“I can do it in one minute. The Launch, Recovery, and Transport vehicle has its own power. External controls on the starboard side. Flood the pontoons. When the platform reaches dive level, pump out water to attain neutral buoyancy. Fine-tune our positioning with the LRT thrusters. Release the securing clamps. I drive off. You can stay below or take the LRT to the surface.”
“What about recovery?”
“The same procedure in reverse. I come in like a plane landing on an aircraft carrier. You secure the vehicle on the platform and up we go.”
“You’re a genius,” Austin said. “Crazy, maybe, but still a genius.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I worried that the project might be seen as a frivolous expenditure of NUMA resources.”
“It’s not exactly the ALVIN,” Austin said, referring to the tubby submersible that dove to the Titanic. “But I’m sure Pitt would approve.” NUMA director Dirk Pitt was a passionate collector of vintage cars. Let’s take the latest addition to the NUMA undersea fleet out for a spin.”
They rowed back to the boat and got into their scuba gear. Austin had asked Zavala to bring along scuba equipment that included an underwater communications setup. The Ocean Technology Systems receivers were attached to the straps of their full
face masks.
Mustapha rowed the two men to the submersible platform. They climbed aboard and pulled on their air tanks. Zavala sat behind the Subvette’s steering wheel. He had modified the seats to accommodate the tanks. Austin took his station on a folding seat built into the starboard side of the launch vehicle. He punched a button on the control panel to start the battery-powered pumps. The pontoons filled with water, and the platform and submersible slowly sank below the surface.
At a depth of forty feet, Austin reversed the pump action to stabilize the platform in a hover. Other controls allowed him to detach the metal clamps that held the submersible on the LRT. The sub’s headlights snapped on. With a whirr of its vertical thrusters, the Subvette rose off the platform and hovered above it.
Austin pushed off from the platform and positioned himself in a sitting position above the submersible. He purged air from his buoyancy compensator and slowly dropped into the passenger seat. Zavala had built extra foot room into the cockpit to accommodate swim fins.
Recognizing the impossibility of working floor pedals with fins on his feet, he had placed the thruster controls on the steering wheel.
Zavala pivoted the submersible around to face inland. Twin cones from the submersible’s high-intensity headlights illuminated the scarred face of a rockslide that sloped down to the bottom at a forty-five-degree angle. The collapsed cliff had broken into fragments that ranged in size from rocks no bigger than a head of cabbage to giant boulders that dwarfed the submersible.
“Your Navigator would have to be one tough hombre to come out of this mess in one piece,” Zavala said. “He’d be crushed down to the size of a beer can.”
“The old guy didn’t survive three thousand years by being a wimp,” Austin said.
Zavala’s gargled chuckle came through Austin’s earphones. “Can’t argue with unreasonable and unjustified optimism. What’s a few hundred thousand tons of rock? Where do we begin the search for our hardheaded friend?”
A flat rock, the size and shape of a banquet table, lay several yards out from the base of the slide. “We’ll use that slab as a starting point,” Austin said. “Work to the right, and move up the slide in parallel tracks until we get near the surface. Then we’ll do a reverse search on the left side of the rock. Keep an eye out for columns, a portico, or pediment. Anything that looks man-made.”
Zavala drove the Subvette along the base of the slide. Startled at the submersible’s approach, schools of feeding fish darted into nooks and crannies. At the outer edge of the rockslide, Zavala put the submersible into a graceful climbing reverse turn. He continued the lawn-mowing pattern, moving back and forth across the face of the slide. Occasionally, he stopped at a promising object and pivoted the submersible so that the headlights could come to bear on the target.
The deep-blue water changed to a shimmering green as they neared the surface.
The submersible dove again and coursed along the base of the slide to the left. Austin saw an object on the bottom that was buried except for an exposed, curved edge. He asked Zavala to blow the surface covering off the object with bursts from the vehicle’s thrusters. The technique was commonly used by treasure hunters to uncover a buried wreck. The clouds of sediment eventually settled to reveal the cylindrical shape of a stone column.
“Try going straight up the slope from the column,” Austin advised.
Zavala narrowed the back-and-forth area of coverage, and the vehicle ascended the slide. On one turn, the headlights swept across a triangular pediment that rested at a drunken angle on sections of columns. Austin’s probing gaze zeroed in on a shadow. He pushed himself out of the submersible and swam closer to the cavelike opening. He flashed the beam of his waterproof torch into the cavity.
A second later, Zavala heard Austin’s laughter.
“Hey, Joe, got any kitty treats?” Austin said.
“Talking crazy is a symptom of nitrogen narcosis, my friend.”
“This is not a case of rapture of the deep. I’m looking at a bronze Phoenician cat.”
A feminine squeal of delight filled their earphones. Carina had been listening to the conversation.
“You’ve found it!”
Austin ran the flashlight beam around the cave’s interior. The statue lay faceup, like a corpse stretched out on a funeral bier. The space was about ten feet across and deep, and three or four feet from top to bottom. Austin squeezed through the opening. The figure’s conical hat was dented, and the arms were broken off. Unlike the original statue, the nose was intact.
Austin backed out, and curled his thumb and forefinger in the universal okay signal.