“No,” Kurt said bluntly. “Not deep enough at all.”
The President had heard enough. He turned to the ranking Navy officials. “Okay, gentlemen,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you how important this aircraft is to the future security of this nation. It’s the one weapon that can protect us from a nuclear onslaught without having to retaliate by frying the rest of the world. It’s the first brick in a wall that will keep us safer than we’ve been in a hundred years. If the Russians or Chinese or any other enemies of ours get ahold of it, we’ll have lost an advantage that should last us ten years. If Russia had such a weapon they might be inclined to attack Europe knowing they were safe from retaliation. If the Chinese had a fleet of these planes, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea would be swept into their clutches while we stood by unable to get enough weapons onto their targets to make much of a difference. This EAGL isourstrategic advantage, and I want it found or destroyed beyond recognition.”
The Navy’s assistant chief of staff was present. He cleared his throat. “Mr. President, we have oceangoing salvage assets in Norfolk that could sail within twenty-four hours.”
“How long would it take them to reach the search area?”
The reply was disheartening. “These are not fast ships, Mr. President. We’re looking at eight, maybe nine days until they’re in the on-site.”
At this the CIA director interjected. “Mr. President, may I suggestnot sendingthe Navy’s main salvage team to the area. At least not toward the signal line. All it would do is telegraph what we know to the Russians, who at this point seem to be aware that something has happened, but are currently focused on missing F-35s.”
The President grasped the logic. A secret operation would be preferable. He turned slowly back to the man who’d given him some hope in the matter. He almost seemed pleased that the options had presented themselves in this manner. “Sandecker is always telling me that you NUMA guys have ships everywhere. Is this true?”
“Not everywhere, Mr. President,” Kurt said. “But as fate would have it, there’s a NUMA vessel looking for the wreck of a World War Two U-boat off the coast of Norway right now. Several good friends of mine are on board.”
“Perfect,” the President said. “In fact, it couldn’t be more perfect. I want you to get yourself to Norway and start looking for that aircraft.”
“And when we find it?”
The President grinned at Austin’s confident nature. “We’ll let you know. But I would plan on being able to recover it or blow it to a thousand pieces.”
Kurt nodded his understanding and stepped back. As he did, Sandecker shot him a look that said,Well done.He remained eminently proud of the organization he’d built, having instilled an unflinching attitude into NUMA’s core.
Kurt couldn’t have agreed more. The fact was he’d rather take on a high-stakes mission than attend a boring party any day. To that end, he made a mental note: the next time Pitt and Gunn left the office together, he was going to get as far away from Washington as fast as he possibly could.
Chapter 4
The NUMA vesselLyrahad an odd profile for a seagoing ship. She had been built with a wave-piercing bow, which was smooth and enclosed, like the front end of a Japanese bullet train or, more nautically, the hydrodynamic head of a large shark. This design had been chosen over the traditional V-shaped bow with the flat open deck behind it in order to give theLyragreat stability in a storm. Instead of pitching upward as the waves rolled in and then downward as it crashed into the troughs, theLyracut through the largest waves, puncturing them and allowing the water to slide upward along the enclosed front of the ship. A central peak in the hull divided oncoming water, shedding it equally to port and starboard. This allowed it to face storms head-on and kept the vertical movement to a minimum.
Behind the smoothly curved shape of the bow stood a tall superstructure, which had been pushed forward in a bulldog-like stance. Behind that lay a long flat deck, perfect for landing helicopters and storing submersibles, ROVs, underwater drones—all the equipment that made searching for sunken objects possible. Viewed from the side, the ship looked as if it had come to a sudden halt, causing everything above the main deck to slide forward in the process.
While the aesthetics weren’t all that pleasing, the design balanced the ship. Keeping weight forward helped hold the bow down, enhancing its ability to push through the sea. The effect was a silky, smooth ride, smooth enough that some of the crew complained that it didn’t feel like being on a ship at all.
Standing in front of the bridge, at the vertex of the arrow-shaped wall a few decks below the towering superstructure, Kurt Austin understood the complaint. With a bitterly cold wind coming in from the north, ten-foot waves were rolling by. He watched them ride upward on the hull and then peel away, vanishing long before they reached him. Only a soft hint of vertical motion suggested he was standing on a ship rather than a concrete pier.
At least he could feel the wind.
With each passing wave, the breeze whipped a cloud of fine spray across the ship, coating the hull, the deck, and the lone madman standing afoul of the weather in tiny crystals of frost and salt.
As Kurt stared at the waves, he thought of the ancient mariners who sailed these waters in small wooden boats powered by sails and oars. Kurt’s ancestors were mostly central European, but his mother was descended from English stock and insisted that Nordic blood ran in their veins, left over from the Viking conquest of Northumbria in 865 CE. That ancestry, she insisted, was the source of Kurt’s intense blue eyes and his love of the sea.
True or not, Kurt could feel the kinship with those ancient Vikings. He was never more alive than when he was out at sea. He felt the ocean calling, and the louder and fiercer that voice, the better. At the moment, the sea was just whispering, but it was still trying to tell him something. He was sure of that.
Kurt had flown out of Washington on a NUMA jet, taking off less than an hour after the White House briefing. With Joe Zavala at his side, they’d traveled to a tiny enclave called Hammerfest threehundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, near the upper reaches of Norway.
From there, they’d taken a helicopter out to theLyra, which was already searching for a lost vessel: a World War II U-boat that had been hit with depth charges in the closing month of the war. Some people believed it had gone down with a cache of gold, stolen artwork, or even secret Nazi plans for a Fourth Reich. If they ever found it, Kurt suspected they’d find nothing but the bodies of scared young submariners, most of whom would have been teenagers, as that was all the Germans had left to fight with by the end of the war.
Needless to say, they hadn’t found the submarine. Nor had hours of trolling along the path of the so-called signal line revealed any trace of the missing C-17. Something told Kurt that wasn’t about to change.
Maybe it was a lack of patience, maybe it was those ancient Viking instincts, but as he stared at the black water rolling by and the whitecaps blowing off the top, he became convinced that they were looking in the wrong place.
As theLyrasliced cleanly through another incoming wave, the heavy watertight door creaked behind him as it was shoved open against the wind. Kurt glanced over his shoulder to see Joe Zavala stepping out into the elements, bundled up from head to toe. He wore a jacket that would have made the Michelin Man proud. A balaclava covered his mouth and nose, while a thick toboggan hat was pulled down tight over his head and ears. His hands were covered by large fingerless gloves that looked like oven mitts.
By contrast Kurt wore only basic winter gear; a heavy jacket, a NUMA-issued wool hat that didn’t quite contain his unruly silver hair, and a set of round sunglasses with gold lenses and leather side shields to protect his eyes. He didn’t even have gloves on—which he would have admitted was a mistake had he been under oath.
“Is that you, amigo?” he said to Joe. “I can’t quite tell.”
Joe pushed the door shut and lumbered toward Kurt. “I drew the short straw, so I had to come out here to see if you’d frozen in place like the hood ornament for the ship. If you want, we can boil some water and unstick your feet from the deck.”
