With more information coming into The Organization about the impending military strike on the gas terminus, and the US1 getting close to the rendezvous point, Sam tried repeatedly to contact Max, Carla or the pilot.
It was unheard of for his team to lose contact, unless they were in difficulties, so inquiries were made with the local airports to see if the helicopter was there being serviced, or had taken on fuel. No one had heard from them.
The last time Sam had spoken to Carla, she was at Stan Kendrick’s home and was intending to fly straight to Torino Airport, to take the Lear Jet back to Bermuda. The helicopter would have to take on fuel for the return flight, so they had to be in some sort of trouble.
Sam requested an air search in the mountains for any wreckage, and waited anxiously for news. Time was running out, the strike could be under way at any time. If Stan Kendrick was right in his analysis, the impending disaster that would ensue was too frightening to comprehend.
US1 could continue without Max and Carla on-board, at least something positive was happening that might avert global disaster.
It was two hours later when Sam received the news that The Organization’s helicopter had been found; all six people on-board were unharmed and walking around a smoky signal fire, next to the wreckage.
Sam gave a sigh of relief, “Those two have charmed lives, and thank goodness it rubs off on those around them.”
A mountain rescue team was called in to move them up to high ground, so they could be picked up by a rescue helicopter and taken to the hospital to be checked over. As soon as they were declared OK and everything had been paid for, they flew direct to Sam at The Organization for debriefing.
***
Philippe had been monitoring the local news and was incensed when he heard everyone had been rescued, alive and well.
He made his way back to the terminus and reported his personal failure to Jason Sterling, with the vow that they were on borrowed time; he would kill them all.
Sterling was annoyed, but had moved on to other more important developments.
***
Sam arranged for a car to take them to Torino Airport with their original, but supremely battered luggage and passports, recovered by another team of climbers.
When Max, Carla, James, Amy and Stan eventually arrived in Bermuda, they were whisked off by long range helicopter, to rendezvous with US1 and start the next phase of their mission.
Boarding US1 was straightforward, the very broad hull had a flat area that could be used as a helipad or a stable platform for other equipment to be attached and operated. The whole design was original, it did not have the constraints imposed by military use, and it had to provide a working base for many diverse underwater uses, ranging from research, rescue and mineral harvesting, as well as national security.
The US1’s imaging system of modulated gamma waves replacing conventional sonar, provided the range of radar and the visual detail of a video camera, in any direction outside the hull.
The image appeared on the inner surface of a spherical room, from where the navigator controls the vessel. Suspended in the center of the sphere, the navigator viewed the undersea world as though in a glass ball immersed in perfectly transparent water.
Using computer enhanced imaging, fish, seaweed or other soft surfaces were recognized and realistically colored. Close up objects were viewed with remarkable video detectors and intensely powerful electromagnetic energy, emitted over a wide range of wavelength, beyond infra-red and ultra-violet to capture real images. Suitably filtered, it could display the electric fields from undersea cables and fish.
With these unique tools, what was out of reach because of water pressure, could still be seen from a distance.
The moon pool was a recent addition to the modular hull; a bathyscaphe could be lowered from it, to reach greater depths.
***
Once aboard and with their entire luggage stowed away, they joined a briefing with Captain Howard, and a video link with Sam.
The objective of the mission was to find out if the two wreck sites where ships and planes vanished without trace, would reveal any explanation for their disappearance. If there was time, depending on the military’s attack status on the terminus, they would also try to ascertain the cause of the bubble column under the Ocean Raider.
The team decided to visit the nearest site, where the gas tanker, cargo ship and jet were lost. After that, they would investigate the other site, where the cruise ship and cargo ship disappeared.
Apart from accelerating like an electric tram, the massive submarine slipped through the water at a smooth and eerily quiet sixty-five knots, 600 meters below the surface.
Three hours later, they were over the last known position of the disaster. The clarity of the image of the seabed some 4000 meters below was astounding, it made no difference to the gamma system that there was no light, but like light, it relied on the reflection of the beam at different frequencies.
After 4 hours the cargo ship was located; it was 20km away from the starting point. For a detailed view, the bathyscaphe was lowered, and the close up shots showed the hull to be totally crushed, with no sign of explosion, damage or burning. The exploding gas tanker had not destroyed this vessel. It must have sunk so quickly that the trapped air spaces in the hull had been collapsed by the water pressure.
The jet had disintegrated, either in the air or when it hit the water, but the metal showed no discoloration from intense heat.
The gas tanker was the last to be found, it was crushed just like the cargo ship, and the spherical gas containers appeared like crumpled plastic footballs.
Wherever they looked, they found the seabed crazed with recent fissures, many still glowing, and issuing steam and other gasses.
Stan Kendrick and other specialists on board concluded that the two ships had sunk extremely quickly, possibly on a vast bubble column caused by the molten rock and gases, rising through the mat of fissures in the seabed. The gas containers had eventually imploded from the water pressure, releasing a vast methane gas cloud which the jet had flown into. The jet’s hot exhaust must have ignited the gas, having mixed well with the air.
The second site, with the cargo ship and liner, showed a different story. The bottom had blown out of the cargo ship, and it had only broken up because of the speed with which it hit the seabed.
The cruise ship sat in the middle of another web of fissured seabed, it was no longer glowing, but vast quantities of bubbles were rising from the whole area. The ship itself was totally crushed and burned.
When the bathyscaphe returned and the moon pool was sealed, gas sensors detected almost pure methane.
The team’s unanimous conclusion was, the cargo ship was scuttled deliberately.
The liner had been incinerated in a fireball comprising a mixture of methane released by the silt, and air, ignited by the ship’s engines or exhaust. The amount of sulphur that would be present in the gas depended on how many open fissures there were at the time, and it was probably a lot.
When the submarine surfaced, Captain Howard transmitted all the available imaging and preliminary reports to Sam. He then passed on the reports to various governments and waited impatiently for their reply. By monitoring the situation through military channels, he gleaned that there was to be a stand down of the strike team so, for now, the panic was over.
Contacts in Congress revealed total chaos behind the scenes. To protect their own interests, the petrochemical experts had laid the blame on the harvesting, but were unable to agree on how to shut down the gas harvesting plant.
They suddenly became aware that the fledgling technology was beyond them, and that interfering with the process would result in the blame for the ensuing catastrophe falling squarely upon them.