R. A. Heinlein

by totallynotabrony

Chapter 8

I got back on the phone with Hanley. I don’t think I’d ever heard him so pissed at me. I figured one missile incoming was better than two, and that was probably worth a nuclear detonation.

“I knew this would go badly,” he said. “You’re damn lucky there’s a second line of defense.”

I had already surmised that Observation Island with its high powered radar was on station, but I knew there were no weapons aboard. “What defense is that?”

“The Navy realized how dangerous the situation was, and diverted a cruiser that was on its way back from Korea. I think you’ve worked with them before: Lake Erie.”

That made me feel a lot better. Most of the Navy’s Aegis equipped ships could engage ballistic missiles, and that particular ship and her crew had practiced it before. Combine that with the tracking radar of Observation Island, and this situation suddenly became a whole lot less tense.

“I’m going to go after the ship that left the platform a few hours ago,” I said. “We should be able to catch up.”

“No! You’ve had enough cowboying for one day!”

“Relax. I’m just going to trail them and find out where they’re going back to. Remember, you did tell me to either destroy the Chinese biological weapons program, or get them to shut it down. You never said how.”

“Fine,” he fumed. “Follow them, but do not engage.”

I ordered course corrections that would take us after the Chinese ship. Having nothing better to do, I went through the paperwork of the W80 nuclear warheads that had been attached to our Tomahawks. They were variable yield devices and could be set for anything from five kilotons to 150. For reference, the Fat Man device used in World War Two yielded 21 kilotons.

Our W80s had both been set to eight kilotons by the Navy. It was not something that could be changed unless you went inside the missile and altered it. That was a heck of a punch for taking out a scientific platform, but still small on the nuclear scale. Other information included suggested that the mushroom cloud from the detonation might reach 15,000 feet in height. We did what we had to do.

Unlike a warship, we had no spray system to wash down the decks in the case of nuclear fallout. We did have a fire hose, though, so if it became necessary we could make do.

Mostly, I just concentrated on getting us away from the area. Distance was the best plan.

---

Lake Erie shot down the ballistic missile on the first try and almost made it look nonchalant. Keeping with the casual theme, I realized it was Tuesday and called Dr. Games.

“I’m having some moral issues,” I said. “This time it’s about the environment.”

“What happened?”

“Well…I probably shouldn’t say, but I’m sure you’ll hear about it. I’m in the south Atlantic right now.”

“So, the environment?”

“I’m sure there were quite a few fish killed. The air quality probably took a hit.”

“Is there anything you can do now?”

“Not really.”

“Do you regret it?”

If I’d known that an Aegis cruiser was standing ready downrange, I probably would have just stepped back and let it take care of the missiles. I regretted that part of it. Still, if the Navy hadn’t been there, the nuclear Tomahawk would have at least taken out half the weapons before they reached their targets and maybe saved some lives.

“I think the ends justified the means,” I said. “I just wish I’d had more options for means.”

“So it’s not entirely your fault.”

“Thanks, I feel better now.”

“So what are you planning next?”

“Hunting.”

She paused for a moment. “I’m not going to ask.”

Tracking the Chinese ship proved to be fairly simple. It only took us a few hours of speed running to catch up to a safe following distance. Guiding on their radar emissions was simple, and while we couldn’t be sure of our exact following distance, we were able to take some guesses and stay on course. I just hoped the Chinese didn’t have any spy satellites in the area.

We went back across the Indian Ocean and picked our way through the islands of Oceana. The ship turned north back towards China. It had never deviated from intended course or speed, and seemed either oblivious that we were there, or trying to stay steady and make us a target.

When we could, we used CIA satellite passes to check our own tail. As we got closer to China, the infernal stealth ship appeared, following us at about the same distance that we followed the other ship. They were not using radar, and couldn’t be following our radar because it was off. Obviously, they had satellites on us.

We were interrupted from the stalking by a phone call from David. The Department of Agriculture agents wanted to meet again and couldn’t find me, so they’d contacted him. I said that I’d be available in a few days.

“Hasn’t the application for rezoning gone through yet?” I asked him.

“You know the government. Most paperwork takes ages. It’ll come when it comes.”

With no particular orders to keep up contact with the Chinese, we broke away from the tracking and headed for Japan. Nika and I went through the doorways back to the U.S.

The USDA headquarters was located in a couple of interconnected buildings on Independence Avenue near the National Mall in Washington D.C. It was a conglomeration of different construction materials, with a couple of foot bridges spanning the road to link the various sub-buildings.

Agents Hudson and Malvern met us. They had good news and bad news. The good news was, it wasn’t drug dealers that were doing suspicious things on my property. The bad news was that it was the military.

“What do you mean? Which branch of the military?”

“It’s the Navy. There have been several investigators surveying your property,” said Hudson. “Frankly, we’re baffled. Do you know anything about this? Why would the Navy be interested in a piece of property in west Texas?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Do they know that you know? Do they mind you telling me?”

“We haven’t talked to them,” replied Malvern.

“Have you considered that maybe I’ve been under investigation by the Navy and that you’ve just tipped me off to it?”

The two of them traded glances, alarmed. “You need to tell us everything you know right now,” directed Hudson.

“I’m a defense contractor. I do a lot of work for the Navy on the east coast. I’ve got no idea why they’re interested in some junk land out west.” I wondered why the investigators bothered. Nevis must have given them more than I expected. I made a mental note to burn him when I got the chance.

“Sorry to bring you here and then only have a short conversation,” said Malvern. “We really need to talk to the Navy and get this straightened out.” Nika and I were shown out.

“I should probably go talk to my lawyer,” I said to her.

After speaking to David about the conversation that I had had with the USDA agents, I went to see Hanley. I didn’t get to face-to-face with him often, and I figured it might be good to mend relations damaged by the whole nuclear issue. Nika was forced to wait outside, because nobody at the CIA wanted to let a former Russian intelligence agent in.

“There’s some talk going around about giving you an award,” he said.

“I’m flattered, but can I have a get out of jail free card instead?”

Hanley looked at me for a moment. “Why?”

“Just a question.”

“What are you up to this time?”

“Have you heard what Nevis is going through? The Navy thinks I’m involved.”

“Are you?”

“No comment. The point is, I’d like some protection.”

He grinned. I didn’t like how that made him look. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you ask for help so directly before.”

“I’m doing it for you. If I run into trouble, it could keep me from doing my duties for the CIA.”

“We’ll get someone else to replace you.”

“Really? How long will that take? You’d have to find someone else with the skills and deniability. You’d have to find a new ship because mine would probably be scuttled under mysterious circumstances. Wouldn’t it be easier to just get me off the hook?”

“Canvas, I can’t bail you out every time you screw up.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “Nevis was the one who got caught. If it wasn’t for him getting weapons for me, my ship would be as toothless as a garden snake and wouldn’t be nearly as effective for your operations. I think you should throw him a bone, too.”

“Why do I even keep listening to you?” said Hanley. “You’re like a kid who never grew up and learned to accept the consequences of his own actions.”

“You sound like my therapist.”

“Get out!”

Honestly, I thought that it was almost worth threatening national security just to see Hanley pissed off.

It was hard to say how long it would be before Agents Hudson and Malvern would get back to us. I figured it would be more than a day or two, but I saw no reason Nika and I couldn’t hang around for a little while. We checked in to a place in D.C.

After we got to the hotel, Andy called. “The Air Force wants someone to look for a missing plane. I assume the reason they asked us was because they wanted it kept covert.”

“Where is it?”

“East of Korea. They’re willing to give us an underwater remote operated vehicle to look at the crash site.”

“Can we keep the ROV afterwards?”

“They didn’t say. Maybe.”

“Well, if the money’s good, take the offer. If it’s a peacetime mission, I’m sure you can get along without Nika and I.”

“All right, we’ll get it done.”

There wasn’t much business to take care of in the next few days. I was kept updated about the hunt for the missing plane, but other than that Nika and I didn’t have much to do.

On the second day, I got a phone call from a man who identified himself as an aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“The Joint Chiefs would like to meet with you,” he said. “How soon can that be arranged?”

“I’m actually in Washington right now.” I told him where. He said a car would be sent for me.

When it showed up, the driver took me to the Pentagon. I’d been there a couple of times before, usually for serious business. On the phone, the aide said I would be meeting with the Joint Chiefs, but it was still a little surreal to see them all waiting for me.

“Gentlemen,” I said.

“Mr. Canvas, we’ve called you here today to present you with a Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction.” The Chairman read from a small card. “For civilian service above the call of duty to preserve the security of the United States of America during the recent Korean conflict.”

The aide presented me with a velvet case with the medal and accoutrements, which consisted of a couple of ribbons and pins. The case was heavier than it looked.

The Chairman continued. “As this is a secret award, the President was not able to be here to present it himself.”

“Uh, thanks," I said awkwardly. "This is about the last thing I was expecting when I came down here today.”

“Hell of an acceptance speech,” said the Chief of Naval Operations, slapping me on the back.

“While you’re here,” I said to him quietly, “we should talk about the nukes.”

“What nukes?”

“The Tomahawks that were loaded aboard my ship as a ‘just in case’ at the beginning of the conflict.”

“What about them?”

“I keep trying to get someone to sort out the paperwork to take the remaining one off my hands.”

“Wait, remaining one?” said the Chairman, breaking in.

“Yeah, I got rid of one of the two.”

“Got rid of it? Where?”

“The south Atlantic.”

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force broke in. “A Constant Phoenix bird picked up positive traces of a nuclear detonation in that part of the world not too long ago.”

The Chairman ordered everyone except myself and the Chief of Naval Operations out of the room. When we were alone, he said, “Explain. Now.”

I told how the missiles had come aboard and my difficulty in getting them off again. After skipping to the end of the fighting, I described the event in the south Atlantic. I felt bad for putting the Chief of Naval Operations on the spot, so I made sure to include how Lake Erie and Observation Island had basically saved the day.

The news had reported a mysterious climatological event in the south Atlantic, but other than that, the public didn’t know. It would be in everyone’s best interests to keep it that way. I was told to keep it to myself, and promised that I would. They didn’t even try to take my medal back.

Once out of the Pentagon, I turned my cell phone back on. There was a message from David. He said that someone from the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General had come by to talk with him.

DoD OIG investigated fraud, misuse, waste, and mismanagement in the Department of Defense. This was a step up from just NCIS working on Nevis. Now they were looking directly at me, and had other agencies working in cooperation. I decided that it would be best to get out of the country as quickly as possible.

Nika and I arrived in South Korea and Shep came with the helicopter to ferry us back to the ship. The Navy had not yet contacted us about repossessing the last Tomahawk. Even going directly to the Chief of Naval Operations had little effect, because he had to work his way down to people who could get it accomplished but still had the security clearance to be allowed in the loop.

I put it out of my mind for the moment, because we had work to do. The airplane the Air Force was interested in was a North Korean transport that had departed during the conflict headed to parts unknown. It was unusual enough that someone had paid attention to it and watched the radar as it disappeared. After the fighting, the Navy’s undersea salvage ships had bigger problems to take care of than some cargo plane, and the people in charge didn’t want to bring just any civilians into a military matter.

We found ourselves with a remote operated vehicle and a mission. Basically, it involved us trolling back and forth on the area where the plane went down looking for the wreckage. Once we found something that looked promising on sonar, we would send the ROV down to check it out.

The sonar aboard Heinlein was not advanced enough to give us a high resolution picture of the sea bottom, and we had a couple of false reads. Piloting the undersea robot was relatively simple for gamers like Andy or Hawker, and we had the aft crane to lower it in to the water. The thing that we had detected would usually turn out to be something like junk or just a bottom geographical feature.

The Air Force had provided us with a rough outline of where the plane had gone down. Not only was it just a passing blip on the radar, but it could well have continued flying for a while below radar coverage before crashing. In other words, it was hard to prove that an airplane had actually crashed at all.

We were looking in the East Korea Bay, an area of relatively shallow waters in the western Sea of Japan. The sonar showed another hit, and we sent the ROV down again. I stood on the fantail, making sure the winch cable didn’t get tangled as it passed over the crane and dropped into the ocean. The ROV used an “umbilical cord” to transmit data between it and the base station. The cable ran back into the ship and traced a route through the passageways to the CIC.

I went back inside to have a look. Andy was sitting at the controls, “flying” the ROV. It had taken a few minutes to drop into position. The lights of the robot picked up a few bits of metal, which was promising. As it glided over the seafloor, more and more man-made material became visible, and finally, a jet engine.

There’s something mesmerizing about looking at stuff undersea. Now I know how Robert Ballard feels. For a few minutes, several of us in the CIC watched the feed from the ROV camera. Finally, we came upon the main fuselage.

Based on what we knew of the North Korean Air Force, and what we could tell from the wreckage of the plane, it was probably an Ilyushin IL-76.

I was just about to order the ROV back up when something shiny appeared on the screen. Andy saw it too and moved over to it. It was a gold brick.

“Oh my God,” said Andy. He positioned the camera so it could look inside of a hole in the fuselage. Inside, more gold gleamed in the ROV’s powerful lights.

Robert Ballard or not, that discovery was probably the most impressive thing I had ever seen underwater. The Air Force had acted like they didn’t know what was aboard the plane, which sounded like a perfect opportunity to help ourselves.

The hardest part of recovery was the depth. The ROV recorded it at three hundred six feet. There was basically no natural light down there, and it was much colder than the surface. Some ROVs had mechanical arms, but ours did not. Diving was the only way.

I was the only one aboard who had experience with technical diving. Still, it would be the deepest I had ever attempted. It may have been stupid, but the lure of gold does funny things to all of us.

I got a rebreather set up with the proper mixture of gasses. The oxygen requirements were different for deep diving, and the other normal elements found in air would cause funny things to happen. We didn’t have real mixes of exotic diving gasses aboard, so I had to improvise. I was well aware that I was taking my life in my hooves.

Speaking of hooves, this was a job for a pegasus, with better cold resistance and higher tolerance to low oxygen levels. I put on a dry suit and extra insulation hoping I would be warm enough. We didn’t have gear that was truly intended for this. With the rebreather, I had about eight hours of down time, and I might need all of it. The deeper you go, the dive length increases exponentially.

When I was ready to go, I walked to the fantail. The ROV had been strapped down to a pallet and they would be lowered together to keep them from getting tangled in each other. I stepped onto the pallet and grabbed the cable. Andy was at the controls of the crane and lowered it gently over the stern.

I rode the pallet all the way down. When it got dark, I switched on my dive light and shone it downward to make sure I wasn’t dropping too rapidly. When the bottom appeared, the pallet settled softly onto it. I looked around and saw the main section of the airplane lying about twenty yards away, not too far considering the situation.

I released the ROV, and whoever was driving it moved it to get it out of my way. I picked up one end of the pallet and awkwardly dragged it towards the plane. The ROV hovered nearby, lighting my way.

I found about half a dozen bricks that had spilled out of the plane. After picking them up and placing them on the pallet, I moved on. Hunting around, I found the place where the fuselage of the plane had broken in half. There was no sign of the tail section, so I assumed that it had sunk separately.

Inside the plane, there was some miscellaneous cargo, and a body or two. The crash had not been kind to these people, and the fish had been worse. I pretended not to notice them, and proceeded further into the plane. To avoid tangling its cable, the ROV was unable to follow me very far.

The gold was on a loading flat covered with a cargo net. It had shifted when the plane crashed, and a few bricks had escaped through the holes in the net. I picked one up. Even underwater it was heavy.

I began carrying the bricks one at a time out to the pallet. It was slow work. I couldn’t easily swim inside the plane, and with the gold weighing me down I couldn’t have anyway.

I guessed that there were maybe a hundred bricks in the plane. I had shifted maybe a quarter of them out to the pallet when my dive computer began to flash. It was a warning that I had reached the end of my bottom time and had better begin my assent.

I looked at the ROV and gave the “just a minute” signal to the camera. I went back in as quickly as I could and grabbed two last bricks, trying my best to balance them in my hooves. It was slow going, and my muscles were tired from carrying the others. As I stepped out of the fuselage, I dropped one.

I put the one I still had on the pallet and turned back to get the last one. The ROV bumped my shoulder as if to tell me what an idiot I was going back for it. I grabbed the brick and started back to the pallet. I stacked it neatly with the rest, and climbed aboard. After helping to get the ROV back to where it would sit, I strapped it down. The cable on the pallet slowly began to go taut.

I checked my dive computer. I was ten minutes behind schedule. Error and reserve had been built into the dive timetable, but if I had miscalculated too much, I wasn’t going to have enough air to make it back to the surface.

The ride stopped periodically to let me get acclimated to a lower pressure. If I didn’t take my time getting to the surface, I could get the bends, a condition where the dissolved gasses in blood begin to bubble out.

Looking at the dive computer and the gauges on my rebreather, I began to get nervous. I was more than a little relieved to see Nika wearing scuba gear meeting me at one hundred feet. She had a spare tank that I could use if the rebreather ran out.

Luckily, I had just enough air to make it all the way. Nika rode with me and helped me maintain my balance as the pallet came out of the water.

Gold isn’t a very reactive metal, and doesn’t tarnish or rust. It was just as shiny as the day it had been cast into ingots. The crane swung over and deposited everything, including Nika and I, onto the aft deck.

Even after shedding the heavy dive gear, I felt weak. I sometimes got that way after long dives, but this was the worst I’d ever experienced. I had a few issues with balance and felt a little sick. I swore to never dive that deep again.

I’d collected twenty nine of the gold bricks. Each one was an ingot about eight inches long, three inches wide and an inch and half thick. There was a serial number stamped on each. When we weighed one, it came out to be about twenty seven pounds. That was close to the 400 troy ounce standard weight for internationally traded gold. At current market prices, even with the Equestrian supply affecting the economy, the load we’d picked up was worth several million dollars.

I was convinced that there was at least twice much that still on the sea floor, but I was disinclined to make another trip down there. Besides, if the Air Force actually was expecting gold to be aboard the plane but hadn’t told us, we couldn’t very well collect all of it.

The bricks were hidden in the bilge until we could find some way to get rid of them. In the meantime, we called the Air Force and told them we’d found the plane and it was full of gold. It was such a Clive Cussler-esque story that some Airman couldn’t help but leak it to the press.

“I can’t write this in one of my books,” said Andy. “Nobody would believe it.”