Final Option (Oregon Files 14)

“Be careful. We don’t know all the ways Tate is monitoring the capsule. And we don’t want to tip him off to our intentions.”

“All my running lights are off, and the water down here is pretty murky. Eddie and Linc are in their scuba gear and set for extraction.”

“Acknowledged. As we expected, Tate has a video feed from the diving bell.”

“Then the plan is a go?”

“Yes. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way down.”

“Copy that.”

As the Porter took off, Juan went over the controls for the RHIB. Murph had modified the boat to be operated remotely. With a press of a button, the RHIB would start up and race at top speed to Juan’s location in the harbor. It would give him the choice of escaping the diving bell’s spot by boat or by floatplane.

Next, he checked Fred, the dummy. He was packed into a case designed to absorb a tremendous amount of shock. Juan shrugged into a sturdy harness and clipped the case to his waist.

Finally, Juan put on his parachute.

25

SOUTHEAST OF MONTEVIDEO

As the Oregon approached Tate’s specified coordinates a hundred miles off the coast of Uruguay, Max entered the moon pool to see how the preparations were going. If the Kansas City really was in the vicinity and had a bomb planted on its hull, this would be an incredibly dangerous operation.

Murph and Hali were up in the op center, getting ready to search for the KC using the ship’s sonar array, while MacD prepared the heliox dive gear. According to Tate, the nuclear sub was grounded near the edge of the continental shelf at two hundred fifty feet, well below the maximum depth for using normal scuba tanks. Heliox was a combination of helium and oxygen that eliminated the danger of nitrogen narcosis in deep dives. The Gator would be used to support MacD, and Linda Ross was doing what she could to help get the submersible ready for work, despite her hearing loss. She was communicating with the other technicians via a special set of glasses that Murph had rigged for her, in addition to hand signals and a whiteboard.

Julia Huxley was watching anxiously from the catwalk, and Max stepped up beside her.

“How’s she doing?” he asked the doctor.

“As well as can be expected,” Julia said, “but she’s frustrated by her limitations. I told her she needed to rest, but she said she was going nuts staring at the walls in her cabin.”

“I’d be the same way. Any better idea of what happened to her, Murph, and Gomez in the Gator during the Rio op?”

Julia shrugged. “Lots of theories, but nothing definitive.”

“Like what?”

“There are a few things I think we can rule out. I did a full work-up on all three of them and didn’t find any residual evidence of unexplained chemicals in their systems.”

“So they

weren’t poisoned?”

“No. Or drugged. Besides, there was no vector for them all to be drugged simultaneously. They didn’t consume any of the same food or drinks, and the only other possibility would be an aerosolized gas pumped into the Gator while they were submerged. Murph went over the sub with a fine-tooth comb and didn’t find any hardware that didn’t belong.”

“What about an illness?”

“I didn’t find any virus or bacteria in their cultures, but that was unlikely anyway. They all described the visions hitting them quickly and then turning off like a switch. An infection would take hours or even days to develop and then clear up.”

“So what does that leave us with?”

Julia shook her head, puzzled. “There are a few prospects, but they’re all pretty out there.”

“Hit me.”

“Microwaves could have the effect of causing neurological changes in the brain. Is it possible for such waves to penetrate the water as well as the hull of the Gator?”

“No way. The water around them would absorb the waves and boil first. What else have you got?”