28

EQUIPMENT AND MEN JAMMED THE ROV CONTROL ROOM ON THE GRASP II. A space designed for two or three men held five: Ed, Mitch, Cho, Mr. Lee, and Jenkins. Ed sat in a heavily duct-taped swivel chair with a steel Thermos, and a no-spill coffee mug at his elbow. Mitch perched on a stool beside him. Each man had an array of controls in front of him. Ed “flew” the ROV, controlling its multiple thrusters and keeping his eyes glued on the video input from Eileen’s cameras. Mitch would be responsible for the manipulator arm when the little robot reached the bottom. For now, he was mostly a second set of eyes watching the various data feeds from the ROV and the other equipment they had deployed.

The other three men crowded around behind them, wedging themselves into the narrow space between Ed and Mitch’s backs and the overflowing steel cabinets bolted to the wall behind them. They all stared at the monitors showing live feeds from Eileen’s cameras.

Right now, the video screens showed only dark water and occasional fish that swam through the cones of light cast by Eileen’s powerful lamps. The ROV hung motionless in the water almost five hundred feet below them, connected to the ship by a long tether that unspooled through a crane on the ship’s stern. She was about two hundred yards from the nearest crags of the underwater mountain range, waiting as Ed and Mitch readied their approach to the wreck.

Ed jabbed a dirty, thick finger at a sonar printout that provided a workable map of the invisible terrain below. “I’m going to take her through here.” He traced a path between two massive boulders between the ROV’s current position and a long lozenge shape that lay at an angle on the mountainside.

Mitch craned his head for a better view. “Currents?”

Ed exhaled pungently. “Bad, but should be better in the lee of those boulders.”

Mitch nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m gonna need all my attention on the cameras to keep from crashing. You watch everything else.”

“Got it.”

“All right, here we go.”

Ed pushed the joystick on the ROV controller forward. The featureless black on the monitor didn’t change at first. Then flecks of something began to flow across the screen, and soon the ROV’s lights cast swirling, glowing cones like a car’s headlights driving through wind-blown fog.

“Hitting some turbulence,” Ed announced. “Mitch, we okay so far?”

Mitch glanced over the sonar readouts. “We’re good, but you’re coming up on something pretty soon. Looks like a—”

Ed suddenly swore and Mitch jerked his gaze back to the monitor showing the camera view. A blurry close-up of a wall of rock.

Ed invited the boulder to commit a number of obscene acts as he worked to move the ROV away from the rock and out of danger. He hunched over the joystick and stared at the monitor from less than a foot away. Dark rings grew in the armpits of his shirt.

At last, the image of the boulder shrank and faded on the monitor. Ed leaned back, took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Well, that was fun. I think we fouled a propeller. Must’ve sucked a rock into one of the thrusters or something. Motor might be damaged too.” He pointed to the image on the screen, which had started quivering. “Looks like we picked up a shimmy.”

Cho cleared his throat. “So we must stop and repair the ROV?”

Ed shook his head. “Don’t have a spare forward motor on board. We’d have to order one and make port somewhere to pick it up. That would take weeks. Probably quicker to just go back to Oakland and get one from the warehouse.”

“But without the motor—”

“Who flies this thing, you or me?” Ed demanded, cutting off Cho.

Mr. Lee leaned toward Cho and said something in Korean.

Cho nodded. “Please proceed.”

Ed grunted and turned back to the bank of monitors. “Okay, Eileen’s a little banged up in front. Everything else good to go, Mitch?”

“Good to go, Ed. Gonna drop her over the top this time?”

“Yeah. The current around those boulders was stronger than I expected. Better to just come straight down and take our chances.”

They all watched silently as Ed maneuvered the ROV up to a point roughly a hundred feet above the target. “She’s still shaking some, but not bad.… Okay, we’re going down. Eighty feet. Sixty. Fifty—hitting that current again, but it’s steady. Forty. Current’s picking up. Mitch, watch our sonar. Twenty-five. Current’s not so steady anymore—getting some turbulence. Twenty. Fifteen. Lots of sediment, but we should be getting visual any second. Here’s the moment of truth.”

“Jackpot!” Jenkins crowed as a shape appeared out of the glowing clouds of silt on the screen. The stern of a submarine.

But there was something wrong with the picture on the screen. This was not the heavily corroded, narrow craft that Mitch had expected. It was too round, too big, and the propellers were intricately sculpted. This was nothing like any Nazi u-boat that Mitch had ever seen. Yet he had seen it before.

Mitch’s mind raced. He recognized that wreck—but from where? Something he’d seen in a museum? During his stint in the Navy? On TV? He plumbed the dark waters of his memory, hunting for the answer.

Ed moved Eileen over the top of the wrecked sub. Her conning tower, still intact, came into view. Then Ed tilted Eileen’s cameras down toward the wide deck in front of the tower. Pairs of large hatches punctuated the deck every few feet. The entire bow had been torn open like a Christmas cracker, its contents spilled out on the jagged rocky floor of the ravine.

Colored wiring and bits of metal and plastic lay scattered like streamers and confetti. And resting in the middle of that glittering carpet was a haphazard scattering of massive tubes. Most were crushed, twisted, bent, or torn in two. But not all. Two or three looked undamaged, and a blunt object peeked from one.

Typhoon. The word appeared in Mitch’s mind a split-second before he realized what it meant. Then everything clicked into place and he knew exactly what he was looking at.

Mitch stared at the screen, hardly believing his eyes. Sweat prickled his palms and forehead. Electric tension hummed in his brain. He realized he was breathing fast and made an effort to slow down his respiration.

No one had said anything. Maybe they didn’t recognize the wreck. He glanced around the room, gauging the reactions of the other men. Jenkins leaned at an awkward angle and craned his neck for a view of the screen. Ed’s face was an expressionless mask of focus as his hands danced over the ROV’s controls. Cho and Mr. Lee stood perfectly still, watching with bright, black eyes. Cho’s face was unreadable, but Mr. Lee’s eyes looked hungry and a slight smile curved the corners of his mouth.