Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

“Be right there,” Giordino said.

Hanging up a wardroom telephone, he called over to Dirk, who was examining the results of additional water samples while the submersible was on its dive. The two raced to a tiny control shack on the stern deck.

A communications technician greeted them with a sober nod. “Both data and communications quit about five minutes ago. I’ve tried multiple frequencies and links but am getting no response.”

“Any indication of trouble beforehand?” Giordino asked.

“Negative. The last operating specs were fine. Summer radioed a few minutes earlier that they had located the Alta and were following some underwater tracks leading southeast.”

“Give me a mark on their last telemetry.” Giordino moved to a monitor that displayed a chart of the area. The technician tapped into a keyboard, pulling up the submersible’s last-recorded coordinates, which appeared on the chart as a red triangle.

“That’s about a thousand meters south of us.” Giordino motioned out a side window toward the lights of the ship in the distance. “In the same direction as our friends over there.”

/> “I’ll call them from the bridge and find out what they’re doing and whether they have any resources in the water,” Dirk said, rushing out the door.

“Have the captain reposition us over the Starfish’s last coordinates,” Giordino said. “I’ll have an ROV ready to deploy in five minutes.”

It took ten minutes for the ship to be repositioned. Dirk hailed the nearby vessel but received only a brief rebuff. Without identifying itself, the ship replied that it was engaged in seabed testing, had not seen the Starfish, and ordered the NUMA ship to stay a half mile clear.

The Sargasso Sea’s captain promptly ignored the request, rushing his ship within a quarter mile of its position in hopes of locating the submersible.

Giordino lowered his ROV over the side, spooling out its lift cable as fast as the drive winch would allow. Dirk sat in the control shack, watching its video feed. Halfway down, the ROV’s camera briefly picked up some faint lights in the distance, then lost them.

At six hundred feet, Dirk activated a joystick and navigated the ROV in a small circle as the seafloor came into view.

Giordino stepped into the control shack a minute later. “See anything?”

“Caught a flash of lights during the descent at about two hundred feet. Looked too dispersed to be the Starfish.”

“That ship is up to no good. Take a look at those bottom tracks.”

The ROV hovered over a slew of tread marks that crisscrossed the bottom. Dirk guided the ROV toward the heaviest concentration.

“Something off to the right,” Giordino said.

Dirk pivoted the ROV, its camera picking up a distant flicker of lights. “Let’s go have a look.”

While Giordino remotely played out additional cable, Dirk powered toward the lights. It didn’t take long to see they didn’t come from the Starfish.

The lights twinkled from the massive collecting machine that was designed to vacuum up crushed rock. The big vehicle sat idle, its bulk cutter partner nowhere in sight. Standing watch nearby was the large, square ROV, hovering a few meters off the bottom.

As the NUMA probe drew near, the collecting machine rose off the bottom amid a cloud of silt. A thick pair of cables began hoisting the machine on a slow journey to the surface. Dirk tracked its motions for a short distance, then broke away as the other ROV came to investigate.

The two ROVs eyed each other warily for a minute. The larger vehicle then turned and chased after the ascending machine to the surface.

“Seabed testing, my foot,” Giordino said. “They’re absconding with most of the seafloor.”

“Dad and Summer surely must have snuck up on their operation.”

“Seems a little unusual that they suddenly packed up and headed for the surface. All we can do now is keep searching.”

They piloted the ROV across the bottom for another two hours, repositioning the Sargasso Sea several times to expand the search area. They found no trace of the missing submersible.

Giordino frowned. “I can’t believe we haven’t heard a peep from their emergency transponder.”

“Is it external?” Dirk asked.

“Mounted on the sub’s roof.”