Disguised as a mining ship, the Explorer had moved into position, lowered a cradle, and hauled up three-fourths of what had been the K-129, bringing the wreckage through a huge door in the bottom of the hull and hiding it in what the engineers called the moon pool.
Russian spy ships watching from several miles away never knew what happened. When the truth leaked, the Russians were furious. They were also embarrassed and put on notice that anything in the sea was fair game. They’d maintained a large salvage fleet ever since—a substantial portion of which was currently sailing for the Galápagos—but this Typhoon, this huge submarine converted into a clandestine salvage vessel, was something new.
At least it was new to Kurt. “You guys at the NSA know anything about this?”
“This is a surprise. But it makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Take the missile tubes out and the Typhoon has huge storage capacity. It can move about undetected, dive to twenty-five hundred feet and pluck things right off the bottom, all unseen by the world’s satellites.”
“Wish we’d thought of it,” Kurt said. “While we’re tracking their surface fleet and telling ourselves we have several days before they get here, these guys are already on scene. Which begs the question: Exactly what scene is this? If this wreckage isn’t the Nighthawk, then what are we looking at? And why are the Russians so interested in it?”
“Maybe we should get a little closer and find out,” she said.
“Look who’s become a risk taker,” Kurt replied, grinning.
“It’s a risk-reward scenario,” she said. “A few photos of this Typhoon will help soften the blow of not finding the Nighthawk out here.”
Kurt bumped the throttle forward once more. “Who am I to stand in the way of shameless self-promotion?”
“I assure you,” she said, “I’m thinking purely of the national interest.”
Kurt suppressed a laugh—on the odd chance it might have carried through the water to the Typhoon’s hydrophones.
The closer they got, the louder the racket became. As they watched the effort from the darkness, it became clear that haste was the priority. As soon as the retrieval bucket deposited a load of wreckage in the Typhoon’s cargo bay, it was run back out, repositioned and dropped once again. There was no caution to the work and no attempt to preserve or protect any technology they might be recovering.
The reason dawned on Kurt. “They’re not trying to salvage anything. They’re trying to haul it away and hide the evidence before anyone else finds it here. Which means—”
“This is a Russian aircraft,” Emma said, finishing his thought. “Maybe it’s a recon flight that went down while searching for the Nighthawk.”
Kurt shook his head. “This crash happened almost simultaneously with the Nighthawk’s disappearance.”
“A chase plane, then,” Emma suggested. “The Russians have tried that before.”
By now, they were near enough to make out gearing and teeth on the inner part of the wing. He was maneuvering to get the camera focused when a brief flash caught his eye.
Kurt shut off what remained of the interior lighting and waited. A full minute ticked by before the light made another appearance. It was quick. Here and then gone. A white spark in the dark water of the sea.
r /> “Low-powered strobe light,” he said.
“Black box,” Emma suggested, referencing the nearly indestructible data and voice recorders common on most military and commercial aircraft.
“Let’s see if we can get at it without drawing too much attention to ourselves.”
He eased the submersible forward with a deft touch, traveling past that shattered wing and holding station near a tear in the forward part of the fuselage. The curved body of the aircraft had been opened and peeled back. The section beneath it was exposed. The tiny strobe flashed again from within.
“See if you can reach it.”
Emma went back to the controls and extended the arm to its maximum length. “No,” she said. “Can you get any closer?”
“Hang on,” Kurt said. He backed off and moved forward again, using a quick burst of the throttle. The Angler bumped against the wreckage, scraping against it and pushing a section of the airframe out of the way.
When the strobe flashed again it was brighter and closer and they were all but inside the airframe. Emma extended the arm once more. The claw at its end opened. The lower half slid underneath a metal handle on the housing of the data recorder and Emma closed it down tight.
“Got it,” she said, retracting the arm.
The black box—which was actually orange and covered with gray Cyrillic writing—came out of its slot with a little effort. Once it was clear, Emma retracted the arm and dropped it into the starboard cargo container.
“Good work,” Kurt said.
He put his hand on the throttle and prepared to back out but paused when the sound of the Typhoon’s thrusters surged through the water with a different timbre.