Sam adjusted the ballast, slowly taking in water until the heavily modified Exosuit became negatively buoyant. At a depth of thirty feet, he brought it back to neutral buoyancy. Beside him, Tom did the same.
He ran his eyes across a series of gauges, confirming that his power and life-support systems were all functioning correctly. Happy with the results, he depressed his radio microphone and said, “How are you looking, Tom?”
The Exosuit used a combination of UQC and 27 KHZ Acoustic which were heterodyned. This was a radio technique used to shift an inputted frequency from one to another through modulation in order to achieve successful transmission – to a high pitch radio frequency for acoustic transmission through water.
“Everything’s looking good,” came Tom’s reply. “You ready to descend?”
“Yeah, I’m good. All right, I’m starting my descent, now.”
Sam opened the ballast tanks, and water flooded in while large air bubbles were expelled, until his Exosuit began its continuous descent to the seabed below. The clear surface water rapidly turned into a cloudy darkness.
A small school of large, silvery fish, swam by. At first, Sam instinctively made a sharp turn away from them, as though expecting them to be a large predator. Then, realizing that the Exosuit offered no harm, turned again to brush by, making a cursory examination. After thirty or so seconds, having discovered nothing to reward their curiosity, the fish disappeared.
Sam glanced at his depth gauge.
They were already at a depth of two hundred and fifty feet.
At four hundred feet, an underwater current carrying debris made their world turn to near complete darkness.
He switched on his overhead LED lights, providing a thick stream of light ahead. Next to him, he spotted Tom’s lights pop on. Sam glanced across at his depth gauge. They were coming up on five hundred feet. His eyes turned to the bathymetric sonar array, which gave a colored delineation of the seabed far below.
At six-hundred-feet, the seabed became a series of undulating submerged valleys and hills. The crests were at six-hundred, while the troughs were up to seven hundred and fifty feet.
The Clarion Call came into view, positioned with its stern within a deep trough, while its bow rose upward near the six-hundred-feet mark.
Figures. Sam grinned, amused by fate.
The secret smuggling compartment was located near the stern, in the deepest part of the ship. Not that it mattered. The Exosuit had a theoretical crush depth of 2000 and could be safely operated without any concern anywhere below a 1000.
Tom said, “I’ve picked up the wreck of the scuttled Clarion Call.”
“I see it. We’ll head for the stern, and then work our way up until we reach the smuggling compartment.”
Thirty seconds later, Sam reached the Clarion Call’s stern.
He added some gas to the ballast tanks, slowing his rate of descent until he eased to a standstill approximately thirty feet from the seabed.
Both divers studied the wreckage.
Despite its age and time spent at the bottom of the sea, the Clarion Call was in good condition. In the early eighties, she was one of the fastest cargo ships on the oceans. Mike Reilly, his grandfather, had happily paid well to ensure her engineering allowed him to beat all other competitors on speed and reliability.
Sam swept his eyes across the hull. Despite a thin layer of rust, the bulk of the ship was still in perfect condition, listing thirty degrees to her starboard side. Two large openings to the stern showed where the dedicated soldiers from the 832nd Ordnance Battalion US Marine Corps, under the command of Major Roger Goodson, had planted C4 to scuttle the ship.
Tom said, “Tell me the hatch to the secret compartment was on the portside.”
“We’re good. It’s on the portside.”
Sam placed slightly greater pressure on the balls of his feet, triggering the Exosuit’s quad thrusters to move him toward amidships, while maintaining his upright position. It didn’t take long to reach the opening.
The giant hatch – roughly ten feet high by five wide – looked like it had maintained its structural integrity as the Clarion Call went to the bottom, until the external pressure became too great, and the door imploded.
Sam glanced inside and hoped to hell whatever secrets once stored inside hadn’t been destroyed in the process.
The opening was large enough that they could both comfortably maneuver their large Exosuits inside the remnants of the smuggler’s compartment.
Sam adjusted his position and the quad-thrusters whirred into life, sending him inside. He flashed a beam of light around the room. The crumpled remains of the once hidden hatchway were located straight ahead, but the rest of the twenty feet by forty feet vault, appeared empty.
His mouth went dry as his heart sped up. Had he got it all wrong or had someone retrieved the secrets he needed so desperately?
Over his headset, he heard Tom say, “I think I just found what we were looking for.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tom stared at the ghastly remains of the man at the corner of the smuggler’s vault.
He wore a dark business suit and what appeared to be a red necktie, but after nearly two decades, all that remained of his fleshly body was his skeleton and the scatterings of loose bones. Still attached to what appeared to be an ulna or possibly a radius bone – one of the two lower arm bones – was a locked handcuff and chain, that was attached to a small metallic suitcase.
“What do you want to bet the answers you’re looking for are contained within that?” Tom asked, floating toward the metallic suitcase.
“I’ll take that bet,” Sam replied.
Without further discussion, Sam manipulated his titanium pincers at the end of his right arm and pulled the case free from the bones.
Tom laughed. “All right, you beat me to it.”
He adjusted increased opposing power to his twin thrusters, causing him to rotate slowly through three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees. Running his eyes across the room, it appeared almost entirely empty.
When he was finished, he heard Sam say, “Find anything else?”
“No.”
“All right, let’s head to the surface and find out what was so important inside this case that someone was willing to terrorize Washington, D.C. just to retrieve it.”
Tom maneuvered his way through the smuggler’s vault and into the open waters outside. Once outside the sunken wreckage, he and Sam added small increments of gas to their ballast tanks.
The two Exosuits began their controlled ascent to the surface.
It was a slow and measured ride. Soon the dark gray of the bottom gave way to the soft light of predawn. Sam kept his eyes fixed on a series of gauges. There were significant external differences between 700 feet and sea level. Even the Exosuit needed to treat that pressure gradient with respect.
Both thinking hard, Sam and Tom rose in silence.
At 500 feet Sam said, “I can’t even imagine what that poor man went through. He must’ve known what happened as soon as he heard the explosions. He knew he was on his way to the bottom, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. The external water pressure made it impossible to enter or exit the smuggler’s cabin until the cargo was offloaded and the hatch was once more above the waterline.”
Tom swallowed. “It would have been a rotten way to go.”
“I only hope that whatever secrets are hidden within this suitcase are worth it. Maybe, the stranger’s death might not have been in vain.”
“Yeah. We’ll find out soon.”
The gray water turned light, as crepuscular beams shone through the last two hundred or so feet of water.
Tom raised the faceplate of his suit, studying the outline of the Maria Helena riding on the surface high above them. His jaw leveled, and his eyes ran across a series of gauges. They had little more than a hundred and fifty feet.
And then his world went dark.
He looked up again and spotted the cause. A large submarine nearly the leng
th of two football fields and as wide as a three-lane highway had come to a complete stop in the silence directly above them.
Five individual lights suddenly pierced the now pitch-dark canvas.
Sam swore, and said, “It looks like we’ve got company.”
Chapter Fifty
Sam shouted, “Let’s go!”
He pressed all his weight on the balls of his feet, triggering his quad-thrusters into life. He stretched out horizontally, making his bulky Exosuit as streamlined as possible. An instant later, all four propellers whirred, and the suit raced through the water like an uncoordinated torpedo.
They needed to get around the massive submarine to reach the surface.
Above, a set of LED lights raced toward them.
There was no doubt in Sam’s mind about their intentions. Their attackers were using weighted sleds to descend at speed.
“We’re not going to reach the edge of that sub before they do!” Tom warned.
Sam’s head snapped back. The team of elite soldiers were nearly on top of them. “Okay our suits should provide the protection we need, but we can’t let them swarm us. Their numbers are overwhelming.”
“Agreed. Let’s split up. You go left I’ll go right.”
“Got it!”
Sam put pressure on his left foot and the Exosuit raced diagonally to the left.
The divers didn’t stop to rearrange their attack. Instead, they fixed on Sam like a homing missile and kept coming. There was nothing for it. Sam adjusted his position again to a right angle with the sub, in an attempt to shorten the distance.
It didn’t matter.
They kept coming.
Sam cleared the imaginary line that formed beneath the edge of the submarine. He dropped his emergency ballast weights. His buoyancy changed in an instant.
The Exosuit shot upward.
It lasted less than a few seconds before he heard the loud clank. One of the divers had landed directly onto the back of his Exosuit. The attacker somehow attached his heavy diving sled to Sam’s mechanical leg.
The additional weight had brought Sam to a standstill. He tried to kick it off, but it wouldn’t fall free. Sam tried to bend down and reach it. The diver had wrapped a small tether around the base of his left foot. Sam attempted to lift his knee to bring it higher. It felt like he was wearing a cement boot.
Sam said, “Tom, they’ve got me!”
“I’m coming for you!” came Tom’s reply.
“No! Get topside and get help!”
“Not on your life!”
Sam strained the fully articulated joints around his torso and lower abdomen. The suit provided surprising flexibility, but there was limited dexterity, compared to the divers outside who wore nothing but wetsuits and SCUBA. Besides, he only had the use of his left pincer arm – the right was still holding the metallic case.
The metallic case!
The thought snapped him out of his mental cloudiness. He dropped the weighted tether. There was nothing he could do about it right now. Instead, his eyes fixed on the end of his right arm, where the pincer gripped the heavy chain at the end of the metallic case.
Already, one of the divers was trying to pry it free.
Sam rotated his left arm. The fully actuated joints moved quickly, at speeds only just slower than someone outside of the suit. He extended the titanium pincer grip wide and drove his arm toward his attacker.
The pincer collided with the side diver’s solar plexus.
Sam squeezed his finger and the pincer closed together. His attacker screamed – or at least he would have, if that had been possible with his dive regulator in his mouth – instead it came out more of a high-pitched gurgle. The diver spun around, recovering faster than Sam had expected. The mechanical force would have crushed any flesh within its way but must have missed any vital organs.
Behind him, his shoulder plate started to move backward.
Someone else had joined their fight, followed by another person at his right. He could hear a slight tapping behind his suit. It was impossible to visualize it, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t need to. The sound alone was enough to panic him.
Someone was trying to unbolt his helmet!
His pulse racing, Sam jammed the quad-thrusters into full. Their small propellers sped with a whine, but he didn’t move far. He was being held by at least four separate divers. Like prehistoric peoples banding together to take down a Woolly Mammoth, his fortified suit would only hold them off so long.
Someone jammed metal into one of his thrusters. It stopped with a loud bang, the noise racing through the water like the sound of his lifeline shattering. The diver immediately worked his way through the rest of the thrusters.
Sam didn’t have long to go.
He swung his mechanical arms around like lethal weapons. Every time his arm connected with anything he closed the titanium pincer.
It didn’t matter. None of it did. There was no way he could hold off all five of them on his own.
What happened to Tom? Had he changed his mind and continued to the surface for help?
Sam didn’t have to wonder very long to find out.
The diver in front of him was suddenly drawn downward. Sam couldn’t see what had taken him, but he could guess. Three seconds later, air bubbles raced to the surface, followed by a diver.
Sam cocked his head to the left, and the small crease of a smile curved his lips. It appeared Tom had ripped the diver’s regulators straight off the tank. The diver, unable to breathe, had raced toward the surface.
His odds just improved. A lot.
The sight boosted Sam on and he moved his massive, mechanical right leg into a second diver. The knee connected to the man’s solar plexus. It should have been enough to knock the man out, or at the very least, take the wind out of his lungs. But instead, the man spun round, and continued to hack at the weaker joints and seals joining Sam’s upper torso and his helmet.
A sharp light hiss came from someplace he couldn’t see. It was the diver behind him. Whatever the man had been trying to achieve, it looked like he was getting dangerously close.
Sam tugged his legs into his chest and tumbled backward, like a gymnast doing a back summersault.
The diver hung on throughout the maneuver, but when Sam was coming back up, Tom ripped the man’s dive-mask clear off – crushing it in one piece, blinding the diver.
“Thanks,” Sam said.
Tom replied. “Not a problem. I got bored waiting for you to deal with them and catch up.”
They adjusted their positions so that their backs faced each other. The remaining two divers appeared to circle them, never quite coming close enough to confront them, more simply biding their time, waiting for something to happen.
Sam fought with the weight attached to his left boot, but every time he got close to it, one of the divers would make a move, attempting to re-engage.
Stalemate.
In front of them, a second team of divers spewed forth from the submarine. They moved in on them, quickly.
“We gotta go, Sam!” Tom said, “We’ve got company!”
“I see them!”
Sam tried his weight again, but it didn’t budge. Whatever the divers had used to attach it with, was too tough to break, and too flexible to snap. What was worse, with the single pincer it was impossible to untie.
The new group of divers joined what remained of the first and they slowly encroached on Sam and Tom. Again, their opponents appeared to work with the smooth and lethal efficiency of elite forces.
Every time one of them got within arm’s reach, Sam or Tom would try to punch or kick them. They were able to move surprisingly fast for two guys in giant atmospheric suits. More importantly, weighing nearly 500 pounds meant that if they connected with their target, it would serve its purpose well.
None of the divers had a weapon, or if they did, none of them wanted to use it. That was interesting. It meant they weren’t interested in killing him – yet.
&nb
sp; So what did they want to do, abduct him?
The Mexican standoff continued for at least fifteen minutes, with neither side gaining any real advantage. Their attackers had more men, but Sam and Tom had a much larger air supply. If they could hold off for another thirty minutes, the divers would almost certainly run out of air.
Everything was going to be all right.
That was until someone managed to cut Tom’s emergency ballast weights.
Chapter Fifty-One
Free from its iron emergency ballast, Tom’s Exosuit raced toward the surface. He tried to fight his extreme buoyancy by swimming downward, but it was impossible. He was simply too positively buoyant.
His Exosuit broached the surface and warm sun hit his face full on.
He was on the VHF radio to the Maria Helena in an instant. “Pull me up, Sam’s being kidnapped!”
“Kidnapped?” came Matthew’s calm reply. “We’ve taken two diver’s hostage ourselves. They’re on deck now, but don’t seem interested in talking.”
Genevieve was in the water a moment later, hooking up the tether for the crane. Veyron started to bring Tom in.
Tom said, “Tell Elise to get the Secretary of Defense on the line and keep her there. I want to speak to her the second I’m on board.”
“Understood,” Matthew replied.
The crane extended several feet off the starboard side of the Maria Helena’s deck. Tom heard the machine’s diesel engine kick into action. The engine whined as Veyron knocked it into gear, and the cable started to shift.
A moment later, Tom was being lifted into the air by a steel tether attached to the top of the atmospheric diving suit. At a height of roughly ten feet above the sea, the crane rotated until the Exosuit was directly above the deck. Then Veyron kicked the winch into the opposite direction.
Tom’s feet reached the deck of the Maria Helena. He felt unsteady. The suit wasn’t designed for movement on land – it was only stable in the water. Genevieve secured the back of the atmospheric diving suit to a holding cradle, and Veyron quickly went to work removing Tom’s helmet.
As soon as it was off, Elise handed him the satellite phone.
The Heisenberg Legacy Page 17