Siege at Tiamat Bluff

by David DeLee

  “Seaview-One is good to go,” he reported over the radio.

  Garcia opened up the vents filling the small round cabin with warm, canned air. With a whine from the hydraulics, the Putnam’s ramp started to lower. White frothy ocean water roared up the declining ramp.

  Curious, Bannon watched Garcia start the battery-powered engines and manipulate the submersible’s controls. With a gentle rocking motion, the vessel began to float on the bubbling white water. Bannon twisted and took in the passengers’ expressions behind him. Grayson smiled while Kingsley grinned like a kid on his first roller coaster. The newscaster, Little, clutched his seat tightly, white-knuckling it, while the cameraman practically bounced in his seat, twisting and turning to take it all in, filming and almost giggling.

  Holloway stared out of the bubble with a blank expression, her sunglasses still concealing her eyes.

  “You okay, Mr. Little?” Bannon asked, noticing the man seemed a bit green around the gills.

  He forced his famous TV smile. “Just a touch of motion sickness is all. I’ll be okay.”

  “How about you, Agent Holloway?” Bannon asked.

  She glared at him. “I don’t get seasick.”

  “Good to hear,” Garcia said. “I’d prefer no one throw up in here.” He maneuvered the vessel out into open water. “Things will smooth out once we’re submerged. It’ll just be a couple of minutes.”

  Bannon noticed what seemed like the entire ship’s complement of guardsmen lined up on the stern deck, waving to see them off. Garcia moved Seaview-One one hundred feet astern of the Putnam, then said, “Here we go.”

  Water bubbled up around the acrylic glass bubble.

  The cameraman, Leary, gasped with excitement. Little clamped his hand over his mouth.

  The bubble darkened as the submersible sank. Small, bulbous running lights along the vessel’s pontoons came on. The control panel in front of Garcia glowed green, casting the cabin in an ethereal glow.

  “I’ll leave the cabin lights off,” he said. “Give you all a better view on the way down.”

  “How long’s the trip?” Bannon asked.

  “At three knots we’ll be there in less than ten minutes.” Garcia snapped a switch that turned on a spotlight under the submersible. Then he gently pitched the vessel forward and down toward the darkness. “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was quite the show, too.

  At first, the brightness of the midday sky reflected off the surface giving them a ceiling of shimmering white light. In the ethereal like glow, all manner of fish swam by. A few gave them a cursory look before darting quickly away. But soon, the aptly-named Seaview-One drifted slowly downward through what scientists call the Epipelagic Zone, that band of water to about six hundred-fifty feet deep. This zone is the warmest and most exposed to light and thus teems with oceanic life.

  Jellyfish pulsated like floating lanterns. A sea turtle swam by and gave them a curious look before continuing on. In the murky purple-blue distance Bannon spotted a hammerhead shark in search of prey.

  At one thousand feet, Tiamat Bluff lay solidly in the mesopelagic zone, often referred to as the twilight zone. The oceanic zones were measured not by depth so much as on how far light reached them. At a measured depth of twelve hundred feet, even the deepest part of the Gulf of Maine—where, according to Dr. Larson's presentation, the power plant and mining operations lay—did not extend into what is referred to as the midnight zone or the abyss.

  Though the twilight zone was plenty dark.

  As they furthered their descent, the natural light diminished as did the amount of aquatic life to be seen. Here bristlemouths, blobfish, bioluminescent jellyfish, and squid lived.

  “There,” Leary, the cameraman, shouted and pointed. He hoisted his camera onto his shoulder. Grayson, Little, and Kingsley leaned forward. Bannon followed the excitable young man’s pointed finger.

  “There she is,” Garcia said.

  Ahead and below them were the dark, spherical structure of Tiamat Bluff’s main facility aglow in a pale red light. The top of the dome was transparent; a white-yellow glow of light. Several layers below it could be seen rows of horizontal yellow windows. During the presentation, Dr. Larson had informed them Tiamat Bluff contained seven levels, including the Kanaloa Park.

  In the darkness, Bannon could barely make out the dim glowing windows, smaller and deeper along the sloping terrain of Georges Bank, of the lower mining and training facility and power plant. It was too dark to distinguish the tubular connectors from Tiamat Bluff’s main building to the ancillary ones against the dark sloping seabed.

  “Magnificent,” Kingsley said, pulling himself forward for a better look.

  “Are you getting this?” Little asked of his cameraman.

  Leary leaned forward, his eye in the viewfinder of his camera. “Yeah. Yeah.”

  Garcia lowered his voice and gave Bannon a sideways look. “Impressive, huh?”

  “It is.” Bannon had no problem admitting it either. He’d been on ships and boats of every shape and size imaginable and had explored every one of the world’s Seven Seas, under, on and above the water. He’d worked on floating islands, oil rigs, and even in submersible bathyspheres for extended periods of time. Nothing he’d ever heard about or experienced came close to what he was seeing at that moment. Despite Dr. Larson’s modest denials and insistence to the contrary, Tiamat Bluff was an engineering marvel. She and her team had truly built a city under the sea.

  Garcia had the sleeves of his jumpsuit rolled up two turns.

  “Marina de Guerra Revolucionaria,” Bannon said, nodding toward the tattoo he’d spotted on the man’s inner forearm. It was a blue circle under an anchor and a red triangle with a star in the center of it. “Cuban Revolutionary Navy.”

  Garcia kept his voice low. “Before I migrated to the United States, yes. I stole an old Soviet-era patrol boat and escaped with ten others fifteen years ago. We left Varadero under the cover of night. We managed to evade the Cuban authorities but had greater trouble with the American Coast Guard.”

  “But you made it?”

  “Not all of us. We were spotted off the coast of Key West. On the patrol boat, we had a rigid-hull inflatable. Black. We abandoned the boat as the Coast Guard was about to take us, but by doing so, we overweighed the inflatable. It capsized. We swam for it. Only four of us made it to land.”

  “The others?”

  “The ones the Coast Guard managed to rescue.” Garcia shrugged. “Returned to Cuba.”

  “Wet feet, dry feet,” Bannon said.

  That was the name given to a revision made at the time to the U.S. policy regarding Cuban refugees called the Cuban Adjustment Act. If a refugee was caught attempting to enter the U.S. while still on the water, thus wet feet, they were returned to Cuba. If they managed to reach land, achieved dry feet, they had a chance to remain in the United States, to qualify for legal permanent resident status, and eventually even U.S. citizenship.

  That was no longer the case.

  Garcia steered Seaview-One in a long, slow, lazy circular pattern, given his passengers a full, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the city under the sea. In doing so, Bannon noticed the second submersible descending about a hundred feet behind them.

  “There’s the other submersible,” Bannon said.

  Garcia nodded. “Oceanview-One. Right on schedule.” He toggled a switch. “Tiamat Control. This is Seaview-One.”

  “Go for Control, Seaview-One,” a voice said over the speaker system.

  “We are on final approach. Requesting clearance.”

  “Clearance granted, Seaview-One. Moon Pool Alpha is clear and awaiting your arrival.”

  “Roger, control. Moon Pool Alpha it is.”

  “Seaview-One.”

  “Yes, Control?”

  The voice said, “Welcome to Tiamat Bluff.”

  Chase Lang stood in the center of the command center of Tiamat Bluff. He
held the mic in his hand while his team held Ops in quiet terror at gunpoint. He keyed the mic again and said, “Seaview-One…Welcome to Tiamat Bluff.”

  He returned the mic to its cradle and turned to the swarthy-skinned man beside him. Sebastian Ramos Sucre. He didn’t think much of the little Hispanic man. Thought him spineless and a pain in the rear, if he had to be frank. But he needed him. The mission needed him. Sucre had a role to play and so long as he could do that, maybe Lang wouldn’t kill him when it was all over.

  “What now?” Sucre said.

  “Now, you go do your job,” Lang said. “Take your team, secure the moon pool, and be ready to receive the President of the United States.” Sucre stepped away but stopped at the door when Lang called out to him. “And, Sucre. Don’t screw this up.”

  Visibly irritated, Sucre said, “You mean the way you did yesterday?”

  Lang clenched his fist. “Careful, Sucre. I’m very good at improvising when missions go sideways. Don’t think I haven’t got a contingency plan that’ll work just as well without you as our spokesperson.”

  Sucre opened his mouth to protest the threat but snapped it shut. He activated the door and stormed out before the door had completed it slide open.

  Chase sent him on his way with a one-finger salute.

  “Do you want me to keep an eye on him. Or I could deal with him permanently,” Sasha Wilcox said, stepping forward. She wore a blue maintenance jumpsuit and clutched a machine pistol in her small hands. “It would be my pleasure.”

  She’d been with Lang for a number of years. Like his team, his loyalties ran toward himself and no one else. Certainly, it didn’t extend to anyone who worked for him, but if it had, Sasha would be among that very, very, small group.

  Lang stared at the door, considering it. “No,” he said finally. “Sucre’s a spineless twit, but he wants this as much as we do. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  And if it did, Lang decided, he’d reserve the pleasure of doing the task himself.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Seaview-One continued its angled descent through the darkening depths of the Gulf of Maine. An excitable tenseness permeated the bubble-shaped cockpit. The main complex of Tiamat Bluff becoming clearer to them upon approach. Below them, white spotlights snapped on, illuminating the terrain five feet under a tubular spur extending from the left side of the main structure. Small square lights dotted the length of the stubby offshoot and bright white light illuminated the area under the moon pool.

  “They’ve turned the porch light on for us,” Garcia said, adjusting course toward the spur.

  Bannon glanced overhead and saw Oceanview-One hovering in line overhead. They’d cut their distance to about fifty feet.

  According to Garcia, the other two submersibles were preparing to depart the Putnam. They’d begin their descent approximately thirty minutes after Seaview and Oceanview’s arrival. The entire tour of Tiamat Bluff and photo op for the President was expected to take about four hours, after which, they would return to the cutter on the surface and be back in Boston by nightfall.

  Garcia expertly guided Seaview-One underneath the spur and positioned her under the open moon pool. Bannon watched, impressed, as the man manipulated the vessel’s foot pedals, ballast, and controls to raise them upward in a slow, steady ascend. Everyone stared up overhead, their mouths agape in astonishment while Bannon thought about all the science fiction movies he’d ever seen where the unsuspecting person was caught in a pool of light from overhead and levitated upward into an alien ship, trapped in some kind of tractor beam.

  He shook the thought away. Maybe he should start watching more comedies.

  Seaview-One entered the opening and soon breached the surface of the moon pool. Water bubbled and cascaded off the acrylic domed cockpit as the vessel popped like a cork into the large open pool.

  Overhead a crane was in position and several jumpsuit clad workers in the wet room reached out over the chipped yellow railings. They attached the cranes' straps to the vessel’s cleats ready to haul it out of the water.

  Bannon noticed the room was large enough to accommodate multiple submersibles. Pallet-like platforms lined the opposite walls. Docking stations for each of the four submersibles. Garcia powered down the engines as a worker extended a gangplank. Garcia unbuckled and climbed to the rear of the cockpit.

  He undogged the overhead hatch. “Welcome to Tiamat Bluff.”

  Kingsley started to get up but Holloway put a hand on his shoulder. “Me first, sir.”

  Still smiling from experiencing the trip down, he nodded. “Of course, Kate.”

  She scrambled out of her seat and climbed out of Seaview-One first.

  Kingsley glanced at Bannon and then each of the others. “How incredible was that? American ingenuity at its finest. Business, academia, and government working together. Brilliant.”

  Grayson simply nodded, while Jerry Little and his cameraman Malcolm Leary looked like kids coming off an amusement ride, one clamoring to go again. The other looking like he wanted to vomit.

  From the hatch ladder, Garcia called out, “Agent Holloway says you’re good to go, Mr. President.”

  Kingsley shook the pilot’s hand and thanked him before climbing up the ladder and emerging through the top hatch.

  “My honor, sir,” Garcia said.

  “Madam Secretary,” Jerry Little said, waving a hand, indicating she should go first.

  “No. You and Mr. Leary go ahead. We’ll be right behind you.”

  They exited.

  To Bannon, Grayson said, “Glad you came along?”

  Anxious to see the facility, Bannon said, “Best vacation day I’ve had in years.”

  Garcia helped Grayson climb up the ladder where a Tiamat Bluff crewman escorted her off the gangplank. Bannon shook Garcia’s hand. “Thanks for the trip down. I run a bar called the Keel Haul. Next time you’re in Hampton Beach, the drinks are on me.”

  “I’ll be sure to take you up on it.” Garcia winked. “But you haven’t seen anything yet. Enjoy.”

  The last to walk down the gangplank, Bannon strolled past the men and woman surrounding the President. Holloway stood by his side with a worried look on her face. Little was interviewing the workers while Leary filmed the President’s interaction with them.

  Grayson stood off to one side, avoiding the limelight.

  Unlike any vice-presidential candidate in history, Bannon thought bemused. He joined her. They waited silently as Seaview-One was pulled from the moon pool by the overhead crane and lowered onto one of the pallet-like platforms.

  Within minutes, while they stood to the side and watched, the procedure was repeated, this time with Oceanview-One. The operation was smooth and effective, Bannon thought, impressed.

  Among the new arrivals with Robin Larson and Dr. Nomura, Bannon recognized Senator Jerimiah Horn from Massachusetts and two men Bannon did not recognize. Grayson told him one was a CEO of an electronics firm that had won a government contract to work at Tiamat Bluff. The other was a reporter for an Internet news blog company. As they disembarked and clamored around the President, talking excitedly, Bannon and Grayson were joined by Nomura and Robin Larson.

  “I thought Ms. Haddad would be joining us,” Grayson said, noting her absence as Bannon had as well.

  “She had to take a phone call from Washington,” Larson said. “She switched seats with the Internet reporter. Told us she’d join the next group.”

  “I see,” Grayson said.

  “Did you enjoy your trip down?”

  “Immensely,” Grayson said.

  “Looking forward to the nickel tour,” Bannon said. “I hope we don’t have to wait long.”

  Larson smiled. “Not at all. But unfortunately, due to the strict requirements imposed upon us by the Secret Service, we’re operating with a skeleton crew and all but essential functions have been shut down. Our total complement in the facility is less than fifty people currently.”

  “The safety concerns ca
n’t be taken lightly,” Grayson said. “Any restrictions put into place are quite necessary, I assure you.”

  “Of course,” Larson said. “It’s just disappointing you’ll not truly experience all that Tiamat Bluff has to offer. We’ve so many ground-breaking projects we’re involved in that I’d love to have shown you in full operation, that had to be suspended for the duration.” She smiled. “But we’ll do our best to tell you all about them.”

  “I’m sure we’ll all be quite impressed, Doctor,” Grayson said.

  Kingsley wrapped up his photo op meet-and-greet with the Moon pool operators.

  With Little, Leary, and Holloway in tow, he joined the others.

  “Good to see you again, doctors.” He clapped his hands together, like a little kid about to dive into a banana split dessert. “So, where do we begin?”

  Before Larson could reply, the doors to the wet room exploded open and five men in Tiamat Bluff jumpsuits and security uniforms burst in. With determined expressions they fanned out, carrying handguns and machine pistols at the ready.

  Holloway rushed at Kingsley. She seized him by the neck and forced him to the ground. “Get down, Mr. President!”

  She knelt over his prone body, drawing Her service Sig Sauer. The only gun among the group.

  Bannon stepped in front of them, blocking them both from the cadre of gunmen. Grayson did the same, even as Bannon angled his body to protect her as well.

  “Get out of the way, Bannon!” Holloway shouted.

  He called out over his shoulder. “What are you going to do? Shoot it out against seven armed men? Stand down, agent.” To the armed men, he demanded, “What is this?”

  Larson and Nomura stepped forward. But it was Larson who demanded of the short Hispanic man who stepped forward carrying only a pistol. “Who are you?”

  He pointed his pistol at Nomura and pulled the trigger.

  The gunshot echoed loudly in the metal chamber. The bullet struck Nomura in the forehead. With a stunned expression and a trail of blood leaking from the wound, he took a step back before collapsing to the metal deck with a grunt.