or twelve conscious hours left, and then he would be gone. When they did cut into the hull, they would find him frozen, his body at thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and dead as the steel of the bulkhead. He crouched at his pile of padding and wrapped himself in his blanket. From where he sat he could see the other three, their plumes of breath vapor rising. Pacino had gone to sleep, as ordered. Schultz and Alameda had never awakened, a bad sign. Catardi had awakened after an hour or two, too nervous to sleep anymore.

He had informed the topside ship, the Emerald, that they would not be talking any further, since it would keep them from sleeping to conserve their oxygen. Emerald had promised to find a way to get oxygen and power into their hull, but it was too big a task. They had hinted that the weather above was getting rough from a storm that had been in the eastern Atlantic. Catardi had said goodbye to the fuzzy voice hours before and requested they not call him again. False hopes were worse than hopelessness. He lay down on the padding, then changed his mind and got up to walk to Pacino, Alameda, and Schultz. He wanted to see their faces and say a farewell. He reached out for Pacino’s forehead and pulled the kid’s hair out of his eyes, thinking he’d failed the young man. Then Carrie Alameda, who looked like a child when she slept.

He touched her hair and her cheek, then moved on to Astrid Schultz, the pretty blonde who had sent Catardi’s wife into fits of jealousy when she was first assigned to the Piranha. Catardi stroked her cheek, mentally thanking her for all she’d done, and saying goodbye to her. Finally he returned to his padding and pulled the thin blanket up to his nose, took one last look around and shut his eyes.