Blue Hope: (Book 2) (Red Hope) Read online

  Adam looked up and saw a world of water falling at him. He took another step through the sheet of water and was now behind it.

  Adam raised his arm and pushed the button on his flashlight. Directly in front of him was a sight that caused both confusion and bewilderment. His awestruck gaze moved upward and upward.

  “What the hell is that?”

  CHAPTER 61

  20,000 feet below the Pacific

  DSE2 Submarine

  Tonga Trench

  An unsettling cracking sound reverberated throughout the steel sphere that housed the three submariners. They threw panicked looks at each other. Alexis felt her stomach wrench up — a squirt of acid bubbled up into the back of her throat.

  “Don’t worry,” Jim said, looking around frantically. “We’re not dead, so it wasn’t catastrophic.”

  “Are we still descending?” Alexis asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Jim confirmed.

  “Why? We should stop and find out what’s wrong!” Alexis yelled.

  “Please remember that the same thing happened to the Trieste on its dive in 1960. We’re still alive. Whatever made that noise is not a catastrophic failure,” Jim said.

  “That’s not very comforting,” she said nervously.

  “Look at the window,” Jim directed. “It’s perfectly fine. Probably just a cracked battery cell on the outside.”

  Alexis quietly counted to ten, taking deep breaths.

  Depth: 29,000 feet

  “We’re passing beyond the Mount Everest point,” Jim remarked.

  “What’s that?” Alexis asked.

  “We’re now further below the surface of the ocean than Mount Everest is above the ocean.”

  “Interesting,” Alexis said, still worried about the integrity of the hull.

  “Almost there,” Jim said with excitement. “We’ve got sonar detecting the seafloor. Looks like we won’t break thirty thousand feet, though. Not as deep as the Mariana here, but not too shabby. Gotta start slowing the descent so we don’t slam into the bottom.”

  Alexis was getting nervous now. This sphere was feeling very cramped.

  Depth: 29,500 feet

  “Okay, this is as deep as we’re going,” Jim said. “Just a few feet above the ground. Roberto, you’re in charge now.”

  “Turning on lateral sonar,” Roberto said as he flipped a switch on the console. The screen lit up with a sweeping green line rotating around the center of the screen.

  “Do you see it?” Alexis asked with anticipation.

  “No, nothing yet…” Roberto trailed off. “We should see some big solid green spots if there is anything other than the seafloor.”

  Alexis looked out the small window in the hatch and saw a brownish green seafloor, devoid of any sign of life or even trash. Not even rocks. It was reminiscent of the Moon.

  “Can you increase the diameter of the scan?” Alexis asked.

  “Turning on the long-distance side-scanning sonar,” Roberto confirmed. “Hey, lookie, lookie.”

  A large green blip showed up on the radar.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” Roberto said. He maneuvered the joysticks so that the DSE2 began traveling toward the green blip. Like a skilled pilot he flew just a few feet above the seafloor as they navigated up a slight incline. When they flew just over the top of a slight ridge, splayed out in front of them was a huge boat anchor, heavily rusted.

  “Well,” Roberto admitted. “That’s not exactly deep sea treasure.”

  Roberto flew the DSE2 upward a few feet to get a better range for the sonar scan. The crew stared at the sweeping green line on the screen. Nothing showed up except for the boat anchor.

  “There must be something…” Alexis complained.

  “This place is totally dead,” Jim said. “There’s nothing here. Did your cartographers correct for continental drift over all this time?”

  “Yes, they ran a bunch of possible scenarios and this is supposed to be the most likely location of the laboratory,” Alexis said, obviously very upset.

  Roberto grabbed the joysticks which controlled the external propellers again. The ship dropped down and began moving laterally again, almost hugging the seafloor.

  “I’ll start taking us in wide sweeping paths. Maybe we’ll see something.”

  Roberto carefully took the DSE2 on a slow pleasure cruise along the bottom of the Tonga Trench. Gliding above the mild moguls, the entire landscape around them was lit up by their external stack of LED lamps. After ten minutes, he brought the submersible to a halt.

  “Alexis, I haven’t seen anything.”

  “Are we done?” she asked.

  Jim nodded his head. “I think so.”

  Alexis picked up the intercom microphone.

  “DSE2 to Captain Nadino.”

  After a few seconds, a staticky reply came back. “I hear you, Alexis.”

  “We’re all done here. Very disappointing. No joy on finding the Martian laboratory.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the captain said with surprisingly little disappointment. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Just an old anchor. Not even a strange animal to make it worth our trip.”

  “I understand,” the captain replied.

  Alexis pushed the transmit button again. “Can you please send a message to Chris Tankovitch that the Tonga Trench dive did not find the target?”

  “I will do that,” the captain agreed.

  “Over,” Alexis said. She hung the intercom microphone back on the hook.

  “Well, gentlemen, sorry to waste your time. Let’s head back up.”

  The two men glanced at each other, both with a look of concern on their faces.

  “Well,” Roberto said. “There is plan B.”

  Alexis looked confused, with eyebrows furled.

  “What plan B? Do you know something that my cartographers didn’t?”

  Jim laughed.

  “No, ma’am, but there is something down here that may make it worth our time for this dive.”

  Roberto reached below his seat and pulled up the manila envelope with SECRET written on it.

  “We’re going to take a slight detour,” Roberto said, removing a sheet of paper from the envelope.

  “What are you talking about? Let’s just go back up to the ship. We’ve got a long ascent ahead of us.”

  “Hold your horses,” Jim replied.

  “No, we are going back right now!” Alexis demanded.

  Jim and Roberto smiled at each other as if they had some inside joke.

  “Did you ever pause to think about why we suddenly had an opening in our schedule for this dangerous dive?” Jim asked.

  “Patriotic duty?” Alexis answered. “The search for the cure for cancer?”

  Both men laughed.

  Roberto typed some coordinates into his navigation computer which put a new dot on the screen, roughly one mile away.

  “Bingo,” both men said simultaneously.

  “Just bear with us on this one,” Jim told her in a patronizing tone.

  “Look you guys,” Alexis said firmly. “I don’t like this one bit. Every extra minute down here brings extra risk.”

  “So now you’re suddenly averse to risk?” Jim asked with sarcasm. “Our captain tried to prevent you from coming down here with us.”

  Alexis gritted her teeth.

  “What if I pulled the ballast release right now?” Alexis asked.

  “Well, then an externally actuated hook would release our 500 pound block of steel and we’d rise up to the surface.”

  Alexis slowly reached for the switch.

  Jim stuck his hand over it.

  “Please. Just give us a minute.”

  Roberto deftly steered the sub over the bland seafloor. From somewhere in the sphere, a clicking sound began. The clicks came faster and faster. Alexis looked around to find the source of the sound, but failed to locate it.

  Roberto looked somewhat worried at the accelerated clicks.r />
  Jim reached below his seat and pulled out a plastic bag filled with yellow cards marked with “RADwarn” on them. He gave one to Alexis.

  “Hold onto this,” he said.

  The clicks were steady now. Alexis looked at her RADwarn card and the circle in the middle was green — she assumed that was a good sign.

  “Can you see it?” Jim asked, eyes squinting at the display monitor. The green dot on the side-scanning sonar screen was very close to them now.

  “There!” Roberto blurted out. “Look! It’s right there.”

  Alexis looked at the monitor and saw a three foot long cylinder with big vanes emanating from it.

  “So what the hell is that?” Alexis asked.

  “That,” Roberto said with a big grin, “is real treasure.”

  Jim nearly jumped out of his seat with excitement. He turned to face Alexis and blurted out:

  “What do you know about Apollo 13?”

  CHAPTER 62

  Behind the waterfall

  Zhuvango Falls

  Africa

  Adam huffed and puffed his way up to the top of a long dirt mound hidden behind the waterfall. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he began to make out details — he was standing in an enormous dry cave behind the waterfall, 300 feet wide by at least 200 feet deep. The ceilings were at least 75 feet above him. The air was damp and the walls were illuminated by the glow of sunlight filtering through the waterfall. At various locations around the wall of the cave were rock ledges that appeared to be covered in something that was moving.

  “Hey guys,” Adam called for his crewmates standing behind him. “What’s up with those ledges?”

  The two Rogers and Leroy climbed up the dirt mound and stood next to him. They squinted their eyes to get a sharper view.

  “Bugs,” Leroy declared.

  “Just bugs?”

  “Yup. A huge hive of them probably,” Leroy stated. “I recommend not messing with them.”

  Leroy looked down at the earthen mound they were standing on. He stomped his feet to test the compactness of the soil.

  “So did you think this was anything unusual?” Leroy asked, frowning with extreme sarcasm

  Adam looked down and shined his flashlight along the ground to judge distance.

  “It’s a long dirt mound. About thirty feet long?”

  “More like ten meters, yes,” Leroy said.

  Adam rolled his eyes at the correction.

  “It is peculiar in shape and location,” Leroy said definitively.

  Roger the geologist walked down to the bottom of the mound, fifteen feet below. He picked up his portable ground-penetrating radar and unwrapped it from the poncho he’d used to keep the water off of it. Then he climbed back up, breathing heavily when he reached the top.

  “Man that waterfall noise doesn’t let up. It’s deafening,” Roger declared.

  “Just get used to it,” Leroy said.

  Roger set the radar probe vertically over the dirt and pushed the button on top.

  The LCD screen came back showing severe findings.

  “Solid as a rock?” Adam asked.

  “No, it’s solid as steel,” Leroy corrected. “Grab some shovels.”

  The four of them picked up their shovels and began digging. The dirt was looser than they thought — it made quick work for removal.

  Clink!

  They stopped digging. An enormous grin enveloped their faces. All of them.

  “Keep going!”

  They dug furiously, uncovering a shiny surface as reflective as polished stainless steel. It was unscratched and mirror-like. After thirty minutes, they had uncovered one third of the roof of the building. They searched for the edges. All in all, it was covered by about eighteen inches of soil, loosely packed.

  Victor found his way to the top of the dirt hill. “You’ve found something huge!”

  “Yes, strangest metal I’ve ever seen,” Roger admitted. “Covered by dirt for tens of thousands of years and no scratches or oxidation?”

  Victor joined in the digging. After an hour, they had uncovered the entire roof and were starting on the front section. The shape resembled an enormous trailer with a completely flat roof. No seams or welds.

  All of their shoveling was creating an enormous ring of dirt five feet away from the edge of the building.

  “Adam, is this your Martian laboratory?” Victor asked breathlessly as he shoveled.

  Adam paused shoveling and leaned on the handle.

  “Without a doubt.”

  Victor let out a huge belly laugh. “Keep digging, my friend! Keep digging!”

  CHAPTER 63

  DSE2 submarine

  The bottom of the Tonga Trench

  “What do I know about Apollo 13?” Alexis repeated.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I asked,” Jim said.

  Alexis furrowed her brow to think.

  “Of course I know about it,” she declared. “After all, I’m the director of NASA. Apollo 13 was meant to land on the Moon, but had to abort due to an explosion from an oxygen tank. Instead, they flew around the Moon without landing, and returned to Earth with very little time to spare.”

  “Right. And what did they not do?” Jim quizzed her.

  “They didn’t land on the Moon,” Alexis reiterated.

  The non-stop clicking sound accelerated as they maneuvered right up next to the finned pipe laying on the seafloor. She looked at the RADwarn card in her hand. It was now a lighter color of green.

  “When they didn’t land on the Moon,” Jim explained. “They also didn’t leave their scientific experiments that were meant to stay on the Moon.”

  “We all know they didn’t eject the lunar module. It came back with them to Earth instead,” Alexis said. “In fact, it was their lifeboat on the return journey.”

  “Exactly. And one of the Moon experiments they brought back was powered by an RTG,” Jim said, like he was winning at Trivial Pursuit.

  “I know what an RTG is,” Alexis declared.

  “It’s a Radio-isotope Thermal Generator,” Jim said in a patronizing tone. “A little electric power plant run by…?”

  “Plutonium-238,” she answered with authority.

  “They not only brought it back in the Lunar Module, but it crashed into the ocean and the damn thing sank right down into the Tonga Trench of all places,” Jim concluded.

  “You’re telling me that the pipe outside our window with fins is the Plutonium RTG from Apollo 13?”

  “Do you hear the clicks?” Jim asked. “That’s our Geiger counter.”

  “Oh my God,” Alexis panicked. “You guys are playing with something more dangerous than you can imagine. Plutonium is the most poisonous element on Earth. We need to ascend right now!”

  The clicking continued non-stop. Her badge was still light-green colored.

  Jim swung his head side to side, slowly.

  “We’re not ascending without that RTG. It contains eight and a half amazing pounds of Plutonium. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make Plutonium? That is a prize worth more than any sunken treasure ship or Martian laboratory.”

  “How much?” Alexis asked with pure derision.

  “At least one hundred million dollars. Maybe more.”

  “Is that the only reason you found an opening in your schedule for my dive?”

  “Absolutely, it costs an enormous amount of money to conduct a mission like this. We were happy to have NASA pay for it. We just didn’t expect a guest of your stature.”

  “What makes you think I’m just going to let this go unreported?” Alexis asked.

  “Because,” Jim paused. “The US Government is our customer. We have a salvage contract with the Department of Energy.”

  Click, click, click. The Geiger counter kept clicking.

  Suddenly, a crackly voice came over the intercom.

  “Okay, crew,” said Captain Nadino. “We’re watching your monitors. It’s a thing of beauty all right. Now grab that RTG an
d come back up.”

  Roberto flexed his shoulders to loosen up — then he grabbed for the joysticks. Little movements of the external propellers made the DSE2 dance slowly toward the RTG. It was coated in a dusting of seafloor material. Parts of the fins looked burnt, as if it didn’t quite make the journey unscathed during the Apollo 13 re-entry back in 1970.

  The click rate increased. Alexis looked at her RADwarn badge — it was lighter green than just a minute ago.

  Roberto maneuvered the grappling arms carefully. He unconsciously bit his lower lip to help with concentration. The mechanical fingers on the grappling arm nudged the RTG, sending a small cloud of silt floating up. He put one grappling arm under the left end of the RTG fins and the other arm under the right-side fins.

  “Here goes nothing,” Roberto said.

  He pulled the secondary joysticks toward him and the arms raised up, lifting the pipe filled with plutonium. Two feet in front of their only access window were several pounds of plutonium, contained inside a shielded pipe.

  “Phew,” Roberto breathed. “Lifting just a bit more to stabilize it.”

  He pulled on the joysticks. The RTG rolled slightly back toward the big steel sphere that housed the explorers. Alexis could see the RTG cylinder through the window now.

  To her horror, the RTG split in half along a previously unknown crack in the weld, made worse by decades of seawater corrosion.

  A glowing red chunk of metal fell out, quickly surrounding itself with a globe of steaming bubbles that rose up in a column.

  The Geiger counter went from a click, click, click, to a high-pitched whine.

  The lights in the sub began to flicker.

  Alexis looked down at her RADwarn card. It was bright red. Her skin felt tingly.