Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

Austin managed a chuckle. "Zavala taught me the ones in Spanish. Sorry for dragging you all this way for nothing."

"If I weren't under a giant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Gamay would have me wallpapering our town house. Got any backup plans?"

"Maybe if we knock, they'll open the doors. Or we swim to the surface, look for a ladder hanging down and climb aboard."

"Hardly practical."

"You asked if I had backup ideas. You didn't say they had to be practical."

Austin was about to give the word to head back when Trout let out a yell of surprise and jabbed his forefinger straight down.

Paul's sharp fisherman's eye had seen faint lights rising from the darkness below. The hazy glow reminded Austin of the luminescent fish William Beebe had found on his half- mile dive in a bathysphere. The oncoming object grew larger. They hurried out of its path until they were off to one side of the ship. They turned around and saw a small submarine ascend until it was about a hundred feet beneath the hull of the Ataman ship. The sub was clearly outlined by its running lights.

"I'll be damned," Trout said, recognizing the distinctive silhouette. "It's the NR-1. What's she doing here?"

"More important, where's she going next?" Austin's nimble mind had already sprinted several steps ahead. "Let's go for a boat ride."

Austin angled his body downward and swam behind the hovering sub. He had once made a dive on the NR-1 and knew a camera was mounted forward of the conning tower. He and Trout grabbed onto the stair rungs built into the sail and hung on. Within seconds, a thin glowing line of yellow light appeared above. The moon pool gates were being retracted.

Trout looked up, the illumination from above reflected in his mask lens. "I think I saw this on The X-Files when the aliens abducted a human."

"It's always nice to meet new friends," Austin said, his eyes glued to the line as it widened into a long narrow rectangle, then a square of blazing light.

The sub's vertical thrusters whirred, and the NR-1 rose slowly into the ship. Austin and Trout slid off the deck before the sub surfaced inside the pool. They swam toward a dark area between the circles of illumination cast by the lights inside the ship. At the edge of the pool, they cautiously poked their heads from the water. From the safety of the shadows, Austin took measure. The pool was about two hundred feet long and half as wide. Steel mesh catwalks accessed by short flights of open stairs ran along both sides.

Men in coveralls leaned over the railings and watched the NR-1 emerge from the water. Then the loud grinding of gears filled the enormous chamber as the pool doors closed.

Heavy-duty hoists fitted with steel hooks descended from the ceiling. A door opened in the side of the chamber, and several divers dressed in dry suits jumped int

o the water. They slid wide yokes under the front and back of the sub. The yokes were attached to the hooks, and powerful winches lifted the sub like the chain falls that were used to yank car engines out.

The hydraulic gates slid shut, sealing the chamber from the sea, and with a mighty grumble, invisible pumps began to suck water from the pool. The powerful pumps cleared the pool in minutes. Then the winches lowered the sub.

Crews of men flowed down the stairs onto the slimy floor of the pool. While some men swept the deck clear of seaweed and flopping fish, others attached cables to the NR-1 and braced it with timbers so it wouldn't shift with the ship's movement. The whoosh of ventilators brought fresh air into the space.

Austin and Trout had scrambled up a ladder when the pumping started, and now they hung above the deck. The weight of their scuba equipment pulled at their arms and fingers. While they huddled in the shadows, below them in the glare of lights men leaned a ladder against the sub. The hatch opened in the conning tower, and a man with a white beard climbed out. He had a revolver holster on his belt and matched the description Ensign Kreisman had given of Pulaski, the phony scientist who'd pulled a gun on the NR-1.

Two more men came out. Austin recognized Captain Logan and the pilot of the NR-1 from pictures he'd been shown. Four more men emerged. They had tough, impassive faces and carried heavy-duty firearms that identified them as guards. The NR-1 men were ushered up the stairs and disappeared from view. Hauling bags of sea debris, the last of the cleaning crew followed. The lights went out except for a glow above their heads.

"What now?" Trout said.

"We've got two choices. Up or down."

Trout looked at the darkness below them and then grabbed the rung above his head and started to climb. The scuba gear seemed to get heavier the higher they got. Luckily, they had to climb less than twenty feet before they reached a narrow landing. With a mighty grunt, Trout pulled himself up and over the rail and slipped off his tanks and weight belt. He gave Austin a hand and they both sat there, catching their breath.

While he sat with his back to the bulkhead, Austin retrieved his Bowen from a watertight pack. Trout carried a SIG-Sauer.9 mm pistol of Swiss design. They walked to where the short landing joined a catwalk at a right angle. The catwalk ran into a well-lit passageway. Seeing that it was deserted, they kept on the move. They came upon a large alcove that sheltered a shiny, white, domed structure with small portholes on its side. They recognized the white dome immediately as a decompression chamber.

After making sure no one was using the chamber, they went back for their scuba gear and stashed it inside. Then they slipped out of their dry suits and stowed them with the tanks. A short distance from the decompression chamber, they found a locker room. Hanging from a thick rod and still dripping with seawater were the suits worn by the divers who had tied down the NR-1. Austin was more interested in the neatly folded sets of coveralls stashed on shelves near the lockers. They pulled the coveralls on over their suit liners.

At six feet eight and 270 pounds, Trout wasn't easy to fit. The legs of his uniform came down to his ankles, and his arms protruded from his sleeves. "How do I look?" Trout said.

"Like a very tall scarecrow. Aside from that, you should fool anyone we meet for at least ten seconds."

He scrunched down. "How's this?"

"Now you look like Quasimodo,"

"That hair of yours isn't exactly inconspicuous. Let's hope anyone we meet is legally blind. What's next?"