Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

“Better be quick,” Emma said. “There’s not much wreckage left down there.”

Kurt moved an acetylene torch into position. At the touch of a button, it snapped to life. He brought it up against the bent metal spar that had snagged them. The flame burned bright blue and the metal flared, red and molten, dropping away in burning fragments.

As he worked, the Typhoon repositioned itself and the retrieval bucket descended once again.

Emma watched the gearing above them spin. The cable let out for several seconds and then came to a rather abrupt stop. “Now would be a good time,” she urged.

Kurt continued to burn through the length of metal, watching small bits melt and fall off. It seemed to be taking forever, as if the metal was made of something other than aluminum.

The gearing above began to spin as the cable was reeled in to bring the next load of wreckage on board.

“Hurry, Kurt,” Emma urged.

“I’m cutting as fast as I can.”

The torch finished its cut and a large triangular piece fell away. The Angler was free.

Kurt switched over to the throttle, tilted the thrusters and poured on the power. The Angler rose up out of the junk pile, shedding metallic debris and the coating of silt it had acquired.

Once they were above the wreckage, Kurt spun the submersible in a half circle and accelerated toward the open gap at the end of the cargo bay. They reached the edge, dove downward underneath the bucket just as it shook loose its next great cloud of silt.

Momentarily blinded, Kurt kept the throttle wide open. When they emerged on the far side, they were in the clear, headed for the darkness and safety beyond.

Sitting in the operations room of the Typhoon, Captain Victor Tovarich of the Russian 1st Salvage Flotilla watched the operation unfold on several screens, each linked to cameras on the underside of the Typhoon. An additional screen was divided into four quadrants and displayed the video feed from cameras mounted on the divers’ hard suits.

He was proud of his men and his great machine but anxious to complete the project. He turned to his second-in-command. “Progress report.”

“Eighty percent of main wreckage recovered,” the officer replied.

“Any sign of the Nighthawk?”

“No, sir,” the officer replied. “I’m afraid not.”

“It has to be here,” he said, walking over to the monitor to study the grainy picture that was coming in. “We know they had it in their grasp.”

“Permission to speak freely?” his First Officer said.

“Of course.”

“If the Nighthawk is not with the bomber, we should stop wasting our time on this recovery and get back to searching for the American craft.”

Tovarich resisted the urge to smile. His First Officer was a charger. He wanted the glory that came with plucking the American space plane off the bottom. He wasn’t alone. “I share your desire, Mikael. But they’ve decided in Moscow that this craft is a priority.”

The officer nodded.

“Besides,” Tovarich added. “It could still be here. There was always a chance that the pilots managed to hold on to the Nighthawk even as they lost control.”

“A blind man’s chance of catching a sparrow.”

“Perhaps,” Tovarich agreed. “Only an airman could come up with such a plan. We should salute their bravery. Which reminds me, we’ll need to search the wreckage in the cargo bay and recover the bodies.”

He reached over and tappe

d a button, switching one of the monitors to an internal camera view. “Have one of the divers report to . . .”

Tovarich froze midsentence. Something on the screen caught his eye. A flickering light: fire. His first concern—that they’d brought something combustible on board—vanished as the firelight snapped off, but his confusion grew worse as he saw movement in the wreckage. “What in the name of . . .”

Tovarich watched in disbelief as a white submersible with a broad red stripe rose out of the tangled metal and spun around. It came forward, heading right toward the camera, and then dove out through the open cargo bay doors, but not before Tovarich noticed the letters NUMA prominently displayed on the top of the submersible.