Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“Thanks for your unqualified endorsement of our building skills,” Zavala said.

As he stepped off the raft, Contos rolled his eyes. “Look guys, please try not to lose the SeaBus. It’s tough as hell to run a test program without something to test.”

Without its protective covering, the SeaBus looked like a fat plastic sausage. It was a small workhorse version of a tourist sub working in Florida, designed to take crews to and from underwater jobs of moderate depth. It carried up to six passengers and their gear in a transparent pressure hull of acrylic plastic. The hull rested on fat, round skids that carried the hard ballast, trim, drop weights, and thrusters. Higher on the sides were additional ballast tanks and compressed air containers. The external structures were attached to the pressure hull by a tough ring frame. The two-seat cockpit was at the front. In the aft section was the electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical heart of the sub and an airlock that allowed divers to go in and out while the SeaBus was submerged.

Trout stuck his head out of the stern wheeler. “We’re coming up on target,” he said, checking his watch. “Three minutes to launch.”

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Austin said. “How about you, Paul?”

“Finest kind, cap,” he said with a lopsided grin.

Trout was far from fine. Despite his stolid Yankee façade, he was worried about Gamay and desperately wanted to go on the mission. He knew that with his bad arm he would just get in the way. Austin convinced Trout that they needed someone with a level head above water to call in the troops in case the s

ituation got dicey.

A crane had been brought in to lift the submersible from the truck onto the raft. The stern wheeler left early in the morning before the waterfront got busy. The boat hunkered offshore until it was time to make its usual crossing. Even with its heavy load the raft pitched and yawed as it was towed along. Austin and Zavala had to brace themselves as they knelt at the rear, each man above one of the lift bags. On signal they simultaneously stabbed the rubber pontoons with their dive knives. The air shot out in a loud hiss that rapidly turned to a flatulent bubbling. Squeezed between the water and the raft, the pontoons rapidly deflated. As the back of the raft settled into the water, they unhooked the tie lines securing the SeaBus. Then they scrambled through the aft hatch, made sure all was tight, and settled into the cockpit.

The front of the raft tilted upward at an angle. Then, as the lift bags deflated, it leveled out and began to sink. It was a primitive launching system for such a sophisticated craft, but it worked. The SeaBus maintained its buoyancy as the raft sank and was pulled out by the forward motion of the paddle wheeler. The submersible danced in the larger boat’s wake and sank into the foam kicked up by the stern paddles. As they gained depth the water changed from blue-green to blue-black.

Austin adjusted the ballast, and the sub attained neutral buoyancy at fifty feet. The battery-driven motors whined as Zavala goosed the throttle and pointed the submersible toward shore. They were lucky to have no current pushing against the round, almost blunt bow of the submersible and could keep it at a steady ten knots. Within half an hour they had covered the five miles to land.

As Zavala steered, Austin consulted the sonar screen. The rocky shore continued its vertical drop into the water for more than a hundred feet before jutting out in a wide ledge. The sonar picked up an extremely large object resting on the ledge directly under the floating pier. Moments later they looked up and saw the long shape of the pier and its floats silhouetted against the shimmer of surface light. Austin hoped his earlier assessment was correct, that the guard was too numb from boredom to notice any disturbance the submersible might cause. Zavala took the SeaBus down in a shallow spiral while Austin alternated between radar and visual checks.

“Level out. Fast,” Austin said.

Zavala responded instantly, and the submersible circled like a hungry shark.

“Were we getting too close to the ledge?”

“Not exactly. Take her out and go down another fifty feet.”

The SeaBus moved away from the shore and spun around so they were facing a ledge.

“Madre de Dios,” Zavala said. “Last time I knew, the Astrodome was still in Texas.”

“I doubt you’ll find any Dallas Cowgirls inside that thing,” Austin said.

“It’s similar to the one that went ka-pop in the Baja. Hate to admit it, but you were right as usual.”

“Just lucky.”

“I don’t know how lucky you are. We’ve got to get inside that thing.”

“There’s no time like the present. I suggest we take a look at the underside.”

With a nod of his head, Zavala cranked up the throttle and put the SeaBus into a glide that took them directly under the massive structure. The surface was made of a translucent green material that emitted a dull glow. Zavala’s hyperbole notwithstanding, the facility would have been an impressive engineering feat even on dry land. Like the Baja operation, this structure also rested on four cylindrical legs around the perimeter.

“There are openings in the outside legs,” Austin said. “Probably like the ones in Mexico, used for intake and exhaust.”

Zavala brought the submersible in close to a fifth support at the very center of the structure. He switched on the sub’s twin spotlights. “No duct openings. Hello. What have we here?” He nudged the SeaBus closer to an oval depression in the otherwise smooth surface of the support. “Looks like a door. Still no welcome mat, though.”

“Maybe they forgot it,” Austin said. “What say we park the bus and pay a neighborly social call?”

Zavala dropped the SeaBus lightly onto the ledge next to the support leg. They pulled on their air tanks and the headsets for their Divelink communicators. Austin tucked his big Bowen and some spare ammunition into a waterproof fanny pack. The pack held a 9mm Glock to replace the machine pistol Zavala lost in Alaska.

Austin crawled into the snug airlock first, flooded the chamber, then opened the outer hatch. Minutes later, Zavala joined him outside the SeaBus. They swam to the support leg and rose up the thick cylinder, where they hung on to hand bars on either side of the door. To the right of the tight seam was a panel. Encased in clear plastic were two large buttons, one red and the other green. The green one was glowing.

They hesitated.