With a good deal of finessing, Pitt and Giordino secured the cable around the shed’s hinged door, then looped it around the sides and roof several times.
“Won’t win us a merit badge for knot tying,” Giordino said, “but now our kite’s got a tail.”
“On to the scientific portion of the experiment,” Pitt said.
Giordino let loose of the cable, and Pitt guided the submersible close to the Alta. He settled the submersible on the seafloor and watched as Giordino reached with the manipulator and clutched a brown helium tank by its valve.
Giordino gave Pitt a cautionary gaze. “These babies ain’t light.”
“Mere child’s play.” Pitt raised the submersible just off the bottom and applied power to the reverse thrusters.
The submersible eased backward. The helium cylinder held firm, then slipped across the sand. Pitt worked the controls until he had dragged the tank alongside the welder’s shed, positioning its valve near the open door.
“There’s one,” Pitt said.
“Not a popular move with our batteries.” Giordino looked at their gauges. “We’re down to thirty-five percent remaining power reserves.”
Pitt nodded and maneuvered the submersible toward the next cylinder. They had repeated the process six more times, lining up all seven tanks beside the shed, when Giordino announced they could do no more.
“Power reserves approaching single digits, boss. It’s time we think of heading for daylight.”
“Okay, maestro. First open up the tanks, and let’s see if this bird will fly.”
Pitt hovered the submersible over the cylinders so Giordino could reach down with his manipulator and open the valves. A cascade of bubbles rushed past the viewport as he opened the first valve. When Giordino had opened the last cylinder, Pitt moved back a few feet and Giordino nudged the tanks forward, allowing the spewing gas to rise into the confines of the welder’s shed.
It was a crazy gamble but their only chance of saving the divers. Pitt hoped to raise the cable enough to lift the diving bell off the wellhead structure. To do so, the welding shed would act as a lift bag and pull the cable to the surface.
Pitt maneuvered the submersible until it hovered just above the shed.
“You sure you want to park it here?” Giordino asked.
“We might need to hold it steady, as well as give it a boost. See if you can grab hold of it.”
Giordino reached out the manipulator arm and latched onto a knuckle in the shed’s peaked roof. Pitt purged the ballast tanks. A wall of rising bubbles obscured their view and any sensation of movement, so Pitt eyed a depth gauge. The digital readout held steady, then began decreasing a foot at a time.
He grinned. “We’re moving.”
Peering into the distance from the diving bell, Fletcher saw the submersible ascend. For a second, he thought its lights illuminated a small house beneath it. He rubbed his eyes and watched the lights of the submersible disappear, his hopes of escape vanishing with it.
Little did Fletcher know he was attached to the rising structure.
Using the weight of the submersible to balance the roof, Pitt managed to keep the shed level as it filled with gas and attained buoyancy. More importantly, the shed continued to rise while trailing the steel lift cable beneath it. As the structure ascended, the sea pressure would diminish, causing the gas inside the shed to expand. With luck, the expanding gas would provide the needed lift to offset the growing weight of the cable.
“Five hundred feet,” Giordino said. “We’re riding a regular freight elevator.”
“Feels more like a mechanical bull.” Pitt jockeyed the submersible to one side. He had to constantly work the thrusters to keep the shed’s roof level. If the shed tipped, the gas would escape and the whole works would plummet to the seabed.
The odd assemblage continued to rise in a curtain of bubbles. Ascending higher, the expanding helium ultimately displaced all the water in the shed. Its sides began to bulge as the expanding gas sought its escape, streaming out of every crevice, as well as the open door. The shed’s ascent accelerated, pushing the submersible with it.
The Sargasso Sea had been alerted to stand clear but at the ready. Pacing her stern deck, Kevin Knight stared at the water. A disruption caught his attention and he watched as a circular froth erupted. A few seconds later, the bright yellow NUMA submarine broke the surface, rising completely out of the water. Knight saw that it was sitting on some sort of structure that resembled a tiny house. As it settled slightly and the submersible moved clear, Knight recognized it as the welder’s shed from the Alta.
At Pitt’s direction, the Sargasso Sea moved in quickly and snared the looped cable with a crane and hook. The structure was hoisted onto the stern deck as a waiting throng of crewmen secured the cable with clamps and braces. The loose end was unwound from the shed and fed onto a drum winch that had been cleared of its own cable.
As the winch began reeling in the cable, the ship’s lift crane deposited the welder’s shed over the side and retrieved the submersible.
Pitt and Giordino had barely climbed out of the hatch when Knight jumped in front of them.
“Are they still alive?”
“For the moment,” Pitt said. “The bell lost several of its emergency gas cylinders, so they don’t have much time to spare.”
The crew waited anxiously as the winch spooled up the cable. No one knew what they would find at the other end. Finally, there was a commotion near the stern rail and Pitt saw the top of the diving bell break the surface.
“Snag it with the lift crane and prepare to transfer it to the decompression chamber,” Pitt said. “We’ll need some welders to cut away the lower frame to access the hatch.”
The bell was hoisted aboard and the crewmen swarmed to work. A technician ran up to Pitt as welders’ sparks began spraying across the deck.
“I’ve spliced the bell’s communications cable with our comm system,” the technician said. “One of the divers inside wants to talk to you. His name is Warren.”
Pitt followed the technician to a console set up near the bell. He picked up a handset as a man inside the bell waved through the viewport.
“Hi, Warren. My name’s Pitt. How are you making out in there?”
“A lot better now that I can see some sunshine,” Fletcher said. “For a while, I thought we were going to be a permanent part of the wellhead. That was a crazy way to lift us, but I’m sure glad you tried.”
“Apologies for the rough ride. How are your partners?”
“Tank’s good, but Brown has a broken leg. He’s been in and out of consciousness.”
“We’ve got a doctor waiting in our decompression chamber, just as soon as we can get you into it.”
“Thanks, Mr. Pitt, we appreciate everything. Tell me, though, what happened to the Alta?”
“She sank in a sudden explosion. No casualties, thankfully, but nobody seems to know what happened. We’ll talk again once we get you transferred to the chamber.”
Fletcher nodded. “Call me crazy, Mr. Pitt, but I saw an unknown submersible shortly before the cable snapped. I think somebody may have deliberately sunk the Alta.”
Pitt looked into the diver’s hardened eyes and realized it was the least crazy thing he had heard all day.
10
A bright azure sky belied the sorrow that hung over Havana. The source of the melancholy was a funeral procession that crept through the crumbling streets of Cuba’s capital, where the calendar seemed fixed at the year 1959. The pockmarked streets, which over the centuries had been trod by Spanish conquistadors, British redcoats, American doughboys, and Russian generals, were lined ten deep by ordinary Cuban citizens. Seemingly every resident of the island had come to bid a final farewell to El Caballo.