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“We’re tracking them,” General Lyon reassured the women over the speakerphone. As soon as dusk fell, they’d lost track of the Russian sub. “It’s still six miles away from you and Lady Kite’s jamming is holding.” The commanding officer of USSOCOM chuckled. “We’ve been bouncing the signal off a tower in the Dominican Republic. That ought to confuse the fuck out of them. It should be dark enough now, go get those viruses.”
“Yes, sir.” The chorus of female voices struck Shakespeare as strange. His entire military career he’d heard those words in tones from bass to tenor. It reminded him, once again, that these were active duty women.
Lei Lu dug in her duffel bag for a moment as though looking for a piece of her equipment, then paused. “Lady Harrier, do we need to bring up the entire box? One cubic foot of water weighs sixty-four pounds. Rather than make fifteen trips to the surface, and burn through a whole lot of air, what part is absolutely necessary?”
Damn, that little woman was brilliant. Shakespeare smiled like a proud teacher when a student was thinking out-of-the-box. Literally in this case.
“You can ditch the outer cardboard and any padding that was used around the watertight metal container.” Lady Harrier settled an air tank on to Lady Hawk’s back. “The virus itself is in an airtight three-inch glass vial which is surrounded by bubble wrap inside a six-inch metal canister. Those cylinders should actually float.”
“If it was daylight, I’d suggest we bag the cylinders and release them to the surface. We could collect them with the boat and get the hell out of here.” Lady Hawk glared at the unseen horizon. “But thanks to our friends from Russia, we don’t have that option.”
“Everybody, grab your mesh bags,” Lei Lu ordered. “Even if you’re not diving this round. Hopefully, we can do this in one trip.”
“Then Oli and I will go down for the bodies,” Lady Harrier added.
The six members of the first team of the night to dive slipped into the water. Shakespeare went in first and clipped onto the rope that led down to the plane. He’d insisted on that precaution since they weren’t turning on any boat lights. Night diving was dangerous enough, but he felt like they were diving blind.
Katlin, Tori, and Grace followed quickly behind and immediately attached to the line after turning on their headlamp. When Lei Lu jumped in, she went straight for the rope then gave him the go-ahead signal.
Swimming fast, they made it to the airplane in just a few minutes.
According to their dive computers, since Shakespeare, Katlin, and Lei Lu dove that morning, they could only remain at the crash site for twenty-two minutes. Fortunately, Grace and Tori had a little more time.
The airplane was too small for five people in dive gear, so it had been decided that Lei Lu would enter first and she’d cut the boxes free from the walls. They would create a fire line and pass the boxes down until each had one, rip off the saturated cardboard and leave it in the plane, then secure the watertight canister in their mesh bag.
The last thing they would do was retrieve the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Shakespeare was the largest and remained outside the airplane, the only one still attached to the line. As an added precaution, he hooked several chemical glow sticks to the line. Lei Lu had made sure each woman had a two-thousand lumen headlamp and at least a one thousand lumen chest light, plus backups for each.
He carried two extra lights. His backups had backups.
Impressed by how quickly the women moved into place and started working, it was very evident they were a cohesive team, at least underwater. In less than two minutes, Shakespeare was handed a cardboard box. When he peeled away the delaminated brown paper, it seemed to fall apart in his hands. He was surprised when the six-inch metallic canister popped out and started to float quickly to the surface. Being inside the plane, the women had the advantage that their containers would only float to the ceiling.
With a few kicks, he captured the runaway metal cylinder and returned to his place at the end of the line. Just in time, too. Katlin was handing him another box through the open front window.
Smarter this time, he reached into the box and extracted the canister, securing it in his bag before dealing with the cardboard.
Checking his dive computer, he was astonished at how much time had passed. He was glad for the last one. When Katlin handed him the next box, he pointed to the gauge and signaled that they should start for the top.
She nodded in understanding.
As soon as his third container was secured inside his mesh bag, Shakespeare shoved the cardboard and packing materials back inside the airplane. Soon, the ocean would disintegrate everything remaining since nothing was plastic. Part of him worried that fish might eat some of the paper, but they would either spit it back out for its unusual taste or it would work its way through their digestive system and come out the other end even more biodegradable. There was a whole lot of fish shit in the ocean.
Katlin swam through the open cockpit window, wagging her mesh bag containing three cylinders. Grace was right behind her, followed closely by Tori.
When Lei Lu didn’t appear right away, Shakespeare began to worry. He checked the time and wondered if she was having difficulty with the recorders. Thirty seconds later, he swam through the open window and went straight to the back of the airplane where he saw her lights bobbing.
She was pulling with all of her might on the wrench, trying to free one of the recorders. She already had the other in her bag. He worried that she was utilizing too much oxygen and tapped her hand holding the wrench. She released her grip and moved out of the way.
With his bigger body, Shakespeare was able to stabilize his stance to apply more torque. After a few tries, he loosened the bolt. He indicated to Lei Lu to extract it while he moved on to the last bolt, which came out easier. He lifted the proverbial black box and clipped it to his equipment belt then handed her back the wrench.
It was time to go. She swam smoothly through the water and waited for him at the nose of the plane. He was grateful he’d attached the Chemlume to the line that moved in the underwater current. Lei Lu brought up the rear, the last to clip onto the line. Looking up toward the surface, the other three women were still at the twenty-foot mark. Katlin was staring at her watch when Shakespeare arrived.
Working as they had at eighty-five feet, they’d breathed more air than if it were on a casual dive, sightseeing the colorful coral and schools of fish. Combined with their morning dive at that depth, he and Lei Lu had agreed to a five-minute rest to be sure all the gases built up at the deep level worked their way out of their bodies. No one wanted to get the painful and dangerous bends.
The first thing each of them did when they reached the surface was hand their bag directly to Nita who placed the canisters in the foam-filled airtight cases brought to them by the CDC.
Since the voice and data recorders were nearly indestructible, Shakespeare and Lei Lu slid them into one of the storage bins.
“If we have to, we can dive again in three hours,” Lei Lu announced once all five of them were back in the boat. “Lady Harrier, Oli, are you ready to go?”
“Ready,” her teammate answered.
“I’m always ready,” Oli said with a smile.
“Lady Kite, they had some difficulty with just the two of them wrestling one body. I think it would be a good idea for Agent Silva to go down and help,” Shakespeare suggested, then quickly added, “She’s had enough time at sea level for her body to adjust.”
“Excellent idea.” When Lei Lu smiled at him, he wanted to puff out his chest and strut around the deck, proud that he had pleased her.
What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d never been this way with a woman before. They were the ones trying to please him, attract his attention. What the hell was different about Lei Lu?
He could answer his own question. Lots. She was brilliant, so capable, cool in a tense situation, all while remaining beautiful and feminine. She was truly unique.
As soon as Nita, Harper, and Oli were in the water, Lei Lu went directly to her computer. Ten minutes later, she was dancing, punching the sky with her arms and rolling her hips side to side, as far as her earbuds would allow.
“I did it!” She repeated over and over.
She stopped.
Not a single muscle moved.
“Are you all right?” Shakespeare asked. He wasn’t sure she was breathing.
She cupped her hands over her ears and cocked her head, staring into the distance.
Even in the pale light of the half moon and sparkling stars, Shakespeare could see all the blood drain from her face.
“Lady Hawk, get the general on the line. The fucking Russians are asking permission to torpedo the plane.” Lei Lu’s eyes were wide, the whites shining brightly in the night.
Fuck. No. The concussion of the impact would kill his friend Oli and the two women. He darted to the back deck and immediately started gearing up. Yes, it would be dangerous for him since he’d already done two deep dives, but if he could save those three lives, he would.
Tori had on half her equipment. “You can’t go down yet, Shakespeare, but I can. They’re only at forty-five feet.” She worked her dive computer for a few seconds. “I’ll just have to decompress at twenty feet for six minutes.”
Katlin helped her into a fresh tank. “Rerun the numbers once you’re down there. Every minute is going to count. I want you guys back here on the surface as fast as possible. If you must, leave the bodies.”
“Understood.” Tori put in her mouthpiece and stepped off the dive platform.
Lei Lu was pinned to her computer. “They must be really close to the plane. They’re giving someone back in Russia a complete description, including the large hole in the side that knocked them out of the sky.” She looked up at her teammates and Shakespeare. “They were the ones who shot the plane down.” She squinted. “Either that, or they know who did.”
Whipping out her phone, she typed a word into her translator. She stared at it for a long moment before raising her eyes. “They’ve developed a surface to air laser. They want the airplane to analyze their shot. If they can’t get the plane, they are asking permission to destroy it. They mentioned us...decadent Americans. Whoever they’re talking to, kind of like our SOCOM, told them not to worry about us. We would be nothing more than another Bermuda Triangle statistic.”
Katlin repeated everything Lei Lu said into the satellite phone.
“Why the h-e-double hockey sticks do they want to torpedo the airplane now?” Grace asked.
Lei Lu’s smile was a slice of white in the night. “They know an American submarine is running fast and deep straight toward them.” She held up one finger then cupped her ears.
She let out a long breath. “Well, somebody in Moscow is awake and intelligent enough that they don’t want to start a war with United States. The submarine was just told to back off to at least five miles away.”
“Thank Christ.” Shakespeare felt his whole body relax. He glanced over his shoulder to where he hoped his four team members were moving quickly toward the surface.
Lei Lu giggled. “They were told to run silent and hide. A little late for that.”
“SOCOM says the U.S. sub has them on their radar,” Katlin announced with her hand over the microphone on the satellite phone. “As soon as our people are topside, the sub commander needs to know. He’s going to park the sub right in front of the plane. By the way, there’s now talk about the U.S. raising the airplane to examine the damage up close.”
Wahoo. Shakespeare celebrated deep inside. That meant the women might be around a little bit longer, although he was only interested in one woman. The one whose gorgeous hair was now falling all the way down her back and over her shoulders like a black veil as she typed on her laptop.
Splashing off the end of the boat indicated that the body retrieval team was back. Grace and Katlin beat him to the stern, extending a hand to Nita who handed him a rope as she slid onto a bench seat. He tied it to one of the side cleats as the body floated just below the surface.
Nita pulled off her gloves while spitting out her mouthpiece. “Torpedo?”
Shakespeare shook his head. “Crisis averted thanks to the U.S. submarine.”
The team doctor nodded once. “We have both bodies. I suggest we drag them onto the dive platform and let the water drain out of the bags before we try to lift them into the boat.” She inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, expelling it in a huff. “I have to take samples from each, but I can do that while we’re underway.”
He was so glad these women thought the same way as he did. Her plan matched his exactly.
Harper flopped into the seat next to Nita. “I brought up the second body. It’s tied to the dive deck.” Her eyes met his. “Oli stayed at the rest stop with Tori. They’re about three minutes behind us.”
When the retrieval team was back on deck, it took almost everyone to haul the body bags onto the dive platform.
“Just unzip the bottom and roll it back so it will empty quickly.” Nita ordered Shakespeare as she worked on the other bag. “We need to preserve as much of the body as possible. I’m sure the eyeballs have popped out, and who knows what else.”
“Thanks for that visual,” Tori complained.
“It’s just science.” Nita went on to explain as she lifted the top of the body bag so more water would run out. “I figure these men died before they hit the water. Then their bodies were trapped in eighty-five feet of salty ocean water. There’s still air in their lungs and food in their digestive system that continued to chemically process even after they were dead. Their body had no way to release the gases that built up. I’m just glad a shark didn’t get in there at them. That would’ve been a mess.”
“You can stop now.” Tori held up her flat palm. “I don’t need to know how the body works any more than I already do. And I do know science, like the physics behind explosives.” She went over and threw her arm around Harper. “Isn’t that right, neighbor?”
“Nita, do you have any brain bleach in your doctor kit?” Harper didn’t even notice that she’d used Lady Harrier’s real name. “I have a vivid imagination and you painted a very gruesome picture in my mind of what’s inside those black bags.”
“You pansy asses,” Nita chided. “You’d never make it through med school. We worked on cadavers for two semesters. These guys are nothing compared to what I’ve seen.”
Eventually the water lessened to a trickle. “That’s good enough. Let’s get them into the boat and get the fuck out of here.” Nita zipped the bag back up before she grabbed one corner. Three of her teammates automatically latched on and lifted it over the stern.
Shakespeare followed her lead and soon the pilot and copilot were lying side-by-side. He was ready to leave. As he headed to start the boat, Katlin’s phone rang.
When the team leader punched the air, he knew it was good news.
“The U.S. submarine is here. His orders are to take up position between the Russian submarine and the airplane.” Katlin looked at Lei Lu. “They were just confirming that we have the recorders, which by the way, are still pinging.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that.” Lei Lu shook her head.
“Then we’re just going to confuse the hell out of the Russians when the pinging starts moving and ends up at Turks and Caicos tonight.” Katlin shrugged. “I’ve given the submarine captain the exact coordinates for the plane.”
Shakespeare felt better now that the submarine was protecting the airplane.
Minutes later, the roar of the engines was the best sound Shakespeare had heard in years. He had the same feeling as when he heard the whomp, whomp, whomp, of a rescue helicopter extracting them from another godforsaken mission.
The cold metal power control in his hand was comforting as he pushed it forward and pointed the bow toward Grand Turk. He wondered if he could talk Lei Lu into a drink before they went their separate ways to sleep. He grinned as he thought about inviting her to sleep in his bed and suggesting they work off their adrenaline spike together in the oldest way known to man and woman.