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Back Silent Sea Save as PDF
Chapters (32)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE

He stood to the side when he spun open the locking wheel to avoid the deluge of freezing water that cascaded to the deck. He climbed up the integrated ladder, his hands going numb on the wet steel. He popped his head out of the hatch. The chill took his breath away. Needles of agony pierced his sinuses, and it felt like his eyes were being seared. Juan ignored all this and concentrated on his surroundings. A tongue of ice stood poised in the gap between two black mountains that soared at least two thousand feet into the sky. The ice formed a vertical wall between them that ran right to the water. The bottom edge had been partly eroded by waves and tides, but the rest looked like a solid massif.

“You’ll do,” he said aloud, his words torn from his mouth by the wind, and then he ducked back into the relative warmth of the submersible.

His first act when he retook his seat was to crank the heater to maximum, power-reserve requirements be damned.

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-FIVE

A TEAM LEAD BY MIKE TRONO WAS HEADING TO THE BAY where the Silent Sea lay on the bottom even before Juan and the others returned to the Oregon. Juan had radioed his instructions for them to take the larger Nomad back up north and get to work on making the wreck disappear. Mike had five others with him and almost a ton of gear crammed into the submersible.

They were in for a cold, miserable night.

After what was the longest, hottest shower of Juan’s life, and learning that the Argentine’s survey boat hadn’t spent more than an hour in the wrong location before coming back to base, he met with his department heads to go over the next phase of their operation. The meeting went quickly. In the idle hours motoring back from the wreck site, Cabrillo had developed a plan that needed little refinement. He was back in the moon pool less than two hours after returning home.

Rather than take the time to recharge the Discovery’s batteries, technicians swapped them out for fresh ones, and they changed the carbon dioxide scrubbers and refilled all her air tanks as well. For this mission, Juan chose Franklin Lincoln to accompany him. He wasn’t expecting any gunplay, but the big former SEAL moved like a wraith despite his size and had been on more covert insertions than almost the rest of the crew combined.

By the time they were ready to leave, Kevin Nixon arrived with arctic clothing his staff had modified to closer resemble the gear the Argentines wore. Once they were bundled into the jackets, pants, hoods, scarves, and goggles, they would be completely anonymous.