by Robin Cook
Perry felt weak-kneed. He pulled Mark’s chair out from his desk and sat down heavily. He rubbed his eyes. He was tired, hungry, and discouraged. He could kick himself for betting so much of his company’s future based on so little reliable data, but the discovery had seemed so fortuitous. He’d felt compelled to act.
“Hey, I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news,” Mark said. “We’ll do what you suggested. We’ll try to get a better idea of the rock we’re drilling. Let’s not get overly discouraged.”
“It’s kind of hard not to,” Perry said, “considering how much it is costing Benthic Marine to keep the ship out here. Maybe we should just cut our losses.”
“Why don’t you get yourself something to eat?” Mark suggested. “No sense making any snap decisions on an empty stomach. In fact, I’ll join you if you can wait for me to shower. Hell! Before you know it we’ll have some more information about this crap we’ve hit up against. Maybe then it will be clear what we ought to do.”
“How long will it take to change the bit?” Perry asked.
“The submersible can be in the water in an hour,” Mark said. “They’ll take the bit and the tools down to the well head. Getting the divers down there takes longer because they have to be compressed before we lower the bell. That’ll take a couple of hours, more if they get any compression pains. Changing the bit is not hard. The whole operation should take three or four hours, maybe less.”
Perry got to his feet with effort. “Give me a call in my compartment when you’re ready to eat.” He reached for the door.
“Hey, wait a sec!” Mark said with sudden enthusiasm. “I got an idea that might give you a boost. Why don’t you go down with the submersible? It’s reputed to be beautiful down there on the guyot at least according to Suzanne. Even the submersible pilot, Donald Fuller, the ex-naval line officer, who’s usually a tight-lipped, straight-arrow kind of guy, says the scenery is outstanding.”
“What can be so great about a flat-topped, submerged mountain?” Perry asked.
“I haven’t gone down myself,” Mark admitted. “But it has something to do with the geology of the area. You know, being part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and all. But ask Newell or Fuller! I tell you, they’re going to be ecstatic about being asked to go back down. With the halogen lights on the submersible and the clarity of the deep sea water, they said the visibility is between two and three hundred feet.”
Perry nodded. Taking a dive wasn’t a bad idea since it would undoubtedly take his mind off the current situation and make him feel like he was doing something. Besides, he’d only been in the submersible once, off Santa Catalina Island when Benthic Marine took delivery of the sub, and that had been a memorable experience. At least he’d get a chance to see this mountain that was causing him so much aggravation.
“Who should I tell that I’ll be part of the crew?” Perry asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” Mark said. He stood up and pulled off his T-shirt. “I’ll just let Larry Nelson know.”
CHAPTER TWO
Richard Adams pulled a pair of baggy long johns from his ship’s locker and kicked the door closed. Once he had the underwear on he donned his black knit watch stander’s hat. Thus attired he left his compartment and banged on Louis Mazzola’s and Michael Donaghue’s doors. Both responded with a slurry of expletives. The curses had lost their sting since they constituted such a large percentage of these crew members’ vocabularies. Richard, Louis, and Michael, professional divers, were the hard drinking, hard living sort who regularly risked their lives by welding underwater if that were required, or blowing things up like reefs, or changing bits during submarine drilling operations. They were underwater hard-laborers and proud of it.
The three had trained together in the U.S. Navy, becoming fast friends as well as accomplished members of the Navy’s UDT force. All had aspired to become Navy Seals, but that turned out not to be in the cards. Their predilection for beer and fistfights far exceeded that of their fellows. That the three had grown up with alcoholic, brutish, abusive, bigoted, blue-collar, wife-beating fathers was an explanation for their behavior, but not an excuse. Far from being embarrassed by their patriarchal examples, the three looked upon their harsh childhoods as a natural progression to true manhood. None of them ever gave even a passing thought to the old adage: Like father like son.
Manliness was a critical virtue for all three men. They were ruthless in punishing anyone they perceived as being less manly than they who had the nerve to enter a bar in which they were drinking. Their judgment fell heavily on “shyster” lawyers and fat-assed Army personnel. They also condemned anyone they deemed a dork, a nerd, or a queer. Homosexuality bothered them the most, and as far as they were concerned, the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy was ridiculous and a personal affront.
Although the Navy tended to be lenient with divers and tolerated behavior it wouldn’t brook with other personnel, Richard Adams and his buddies pushed the envelope too far. One hot August afternoon the men retreated to their favorite hole-in-the-wall diver’s bar on San Diego’s Point Loma. It had been an exhausting day of difficult diving. After numerous rounds of boilermakers and an equal number of arguments about the current baseball season, they were shocked and dismayed to see a couple of Army guys jauntily walk in. According to the divers at their court-martial, these men proceeded to “love it up” in one of the back booths.
The fact that the soldiers were officers only made the divers’ outrage all the more impassioned. They never asked themselves why a couple of Army officers might be in San Diego, a known Navy and Marine town. Richard, their perennial ringleader, was the first to approach the booth. He asked—sarcastically—if he could join the orgy. The Army men, mistaking Richard’s meaning—which was for them to get the hell out—laughed, denied any orgy of any sort, and offered to buy him and his friends a round of celebratory drinks. The result was a one-sided brawl that put both Army officers into Balboa Naval Hospital. It also put Richard and his friends into the brig and eventually out of the Navy. The Army men happened to have been members of JAG, the Army’s Judge Advocate General corps.
“Come on, you assholes!” Richard yelled when the others still hadn’t appeared. He glanced at his diving watch. He knew Nelson would be pissed. His orders on the phone had been to get to the diving command center ASAP.
The first to appear was Louis Mazzola. He was almost a head shorter than Richard, who stood six feet. Richard thought of Louis as a bowling ball kind of guy. He had meaty features, an omnipresent five o’ clock shadow, and short dark hair that lay flat on his round head. He appeared to have no neck; his trapezius angled out from his skull without any indentation.
“What’s the hurry?” Louis whined.
“We’re going on a dive!” Richard said.
“So what else is new?” Louis complained.
Michael’s door opened. He was somewhere between Richard’s rawboned silhouette and Louis’s stockiness. Like his friends he was well muscled and in obviously good shape. He was also equivalently slovenly, dressed in the same baggy long johns. But in contrast to the others he had on a Red Sox baseball cap with the visor angled off sideways. Michael hailed from Chelsea, Massachusetts, and was an avid Sox and Bruins fan.
Michael opened his mouth to complain about being awakened, but Richard ignored him and set out for the main deck. Louis did likewise. Michael shrugged and then followed. As they descended the main companionway, Louis called ahead to Richard: “Hey, Adams, you got the cards?”
“Of course I got the cards,” Richard shot back over his shoulder. “Have you got your checkbook?”
“Screw you,” Louis said. “You haven’t beat me in the last four dives.”
“It’s been a plan, man,” Richard returned. “I’ve been setting you up.”
“Screw the cards,” Michael said. “Have you got your porno mags, Mazzola?”
“You think I’d go on a dive without them?” Louis questioned. “Hell! I’d rather forg
et my fins.”
“I hope you checked to make sure you’ve got the mags with the chicks and not the dudes,” Michael teased.
Louis stopped abruptly. Michael bumped into him.
“What the hell are you saying?” Louis growled.
“I’m just checking to make sure you brought the right ones,” Michael said with a wry smile. “I might want to borrow them, and I don’t want to find myself looking at any shlongs.”
Louis’s hand shot out and he grabbed a handful of Michael’s long johns top. Michael responded by grabbing Louis’s forearm with his left hand and balling his right hand into a fist. Before it could go further, Richard intervened.
“Come on, you dorks!” Richard yelled, inserting himself between his two friends. With an upward blow he knocked Louis’s arm aside. There was a tearing sound, and Louis’s hand came away with a torn swatch of Michael’s undershirt clutched in his fingers. Like a bull seeing red, Louis tried to push past Richard. When that didn’t work he tried to grab Michael’s top over Richard’s shoulder. Michael howled with laughter and ducked away.
“Mazzola, you meathead!” Richard yelled. “He’s just trying to pull your chain. Chill out, for chrissake!”
“Bastard!” Louis hissed. He threw the swatch of torn fabric he’d yanked out of Michael’s undershirt at his tormentor. Michael laughed again.
“Come on!” Richard said with disgust as he continued down the passageway. Michael reached down and picked up the piece of fabric. When he pretended to stick it back onto his chest, Louis laughed in spite of himself. Then they ran to catch up to Richard.
When the divers emerged onto the deck they could see that the derrick was raising the pipe.
“They must have broken the bit again,” Michael said. Both Richard and Louis nodded. “At least we know what we’ll be doing.”
They entered the diving van and draped themselves over three folding chairs near the door. This was where Larry Nelson, the man who ran all the diving operations, had his desk. Behind him, on the right-hand side of the van and extending all the way down to the far end, was the diving console. Here were all the readouts, gauges, and controls for operating the diving system. On the left side of the van’s dash were the controls and monitors for the camera sleds. Also on the left side was a window that looked out on the central well of the ship. It was down this central well that the diving bell was lowered.
The diving system on the Benthic Explorer was a saturation system, meaning the divers were expected to absorb the maximum amount of inert gas during any given dive. That meant that the decompression time required to rid themselves of the inert gas would be the same no matter how long they stayed at pressure. The system was composed of three cylindrical deck decompression chambers (DDC), each twelve feet wide and twenty feet long. The DDCs were hooked together like enormous sausages with double pressure hatches separating them. Within each were four bunks, several fold-down tables, a toilet, a sink, and a shower.
Each DDC also had an entrance port on the side and a pressure hatch on the top where the diving bell, or personal transfer capsule (PTC), could mate. Compression and decompression of the divers took place in the DDC. Once they had reached the equivalent pressure of the depth where they were to work, they climbed up into the PTC, which was then detached and lowered into the water. When the PTC reached the appropriate depth the divers opened the hatch through which they’d entered the bell and swam to the designated workstation. While in the water the divers were tethered with an umbilical cord containing hoses for their breathing gas, for hot water to heat their neoprene dry suits, for sensing wires, and for communication cables. Since the divers on the Benthic Explorer used full face masks, communication was possible, although difficult, due to voice distortion in the helium-oxygen mixture they breathed. The sensing wires carried information about each diver’s heart rate, breathing rate, and breathing-gas oxygen pressure. All three levels were monitored continuously on a real-time basis.
Larry looked up from his desk and regarded his second team of divers with disdain. He couldn’t believe how slovenly, brazen, and unprofessional they invariably appeared. He noted Michael’s jaunty baseball cap and ripped shirt, but he didn’t say anything. Similar to the Navy, he tolerated behavior in the divers that he would not tolerate with other members of his team. Three other divers who were equally aggravating and obstreperous were still in one of the DDCs, decompressing from the last dive on the well head. When diving to almost a thousand feet, decompression time is measured in days not hours.
“I’m sorry to have awakened you clowns from your beauty sleep,” Larry said. “It took you long enough to get down here.”
“I had to floss my teeth,” Richard said.
“And I had to do my nails,” Louis said. He flapped his hand in a swishy, loose wrist fashion.
Michael rolled his eyes with mock disgust.
“Hey, don’t start!” Louis growled while eyeing Michael. He poked one of his meaty fingers in his friend’s face. Michael batted it away.
“All right, listen up, you animals!” Larry yelled. “Try to control yourselves. This is going to be a nine-hundred-and-eighty-foot dive to inspect and change the drill bit.”
“Oh, something new, eh, chief?” Richard said in a high, squeaky voice. “This is the fifth time this dive’s been done and the third time for us. Let’s get on with it.”
“Shut up and listen,” Larry commanded. “There’s something new involved. You’re going to be piggybacking a corer on the diamond bit so that we can see if we can get a decent sample of whatever the hell we’re trying to drill into.”
“Sounds good,” Richard said.
“We’re going to speed up compression time,” Larry said. “There’s some brass aboard who’s in a hurry for results. We’re going to see if we can get you down to depth in a couple of hours. Now I want to hear immediately if there’s any joint pain. I don’t want anybody playing macho diver. Understand?”
All three divers nodded.
“We’ll lock in chow as soon as it comes up from the galley,” Larry continued. “But I want you guys in your bunks for the compression, and that means no screwing around and no fights.”
“We’re going to play cards,” Louis said.
“If you play cards do it from your bunks,” Larry said. “And I repeat: no fights. If there are any, the cards are coming out. Do I make myself clear?”
Larry eyed each man in turn, who averted his gaze. No one contested the terms of the arrangement.
“I’m going to take this rare silence as acquiescence,” Larry said. “Now, Adams, you’ll be red diver. Donaghue, you’ll be green diver. Mazzola, you’ll be bell diver.”
Richard and Michael cheered and then leaned across to one another and high-fived. Louis blew out disgustedly through pursed lips. The bell diver’s job during the dive was to remain inside the PTC to play out the tethers for the red and green divers and watch the gauges; he did not enter the water except in an emergency. Although this position was safer, it was looked down upon by divers. The designations of red and green diver were used to avoid any confusion in communications with topside that might occur if given or surnames were used. On the Benthic Explorer red diver was recognized to be the on-site leader.
Larry reached down on his desk and picked up a clipboard. He handed it over to Richard. “Here’s the predive checklist, red-diver. Now get your asses in DDC1. I want to start compression in fifteen minutes.”
Richard took the clipboard and led the way out of the van. Once outside, Louis began a long lament about being bell diver, complaining that he’d been bell diver on the last dive.
“I guess the chief thinks you’re the best at it,” Richard said while giving Donaghue a wink. He knew he was goading Louis. But he couldn’t help it. He felt relieved that he’d not been selected, since it was his turn.
As the group passed the occupied DDC3 each man took the time to glance through the tiny viewing port and give a thumbs-up sign to the three occupan
ts, who still had several more days of decompression ahead of them. Divers might fight with each other at times, but they also shared a close camaraderie. They respected each other because of the inherent risks. The isolation and danger of being on a saturation dive was ironically similar in certain respects with being in a satellite circling the globe. If a problem occurred it could be hairy, and it was difficult to get you back home.
At DDC1 Richard was first through the narrow round entrance port on the cylinder’s side. It required him to grasp a horizontal metal bar, lift his legs, and enter feet first by wiggling through the aperture.
The interior was utilitarian, with the bunks at one end and emergency breathing apparatuses hanging from the walls. All the diving gear, including the neoprene suits, weight belts, gloves, and hoods, and other paraphernalia, was in a pile between the bunks. The diving masks were up in the diving bell with all the hoses and communication lines. At the other end of the DDC was the exposed shower, toilet, and sink. Saturation diving was a communal affair of the first order. There was no privacy whatsoever.
Louis and Michael entered right after Richard. Louis climbed directly up inside the diving bell while Michael started sorting through the material on the floor. As Richard called out the names of individual pieces of equipment, either Louis or Michael would yell out whether it was present or not, and Richard would check it off on his list. Anything not present was immediately handed through the open port by one of the watch standers.
When the four pages of checklist were completed, Richard gave a thumbs-up to the dive supervisor via the camcorder mounted on the ceiling.
“Okay, red diver,” the supervisor said over the intercom, “close and dog the entrance hatch and prepare to start compression.”