“Back through the Smoking Lounge,” Carter said, referencing his diagram for a moment before returning his attention to operating the spotlight. They traversed the lounge without incident, dragging the twin safes across the flooded space. Reaching the double-doored exit they had opened on their way in, they passed through without issue.
When they got to the opposite end of the room, it was time for the tricky maneuvering that had gotten them out of the restaurant. They repeated the process in reverse, jockeying the sub into position so that it could slide through the ragged crevice and back into the restaurant. This time the feat was made trickier by the two protuberances in the grab arms’ clutches, and though it took longer than made both submariners comfortable, within a few minutes the Deep Voyager was sliding out into the restaurant’s open space near the ceiling…
….when suddenly a blinding flash of light erupted below them.
Chapter 6
By the time Carter aimed the spotlight under his control straight down toward the source of the new light, he felt the physical impact. First there was a light thud, almost a scraping sound as something came into contact with the sub’s grab arm on Carter’s side. Immediately following that was a much more forceful impact of something heavy colliding with the Deep Voyager’s underbelly.
“What in the—” Jayden began but Carter cut him off as he recognized a discernable shape below them.
“Mini-sub! Manned, two guys inside! Lookout!”
Jayden gunned the horizontal thrusters in the hopes that it would send them darting off into the center of the restaurant space, creating some separation between the two subs. But instead, as soon as he felt the acceleration kick in, Deep Voyager’s progress came to a sudden, jolting halt. Jayden knew the thrusters were still turning, his hand was on the control and he could feel the vibrations and hear the hum of the motor. So why did their sub stop? Did he hit something? Looking ahead and up, he saw nothing to get in their way. He was checking left and right when Carter said, “You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me,” Jayden said, doing his best to keep his voice level.
“Those bastards clamped their grab arm claw onto the other bracket of the safe on my side.”
“What?”
“They’ve got it in their own grab arm! Watch it, watch it — their moving the sub now — heading up and away from us.”
“Try to radio them on an underwater-to-underwater frequency!” Jayden said, more like yelled, as he grappled with the submersible’s controls to try and wrest it from the interlopers. Carter picked up the radio transmitter and did a channel scan, monitoring for activity, while transmitting “Titanic sub to Titanic sub” on each channel.
Jayden put the sub’s thrusters on full and was able to plow the sub slowly out into the spacious room, towing the other sub behind them. But when they reached the middle of the restaurant, the combatant sub applied its own thrusters in the opposite direction, effectively cancelling out the Deep Voyager’s forward progress.
“Well this is damned stupid!” Jayden yelled, banging on the console in frustration. “We’re both just burning out our batteries! If I stop using our thrusters, we get pulled back that way. What the hell do they want?”
Carter still fiddled with the radio. “They want this safe, that’s what they want.”
“That’s ridiculous! How do they even know what’s in it? We don’t even know what’s in it yet!”
“We know what we think is in it,” Carter said, reaching out to adjust the radio settings, “and I have a feeling that they do, too.” Before Jayden could reply, the radio came to life with a voice that was not Johnny’s.
“You must be violating the rule of one-thirds by now. Let go of the safes — we know you have two of them — and you will be able to return to the surface safely.” The voice was that of an adult male with a vaguely European accent that Carter couldn’t quite place. He turned to Jayden.
“You keep trying to get us away from them and out of this room, back the way we came. “I’ll talk to these losers.”
Carter held the transmitter up to his mouth. “Who are you and what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I told you, we want the safes. Drop them and we let you go. If not, well… let’s just say that we’re willing to play a little game of chicken with battery supply and oxygen levels.” Laughter from the other occupant of the invading sub emanated from the radio speaker. The look on Carter’s face said that he was beyond furious. He growled into the transmitter.
“Look: we’re both in a very treacherous situation here. Release your grab arm, and we’ll be happy to chalk all this up to a happy little accident, okay? Over.”
“You release the safes, both of them, and we will consider this little meeting in the same light,” came the reply.
Maddock became livid as Jayden informed him that he was not having success in freeing them by maneuvering their own sub. The former Naval officer raised the mic to his lips once again. “Listen here, I don’t know who you think you are, ignoring all requests for identification, interfering with permitted operations on an internationally regulated historical grave site, but we are authorized to work this site. We have the proper permits to retrieve these safes, and you do not. We know this because no other artifact recovery permits have been issued for this timeframe. So you are the ones who are breaking the law by not having a permit and sabotaging an underwater salvage operation in a manner that equates to reckless endangerment. Over.” Radio silence ensued during which Jayden and the pilot of the mystery sub continued their oddly quiet, yet deadly, battle.
“They’re smaller than us, and probably a little less powerful, but that also makes them more maneuverable and a little faster,” Jayden summed up as he jostled the controls. “Hey, shine your spot to over one O’clock, down low on the floor — what’s that?”
Carter illuminated the area of interest as requested. “Looks like a pile of rubble. Something to avoid.”
“They’re beneath us, grabbing onto us from below, so I was thinking maybe if I can drag them across it, they’ll have to let go or else take too much damage.” Jayden wrestled some more with the sub’s controls, the net result being that their high-tech craft made its way ever so slowly toward the rubble mound. Meanwhile, the radio stayed silent, their subsea foes apparently deciding that communication was not the answer here.
Carter tried out what he thought of as a potential disorientation technique, aiming his powerful spotlight toward the enemy sub and then rapidly moving the beam back and forth in an erratic fashion. He would do that for a few seconds and then stop for a few in an unpredictable cycle. He had no way of knowing if it was working or not, but soon Jayden called out that they were about to go over the rubble mound.
Suddenly, Deep Voyager burst forward in a rush of relative speed.
“We’re free! They’re off of us!” Jayden shouted in spite of the close quarters.
“Did they let go or get knocked off?” Carter wondered aloud.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Help me locate the exit so we can leave these bastards behind. I don’t want them to catch up to us again.”
Carter had no argument for that and so, after a last salvo of combative spotlighting, turned the spot toward the front, up high, looking for the tear in the ceiling. The room was big enough that even with the spotlight it was difficult to make out much detail that far away. The sub chugged along toward the wall, and Carter began to truly worry about their battery and oxygen supplies. He didn’t dare look at the actual gauges, he was too afraid that would just make him unable to concentrate and send him into panic mode. He scanned the floor and mid-water of the room as well, lest he miss something that could snag them, but found no threats of that type. The next time he swept the beam to the far reaches of the room, in the middle of the wall, he found the top of the elevator shaft from which they had come up.