“Cable is released,” Ryan's voice announced over Dirk's headset. “You are free to swim. Happy hunting, guys.”
“Thanks for the drop,” Dirk answered. “I'll honk the horn when we get back from the store.”
Dirk tested the thrusters one last time as Summer opened a ballast tank, allowing a flood of salt water to fill the chamber. Negative buoyancy was quickly achieved and the submersible began slowly dropping into the depths.
The pale green water gradually dissolved to brown, then faded to an inky black as the Starfish sank deeper. Summer flicked on a switch and a powerful bank of xenon arc lights illuminated their path, though there was little to see in the murky water. Dependent on gravity to reach the bottom, it took about fifteen minutes to make the nearly thousand-foot descent to the seafloor. Despite the frigid water temperatures outside, the occupants soon became warm from the electronic equipment churning about them in the insulated acrylic and Summer finally turned on an air-conditioning unit to keep themselves cool. Attempting to make the time go faster, Dirk rehashed a few of Jack Dahlgren's stale jokes while Summer brought her brother up to date on the sea pollutant survey taken off Japan's eastern coast.
At nine hundred feet, Summer began tweaking the buoyancy level to slow their descent and avoid smacking hard on the bottom. Dirk noticed the water visibility had cleared, though the seas were devoid of much life at that depth. Gradually, through the murk, he eyed a familiar dark shape looming up beneath them. “There she is. We're right on her.”
The shadowy black superstructure of the I-411's conning tower reached out to them like a tiny skyscraper as the Starfish descended amidships of the giant submarine. Much like he had found with the I-403, Dirk observed that the I-411 was sitting upright on the bottom, tilted at just a fifteen-degree angle. Surface encrustation was much less severe than on the I-403 and the big sub looked as if she had been underwater only a few months, not years. Dirk activated the Starfish's thrusters and backed away slightly from the approaching vessel while Summer adjusted their buoyancy to remain neutral at 960 feet, just even with the submarine's deck.
“She's enormous!” Summer exclaimed as her eyes took in the sub's huge girth. Even with Starfish's bright lights, she could see only a portion of the entire vessel.
“Definitely not your run-of-the-mill World War Two U-boat,” he replied. “Let's see where she got hit.”
Maneuvering the thrusters, Dirk propelled the submersible along a path down the starboard flank of the submarine, gliding just a few feet above its rounded topsides. Circling around the stern, Summer pointed out the tips of the I-411's two giant bronze propellers poking out of the muddy bottom. Moving forward along the port side, they traveled about fifty feet before a huge gash appeared at the waterline.
“Torpedo hit number one,” Dirk called out, eyeing the fatal impact from one of the Swordfish's torpedoes. He positioned the Starfish so that its lights shined into the irregular opening. Inside, a circular mass of twisted and jagged metal shined back at them, like the open jaws of an iron-toothed shark. Turning and moving forward again, the submersible crept along the silent wreck another thirty feet before a second opening appeared.
“Torpedo hit number two,” Dirk said.
Unlike the first gash on the port flank, the second hole was oddly centered higher up, along the edge of the topside deck, almost as if the explosive force had been delivered from above.
“You're right, this must have been the second torpedo impact,” Summer speculated. “The stern must have already dropped under from the first hit, and the sub rolled back from the initial recoil when the second torpedo hit her here.”
“Pretty good firing from the Swordfrish. They must have caught her at night, while she was running on the surface.”
“Is that the aircraft hangar?” Summer asked, pointing to a large tubular appendage that ran lengthwise along the rear deck to the conning tower.
“Yes. Looks like it was blasted open in the explosion,” he said as they glided over toward the opening. A twenty-foot section of the ) hangar adjacent to the deck had simply disappeared in the carnage. Under the beam of the floodlights, they could see a three-bladed air| craft propeller mounted on the backside of the hangar wall as they floated outside peering in. Applying power to the thrusters, Dirk turned the vehicle and zoomed forward, gliding past the I-411's conning tower with its multiple gun platforms still in place. The Starfish proceeded down the forward deck before turning and hovering off the bow near one of the large diving planes, which sprouted off the submarine like a giant wing.
“That concludes the scenic portion of the tour,” Dirk said. “Let's see if we can find out what she carried.”
“We better check in with the gang upstairs first,” Summer said, slipping on her communications headset and pushing the transmit button.
“Sea Rover, this is Starfish. We've found the Easter Bunny and are proceeding to hunt for the eggs.”
“Roger,” Ryan's voice crackled back. “Be careful with the basket.”
“I think he's more concerned about his submersible than he is about us,” Dirk deadpanned.
“A typical man,” Summer mused, shaking her head. “Places emotional feelings on inanimate mechanical objects.”
“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about,” Dirk replied facetiously.
As he spoke, he gently guided the Starfish above the submarine's bow section, studying the forward deck. After several minutes, he spotted what he was looking for.
“There's the forward hatch to the upper torpedo room. If they follow suit with the I-403, that's where the biological ordnance would have been loaded and stored.”
Dirk maneuvered the Starfish in front of the hatch before setting the submersible down onto the deck of the I-411 and killing the thrusters.
“How's your breaking and entering skills?” he asked of Summer.
Unlike on the I-403, the forward hatch was closed and battened tight by a flush-mounted wheel. Summer activated a joystick control hidden in the armrest of her chair and powered the hydraulics to the submersible's right retractable arm. As she manipulated the controls, the metal appendage sprang from the side of Starfish and extended forward in a clumsy stretch. Slowly she dropped the arm down toward the hatch, adjusting the toggle control with short flips to maneuver the device. With the precision of a surgeon, she opened the clawlike hand and dropped it down to the hatch, wedging the fingers into the open slots of the hatch wheel on the first attempt.
“Nicely done,” Dirk admired.
“Now, if she'll just open,” Summer replied. With the flick of a second toggle control, the articulated grip of the mechanical claw began to twist. Dirk and Summer both pressed their faces to the bubble window, intent on seeing the wheel turn. But the seal that had been locked for sixty years didn't budge. Summer tried toggling the grip back and forth a half-dozen more times but to no avail.
“So much for my hydraulic grip,” she finally muttered.
“Keep a hold on the wheel,” Dirk instructed. “We'll try a little leverage.”
In an instant, he powered up the thrusters and lifted the Starfish a few inches off the deck. With Summer gripping the hatch wheel with the claw, Dirk applied full reverse thrust and tried to break the seal with the momentum of the entire submersible. The wheel held tight, so he began rocking the Starfish forward and backward, trying to get a quick burst of leverage against the hatch.
“I think you're going to rip the arm off,” Summer cautioned.
With silent determination, he kept trying. On the next tug, he observed a barely perceptible movement in the wheel. Another blast and the seal broke at last, the wheel jerking a quarter spin. “That's showing it who's boss,” Summer said. “Just don't tell Ryan that his baby's right arm is now a few inches longer than it used to be,” Dirk smiled.
Hovering over the hatch, Summer was quickly able to spin the locking wheel to its stops with the articulated claw. Dirk then backed the Starfish away, and, with Summer holding on,
the hatch finally swung up and open. Repositioning the submersible in front of the opening, they peered into the hole but could see nothing but a black void.
“I guess this is a job for Snoopy. You have the controls,” Summer said.
Dirk pulled out a laptop control module and pressed the power on button. A row of lights lit up green as the unit was activated. “Ready, go fetch,” he murmured while pressing a toggle switch that engaged a tiny thruster.
From an external cradle tucked beneath the acrylic bubble popped out a small tethered Remote Operated Vehicle. No larger than an attache case, the tiny ROV was little more than a self-illuminated video camera wedged against a small set of electronic thrusters. Able to probe and prod into tight spaces, Snoopy was an ideal tool for exploring the deep and dangerous niches of a submerged wreck.
Summer watched as Snoopy sprang into view and quickly ducked into the open hatch amid a spray of small bubbles. Dirk punched another console button and a live video feed from the ROV appeared on a color monitor. Watching the monitor to steer, he guided the vehicle around the now-familiar torpedo room. Snoopy skirted down one row of torpedoes, where the camera showed all five of the huge steel fish still resting in their racks. Circling to the other side of the bay, a duplicate scene was replayed on the opposite side of the torpedo room-The I-411 was clearly not anticipating battle when the Swordfish surprised and sank her.
But Dirk wasn't interested in torpedoes. Methodically, he drove Snoopyto the Prow f ^e torpedo room, then systematically swept the ROV back and forth across the bay, slipping a few feet toward the stern with each pass until he was satisfied that every square foot had been viewed.
“No sign of the canisters or their crates. But there is a second torpedo room below where they could have been stored.”
“Can you get Snoopy down there?” Summer asked.
“There's a floor hatch for loading the torpedoes, but I don't think Snoopy is going to lift that open. I may know of another route.”
Scanning the room with Snoopy camera lens eye, he spotted the rear hatch door that led to the chief's quarters. The hatch door was still open and Dirk maneuvered the ROV through it a few seconds later.
“Over there,” Summer said, motioning to a corner of the monitor. “There's a ladder that looks like it leads to the deck below.”
Dirk danced the ROV around a mass of debris and down an open hatchway in the floor. Dropping down to the deck below, Snoopy sniffed out the doorway to the lower torpedo room and- entered the second bay of warheads. Though slightly smaller due to the more tapered sides of the submarine's hull, the bay was an exact duplicate of the torpedo room above it. And just as they had seen once before, the camera showed all ten of the deadly Type 95 torpedoes resting peacefully in their racks. Though near the limit of the self-coiling tether that provided Snoopy its power, Dirk carefully maneuvered the ROV around the full confines of the room. The camera showed a full complement of torpedoes in the bay but nothing else. The empty room glared back at them vacantly.
“It would appear,” Summer said, shaking her head with disappointment, “that there are no eggs to be had.”
As Dirk carefully guided the small ROV back to the Starfish, he began whistling the old Stephen Foster standard “Swanee River.” Summer looked at her brother with abashed curiosity.
“You seem awfully happy, given that the biological bombs are missing in action,” she said.
“Sister, we may not know where they are, but we sure know where they ain't. Now, if it was me, I'd want to keep those eggs close to the hen.”
Summer took a second to digest the comments, then her face brightened slightly.
“The deck hangar? Where the aircraft are stored?”
“The deck hangar,” Dirk replied. “And the Swordfish was even kind enough to leave the door open for us.”
Once Snoopy was secure in its cradle, Dirk activated the main thrusters and the Starfish shot off down the deck of the submarine to the second torpedo blast. The detonation hole was easily large no ugh to allow the Starfish to drop into the interior, but the 11.5-foot ijarneter of the hangar was just fractionally too tight to allow any room for the submersible to maneuver any farther. Dirk studied the gash in the aircraft hangar before inching the Starfish into the opening. The deck had been blasted away in pockmarked sections, leaving step-through holes that led into the dank bowels of the submarine. Dirk slowly guided the Starfish lower until he spied firm decking near the forward edge of the gap that was large enough to support the submersible. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the airplane propeller they detected earlier was hanging just to his right. He gently eased lower until the Starfish's supporting skids tapped onto solid decking.
As he powered off the Starfish's thrusters, a momentary silence filled The submersible. Together, they peered down the enclosed hangar that stretched in front of them like an endless tunnel. Then the quiet was broken by a muffled metallic clunk than rang through the water.
“Dirk, the propeller!” Summer shouted, pointing out the bubble window toward the right.
The mounting bracket that held the spare three-bladed Seiran bomber propeller had long ago corroded in the salt water yet against all reason had somehow maintained sufficient integrity to hold the heavy blade onto the wall for sixty years. Not until the stirred waters from the Starfish's thrusters blasted against it did it decide to give up its mission and crumble from the wall in a rusty glob of dust. As the bracket fell away, the heavy propeller dropped straight to the deck, landing on the tips of its lower two blades with a clang.
But the show wasn't over. They watched in helpless fascination as the propeller fell forward, its upper blade skimming just in front of the Starfish's bubble window, inches from Summer's face. It appeared to move in slow motion as the force of the water suspended the movement of the steel blades. A secondary clang echoed through the water as the blade and nosepiece hit home, the entire assembly dragging across the submersible's right robotic arm and falling onto the front skid plates. A cloud of brown sediment rose and obscured their vision for a moment, then, as the water cleared, Summer noticed a small trail of dark fluid rising up in front of them, as if the Starfish were bleeding. “We're pinned,” Summer gasped, eyeing the heavy propeller lying across the front skids.
“Try the right arm. See if you can lift the blade up and I'll try and back us out,” Dirk directed as he powered up the thrusters.
Summer grasped the joystick and toggled it back to raise the arm. The metallic appendage began to rise briefly, then fell away limp. She repeatedly toggled the joystick control back and forth but there was no response.
“No good,” she said calmly. “The blade must have cut the hydraulics. The right arm is as good as amputated.”
“That must have been the fluid we saw. Try the left arm,” Dirk replied.
Summer configured a second joystick and applied power to the submersible's left mechanical arm. Working the controls, she tried stretching the arm across the viewing window and down to the fallen propeller. Since the left arm was both smaller and shorter than the right arm, it allowed for less maneuverability. After several minutes of bending and twisting the arm in various configurations, she finally worked the claw to a position where she could grab the edge of the propeller blade.
“I've got a grip, but it's at an awkward angle. I don't think I'll be able to exert enough pressure,” she said.
Pushing at the controls, her words fell true. The arm attempted to pull the propeller up but nothing budged. Several further attempts met with the same result.
“Guess we'll have to barge our way out,” Dirk replied, gritting his teeth.
Applying full-throttle power to the thrusters, he tried to elevate the Starfish and slip back and away from the fallen propeller. The electronic thrusters hummed and vibrated violently as they clawed at the water with all their might, but the weight of the propeller was just too great. The submersible sat still as a rock while its thrusters beat the water madly, kicking up a
dirty cloud of silt around them. He adjusted the thrusters forward and backward, trying to rock their way out, but it was no use. After several fruitless attempts, Dirk shut off the thrusters and waited for the brown cloud to settle.
“We'll just needlessly burn up our batteries if we continue to try and slide out,” he said dejectedly. “We just don't have enough thrust to pull ourselves away from the prop.”
Summer could see the wheels churning in her brother's head. It wasn't the first time she had been trapped underwater with Dirk and she felt reassurance knowing that he was with her. Just months before, they had nearly died together off Navidad Bank when their undersea research habitat had rolled into a crevasse from the force of a killer hurricane. Only the last-second arrival by her father and Al Giordino had saved them from a slow death by asphyxiation. But this time, her father and Giordino were a thousand miles away.
Out of the murky darkness, voices of the past began to whisper. The long-dead crew of the I-411 seemed to call out to Dirk and Summer to join them in a cold, watery grave a thousand feet under the sea. The silent black sub exuded a morbid sense that sent a shiver up Summer's spine. The stirred waters around them calmed and they could peer again into the depths of the hangar. She could not help but dwell on the fact that they were lodged in an iron tomb for dozens of brave Imperial Navy sailors. Forcing the macabre image from her mind, she tried to refocus her attention on the logical demands of their situation.
“How much time do we have left?” Summer asked, the desperation of their situation beginning to sink in.
Dirk glanced at a row of gauges to his side. “We're fine until the scrubbers give way to the loss of battery power. It'll be lights out in about three hours, then another hour or so for the air to go. We better contact the Sea Rover.” His voice was muted but matter-of-fact.
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