Noticing Gushan’s gaze, the admiral offered an explanation of sorts. “I’m putting it to proper use,” he said. “Instead of consuming it in a state of dour anger.”
Gushan nodded without complaint. Admirals in the navy did notrespond well to being questioned, especially when it came to their personal behavior. “It was always meant for celebrating a victory.”
“And so, we shall celebrate tonight,” the admiral said. He went to open the bottle, but was prevented from doing so by a knock at the door.
“Enter.”
An enlisted man from the communications unit came in. He handed over a coded dispatch, stood until dismissed, and then left without a word.
The admiral opened the communiqué and read it. His jaunty mood vanished. He placed the bottle down without touching the cork.
“Bad news?” Gushan asked.
With a scowl on his face, the admiral handed the message over. He wasn’t about to read it out like a secretary.
Gushan scanned the type, skipping the official banter and slowing down when he reached the pertinent parts. He chose to read it aloud.
“ ‘High command in possession of verified intelligence suggesting the American C-17 entered Tromsø fjord at low altitude on the night of its disappearance. Depart current search area and enter the fjord. Be prepared to meet with possible conspirator. Otherwise, continue the operation clandestinely.’ ”
Gushan raised an eyebrow as he considered what this meant. He handed the communiqué back to the admiral. “It seems we’ve crippled the American ship for nothing.”
“Their interference was reason enough,” the admiral snapped, blunt and grim once again. “Who’s to say they wouldn’t have hounded us wherever we go next.”
“And their NATO allies, the Norwegians? Will they be so eager to let us search their fjord?”
The admiral was unfazed. “We’ll dock, take on copious amounts of fuel and supplies, and pay everyone handsomely. I’ll suggest we’d like the opportunity to demonstrate our ice-breaking capabilities to their government. That should give us ample freedom to move around. The rest will be done in secret.”
Gushan nodded. Money had a way of clearing most paths and the Chinese had plenty of it these days. It was half the reason men like Admiral Li had become so bold, as if nothing could stop China’s ascendence or their own. Hubris it was called, and it had brought great men down from time immemorial. Gushan suspected it would soon bring the admiral low as well. He seemed to have a backward combination of traits: brash when he should be cautious, fainthearted when the moment called for courage. It wasn’t that the admiral was the wrong man for this job, Gushan thought, it was that he was the wrong man for any job. And that would catch up with them both someday.
Chapter 24
TheLyralimped into Tromsø fjord twenty-four hours after the attack. The ship’s survival was one miracle. Getting her back to port was another. While the oversized life jacket Kurt and Joe had rigged up was enough to keep her afloat, the ship could not make much headway without the danger of ripping the blocky inflation bags off the hull.
With the engine room flooded, the captain used the bow thrusters and a small trolling motor that extended and retracted from the underside of the hull for propulsion. The combination of systems allowed for very precise station keeping. And the captain used them to keep theLyrasteady with the bow angled into the waves at roughly fifteen degrees. This allowed the hull to absorb most of the incoming energy from the passing swells, which protected the lifting bags without exposing the ship to a constant back-and-forth rolling motion.
With Kurt, Paul, and Gamay all suffering from hypothermia to one extent or another, the captain restricted them to the sick bay, while allowing Joe to work with the repair crews down below.
The repair process was straightforward, but dangerous. The holes had to be patched up and water had to be pumped out fasterthan it came in. That meant using divers inside the flooded compartments to clear the debris, cut away the bent, jagged sections of hull plating, and weld temporary patches over the openings.
The damaged compartment below the engine room was handled first. Over a two-hour time frame, the damaged sections were cut away. A patch made of sheet metal, backed by plywood and braced by steel pipes and two-by-fours, created an adequate temporary seal. The pumps would remove half the water over the next hour or so, but some water would be left in the lower half of the compartment to act as additional weight, which would help counteract the outside pressure.
The hole in the forward compartment was repaired in a similar manner. But the massive amount of damage done where the penetrator had torn into the bulkhead between compartments three and four required a different solution. There was no way to adequately shore up the damage on both sides of the hole without putting immense stress on the damaged and weakened bulkhead. If it failed, the hull plating would buckle around it and the ship might break at the bend.
Looking for a solution that would allow them to sail, Joe and the ship’s damage-control officer came up with a plan that would push the water out and replace it with something lighter.
Two factors determine how much weight a flooded compartment adds. The volume of the compartment and what engineers call permeability. Flooding in an empty compartment, like a cargo hold, would add maximum weight to the ship as it fills up. A compartment of the same size, filled with incompressible material like solid plastic blocks, would take on much less water and therefore much less weight, because most of the space is already occupied.
While theLyrawasn’t hauling a cargo of plastic blocks, it still carried plenty of salvage materials. The lifting bags placed on theoutside of the hull had been the primary means to raise the EAGL if they’d found it, but there were dozens of additional bladders and floats of various shapes and sizes, some of which were designed to attach to other surfaces of the aircraft or go inside the fuselage.
Joe decided these could be put to work inside the hull, but pressure was the problem. He explained it this way. “If we inflate those bags inside the hull the water will compress them, raising the pressure in the compartment. The pressure increase might blow open the watertight doors or crack the bulkhead, and then we’ll be right back where we started, flooding and sinking.”
The captain understood. “I’ve seen the deck of a flooded barge blown sky-high when someone tried to use high-pressure air to force water out of the hold. Would rather avoid that if we can.”
“So would I,” Joe said. “What we need is a liquid. As a rule, liquids don’t compress. Filling the bladders with a liquid will force the water out without raising the pressure inside the compartment.”
“Well, we’re surrounded by a liquid,” the captain joked, “but seawater is what we’re trying to get rid of. I assume you have something else in mind?”
“This ship runs on turbines,” Joe said. “They use kerosene. Basically Jet A. The same fuel we put in the helicopter.”
