BRING THE HELICOPTER TO A STANDSTILL AND await escort. Comply immediately or you will be destroyed. You will not be warned again.”
Jack had heard the voice only once before, cursing gutturally in Russian, but there was no mistaking Dalmotov’s heavily accented delivery as it crackled through his headphones. Jack had kept the two-way radio on throughout the flight and had been expecting contact as soon as his pursuers came within range. For the past ten minutes he had been monitoring the radar screen as two red dots converged on him from the north, their speed and trajectory leaving no doubt they were the Havoc and Werewolf from Aslan’s base.
He was only ten nautical miles north of the island, less than five minutes’ flying time away. He had sacrificed maximum speed by keeping low over the waves to suppress his radar profile, a gamble that had nearly paid off. Despite its age the Hind was marginally faster and more powerful than the other two machines, but they had gained on him by flying at a higher altitude where there was less air resistance.
As well as a fixed 30 millimetre high-speed cannon and two twenty-round pods of 80 millimetre rockets the Havoc and Werewolf each carried a lethal combination of laser-guided air-to-air and anti-ship missiles, weapons Jack had seen in the loading bay. By contrast the hardpoints on the Hind’s stub wings were empty, the only firepower coming from the trademark four-barrelled 12.7 millimetre machine gun in the chin turret. It was a potentially devastating weapon, a mass killer in the Afghan and Chechen wars, but in the absence of a gunner Jack could only operate it on a fixed trajectory over open sights. At a cyclic rate of 1,200 rounds per minute per barrel, the four one-hundred round belts of armour-piercing would only allow a five-second burst, enough to cause colossal destruction at short range but scarcely sufficient to take on two such formidable adversaries.
Jack knew the odds would be stacked hopelessly against him in a stand-off battle. His only chance would be a close-up engagement of the most brutal kind.
“OK, Dalmotov, you win this time,” Jack muttered grimly to himself as he eased back on the throttle and spun the helicopter round to face his enemy. “But don’t count on seeing home again.”
The three helicopters hovered in line abreast thirty metres above the waves, the downdraught churning up whirlwinds of spray. In the centre the Hind seemed conspicuously bulky, the other two machines having been designed for manoeuvrability and reduced battlefield visibility. To Jack’s right the Mi-28 Havoc looked like a hungry jackal with its low-set cockpit and protuberent snout. To his left the Ka-50 Werewolf’s trademark twin counter-rotating coaxial rotors seemed to magnify its potency yet reduce the airframe to insect-like proportions.
Through the bulletproof flat-screen glazing of the Werewolf, Jack could make out the glowering form of Dalmotov.
He instructed Jack to fly fifty metres ahead of his escorts. The clatter of the rotors increased to a reverberating din as the three machines tilted forward and began to fly north-east in close formation.
As ordered, Jack switched off the two-way radio that would have allowed him to alert outside help. After activating the autopilot he settled back and cradled the Barrett out of sight on his lap. Fully assembled it was almost a metre and a half long and weighed fourteen kilograms. He had been obliged to remove the ten-round magazine to keep the barrel concealed below the cowling. With his right hand he checked the receiver where he had chambered one of the massive 50 calibre BMG rounds. His window of opportunity was closing with each kilometre and he knew he must act soon.
His chance came earlier than expected. Five minutes on they suddenly encountered a thermal, a residual effect of the storm the night before. They bucked and swayed in a roller-coaster ride that seemed to ripple from the Hind to the other two. In the split second longer it took the others to adjust their controls, Jack decided to act. As another jolt of turbulence hit, he twisted the throttle forward and pulled hard on the cyclic. With the increase in engine power, the up-draught was enough to provide lift with the rotor blades pitched to maximum. The Hind bounced twenty metres above its original course, then faltered and began to drop. The other two passed below as if in slow motion, their blades almost skimming the Hind’s underbelly. Suddenly Jack was behind them. It was a classic manoeuvre of First World War dogfighting that was used to devastating effect by British Harriers against the faster Argentinian Mirages during the Falklands conflict.
With the muzzle of the rifle wedged below the left window, Jack decided to use the Hind’s integral firepower against the machine to the right. He depressed the right-hand rudder pedal slightly and swerved sideways until the Havoc was in his sights. The entire manoevure had taken less than five seconds, scarcely time for the others to register his absence, let alone take evasive action.
As the Hind bounced into position fifty metres astern, Jack flipped open the safety cover on top of the cyclic and pressed the red fire button. The four guns in the chin turret erupted in an immense wall of noise, a staccato hammering that threw Jack forward with the recoil. Each barrel spewed out twenty rounds per second, the casings ejecting in a wide arc on either side. For five seconds multiple prongs of flame shot out from under the nose and a withering hail of fire poured towards his opponent.
At first the Havoc appeared to be absorbing the rounds as they punched through the rear plating of the fuselage. Then a gaping hole suddenly appeared from fore to aft as the bullets shredded everything in their path, and the cockpit and its occupant disintegrated in a geyser of carnage. As the Hind tipped upwards, the final torrent of bullets caught the Havoc’s turboshaft assembly, severing the rotor which spun off like a demented boomerang. Seconds later the fuselage exploded in a giant fireball of aviation fuel and detonating ammunition.
Jack pulled hard on the collective and rose above the doomed helicopter. He settled on a level trajectory with the Werewolf, its sinister form now thirty metres to his left and slightly ahead. Jack could see the pilot battling with the controls as the lighter airframe was buffeted by the thermals and the aftershock of the explosion. Dalmotov seemed frozen in disbelief, unable to accept what had happened, but Jack knew it would be momentary; he had only seconds before he lost his advantage.
He levelled the Barrett out of the window and fired. The bullet left with a mighty crack, the noise reverberating inside his earphones. He swore as he saw sparks fly off the Werewolf’s upper fuselage and quickly chambered another round. This time he aimed to the right to compensate for the 200 kilometre per hour airflow. He fired just as Dalmotov jerked his head round to look at him.
Like most close-support helicopters, the Werewolf was well protected against ground attack, the armoured shield round the cockpit designed to withstand 20 millimetre cannon strikes. Its vulnerability lay in the upper fuselage and engine mounting, areas less susceptible to ground fire, where defensive plating was sacrificed to allow maximum armour to be concentrated round the crew compartment. The counter-rotating airfoil was both its strength and its weakness, producing a highly agile machine but requiring a shaft that protruded high above the fuselage to accommodate the two heads for the three-blade coaxial rotors.
The second round struck just below the lower rotor, smashing through the machinery and severing the control line. For a moment nothing happened and the helicopter continued forward with its nose down. Then it began to judder and reared up at a crazy angle. Jack could see Dalmotov frantically working the controls. Even from a distance he could tell the cyclic and collective were dysfunctional and there was no response from the pedals. Dalmotov reached up to pull a red handle that hung above his head.
The Werewolf was unique among battlefield helicopters in having a pilot ejection seat. The problem with helicopter ejection had always been the rotor above the cockpit, but Kamov had devised an ingenious system whereby the blades were discarded and the pilot’s seat was blasted up to a safe altitude for the parachute to open.
From the moment he pulled the handle, Dalmotov must have sensed something was terribly wrong. Instead of ejecting, the rotor blades remained fixed while the explosive charges around the canopy detonated in quick succession. The canopy blasted into the rotor and was hurled into space, leaving the blades bent but operational. Seconds later the seat ejected in a belch of smoke. By hideous chance it was caught between the two sets of blades and tumbled madly like a Catherine wheel spurting fire. After two full revolutions every protruding part of Dalmotov’s body had been sliced away, his helmeted head tossed out like a football. After a final spin the rotors spewed out what was left of their macabre cargo and it disappeared below in a plume of spray.
Jack watched dispassionately as the Werewolf executed a crazy dance in ever diminishing circles, the blades snapping off one by one under the increasing air pressure until the fuselage plummeted into the sea and exploded.
Without lingering any further, he veered south on his original course and twisted the throttle to maximum. Dalmotov would have relayed an automated Mayday and position fix, and the technicians in Aslan’s control centre would be redirecting the SATSURV to the slick of oil and debris where the helicopters had gone down. The sight would only stoke Aslan’s rage, already incandescent after the damage to Vultura. Jack knew any value he had as a hostage would now be eclipsed by Aslan’s need to exact retribution.
To his alarm he saw the fuel gauge was flickering dangerously close to empty. When he had last checked ten minutes before, it had read three-quarters full, and there was no way the ensuing action could have expended half the tank. He remembered the hit aft from Dalmotov’s sniper rifle as he left the helipad. If the bullet had struck a fuel line, the jolting as they passed through the thermal could have exacerbated the damage, severing the connection and causing massive fuel loss.
He had no time for confirmation. He cut back on the throttle to minimize fuel consumption and dropped to thirty metres. The distant form of the island appeared out of the morning haze, the twin peaks with their distinctive bull’s horn shape just as he had first seen them from Seaquest three days before. His only hope now was that the Hind would last long enough to get him within swimming distance of the northern shore.
As the twin turboshafts began to splutter and gasp, Jack’s view was momentarily obscured by a pall of black smoke. He recoiled from the smell, an acrid reek of cordite and burning plastic. Seconds later it cleared and he was confronted by the hulk of Seaquest less than two hundred metres in front of him.
The satellite images were no preparation for the shocking reality. IMU’s premier research vessel was wallowing with her foredeck nearly awash, her superstructure smashed beyond recognition and her starboard side rent with cavernous holes where Vultura’s shells had splayed open the plating as they tore through. It seemed a miracle she was still afloat, but Jack could tell that the forward bulkheads would soon be breached and she would be dragged under.
The Hind barely hung in the air as it shuddered over the ravaged hulk. Almost immediately it began to descend, the rotor no longer able to provide lift. As the engine coughed out its death throes, Jack only just had time to act.
He quickly unbuckled his safety harness and jammed the cyclic forward as far as it would go. By tilting the helicopter down he raised the stub wings behind the compartment out of his way, but in so doing he had also aimed the machine to nose-dive. With only seconds to spare, he threw off his helmet, ducked behind the cockpit and hurled himself out, his legs tightly crossed and his arms pressed hard against his chest to prevent them from ripping upwards as he hit the water.
Without his helmet he reduced the risk of whiplash but even so the impact was bone-jarring. He sliced into the sea feet first and plummeted deep enough to feel the thermocline. He splayed his limbs to halt his descent. As he swam back towards the surface, he felt a stabbing pain where the wound in his side had torn open. Partway up there was a tremendous concussion that sent a shock wave coursing through the water. He broke surface and saw the burning remains of the Hind a short distance away, a scene of devastation that could easily have been his own funeral pyre.
He cracked the CO2 cartridge on his lifejacket and made for Seaquest. He was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue, the adrenaline rush having taken its toll on his already depleted reserves.
Seaquest was so far down on her bow that he was able to swim over the submerged forecastle and haul himself on the sloping deck in front of the gun emplacement. It was the scene of York and Howe’s last stand the day before. After grimly surveying the scene, Jack stripped off his lifejacket and picked his way cautiously towards the remains of the deckhouse. Just before reaching the hatch into the hold, he lost his footing and fell heavily. He realized with dismay that he had slipped on congealed blood, a crimson splatter that trailed to the starboard side of the hull.
Jack knew there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on the final moments of his crew. He sank back for a moment’s respite beside the hatch while he summoned all his remaining willpower and strength.
Almost too late he saw the helicopter out of the corner of his eye. It was far away, just off the corner of the island, and the sound of its rotor was drowned out by the noise of Seaquest breaking up. He knew from the vacant pad at the heliport that Aslan had a fourth attack helicopter, and he guessed this was a Kamov Ka-28 Helix flown off Vultura. He squinted into the morning sun and saw the helicopter low over the water, aimed directly at him. Jack had been at the receiving end of enough helicopter attacks to know what to expect, yet rarely had he felt so vulnerable.
There was a distant flash as a telltale halo dropped and began to enlarge with horrifying speed. It was a heavy anti-ship missile, probably one of the feared Exocet AM.39 warheads he had seen stockpiled at Aslan’s headquarters. Jack hurled himself through the hatch and tumbled to the lower deck, literally falling into the command module. Just as he spun the locking wheel, there was an immense crash. He was thrown violently back against a bulkhead and the world went dark.
THE DOOR SLAMMED BEHIND COSTAS AS HE flew into the bulkhead. It was a jarring impact, the protruding ridge of metal taking him full in the chest and leaving him fighting for breath. The blindfold had been ripped off but all he could see was a crimson blur. He rolled back slightly, his whole body convulsed with pain, and slowly raised his arm to feel his face. His right eye was swollen and closed over, numb to the touch. He moved his fingers to his left eye and wiped away the sticky sheen before opening it. Gradually his focus improved. From where he was lying he could see whitewashed piping running along the bulkhead, the front stamped with symbols and letters he could just make out as Cyrillic.
He had no sense of time or place. His last clear memory had been Jack collapsing inside the audience chamber. Then there was blackness, a hazy memory of movement and pain. He had come to strapped in a chair with a blinding light thrust in his face. Then hour after hour of torment, of screaming and agonizing blows. Always the same black-clad figures, always the same question shouted in broken English. How did you get from the submarine? He guessed he was on Vultura, but all powers of analysis had shut down as his mind focused on survival. Again and again he was hurled into this room, then dragged back just when he thought it was all over.
And now it was happening again. This time there had been no respite. The door crashed open and there was a violent blow to his back, forcing up a slurry of blood and vomit. He was hauled to his knees retching and coughing and the blindfold was yanked on again, so tight he could feel the blood squeezing out of his swollen eye socket. He thought he could never feel another type of pain, but this was it. He concentrated his whole being on his one lifeline, that he was taking the punishment and not Jack. He had to hold on whatever it took until Seaquest arrived and the discovery of the warheads was made known.
He came round facedown on a table with his hands tied behind the chair he was sitting on. He had no idea how long he had been there and could only see a nauseating speckle of stars where the blindfold pressed against his eyes. Through the throbbing of his head he could hear voices, not those of his tormentors but a man’s and a woman’s. Earlier he had gathered from snatches of overheard conversation that his captors were expecting the return of Aslan by helicopter from their headquarters complex. Even the worst of them seemed apprehensive. There had been some kind of crisis, a downed helicopter, an escaped prisoner. Costas prayed it was Jack.
The voices seemed to be some distance away, in a corridor or an adjoining room, but the woman’s was raised in anger and he could hear them clearly. They switched from Russian to English and he realized it was Aslan and Katya.
“These are personal matters,” Aslan said. “We will speak in English so my mujahedin do not hear this blasphemy.”
“Your mujahedin.” Katya’s voice was full of contempt. “Your mujahedin are jihadists. They fight for Allah, not Aslan.”
“I am their new prophet. Their loyalty is to Aslan.”
“Aslan.” Katya spat out the word with derision. “Who is Aslan? Piotr Alexandrovich Nazarbetov. A failed professor from an obscure university with delusions of grandeur. You do not even wear the beard of a holy man. And remember I know about our Mongol heritage. Genghis Khan was an infidel who destroyed half the Muslim world. Someone ought to tell that to your holy warriors.”
“You forget yourself, my daughter.” The voice was icy.
“I remember what I had to learn as a child. He who will abide by the Koran will prosper, he who offends against it will get the sword. The faith does not allow the murder of innocents.” Her voice was a ragged sob. “I know what you did to my mother.”
Aslan’s heavy breathing sounded to Costas like a pressure cooker about to explode.
“Your mujahedin are biding their time,” Katya continued. “They are using you until you become expendable. That submarine will be your tomb as well. All you have done by creating this terrorist sanctuary is hasten your own demise.”
“Silence!” The demented scream was followed by the sounds of a scuffle and something being dragged away. Moments later there were returning footsteps. They halted behind Costas. A pair of hands jerked his shoulders back against the chair.
“Your presence is polluting,” the voice hissed against his ear, still breathing heavily. “You are about to make your final journey.”
Fingers snapped and two pairs of hands wrenched him upright. In his world of darkness he was unaware of the blow when it came, an instant of pain followed by merciful oblivion.
Jack seemed to be in a living nightmare. He saw only pitch-blackness, a darkness so complete it eclipsed all sensory points of reference. All around him was an immense rushing noise punctuated by creaks and groans. His mind struggled to make sense of the unimaginable. As he lay contorted against the bulkhead he felt oddly lightweight, his body almost levitating as if he were caught in the grip of some demonic fever.
He now knew what it felt like to be trapped inside the bowels of a sinking ship as it plunged into the abyss. His salvation was Seaquest’s command module, its fifteen-centimetre-thick walls of titanium-reinforced steel protecting him from the crushing pressure that would by now have burst his eardrums and collapsed his skull. He could hear rending and buckling as the remaining air pockets imploded, a noise that would have spelled instant death had he failed to make it into the module in time.
All he could do now was brace himself against the inevitable. The fall seemed interminable, far longer than he had expected, and the noise increased in a shrieking crescendo like an approaching express train. The end when it came was as violent as it was unheralded. The hull crashed into the seabed with a sickening jolt, generating a G force that would have killed him had he not been crouched with his head in his arms. It took all his strength to keep from being thrown upwards as the hull rebounded, the surge accompanied by a horrific tearing sound. Then the wreckage settled and silence descended.
“Activate emergency lighting.”
Jack spoke to himself as he felt his body for further injury. His voice sounded strangely disembodied, its cadences absorbed by the soundproof panelling on the walls, yet it gave a measure of reality in a world that had lost all waymarkers.
As a diver Jack was used to orienting in utter darkness, and now he brought all his experience to bear. After his tumble through the hatch the missile impact had blown him past the weapons locker towards the control panels on the far side of the module. Fortunately Seaquest had come to rest upright. As he rose uncertainly to his feet he could sense the slant of the deck where the bow had ploughed into the seabed. He dropped back to his knees and felt his way across the floor, his intimate knowledge of the vessel he had helped design guiding him past the consoles that lined the interior.
He reached a fuse box in the wall to the left of the entry hatch and felt for the switch that connected the reserve battery in its protective lead housing to the main circuitry. His hand found the lever that activated the emergency lighting. Not for the first time that day he shut his eyes tight and prayed for luck.
To his relief the room was immediately bathed in fluorescent green. His eyes quickly adjusted and he turned round to survey the scene. The module was below the waterline, and the shells which had skewered Seaquest had passed through the hull above. The equipment and fixtures seemed shipshape and battened down, the module having been designed to survive precisely this kind of attack.
His first task was to disengage the module from the hull. He made his way unsteadily to the central dais. It seemed inconceivable that he had assembled the crew here for the briefing less than forty-eight hours before. He slumped heavily in the command chair and activated the control panel. The LCD monitor scrolled through a series of password requests before initiating the disengage sequence. After the third password a drawer sprang open and he took out a key which he slotted into the panel and turned clockwise. The electronic propulsion and atmosphere control systems would kick in as soon as the module was a safe distance from the wreckage.
Without Seaquest’s sensors, Jack would have no data on depth or local environment until the module was clear of the hull and had activated its own array. He guessed he had fallen into the chasm recorded by Seaquest to the north of the island, a gash ten kilometres long and half a kilometre wide that Costas had identified as a tectonic fault on the same line as the volcano. If so, he was mired in the dustbin of the south-eastern Black Sea, a collecting point for silt and a reservoir of brine from the Ice Age. With every passing minute the wreckage would be sinking further into a slurry of sediment more intractable than quicksand. Even if he managed to disengage, he might simply drive the module deeper into the ooze, entombing him with no hope of escape.
He strapped himself in and leaned back on the headrest. The computer gave him three chances to abort and each time he pressed continue. After the final sequence, a red warning triangle appeared with the word disengaging flashing in the centre. For an alarming moment the room reverted to darkness as the computer re-routed the circuitry to the internal battery pod.
A few seconds later the silence was broken by a dull staccato noise outside the casing to his left. Each muffled concussion represented a tiny explosive charge rigged to blow out the rivets in Seaquest’s hull and create an aperture large enough for the module to pass through. As the panel sheared off, the space surrounding the module filled with seawater and the bathymetric sensor came online. Jack swivelled towards the exit trajectory and braced himself as the water jets came to life, a low hum that increased in a crescendo as the engines bucked against the pivots that secured the module to the hull. A series of detonations erupted behind him as the module separated from its retaining bolts. Simultaneously the locking clamps retracted and he was thrown back violently in the seat, the compression as the saucer ejected equalling the multiple G force of a rocket launch.
The module had been designed to blast from a sinking ship beyond the suction vortex as the hull plummeted to the sea floor. Jack had experienced a simulation at IMU’s deep-water test facility off Bermuda, when the saucer came to a halt a hundred metres away. Here, the G force was followed by an equally violent jolt in the opposite direction, the module stopping only a few metres beyond the wreckage.
He had pitched his head forward in the standard safety posture and his only injuries were a series of painful welts where the straps dug into his shoulders. After taking a deep breath he unbuckled the harness and swivelled towards the workstation, his right hand pushed against the control panel to stop him sliding forward where the module had angled into the seabed.
To the left was a smaller monitor for the display of bathymetric data. As the numbers began to flicker he saw the depth gauge read a staggering 750 metres below sea level, a full hundred metres below the official maximum operating depth of the module. The base of the fault was far deeper than they had imagined, more than half a kilometre below the submerged ancient shoreline.
Jack switched on the sound navigation and ranging system and waited while the screen came to life. The active sonar transducer emitted a high-frequency narrowband pulse beam in a 360 degree vertical sweep to give a profile of the sea floor and any suspended objects up to the surface. During Seaquest’s run over the canyon two days previously they had established that the fault lay north-south, so he fixed the sonar trajectory east-west to give a cross-section of his position within the defile.
The speed of the beam meant the entire profile was visible on the monitor at once. The mottled green on either side showed where the canyon walls rose some four hundred metres apart. Near the top were jagged protrusions that narrowed the profile further still. The canyon bore all the characteristics of a horizontal tear fault, caused by plates in the earth’s crust wrenching apart rather than grinding sideways. It was a geological rarity that would have delighted Costas but was of more immediate concern to Jack because it compounded the gravity of his situation.
He realized his chances against surviving this far had been truly astronomical. If Seaquest had sunk only fifty metres west she would have impacted with the lip of the canyon, smashing him to oblivion well before the wreckage reached the sea floor far below.
He turned his attention to the base of the fault where the profiler showed a mass of light green, denoting hundreds of metres of sediment. Partway up was a horizontal line level with the apex of the sonar, a compacted layer which was the resting place for Seaquest. Above it a lighter scattering of colour denoting suspended sediment continued for at least twenty metres until the screen became clear, indicating open water.
Jack knew he was atop a drift of sediment at least as deep as the ocean above, immense quantities of silt derived from land run-off mixed with dead marine organisms, natural seabed clays, volcanic debris and brine from the Ice Age evaporation. It was continuously being added to by fallout from above and at any moment could swallow him up like quicksand. And if the quicksand did not get him, an avalanche could. The suspended silt above the wreckage was the result of a turbidity current. IMU scientists had monitored turbidity currents in the Atlantic cascading off the continental shelf at 100 kilometres an hour, carving out submarine canyons and depositing millions of tons of silt. Like snow avalanches, the shock wave from one could trigger another. If he was caught anywhere near an underwater displacement of such magnitude he would be doomed without hope of reprieve.
Even before he tried the engines he knew it was a forlorn hope. The erratic hum as he powered up the unit only confirmed that the water jets were clogged with silt and incapable of shifting the module from the grave it had dug itself. There was no way the IMU engineers could have anticipated that the first deployment of their brainchild would be under twenty metres of ooze at the bottom of an uncharted abyss.
His one remaining option was a double-lock chamber behind him that allowed divers to enter and exit. The casing above was enveloped in a swirling cloud of sediment which might still be sufficiently fluid for escape, though with each passing minute the chances were diminishing as more of the particulate matter came out of solution and buried the module ever deeper in a mass of compacted sediment.
After a final glance at the sonar profile to memorize its features, he made his way to the double-lock chamber. The retaining wheel turned easily and he stepped inside. There were two compartments, each little larger than a closet, the first an equipment storage and kitting-up room and the second the double-lock chamber itself. He pushed his way past a rack of E-suits and trimix regulators until he stood before a metallic monster that looked like something from a science-fiction B movie.
Once again Jack had reason to be grateful to Costas. With the command module as yet untested he had insisted on a one-atmosphere diving suit as a back-up, a measure Jack had only grudgingly accepted because of the extra time needed for installation. In the event he had helped to stow the suit inside the chamber so was closely familiar with the escape procedure they had devised.
He stepped onto the grid in front of the suit and unlocked the coupling ring, pivoting the helmet forward and exposing the control panel inside. After satisfying himself that all systems were operational, he disconnected the belts that secured it to the bulkhead and scanned the exterior to make sure the joints were all fully sealed.
Officially designated Autonomous Deep Sea Anthropod, the suit had more in common with submersibles like the Aquapod than conventional scuba equipment. The Mark 5 ADSA allowed solo penetrations to ocean depths in excess of four hundred metres. The life support system was a rebreather which injected oxygen while scrubbing carbon dioxide from exhaled air to provide safe breathing gas for up to forty-eight hours. Like earlier suits, the ADSA was pressure resistant with liquid-filled joints and an all-metal carapace, though the material used was titanium-reinforced high-tensile steel which gave an unprecedented pressure rating of 2,000 metres water depth.
The ADSA exemplified the great strides made by IMU in deep submersible technology. An ultrasonic multi-directional sonar fed a three-dimensional moving image into a snap-down headset, providing a virtual-reality navigation system in zero visibility. For mid-water mobility the suit was equipped with a computerized variable-buoyancy device and a vectored-thrust water-jet pack, a combination that gave the versatility of an astronaut on a space walk but without the need for a grounding tether.
After uncoupling the suit Jack stepped back into the main compartment and quickly backtracked to the weapons locker. From the top shelf he took a Beretta 9 millimetre handgun to replace the one confiscated by Aslan and shoved it into his flight suit. He then uncoupled an SA80-A2 assault rifle and grabbed three magazines. After slinging the rifle he extracted two small packages of Semtex plastic explosive, normally used for underwater demolition work, and two briefcase-sized boxes each containing a mesh of bubble mines and a detonator transceiver.
Back in the double-lock chamber he hooked the boxes to a pair of carabiners on the front of the ADSA and secured them with a retaining strap. He reached over and slid the rifle and magazines into a pouch under the control panel, the bull-pup SA80 fitting easily inside. After closing the hatch to the chamber and spinning the locking wheel he ascended the metal ladder and clambered into the suit. It was surprisingly spacious, providing room for him to withdraw his hands from the metal arms and operate the console controls. Despite its half-ton weight he was able to flex the leg joints and open and close the pincer-like hands. After checking the oxygen supply, he shut the dome and locked the neck seal, his body now encased in a self-contained life support system and the world outside the viewports suddenly remote and dispensable.
He was about to leave Seaquest for the last time. There was no chance for reflection, only an utter determination that her loss should not be in vain. Any sadness would come later.
He switched on the low-intensity interior lighting, adjusted the thermostat to 20 degrees Celsius and activated the sensor array. After checking the buoyancy and propulsion controls he extended the right-hand pincer against a switch on the door. The fluorescent lighting dimmed and water began to spray down. As the turgid liquid rose above the viewports, Jack felt the damp patch where the blood had oozed from his gunshot wound of the day before. He tried to steady his nerves.
“One small step for a man,” he muttered. “One giant step for mankind.”