Lee’s eyes were wide with fright, but she understood what Austin was trying to convey. She took the mouthpiece and clamped it between her teeth. As she filled her lungs, the panic in her eyes subsided. She then passed the mouthpiece back to Austin.
Buddy-breathing would keep them alive, but there was still Chang and his men to deal with. This became abundantly clear when Austin saw a foamy splash in the water, then another. Chang’s men were diving off the boat.
The men easily could have tracked Austin and Lee in the shallow waters of the canal by following their air bubbles on the surface. Eventually, Chang might get lucky, or he simply could wait until the two used up their air supply. But he was impatient.
Austin drew air into his lungs, passed the mouthpiece back to Lee, and pointed with his index finger.
This way.
Taking Lee by the hand, he swam deeper, toward the entrance of the temple enclosure. Chang’s men were at a disadvantage without air and were quickly outdistanced. By the time their prey vanished through the temple wall, the men were swimming back to the surface. Chang’s boat moved back and forth, searching for telltale bubbles. Not seeing any, Chang assumed that his targets had slipped past him. He ordered that the inflatable move farther out into the canal. By then, Austin and Lee were inside the temple.
Lee was buddy-breathing like a pro, but she almost gulped down a mouthful of water when Austin showed her the wall carvings. Like Austin, she too put her hand on the jellyfish. She shook her head in frustration at not being able to talk. Austin pointed to the camera clipped to his vest and signaled OK with his thumb and index finger.
They perched on the edge of the temple pool, sharing the air supply and taking in the marvelous carvings. Austin checked the supply, then tapped his wristwatch and pointed toward the temple entrance. Buddy-breathing was using up the air in the tank twice as fast. Lee nodded in understanding. They swam side by side, as if joined at the hip, until they came to the outer wall. Austin signaled Lee to wait. He slipped out of his vest and swam out into the canal. All was quiet. He looked up at the surface but saw no sign of Chang or the rental boat.
He heard the sound of a engine, but to his practiced ear it sounded different from the inflatable’s high-revving one. He decided to take a chance. Moving closer to the foundation of the islet, he surfaced and peered out from behind an outcropping where the basalt base had collapsed.
A tour boat was moving along the canal toward the rental boat, which was submerged except for the bow, which stuck out of the water at an angle. More important, Chang and his men had vanished.
Austin waved until someone in the tour boat saw him. When the boat turned his direction, he took a deep breath and went back for Song Lee. He gave her a thumbs-up, then pointed upward. She repeated the OK, and together they slowly rose to the surface.
CHAPTER 37
SHORTLY AFTER THE SIKORSKY SEAHAWK LIFTED OFF FROM Pohnpei, Zavala had slipped a chart from the TOP SECRET pouch Austin had put in his safekeeping and matched the specks on it to the islands and atolls he could see from the helicopter. Ensign Daley tapped him on the shoulder and pointed directly ahead, where silhouettes of ships dotted the ocean sheen.
“Looks like we’re coming up on an invasion fleet,” Zavala said.
“We’re entering the search area,” Daley replied. “We’ve got six Navy ships working the waters around the lab site. A research vessel from NUMA has come in to help out. My ship is the command center. We’re coming up on her at twelve o’clock.”
The Seahawk quickly covered the distance to the Concord, hovered over the stern for an instant, then dropped slowly onto the large circle painted on the deck. Zavala slid the helicopter’s door open and climbed out. He was greeted by a gray-haired man in a khaki uniform.
“I’m Hank Dixon, Mr. Zavala,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m commander of the guided-missile cruiser Concord. Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks, Captain. You can call me Joe. My boss, Kurt Austin, is busy in Pohnpei, but he’ll be coming along in a couple of hours. Ensign Daley told me that the Concord is acting as central control for the search flotilla.”
“That’s right. C’mon, I’ll show you what we’ve been doing.”
The captain led the way to the midship’s search-and-rescue center, just off the main deck. A dozen men and women, sitting in front of computer monitors, were processing information that was streaming in from the ships and planes involved in the search.
“How close are we to the actual lab site?” Zavala asked.
Dixon pointed down to the deck at his feet.
“It’s approximately three hundred feet directly under the ship’s hull. We had been on standby patrol for the lab, acting as backup for the support ship, Proud Mary. When we heard the Mayday, we got to the site within hours.”
“Where is the support ship now?” Zavala asked.
“A Navy salvage vessel is towing what’s left of her to a ship-yard, where the forensics folks can take a closer look at her. We were busy taking care of the survivors, so it took some time before we got around to checking on the status of the lab. When we couldn’t raise it on the radio, we erroneously assumed at first that the communications buoy got shot out. We carry an ROV for hull inspections, and we got it down.” He stepped over to a computer screen. “Those circular depressions you see in the ocean bottom match the feet of the legs supporting the Locker.”
“There are no drag marks,” Zavala observed. “That indicates the lab was lifted off the site, which would have been possible with the Locker’s neutral buoyancy. Can you show me the site on the satellite map?”
Dixon asked a technician to bring up a map-and-satellite-image hybrid of the waters being searched.
“We’ve been using orbiting spy satellites that can zero in on an area as small as a square yard to look for infrared emissions,” Dixon said. “Davy Jones’s Locker was west of Pohnpei, between Nukuoro Island on the north and Oroluk Island to the south. We’ve drawn lines from all three islands and dubbed our main search area the Pohnpei Triangle.”
“Those red squares must be the areas that have been searched,” Zavala said.
“That’s right. The squares designate the territory that’s been scoured with sonar. The ships transmit their sonar data to our computer network. We map out a grid of the ocean in squares, the ships move over each square parallel to one another in a line that stretches several miles across, and then they move on to the next square. We can cover a lot of ocean that way in a very short time. We’ve also got fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters making visual checks.”
“These would be the islands circled in red,” Zavala said.
“Correct again. They range from midsize islands to atolls not much bigger than a thumbnail. Most are deserted. We’ve put choppers down on a few of them and talked to the inhabitants, but nobody’s reported anything suspicious. The places we can’t get to by boat or air we’ve vetted pretty thoroughly with aerial surveys.”
“The ensign said you’ve deployed sonobuoys,” Zavala said.
Dixon nodded.
“It took a while before we figured out the lab was gone and got acoustical sensors down,” he said. “We’ve got three antisub submarines equipped with electronic ears so sensitive they can hear a fish sneeze out patrolling the perimeters of the triangle.”
“You might want to tell your subs to use their acoustical detectors to listen for the sound signature of a Russian Typhoon-class submarine. The Typhoons run quiet, but maybe you’ll pick something up.”
Dixon gave Zavala an odd look.
“You think the Russians are involved in this?”
“No,” Zavala said, “but one of their old subs might be. Looks like you’ve got all bases covered. I’d like to go back to square one. I’ll contact the NUMA ship to see if I can borrow a submersible so I can get a look firsthand at the site.”