Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

“None. That’s why I want to get on-site and have a look.”

“If it’s man-made, we’ll find it,” Giordino said. “When do we leave?”

“Captain says we can shove off in an hour.”

Giordino gave a wistful gaze toward Duval Street and its line of raucous bars, then tucked the Creepy Crawler under his arm.

“If that’s the case,” he said with a disheartened tone, “I’d better find my friend a new brain before he’s cast to the depths again.”

He walked across the deck, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him.

5

The suffocating darkness six hundred feet beneath the surface of the ocean had vanished. Banks of LED lights, encased in titanium housings capable of withstanding the crushing pressure, cast a bright glow on the undulating seafloor’s stark landscape. A silver-scaled tarpon swam by and eyed a curious array of scaffolding that towered under the lights before darting into the more familiar blackness.

The structure resembled a lighted Christmas tree that had toppled to one side. Or so thought Warren Fletcher, who peered through a small acrylic window that was as thick as his fist. The veteran commercial diver was perched in a large diving bell that was suspended fifty feet above the seabed by a cable from a support ship.

Working in the alien world at the bottom of the sea fascinated Fletcher. He found an odd tranquility working in the cold dark deep. It kept him active in the grimy, dangerous business of commercial diving years after his original dive partners had retired. For Fletcher, the siren of the deep still summoned.

“You ready for your next dive, Pops?” The helium-rich air circulating through the diving bell gave the voice a high-pitched warble.

Fletcher turned to a walrus-shaped man named Tank who was coiling an umbilical hose across a rack. “There ain’t a day I’m not, Junior.”

Tank grinned. “Brownie’s on his way back, should be up in five.”

As the designated bellman, Tank was responsible for assisting his two divers with their equipment and for manning their life-sustaining umbilicals. The trio would work an eight-hour shift before being hoisted to the surface ship Alta. There they were transferred to prison-like living quarters in a steel saturation chamber that maintained the pressure of the seafloor.

Keeping the divers under constant pressure avoided the need for decompression cycles after every dive. Captives of deep pressure, the men were disciples of saturation diving, where their bodies adjusted to an infusion of nitrogen that might last for days or even weeks. At the end of the job, the men would undergo a single extended decompression cycle before seeing the light of day again.

The purpose behind their dives was the age-old quest for oil. Fletcher and his crewmates were several days into a weeklong project to fit a test wellhead and riser onto the seafloor. A drill ship would then hover over the site and bore through the sediment in hope of striking oil. Fletcher and his cohorts were laying the foundation for the third test well their Norwegian employer had attempted in the last six months.

Under license from the Cuban government, the exploration company had been given the right to explore a promising tract of territorial waters northeast of Havana. Petroleum experts believed a huge, untapped trove of oil and gas reserves lay off the Cuban coastline, but the Norwegian firm was batting zero. Its first two test wells had come up dry.

“You think the Alta will run us into Havana when we pop the chamber?” Tank asked.

Fletcher nodded but was only half listening. His attention focused on a faint light that appeared beyond the wellhead site. He turned and looked down the diving bell’s trapdoor, spotting the light of Will Brown working his way up to the chamber. He turned back to the viewport as the other light grew closer, splitting into two beams. As the object approached the base of the wellhead riser, Fletcher could see it was a small white submersible.

The submersible slowly ascended, traveling close enough that Fletcher could see its pilot. The submersible carried a thick plate-shaped disk on its articulated arm like a waiter carrying a tray.

As the vessel rose out of view, Fletcher cocked his head toward the ceiling. “Shack, who just did a drive-by?”

An unseen voice from the Alta replied, “You got company down there?”

“Just got buzzed by a submersible.”

There was a long pause. “It’s not ours. You sure you ain’t seeing things, Pops?”

“Affirmative,” Fletcher said, annoyed.

“We’ll keep our eyes open to see if anyone comes ’round to collect her.”

Tank kept reeling in the umbilical as Brown swam closer. The open floor hatch fed through a short tube to a second external hatch, also open. The pressurized interior, fed oxygen and helium from the surface, matched the pressure of the water depth and kept the chamber from flooding.

With his helmet-mounted dive light leading the way, the shadowy figure of Brown approached and popped his head through the interior hatch.

Tank and Fletcher pulled Brown up through the hatch, setting him on the deck with his feet dangling in the water. The diver carefully removed his fins while Tank unhooked his umbilical, which had provided Brown a cocktail mixture of breathing gases and also cycled a stream of hot water through his drysuit.

Removing his faceplate, the diver took a deep breath, then spoke through chattering teeth. “Cold as penguin crap down there. Either there’s a kink in the hot-water line or the boys upstairs turned down the thermostat.?