At the touch of a button the cockpit opened on hydraulic arms. Kurt pulled off his bulky jacket, content to wear the mid- and base layers he had on underneath. He handed it to Joe.
“You might want to put this on, you look a little blue.”
“You really must be a Viking. In case you forgot, we designed this thing to do salvage work in harbors and rivers. A heater is not standard equipment.”
It didn’t matter. There was simply no way he could operate in the cramped space with the bulky jacket on. “The impeller motor will keep things warm enough.”
The Otter was designed to work in small spaces; it was controlled completely by water jets. It had no external dive planes, propellers, or appendages that could snag on wreckage, debris, or submerged trees. It maneuvered by opening and closing various vents through which high-pressure water could be directed. It couldn’t dive much past three hundred feet, but its portability and minimal weight had made it a favorite on NUMA expeditions.
Kurt climbed in, folding his six-foot-two frame into the space. He ended up in a position similar to a man riding a high-speed motorcycle with his arms extended, his chest resting against a padded support, and his legs bent and stretched out behind him. Reaching forward, he gripped a pair of handlebar-like controls.
Flicking a single switch brought power to the systems. A quickcheck of the battery and oxygen readings showed them both close to a hundred percent.
“You have six hours of battery power and about four hours of oxygen,” Joe said, looking over Kurt’s shoulder.
“With a little luck I’ll be back here in two,” Kurt said.
“I’ll try to time my nap accordingly,” Joe said. He tossed a beacon into the dark water in the gap between the ice floes. A leash connecting it to the sled would keep it from drifting away. “You should be able to pick this up from a half mile out. The internal navigation system will easily get you within that range.” He handed Kurt a radio. “Call me when you surface.”
The radio was a compact device, no bigger than a cell phone. Kurt slid it into a breast pocket, gave Joe a quick salute, and pressed the button to close the cockpit.
“Watch out for angry whales,” Joe said as the acrylic hatch lowered.
“You too,” Kurt said. “Not to mention polar bears. I’m told they’re particularly hungry this time of year.”
“Polar bears?” Joe said. “Up here?”
Kurt shrugged as the canopy met the Otter’s frame and locked itself down. When the pressure light turned solid green, confirming that he was sealed in, Kurt gave Joe the thumbs-up signal.
Out on the ice, Joe hiked to the rear of the sled and began cranking a lever around in circles, like a man raising the sails on an America’s Cup yacht.
Each winding lifted the tail end of the Otter a few inches higher, tipping the nose downward. At a fifteen-degree angle, the submersible slid forward into the frigid water, knifing under and then bobbing back to the surface.
A rush of air escaped the vents, and the Otter went under for a second time, vanishing as the black waters closed over the top.
Joe stood transfixed by the churning water for a moment. It was impossibly black in contrast to the pristine white ice, more like printer’s ink or crude oil. Not a hint of the small, gray submersible could be seen once it dropped below the surface.
That could be a good thing. Especially if Kurt got too near the Chinese ship. But it left Joe with an uneasy feeling that he struggled to explain or shake off.
Though he’d built and operated at least fifty different submersibles over the years, Joe had never liked climbing into the Otter. It was too tight and too dark. It triggered a vague sense of claustrophobia that he’d never felt before. It made him think of the old submariners who called their boats iron coffins. He hoped it wouldn’t prove to be Kurt’s.
Standing there he began to feel the chill. He’d been still for too long. He got back to work, lowering the rails on the sled and then pulling the white tarp over the top and lashing it down with bungee cords.
With the sled hidden and the hydrophone clicking, his work was done for the moment. With Kurt’s jacket pulled over his own, Joe turned toward the west, heading for the relative warmth and shelter of the helicopter.
It would be no more than a few hours before Kurt returned. But time, he sensed, was already slowing down.
Chapter 8
Kurt took the Otter down to a depth of seventy feet to make sure he wouldn’t bump his head on anything, but even at that depth, the view above remained alien and extraordinary.
It was strangely disorienting gliding under the ice. Light penetrating the ice made it appear to be glowing, mostly white, but in places blue and green hues could be seen. Bubbles skated along the underside of the ice, moving here and there with the current in an endless attempt to escape to the atmosphere, where they belonged. Downward spikes of the frozen water jutted at him in places. Some were long and thin—like stalactites in a cave—but most resembled upside-down mountain ranges in miniature, while the seawater below him swallowed the light so quickly that it resembled the depths of outer space.
Feeling his neck stiffen from looking upward for too long, Kurt switched his attention to the small screens in front of him. Like a modern car, the Otter had a plethora of screens and cameras all over the place. They looked upward, downward, sideways, and backward. The system was designed to allow the Otter and its occupant to see everything around it at all times.
Kurt could bring up the view from any camera, at any time, bytoggling a thumb switch. He could click on a button and see a three-dimensional representation of the Otter and its surrounds, a useful feature when navigating in and around wrecks and dangerous debris. For now, he kept the forward view on the right-hand screen and the artificially created overall view on the left.
Because it was designed to work in murky lake water and sediment-filled rivers, the Otter also possessed tools that allowed it to swim blind. It had sonar to scan the bottom and sides along with a top-notch internal navigation system.
