Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) by Don Keith (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📗

his cargo-handling light and smoothly came to a hover only a few feet to the starboard of Boise and about fifty feet above the deck. A cable dropped from a hoist at the portside cargo door as the pilot slid the big bird over the submarine’s deck. The COB reached up and grabbed the cable with his plexiglass grounding rod. The difference in the electrical potential between the helicopter and the submarine could be more than enough voltage to be lethal. The grounding rod fixed that.

Within a few minutes, the first patient was lifted up and into the bird. A minute later, the second one followed.

“US warship, Sierra Seven-Zero. On behalf of the Taiwan Navy, thank you for saving one of ours. Safe journeys.”

The helicopter disappeared to the north, flying low and fast, with no mention of the second new passenger, the Chinese national, the man who had been bombing and strafing the chopper pilot’s fellow warriors only a few hours earlier.

Chet Allison hardly noticed. That particular complication was no longer his problem.

But as he watched the chopper disappear into the curtain of stars, the skipper was thankful he, his crew, and the Boise had been able to possibly help save both young men’s lives.

Even if that Chinese fighter pilot almost certainly would have sunk his submarine if he’d had the opportunity.

Ψ

Dr. Rex Smith watched the GPS display closely, its bright image reflected in the scientist’s eyeglasses. They were almost back to the correct location, but precision was essential. That would make it much simpler to navigate the Sea Raptor UUV back to the desired fumarole if the submersible started its journey from the very same location. Merely a few seconds off in either latitude or longitude could mean missing their goal by several miles when the UUV had descended ten thousand meters to the pitch blackness at the bottom of the Tonga Trench.

Out on the broad afterdeck, the hot tropical sun bore down on the launch team as they worked furiously to complete final preparations to send the expensive submersible on its journey. Unsurprisingly, Mitch O’Donnell and Sandy McDougal were heavily engaged in another of their interminable arguments about how to best prepare the Sea Raptor. The brilliant sun shot diamonds from the sea’s soft ripples, causing the contentious pair to squint at each other as they verbally sparred.

Bill Bix stuck his head through the bridge door, looked at Smith, and shook his head.

“Doc, you better get down to the afterdeck,” the ship’s captain suggested. “Those two hot-headed Irishmen are at each other’s throats again. If somebody doesn’t go down and referee, one of them’ll end up in the water playing footsie with the sharks.”

“Nursemaiding a kindergarten playground is what it is,” Smith muttered. “We picked those two because they were the best in the world at what they do. Trouble is, they are simply incapable of doing it together.” The scientist pointed to the GPS. “Bill, if you can get us on top of the dot and into auto-station-keeping, I’ll go take my turn at being the playground monitor.”

Smith stepped out of the pilothouse and climbed down the ladder to the main deck, then headed aft. When he arrived at the UUV, the two protagonists were still standing on either side of the Sea Raptor and its cradle. Several other crewmembers stood back, out of the line of fire, watching the spat from a safe distance. A red-faced Sandy McDougal was flailing her arms about, shouting at the top of her lungs at Mitch O’Donnell. He stood there solidly, his feet firmly planted and arms crossed, staring stone-faced at McDougal.

“Damn stubborn Paddy,” McDougal ranted. “Why won’t you listen to common sense for once?”

“You be ‘a callin’ me a Paddy, are ye?” O’Donnell shot back in as thick an Irish brogue as he could muster. “Thick-headed Ulsterman! I mean Ulsterwoman. Oh, I’ll be PC an’ ye be an Ulster-person!”

“Hey!” Smith shouted, interrupting the tirade. He stood at the bow of the UUV and gave a hard look to the two quarrelsome researchers. “Sandy, Mitch, can’t you two ever work together peaceably? What set off World War III this time? Bushmills versus Jameson Irish whiskey again?”

Both answered loudly, each trying to out-shout the other. Rex Smith threw up his arms. “Okay then! Shut up, both of you!” The pair fell silent, mostly from the look on their angry boss’s face. “We’ll do this like the first grade. We’ll take turns. Sandy, you go first.”

The petite red-haired scientist started, “This dumb Irishman…” Smith held up a cautioning finger. “I mean Mister O’Donnell here wants to take off a bunch of sensors and add on some extra sample-stowage baskets. He prefers that we fly blind so he can scoop up and haul up more gold.”

“Bullocks!” the Irishman exploded.

“Damn it, Mitch, you’ll get your turn,” Smith heatedly told him. “Sandy? Your input on the matter?”

“We need those sensors to even make this dive worthwhile,” she finished her argument. “There’s no telling what scientific discoveries we could be missing without those sensors. We need every camera and every single light to capture the most data we can while we can. Before weather, politics, or the environment way down there brings everything to a halt. The chem sensor package is vital to the fumarole study and the high freq side-scan is how we map them.”

Smith shifted to face O’Donnell, whose belligerent posture had not softened one whit.

“Pragmatic,” the Irishman started. “I’m just being pragmatic. Those sensors and their precious data won’t be payin’ the rent. At least not for a while. But with the boxes, we can be pullin’ up over a hundred pounds of gold on every trip. That’d be over three million US dollars each run. After only a few trips down and up, we’d be paying our own way. Once we have the rent covered, then we can go back to playin’ scientist, takin’ pictures of hot water geysers and weird-ass animals.”

Smith rubbed his chin for a few minutes as he