Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

The chief was pointing at a huge, dark shape that loomed from the gathering fog. As the amorphous mass grew closer, it lost its spectral aspect, and the lines that had been softened by the vaporous mists hardened into the silhouette of a very large ship. The vessel was completely black, from the waterline to the top of the single funnel protruding from the high superstructure. Derricks and cranes bristled from the deck like the quills on a porcupine. The dull, light-absorbing paint made the ship hard to see and gave it an evil, brooding aspect that wasn't lost on the other fishermen.

The radio crackled with excited voices. One fisherman said, "Jeez, Roy, what's that thing? Looks like a floating hearse."

“Hearse," said another voice. "Looks like the whole damned funeral parlor."

Austin smiled at the chatter. Anyone listening to the comments would know they hadn't been rehearsed. Jenkins warned his fellow fishermen to keep a sharp eye out so they wouldn't be run down. They didn't have to be told twice and gave the monster ship a wide berth. Austin estimated the ship's speed at around ten knots.

The Ataman Explorer seemed to slow as it came nearer. A dot detached itself from the deck. The speck grew larger, buzzing like a hornet stirred from its nest. Moments later, the black helicopter flew low over the fishing fleet. Jenkins and Howes gave the aircraft a friendly wave. The chopper circled the fishing fleet a few times, then headed back to the ship.

From inside the pilothouse, where he and Trout were donning their scuba gear, Austin watched the departing aircraft with calm eyes.

"Guess we passed inspection," Austin said.

"That was a lot friendlier than the reception Gamay and I got when we poked around Ataman's property in Novorossiysk."

"You can thank Jenkins for that. It was his idea to have lots of witnesses so Ataman would stay on the straight and narrow."

Austin was glad that he had listened to Jenkins

when he'd asked if he'd be willing to offer his services. Jenkins pointed out that there was safety in numbers. Since the vessel was sitting in prime fishing grounds, it was not all that suspicious for boats to be trawling in the area. In fact, Austin could see a half dozen fishing boats tending their nets on the way out.

Austin had based his plan on the successful infiltration of the sub base from Captain Kemal's fishing boat. Penetrating the sub pens had been easy compared with what he had in mind now. Unlike the scruffy Cossacks, who were more interested in playing people polo than standing guard, watchful and well-armed sentries would be manning the Ataman vessel.

Then Austin caught the break he was looking for. The ship plowed to a stop and floated dead in the water. Jenkins ran his boat as a trawler when he wasn't going after lobsters, and it was fitted out with a drumlike stem hauler to handle the net. With the help of the chief, he got the net in the water. Then the Kestrel got under way again and made a sweep by one side of the ship, a hundred yards off. The maneuver gave those on the ship a chance to inspect the fishing boat at close range. What they didn't see were the two divers hanging off the opposite side of the boat.

After traveling about halfway along the length of the ship, Jenkins cut the Kestrel's engine to an idle and went out onto the deck. He and Howes tinkered with the hauler, as if there was a problem. During the pause, Austin and Trout dropped into the water and dove under the boat. They wanted to get deep and out of the way of the net.

It was agreed that Jenkins would make a sweep by one side of the ship, then trawl for a couple of miles before turning back and returning on the other side. That gave them an hour to get on board the ship and back. They would keep in touch with Jenkins using their underwater communicators to talk to a hydrophone Trout had hung into the water before they went over the side.

They swam deeper, moving their legs in a steady flutter that ate up the distance. They could hear the muffled grumble of the fishing boat engine as Jenkins got under way again and dove to thirty-five feet, where the visibility was still fair.

With powerful scissors kicks, they covered the distance to the ship in a short time.

The gigantic hull emerged from the murk like the body of an enormous whale asleep on the surface. Austin signaled Trout to go deeper. When they were directly under the massive keel, they looked up and snapped their lights on. It was hard not to be unnerved by thousands of tons of black steel floating above their heads.

"Now I know how a bug feels just before someone steps on it," Trout said, gazing up at the massive hulk.

"I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't want to make you nervous."

"Too late. Where do you want to start?"

"If I interpreted the satellite photos correctly, we should find what we're looking for at midships."

They swam slowly upward until the ship's barnacle-encrusted bottom entirely filled the lenses of their face masks. In the beam of his light, Austin saw what he was looking for, a rubber-edged seam that ran across from one side of the flat-bottomed hull to the other. "Bingo!" he said.

When Austin had first looked at the satellite pictures, he'd noticed an open area around one of the derricks that rose from the deck. Someone had carelessly left off a tarp that covered the opening and he could see down into a black void. He was sure he was looking into a "moon pool," a docking space similar to that on the Argo and other NUMA ships.

Austin knew from experience that odds favored the pool's gates being closed. It was standard operating procedure, otherwise the drag from the open sea would slow the ship down. But he remembered that some NUMA ships had a smaller pool used for launching ROVs. He saw what he was looking for on the port side, forward of the larger moon pool, an indented rectangle about twelve feet square. When they swam close, they saw that the gates of the ROV launch well were shut tight.

Austin unclipped the Oxy-Arc cutting torch from his belt and uncoiled the hose. Trout produced the oxygen tank he had been carrying and coupled it to the hose. From his belt bag, Austin pulled out two small powerful magnets with hand grips on them. He attached the magnets to the hull, then he and Trout slipped plastic shades over their masks to shield their eyes from the bright flame. While Austin held on to the magnet with one hand, Trout lit the torch. Even with the protection of the eyeshades, it was like looking at the sun.

Austin began to cut, hoping that the pool cover was thinner than the actual hull. Although the ship wasn't moving, water churned around its great bulk and created eddies of current that pulled at Austin's body. With Trout's help, he had been able to stay more or less in one place, but a particularly violent current twisted him completely around. He had to let go of the magnet and when he made a grab with the other hand in reflex, he dropped the torch.

Trout was having similar problems, only he lost the oxygen tank. They managed to grab onto the magnets and whipped their eyeshades off in time to see the tank and the torch, still lit, plunge out of sight into the depths.

Every sailor's curse Austin had learned in years at sea crackled in Trout's earphones. After exhausting his repertoire of curses, he said, "I couldn't hold on to the torch."

"You may have noticed that I lost the tank. I didn't realize you knew so many cusswords."