Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Get yourself through the hatch and wait for me.”

  Tommy slipped through the opening and Dex squeezed through as soon as he cleared the space. The darkness of the hangar was enhanced by the open area, nothing close enough to reflect nearby light. Dex played out the yellow-white beam of his torch and suddenly broke the surface of the water.

  What?

  Looking to his right, he saw the bright red color of Tommy’s suit, gestured at him.

  “There’s an air pocket in here.”

  “Yeah, amazing…”

  “All this time, and it’s still tight as a crab’s ass.” Dex figured he should lift his mask to check the air, which would be stale and foul at best. If bearable, they could save some of their mix.

  At the same time, Tommy’s light touched the fuselage of a plane painted in green and gray camo. “Wow! Check it out, Dex.”

  They were both standing on the hangar deck, with water just past their knees. Tommy took a step toward the plane, and Dex reached out to stop him. “Hold it. You don’t know what’s in there.”

  “Huh?”

  Holding up his index finger, indicating him to wait, Dex lifted his mask off his face, sucked in a quick breath. He could almost taste the air, like putting your tongue on a slab of metal.

  “Hey, guys?” said Don Jordan through the Divelink. “What’s going on? You forget about us?”

  “Looks like we’ve got a light-to-medium bomber in here. Seaplane. You copy, Donnie?”

  “No kidding. In good shape?”

  “Looks perfect,” said Dex. “Never used.”

  Tommy began to video the scene and Dex moved closer to touch the engine cowling. Even in the shadows beyond their torchlights, Dex could see the configuration of a sleek, pontooned plane, its pinioned wings tucked tight against it fuselage like a falcon sleeping on its perch. Along the bottom of the fuselage, he saw the bomb bay doors cantilevered to their widest open positions.

  Tommy moved closer, still shooting video. “Hey look…how come the bottom’s open?”

  “Approach with extreme caution,” said Dex. “There’s something I should tell you.”

  “Huh?” said Don in the headset. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Hang on…” said Dex. “I’ll let you know in a sec.”

  Motioning Tommy away from the open bomb bay, Dex moved in to shine his light up into the belly cavity. He hesitated for an instant, not sure he wanted to see what he knew lay in wait for them.

  “Hey, Dex!” Donnie’s voice sounded sharp and high on the radio. “Looks like we’re getting some company.”

  Dex gestured to Tommy to hold up, then he spoke into his mic again: “What’s that? Who? What’re you talking about? What is it?”

  “Don’t know. Some kind of aircraft. Still way out there.”

  “Maybe you should check in with the Coast Guard?” Dex said quickly. “See if it’s them?”

  There was a short pause as Dex moved through the murky confines.

  “Okay, I just did. No reply yet…”

  “Keep me in the loop. We’re on our way up.”

  “Copy that.”

  Dex looked up at the open belly of the bomber, then backed away. Alarms were going off in his subconscious. They were telling him to get out. Now.

  “Tommy, get down the hatch. We’ve got to get topside.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Dex watched him slip beneath the stale water and enter the hatch. Precious seconds passed, then: “I’m clear,” said Tommy.

  “Right behind you.” Dex flashed his light on the seaplane one last time, re-adjusted his mask and regulator before he slipped into the water. When he descended through the hatch, Tommy was half-floating past the bank of batteries, panning his torchlight back and forth, waiting for him. Dex gestured toward the bulkhead door that would get them back to conning tower and the hatch to the bridge.

  “We’re getting ready to exit,” said Dex into his mic. “You copy, Donnie?”

  There was another pause as Don left the base unit mic open, then: “Hey, I can see it now—a chopper heading this way, from the southeast. Low. And Jesus, this mother is fast! Coming up on starboard and—”

  There was a blur of sound that could have been helicopter rotors or…a slurry burst from a big automatic weapon.

  Then the Divelink went dead.

  Dex followed Tommy out through the hatch and once in the open, he strained to see his red suit through the brackish water.

  “Dex, you hear that? What the fuck!”

  “Don’t know yet. Head up slowly. On an angle.” Pulling out his Spyderco marine blade, he sawed through the safeline attached to the inflatable buoy.

  “Huh?”

  “We need to get away from that line and the wreck! You hear me?”

  Muffled sounds pushed through the water, dissipated by distance and the currents. Sounds that could be anything from an aircraft in trouble to gunfire. Tommy gave him a thumbs-up, and starting flippering horizontally away from the 5001. Dex caught up and guided him farther west of their position. He didn’t like it. Sounded like very bad news up there.

  He’d caught up with Tommy and continued to swim away from the wrecksite as fast as possible. Checking his air, they had less than five minutes left in their tanks.

  A lot could happen in five minutes.

  He touched Tommy’s shoulder, pointed to his Divelink mic, unplugged the lead as he jettisoned the transceiver. Looking at Tommy, he gave him a thumbs down. No more talking on that thing.

  Tommy nodded, disconnected his own unit and dumped it.

  Dex didn’t want anybody using it to track them. Watching the units sink out of sight made him feel a little less exposed.

  They spent the next sixty seconds angling slightly up and as far from the wreck as possible. There was no way to tell how far they’d moved laterally, but they had closed the distance to the surface by twenty feet or so. Tommy looked over and Dex gestured for him to continue along the same generally ascendant course when the explosion resonated through water behind them.

  Dex barely had a chance to twist himself around, turning face-up to the surface, when the shock wave rippled over him. Like being whacked with a wide paddle, the wave starched him flat, then passed through the soft tissues of his organs. Like getting hit by car, so hard that his breath pushed the regulator out of his mouth like a bellows. Dex fought to force it back between his teeth and pull another lungful of air before he passed out. Luckily he and Tommy had gotten far enough away to avoid the lethal perimeter of an underwater blast.

  No way the Sea Dog had been so lucky.

  The force of the shockwave had been dangerously powerful—especially for a boat whose hull was mostly above the waterline. If Don Jordan’s crewboat had absorbed the force of that blast, it had been shredded into grapeshot.

  No way to tell if anybody had still been on board.

  He checked his air. Less than two minutes. They had to surface soon.

  Then a second, more powerful explosion and another one-two shockwave rushed through them. Unlike the first one, the follow-up blasts felt as if they’d detonated completely beneath the surface. Depth charges? That meant kill shots at any divers still down. The extra distance they’d pulled had probably saved their lives but Dex’s eardrums were clanging in pain from the sudden compression.

  Tommy was hanging in the clearing water, staring through his faceplate with wide eyes. Dex indicated he follow him and began a series of leg kicks upward at the appropriate angle. He could sense the seconds clocking past as he watched the flat silvery ceiling of the sea get closer and closer with each kick.

  He didn’t want to think about what might be waiting for them when they cracked the surface, but he had no choice…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sinclair

  East Camden Island


  The incident report was short, and not very sweet.

  The Blackbird assault copter had landed a team on the dive boat, neutralized the crew almost instantly, and swept the premises within desired parameters.

  No evidence of the 5001 found.

  The team leader had intercepted, but had not defeated, a call from the target to the Coast Guard just before the incursion had been initiated. This factor had compressed the operation timeline, and because of this, the team had no chance to confirm or deny any target personnel unaccounted for. There was an assumption that at least one diver was in the water, but this had not been confirmed. Anti-personnel depth charges were dropped with no indication of success or failure.

  The dive boat had been destroyed utterly with some C4 placed between its twin engines.

  Follow-up recommended.

  No kidding, thought Sinclair.

  Less than an hour had elapsed since the incursion, and the Coast Guard was investigating a terrible boating accident. Tragic, but…well, these things happen. Having ops in so many governments and so many corporations for hundred of years afforded the Guild a certain leverage in dealing with things like the sinking of the Sea Dog in the Chesapeake Bay. They operated and existed through continued covert placement of their own people in every organization in the world.

  An article in the Baltimore Sun, a few minutes on WBAL-TV evening news, and the accident would be forgotten.

  Not by everyone, of course. Entwhistle was working through all the information conduits to find out everything he could about the dive boat and its crew. If there had been more than the four men on board, then there was additional clean-up to be done.

  A job worthy of any competent Guild team, but nothing out of the ordinary. Sinclair selected men for the job, assigned them to Entwhistle, and assumed they would have plenty of data as soon as possible.

  But Sinclair’s real work was just beginning.

  Before the Blackbird chopper had even reached the dive boat, he’d assembled his crew for the undersea phase of the operation—the “follow-up” the incident report had fatuously suggested. His vessel was a prototype of the Dragonfish—a deep-sea assault and rescue submersible being built for the Navy. The contractor, Sea Dynamics, because it was ultimately Guild owned, always found ways to provide Guild forces with renditions of its vessels. Sometimes, one of their test-models suffered an “accident,” which covertly provided the Guild with state of the art equipment.

  The Dragonfish was fast, stealthy, and capable of inserting a SEAL team just about anywhere, including any sheik’s private bath. Its crew and dive team would have no trouble compromising the U-5001 right under the unsuspecting noses of the Coast Guard. In fact, Sinclair was anxious to pull it off just to see how good the new DSAR actually was.

  He stood in the launch bay with his helmsman, a short stocky guy named Taggard, and his navigator, a Navy-retired graybeard named Sypniewski. Sinclair had trained both men; they were top-notch sailors. He trusted his life to them, which said it all.

  “Dive team ETA?” said Sinclair.

  “On schedule,” said Sypniewski. “When they arrive, we we’ll be ready to launch, sir.”

  Sinclair nodded and they boarded the long, lean underwater craft. Looking very much like its namesake, it bristled with the latest weapons and two prehensile arms which folded invisibly into the hull when not in use. Sinclair sealed the hatch behind him, looked at his helmsman and nodded.

  Taggard adjusted the ballast vents, toggled up the reactor-powered electric screws, and eased the DSAR into the Atlantic. Sinclair strapped into the captain’s chair as the Dragonfish traversed a short undersea tunnel that exited him and his men beyond the island’s breakers. Just as they cleared the shallows, Sinclair looked at the sky through vessel’s eye-like starboard bubble.

  Beautiful day. Sky a serene blue dome with few clouds. Even the Atlantic surface looked calm. He continued to scan the horizon until a seaplane rose above it on a course that would intersect theirs within minutes.

  “Right on time,” said Sypniewski.

  Sinclair nodded. “Recognition code hailing frequency. Defensive systems ready until you get the code-back.”

  Taggard keyed in the encrypted code, sent it. Routine protocol, thought Sinclair, but you never assumed anything when you worked as covertly as the Guild. He exhaled as the correct reply code came back to them.

  The three-man dive team entered the Dragonfish and began suiting up in the belly assault bay. Before the seaplane had even lifted off, Taggard had begun to slip the DSAR beneath the surface. Once fully submerged, the vessel cut through the cold water at an impressive forty-plus knots.

  They would be onsite within four hours, and that’s when Sinclair figured things would get interesting.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Dex

  Chesapeake Bay

  His pulse had jumped and the extra pulmonary action had used up his tri-mix at a precipitous rate; his tank was damned close to zero when he reached the surface. Regardless, Dex tried to make his return to the air world as unnoticeable as possible. Yanking off his mask, he arched his back to maneuver his nose and mouth above the surface, gulped some air and chanced a quick 360 scan of his position.

  Nothing.

  No sound.

  No boats or planes anywhere. Barely even a trace of smoke. Other than a lot of very small pieces of flotsam, he saw nothing in any direction. The exception being the long swipe of the Bay Bridge in the distance and a scattering of distant white dots—sailboats out doing not much of anything.

  A splash to his left announced Tommy’s ascent, and he gasped and sucked in air with all the noise he could muster. He looked around with half-panicked expression. So much for being careful.

  “Dex! You okay?”

  “So far…”

  “Jesus, what happened? Where’s the boat?”

  “Gone, Tommy. They blew it to hell.”

  “Jesus! What! Who?”

  As the easy bay chop bobbed them lightly, Dex searched the sky. “I don’t know…could be anybody.”

  Tommy looked around the empty water and sky for a moment. “What about…what about the guys?”

  “Doesn’t look good. That was one big mother of a blast.”

  “Oh, man…you’re kidding…”

  Dex shook his head. “The debris’s just a bunch of little pieces of nothing. Hardly any smoke. Whatever happened, it was quick. And efficient.”

  “You sure it wasn’t some kinda accident, maybe?”

  “The last thing Don said was something about a chopper.”

  “Coast Guard?”

  “Again, maybe. No way to tell.”

  “Jesus, well what’d they do—put a freakin’ missile on ’em?!”

  “Could be.”

  “I can’t believe anybody’d kill ’em. Just like that.”

  “Look, we can’t be sure anybody’s dead yet. I’m just saying it doesn’t look good.” Dex paused, did some quick computations. “I mean, we couldn’t have gotten more than three or four hundreds yard from the wreck, and there’s pretty much nothing out here. Nothing.”

  Tommy’s expression had changed to something like anger, but his voice belied his anxiety. “Bastards. What’re we gonna do? We gonna make it?”

  “We’ll be okay. Let’s ditch these tanks. Our suits will just about keep us afloat.”

  As they both wriggled free of the straps, Dex tried to keep his focus on what had just happened. What it could mean.

  “Mine’s loose,” said Tommy. “What’s next?”

  “We swim easy. Side, or backstroke.” Dex had retained the utility belt with his tools, the video, and the collection bag, even though he knew it was extra weight. Weight that might become significant if things got sketchy.

  “Swim where? Where’re we headed?”

 
“For starters, anywhere away from here. Whatever blew up our boat might be back.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “Hadn’t thought of that. Okay.”

  “I figure we head for Gibson Island.”

  “How far?”

  “Two or three miles. Maybe more.”

  “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever tried to swim that far.” Tommy didn’t sound too good.

  “We’re not in a race. We take it nice and easy.”

  “Still…miles?”

  “People swim the English Channel. That’s more than twenty. We can do this. We just take it slow.”

  “Okay, and what do we do when we get there?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Gibson Island’s mostly woods. We can hole up till we figure out what’s going on.”

  Dex pointed them in the right direction and they both started pushing the water with nice long strokes that wouldn’t fatigue them too quickly.

  After a few minutes, the shoreline didn’t appear any closer, but Dex knew it was an illusion. They were making progress. A few sailboats were visible in the distance, but that was it.

  Tommy paused to float on his back for a moment and catch his breath. “What’ll we do if the Coast Guard shows up?”

  “I think we avoid everybody until we get things sorted out,” said Dex.

  “Even those guys? I mean, isn’t that their job to save people in the water?”

  “Listen,” said Dex, indicating they should keep swimming. “We just saw our boat get vaporized and we have no idea who did it.”

  “Huh?” Tommy talked between strokes. “Which means what?”

  “You kidding me? Which means that we can’t trust anybody. Especially for the absolute right now.”

  “That is some scary shit you’re talkin’,” said Tommy. “And I seriously hope you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah, me too, But don’t count on it.” Dex glanced shoreward. They were definitely getting a little closer, but they would still need to pace themselves. “Let’s put all our energy into the swim. We talk later.”

  They continued to head toward shore in silence for another ten minutes. A sailboat meandered closer to their position, but whoever was on the rudder hadn’t spotted them, or if so, had chosen to ignore them. Thankfully, it was mostly overcast; a high sky with a bright sun hammering down would have made the journey twice as hard. Tommy pushed the water past him, behind him, but his motions began to get erratic, less rhythm and pacing. Dex was watching him closely, giving him words of encouragement. Even though he was plenty younger, Tommy was edging toward the panic state people reach when they’ve been in a vast body of water too long.