We left the tower’s illumination behind and swam steadily. Clarke was doing fine, but I kept checking on him to be sure. Alyssna also managed well; she was an experienced swimmer and the depth wasn’t affecting her negatively at all.
Johnny and I were in the lead, and Cliff brought up the rear. Before us, it seemed completely dark. We swam without truly knowing where we were headed. The light from the surface didn’t reach the bottom at this depth. It was murky, thick, black water. It made me shiver as I stared around. There could be anyone nearby, and we wouldn’t even know until they were right on us.
Then, a large shape appeared out of the darkness. We pulled to a stop to let our eyes adjust to better make out the structure.
The jagged ridges and peaks of the rocky outcropping loomed over us. The modules were at the peak with a travel tube connecting them. The ridge was solid rock, and there were no lights visible anywhere. It was dark seafloor, nearly impossible to make out. It was the perfect place for a research facility, I thought. There was a BSF base to the east with a large military contingent. There were acoustic sensors surrounding The Vault to listen for approaching danger. The labs were in the rock, with the only way to access it through the modules atop the ridge, one of which was the security station.
A scraping to my left caught my attention. I motioned to the others and we held still, peering into the darkness.
My guts slithered.
Then there was a swishing and several shadowy figures appeared.
Scuba divers, swimming to the south.
Five of them. They would pass us just meters to our left.
It was the repair team, I realized, heading out to fix the sensor we’d just put out of commission.
—••—
We had a quick choice to make. If we let them continue, it would mean that likely within thirty minutes the sensor would be working again, putting Meg’s team aboard SC-1 at risk.
I couldn’t allow that, and this was something we’d already considered and had prepared for.
But I had made a promise to Sahar that I didn’t want to break. We needed Churchill with us when we declared our independence to the world.
When we announced Oceania.
I gestured to Cliff and Johnny, and we swam after the repair team, leaving Alyssna, Richard, and the Commodore behind.
I drew my needle gun.
—••—
Within minutes, we were directly behind the team. They were swimming for the tower, but not moving too quickly. They had tools around their belts, clanging and scraping; they obviously weren’t worried about making noise.
It would make this easier.
I aimed at the legs of the one in the rear.
And fired.
—••—
The result was instantaneous. He pulled to a stop and writhed on the seafloor, reaching down to his calf to find out what had happened. He likely thought something had bit him, perhaps an eel or some other marine creature. He scrambled to find out where the blood was coming from . . .
And I was on him in a flash. I held the gun’s square barrel before his mask and put my finger to my lips.
His expression froze as he stared at me in fear and realization. What they’d been preparing for, for years, was now happening, and he hadn’t been ready.
And now he was 500 meters down, bleeding, and facing a hostile and armed team.
I knew he was likely not a trained soldier. He was not ready for hand-to-hand combat underwater, and that played in my favor. His comm device was a wire that trailed from his full face mask to his shoulder and down his side to the nylon belt around his waist.
I ripped it from his mask with a quick jerk.
Beside me, Johnny and Cliff were doing likewise to the rest of the repair team. They corralled them and moved them toward me. Blood from the injured man’s leg clouded the area and sent a dangerous signal.
I held my finger to my mask and stared at each in turn.
I will kill you if you make a sound.
Their eyes showed terror.
None of them had weapons.
I pointed back toward The Vault, and they began to swim. Their comms wouldn’t work, and they knew they couldn’t get away.
We’d have to secure them somewhere, to keep them from escaping.
1:15:17
1:15:16
1:15:15
I could leave them outside perhaps, restrained and lying on the seafloor, but eventually their air would run out. We couldn’t do that to them.
Soon we met up with Richard, Clarke, and Alyssna, and we began on our way toward the ridge once again. The repair team were staring at us, eyes wild in realization of what was happening. Frantic. That was fine with me. I wanted them to think they were in grave danger.
It made them easier to bargain with. Easier to control.
We pulled to a stop at the ridge that rose over us. Our depth was 503 meters, but the modules were closer to 470 meters below sea level. Johnny was pointing at something, and I stared past his finger.
It was a black tunnel in the rock, just above the seafloor.
The docking pool lay beyond that opening.
Gesturing with his needle gun, Cliff indicated that he wanted the repair team to go toward the opening.
We followed them.
They led us through the tunnel to a large hatch in the rock. It was the airlock leading back to the pool. The repair team were shooting glances to each other, and I knew what they were thinking.
They were worried that we were going to use them to force our way into The Vault.
They were right.
There was a camera above the hatch, and Johnny darted forward with a fabric bag. He wrapped it around the camera and retreated, staring at it. The camera was still functioning, but security would only see black. When the airlock started its cycle, I hoped they’d just think someone from the repair team had returned for some reason or another.
Complacency was our weapon.
I keyed the airlock, and the large hatch opened.
We entered, the water lowered, and the decompression began.
1:12:03
“Who the hell are you?” one of the repair crew growled at me.
The decompression sequence was working to bring us down to four atms, but I’d had to adjust it because we’d been out for a long time. We had a thirty-minute wait ahead of us, and it made me sweat. Time was ticking, and it didn’t give us long to locate the components.
He was an older man, East Indian perhaps, and he was scowling.
“Just shut up,” I said. “You might survive. Take care of your friend here. He’s still bleeding. Don’t resist; it’ll be better for you.”
They stared at me, then glanced at each other. Then, collectively, they seemed to deflate.
We stripped their equipment and outer clothing off and restrained them against the bulkhead with zip ties. Alyssna wrapped a tourniquet around the injured man’s leg, slowing the bleeding. He started to say thanks, then gasped when he noticed her face.
“What are you doing?” he blurted.
“Shut up,” I said again.
“But—”
I swung my gun and cracked him across the scalp. He yelped and his head snapped back and hit the metal bulkhead. He was out.
But he’d recognized Alyssna.
Not that it mattered. No one would know she was living in Trieste. In fact, it might pin the blame on some other group, like the BSF.
As I thought it, Johnny, Richard, and Clarke stripped off their wetsuits, revealing their BSF uniforms.
I did the same, and the eyes facing us were incredulous.
We were four BSF officers infiltrating their base, along with a former engineer who had worked in their labs.
It made me laugh inwardly.
—••—
The Commodore suddenly spoke, and it sent a shock through me.
“Who’s in charge of this facility,” he asked.
Faces stared up at the man who towered over them. One of the repair crew was a middle-aged woman, and she was shivering on the deck. A younger man replied, “I don’t have to answer you.”
Clarke pulled the knife from the sheath on his left thigh. “Answer or you die right now. Are you BSFIF?”
The man swallowed. My instinct was to stop this and stop it immediately—but I wanted the answer too. I needed to know exactly what was going on with Clarke and his not-so-secret mission.
The man said, “This is a BSFIF base.”
Clarke knelt and held the knife to the man’s throat. “Go on,” he said.
Cliff and Johnny were watching, silent. Cliff’s hands were twitching. He was ready to put a stop to it at a second’s notice.
The man whispered, “Admiral Hitchens is CO of this base.”
Clarke looked up at me. “Hitchens was stationed at Diego Garcia.” Then he looked back to the prisoner. “When did he arrive, and who was in charge before him?”
The man shot a look at his companions, then jerked back at Clarke’s knife in his throat. “He arrived six months ago. The previous CO was Admiral Thompson.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know! They took her away aboard a warsub.”
Clarke said to us, “They probably took her to Diego Garcia. Removed her from duty here because she wouldn’t follow the BSFIF.”
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“Not personally, but she’s loyal to the BSF. She likely resisted their plans and they put someone else in her place. Hitchens. We haven’t received a report from her in a while.”
When they started escalating their aggression, no doubt, by testing the weapon on civilians. Or speaking about taking over the BSF. “Did you know she was here?”
“No. The brass at BSFCO don’t know about this facility.”
I frowned. There was a lot going on here that didn’t involve us.
We just needed the weapon and we needed to get out safely. That’s all I cared about.
—••—
0:43:30
The decompression completed with a chime and the inner hatch opened. Cliff had removed his wetsuit and pulled on one of the repair crew’s work jumpers. Alyssna had taken another. The rest of us were in BSF officers’ uniforms, and we looked like we fit in.
We were strangers though, and people would know we didn’t belong.
Then again, I was sure sometimes people arrived from DG—new crews rotating in, for instance—and we might get a few minutes of safety before people really began questioning us. We’d come up with a plan, and after a tumultuous couple of weeks, we were finally going to see if it worked.
There was a prep room outside the airlock where people could change, charge their tanks, store their equipment and so on. Engineers had carved it from the solid rock; the walls were basalt, sealed with a waterproof and airtight coating that gave them a shiny, wet appearance. Crystals in the rock glistened and sparkled. This was the room that all people passed through on their way into the facility. Security was the next area we’d encounter; it was up through a lift to the southernmost module at the peak of the ridge. It was one of the modules Chalam’s magnetometer had detected all those weeks ago. After that, there were three more modules before we would hit the next lift going down, back into the solid rock to the facility’s laboratories.
I put my palm on the airlock hatch, to shut the repair crew in.
“Wait,” a voice hissed.
It was the younger man whom Clarke had been speaking with earlier. He had a wild look in his eyes. “What?” I asked.
“Don’t do that. I promise we won’t call out.”
“Bullshit. I’m not dumb.”
“No, don’t!” he pleaded. “Listen. If the airlock cycles with us in it, it’ll drown us. We don’t have any equipment!”
I mulled it over. I could jam the door open so it wouldn’t close—and therefore wouldn’t cycle—but then the prisoners could call for help. “I’d have to gag you.”
“Anything. Please. Just don’t seal us in here. I don’t want to die like that.”
I understood his fear. Being in an airlock without the proper equipment would terrify anyone. A glance at Cliff confirmed it, and within minutes he’d gagged them. We used a zip tie to keep the hatch open; if anyone triggered it from the outside, it wouldn’t cycle.
We turned back to the lift that led to security.
We entered.