Sea Scan arced down into the blackness of the deep. The robot sub’s probing sonar looked out over the barren sea floor, but so far it was finding nothing of interest. The magnetometer was quiet.

Bill Schwartz had his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth as he wiggled the joystick. He stared at the empty video screens and steered the little sub closer to the metallic pounding noise.

Suddenly the magnetometer spiked high. A very large metal object was in its field of sensitivity. Schwartz made a minor correction to Sea Scan’s course, aiming for the object. The sonar started to map out the long cylinder. It might just as well have been an instant replay of what they saw when they had found Miami a few hours before.

The difference this time was the hammering. There was someone alive down here, someone alone in the cold and dark who needed help.

Schwartz maneuvered Sea Scan until it was a mere ten feet above the object, hovering a few feet to the side. He flipped on the lights and the video camera and twisted a control on one of the boxes arrayed before him. The screen came into focus.

There was the unmistakable form of a submarine hull. The smoothly rounded sail was just at the edge of the light and, unlike Miami’s, seemed to be intact.

Dan Perkins moved close to the screen, his nose almost touching it, trying to get a better look as Schwartz steered. He watched for several minutes as the Sea Scan moved along the hull.

“Looks like an Akula class. That sail is unmistakable. She’s bigger than any Akula I’ve ever seen, though,” Perkins whispered, more to himself than to anyone else.

Schwartz stopped the robot’s progress for a moment and fiddled with the zoom for a bit, tilting the camera up and down and panning slightly. “Yep. Damage in the bow. Looks like it happened when it hit the bottom.”

Next, the robot sub moved over the stern and there they could see the gaping hole left by the explosion, the jagged metal pointing outward in long, treacherous spears.

Perkins gasped. “My God! Look at that! She has a hole blown in her stern you could drive a truck through. I believe…yes…it’s an explosion from inside. What in hell could cause something like that?”

Gary Nichols looked over Perkins’s shoulder at the devastating sight. He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s a wonder there’s anyone left alive inside a mess like that. They were probably saved by all the compartmentalization the Russians use. What about the hatches? Can you tell if we’ll be able to set Mystic down on one of them?”

Perkins cocked his head. “Good question. Bill, can you steer over so we can take a look?”