“Forty-five minutes is all the time we’ll need.”
“We?”
“Myself and one other man. A former submariner if you’ve got such an animal.”
“My navigation officer, Lieutenant March, served four years in nuclear subs and he’s a skilled scuba diver.”
“He sounds fine. I’ll buy him.”
Boland stared at Pitt thoughtfully. “Not good.”
“Problem?”
“I’m not too keen on sending you down. Your Admiral Sandecker would have my ass if something happened.”
Pitt shrugged. “Not likely.”
“You act pretty confident.”
“Why not? I’m backed by the most sensitive detection instruments known to man. Nothing reads on or around the Starbuck’s hull. Where’s the risk?”
“I’ll have Lieutenant March help you with the diving gear,” Boland gave in. “We have a diving hatch just above the waterline starboard amidships. March will meet you there. But remember, only a visual survey. After you see whatever there is to see, you get back up.” Then he turned and stepped into the pilothouse.
Pitt remained behind on the bridge wing, fighting to keep a grim expression. He felt a touch of guilt, but shook it off. “Poor old Boland,” Pitt said softly to himself. “He hasn’t the vaguest notion of what I’m up to.”
Diving on a sunken ship is both exciting and frightening; it has been compared, by the more superstitious souls, to swimming through the rotting bones of Goliath’s corpse. The diver’s heart begins to pump at a terrifying pace; his mind becomes numb with unwarranted fear. Perhaps it’s the romantic visions of ghostly old bearded captains pacing the wheelhouse deck; or sweating, cursing stokers shoveling coal into fiery ancient boilers; or even tattoo-chested deckhands drunkenly staggering back to the fo’c’s’le after a wild night spent in a backwater tropical port
Pitt had felt all these eerie sensations before on wreck dives. This time it was different The Starbuck looked perfectly natural lying on the bottom. If the underwater world was foreign to a surface ship, it was surely the natural habitat of a submarine. At any second Pitt half expected ballast bubbles to burst from the main vents and the huge bronze propellers to begin turning as the long black shape came to life.
He and March swam slowly along the hull, just inches above the bleak seafloor. March carried a Nikonos underwater camera and began punching the shutter lever, the strobe light flashing like sudden shafts of lightning through an overcast sky. Only the release of air bubbles broke the stillness. Shoals of brightly colored fish glided around the two creatures who had invaded the privacy of their backyard.
A black and yellow angel fish approached out of curiosity. At least forty parrot fish meandered past, flicking their tails. A brownish shark, about six feet long with white tips, swam above the men and paid them no attention. There was such an oversupply of tasty gourmet morsels, the thought of dining on man couldn’t have been farther from the shark’s pea-sized brain.
Pitt shook off his desire to admire the scenery. There was too much to accomplish and too little time. Pitt took a firmer grip on the long, aluminum shaft in his right hand.
Barf the Magic Dragon, March had called it The three-foot cylindrical tube with the needlelike muzzle reminded Pitt of the tool park cleanup men use to spear paper trash. It was, in fact, the deadliest shark killer yet devised. Spear guns, repellents, bang sticks firing shotgun shells; all worked with varying degrees of success on man’s hated enemy. But none were as safe and sure as Barf the Magic Dragon. Pitt had seen commercial models of the shark killer; they were smaller and packed less punch than the Navy’s version. Basically, it was a gun, and in spite of its deceptive nonlethal appearance, it would literally turn a shark inside out If one of the razor-toothed monsters came too close, the diver simply jammed the needled muzzle into the sandpaperlike hide and pulled a trigger, causing a canister of carbon dioxide to discharge into the shark’s body. The resulting explosion of gas would then blow the vital organs of the boneless villain through its gaping mouth while inflating them like balloons. Even that wouldn’t kill the beast. Only after the gas had forced it to rise to the surface would it then drown. Sharks have no air bladders or gills like other fish. They cannot float; they must keep on the move every second so they can pass oxygen through their mouths and out their gill-shaped clefts. If a shark doesn’t move, it can’t breathe.
March clicked the camera shutter, wound forward the film, and clicked one more. Then he motioned Pitt upward. They swam slowly over the level deck, past the closed messenger-buoy hatch, past, the ballast vents, and the mooring cleats.
Pitt looked at March’s expression througnhis face mask; fear was welling in the young man’s eyes-of what lay on the other side of the pressure hull. March held up his camera and pointed toward the surface; he was running out of film. Pitt shook his head. He took a small rectangular board that was attached to his weight belt and wrote two words on it with a grease pencil: ESCAPE HATCH.
March stared at the message board and pointed a finger at the underwater watch on his wrist. Pitt didn’t have to acknowledge; he already knew they were down to their last twenty minutes of air. He held up the board again and gripped March tightly by the arm, digging his fingers into the flesh so the young lieutenant would get the urgency of Pitt’s command. March’s eyes widened in his face mask. He looked up at the shadow of the Martha Ann’s hull, knowing they were being watched by the television cameras. He hesitated, killing time, trying to run out the clock.
Pitt wasn’t fooled. He dug his fingers into March’s arm and squeezed tighter. That did the trick. March nodded in understanding and quickly turned and swam toward the forward bow of the Starbuck. Pitt hardly expected the younger man to do otherwise.
Pitt stayed almost on top of March’s web-footed fins, swimming into the stream of bubbles that trailed from the lieutenant’s exhaust valve. It took only a few seconds before their shadows crept over the hull and they were hovering again above the deck of the Star-buck, A c
rab rudely interrupted during its promenade across the forward walkway, scurried in a crazy sideways movement until it skidded down the rounded hull and sideslipped to a perfect eight-legged landing on the sand below. If the crab was frightened, so was March. Pitt clearly saw him shudder involuntarily as he stared down at the escape hatch, envisioning the grisly scene below.
OPEN IT, Pitt wrote on his message board. March looked at him, shuddered again, and slowly bent down and knelt over the hatch as he applied pressure to the handwheel. Pitt rapped the muzzle of Barf lightly on the hatch cover, the metallic sound amplified by the water. Spurred into action, March twisted the handwheel until the veins in his neck became taut. It wouldn’t budge. He relaxed and looked up at Pitt with questioning eyes tainted with anger. Pitt held up three fingers and pointed at the handwheel, signaling a third try. He moved opposite March and shoved the butt of Barf under the handwheel quadrants as a lever. Then he nodded at March.
Together they twisted. Finally the handwheel gave, but only a bare half inch at first, but since that cracked the seal, it became easier with each succeeding inch until it spun easily and knocked against its stop. March swung the hatch cover open and stared straight down into the air lock. The equal pressure between the lock and the outside was a bad sign. Pitt saw his grand plan beginning to crack, but there was one more card left to play and only one minute left to play it.
Pitt wiped off the lettering on the board and then wrote: CAN YOU OPERATE?
March nodded, shivered inwardly at the ghostly suggestion behind Pitt’s question, took his own message board, and replied: NO GOOD WITHOUT POWER.
Pitt simply scribbled: WE TRY!