As Kurt waited for the deck teams to complete their tasks, the ship’s bosun came over. He handed Kurt a square, weatherized device. “I figure you should do the honors.”
Kurt took the device, called an initiator, and armed the switches one by one. “Starting inflation,” he called out as he pressed the red button. In the water below a series of inaudible pops were triggered. Cylinders attached to the lifting bags opened their valves and began pumping nitrogen into the folded bales.
Nearly simultaneously the bags flipped open, unfolding once, then twice, then two more times. The newfound buoyancy pushedthem upward, a move that was resisted and prevented by the straps hooked to the cranes.
Kurt looked over the side. He saw bubbling, and a hint of yellow color as the downward-pointed lights reflected off the expanding bags below the surface.
At each station along the side of the ship, this same view was repeated and soon eight yellow blocks the size of shipping containers grew up around the ship. The upward force added to the ship was calculated at nearly eight hundred tons. The upward force on crew morale was immeasurable.
They could see it was working. They could feel it working. As the bags filled with air, the ship rose in the water and leaned back to the right. Because the port side was being lifted and the starboard side pulled down, the ship nearly reached an even keel. The collective dread of spending a night in a lifeboat in the rough icy waters was replaced by a surge of hope.
On the bridge, the captain watched the inclinometer rise out of the danger zone and come back toward the center line. It moved slowly but steadily. The plan was working better than he’d even dared to hope.
“Hot damn,” he shouted. “It’s working.”
The crew around him cheered.
The damage-control specialist ran a new simulation. According to the computer they would remain afloat indefinitely as long as the bags stayed intact. He added another bit of good news. “Door fifteen is closed and locked. Compartment five is secure.”
“How long to pump it dry?”
“About an hour.”
“Find some portables,” the captain demanded. “I want that compartment dry in thirty minutes.”
As the specialist began relaying the commands, the captainturned to the next dilemma. They couldn’t get underway with the bags attached to the sides. They would have to get repair crews down into the damaged compartments to seal the breaches and pump the water out. That, his crew could do on their own.
He found an ensign and gave him a set of keys. “Go to my quarters,” he ordered. “Get my finest bottle of brandy and bring it to Austin and Zavala wherever they are on the ship. Tell them they’re off duty for the rest of the night. Captain’s orders.”
Chapter 23
Thirty miles away the mood aboard the Chinese icebreaker was positively joyous. Admiral Li had invited Gushan to his quarters. He had determined that they should now drink from the bottle of baijiu in celebration.
“We’ve struck the Americans a blow from which they will not recover,” he insisted.
Gushan was aware of what had been done, he’d been in the control room commanding the crew as it occurred. His own feelings on the matter were much darker. In his opinion the act was so positively reckless it might have been the first step on the road to war.
“Their ship is dead in the water,” Gushan said calmly. He would stick to the facts and keep his feelings hidden.
“If their ship is still afloat in the morning, it will be a great surprise to me,” the admiral said.
“And yet we’re not turning toward them,” Gushan noted. “Shouldn’t we go to their rescue? It would make us look innocent in the matter. And it would give us a chance to interrogate any survivors.”
“A waste of time,” the admiral insisted.
“Let me put it another way,” Gushan said. “If they go down and we don’t lend assistance from such a close proximity, it will appear more than suspicious.”
The admiral’s mood didn’t sour in the slightest. If anything, he seemed quite pleased to rebut Gushan’s suggestion. “Under normal circumstances you’d be right, Major. But the Americans—for reasons known only to themselves—have yet to send out a distress signal.”
Thisdidsurprise Gushan. “Perhaps they’re not wounded as badly as we suspect.”
“Four iron fish hitting the hull will sink any ship that size, no matter how well-trained their crew. I suspect they capsized before anyone could make a call.”
“We put three into their side,” Gushan corrected the admiral. “The fourth was used to destroy their sonar sled, to prevent them from resuming operations if they somehow escaped the attack. Had they gone to flank speed they would have escaped us.”
The admiral cocked his head as if surprised by this, then waved this off as if it were irrelevant. “Three, four. It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen how these things tear the side out of a ship. The Americans are finished one way or another. And now that they’ve been removed from the equation, we’re free to search the rest of this path alone and undisturbed.”
Only now did Gushan notice that Li had taken the bottle of baijiu from his cabin. A power play, perhaps meant to remind Gushan that the admiral could take what he wanted from anyone on the ship. Even his vaunted special operations officer.
