Her chest burned with that unforgiving and relentless desire to take a deep breath.
Reaching the horizontal opening, Genevieve entered the code into the keypad and the outer hatch swung open. She swam inside and fumbled around in the dark for the mouthpiece. Her right hand made its connection and she shoved it into her mouth and took a deep breath.
The air was cold and sweet.
Next to her, Matthew shined a waterproof flashlight that he must have had in his pocket. Genevieve handed her mouthpiece to Svetlana who was the last to enter the lockout trunk. Genevieve made her way to the opposite end of the trunk to locate another regulator mouthpiece.
When all five of them were attached to the internal breathing apparatus, Genevieve closed the external hatch and vented the water, leaving them inside a dry chamber.
The lockout trunk filled with air, expelling the last of the seawater. When the pressure equalized with the internal hull, Veyron turned the lock, and the watertight hatch opened up.
Sam Reilly looked up from inside with a grin. “Welcome aboard.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Sam brought the rest of his crew up through the forward passageway into the Command Center.
They were bruised and battered, but in remarkably good shape given that the Maria Helena had been torpedoed seconds after they jumped overboard. Genevieve had a small laceration above her right eyebrow that she appeared not to have noticed and no one had any fractured bones as far as he could tell.
Genevieve spotted Tom at the helm, where he and his father were quickly working their way through a series of checklists to start up all the submarine’s system.
She came up and gave him a passionate kiss on his lips.
It was short and sharp. They both knew there was plenty of work to do if they wanted to live much longer.
Tom said, “I was worried about you.”
Genevieve shrugged. “It takes more than a torpedo to kill me.”
Sam laughed. In her case, she probably meant it. She was probably the toughest person he’d ever met, male or female, and certainly the most naturally deadly.
Commander Bower ran his eyes across the gang.
Sam introduced everyone to the commander.
Commander Bower said, “I believe I’ve met your entire crew, except Svetlana,” the commander said before his eyes landed on Svetlana. “I don’t think I’ve met you before — what do you do?”
“She’s a spy,” Sam said, matter-of-factly.
“Oh good. One of ours?”
“Afraid not. She’s Russian. Actually, she was in the process of trying to track your submarine.”
“Of course,” Commander Bower said, cheerfully. “How did she end up here?”
Sam sighed. “It’s a long story.”
Svetlana glanced at the sonar monitor. “We’ve got incoming!”
Sam said, “Another torpedo?”
“No, depth charges,” she replied.
There was nothing the Omega Deep’s countermeasures could do about it.
Commander Bower said, “Brace for contact!”
A nearby depth charge rocked the Omega Deep.
The commander glanced at an array of instruments, forgetting about the spy on board his experimental and most secret submarine.
Another depth charge rocked the hull. Sam thought for sure the hull would be ripped apart any minute.
Sam asked the commander, “How long can she take this?”
“All day, if she has to. Those depth charges are being intentionally dropped too far away to cause any real damage.”
“Why?”
“Because Halifax doesn’t want to sink the Omega Deep any more than I do. He needs it still afloat if he’s to sell it.”
“They know where we are?” Sam asked.
“Sure they do.”
“How?”
“A man named James Halifax, my old XO, betrayed me. He sold the Omega Deep to the highest bidder but hasn’t been able to break the security code I placed on the computer’s main system. He’s been back and forth a few times, hoping he could starve me into submission. My guess is he’s marked the outer shell of the submarine with something so that he can identify her, despite the Omega Cloak still being active.”
Another depth charge exploded nearby. This one was much closer.
Sam said, “All the same. I’d rather not wait around here a moment longer than we have to. Can we get this thing underway?”
Commander Bower grinned. “You bet your ass we can!”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Sam looked in the rear-view-mirror at the top of his console at the commander, who seemed twenty years younger as he buzzed from station to station in the control room, checking readouts and making minor adjustments on the touchscreens. The task of leading this crack team of mariners was invigorating him, breathing new life into his emaciated form.
The commander had given Matthew a crash course in submarine piloting. Though substantially different to a surface ship, mastering the craft shared similar principles, so was not altogether alien to him.
Veyron had taken the copilot’s chair. The shifting of ballast and executive monitoring of all major systems was a no-brainer for him. Gravitational dynamics was his passion, so he quickly learned the parameters of the operations, and even started to test the boundaries. He flicked through all the menus on the screens and familiarized himself with the layout of the submarine systems. He customized a desktop for himself, prioritizing his access portal to the various functions of the ship under his control.
Every command was given to the pilot team by Commander Bower and repeated back to him as the movements and adjustments were completed. Sam watched the old captain’s excitement as his ship came back to life around him.
Svetlana manned the sonar systems, Tom the navigations, and Genevieve — weapons systems. They all shared the command center together. It was a bull-pit, a war room.
Once Commander Bower was satisfied everyone had a rudimentary ability to operate their assigned stations, he brought the ship alive, section by section.
He monitored the nuclear reactor systems himself, ensuring the powertrain held up after the grounding.
"Okay people, here we go." He said to the assembled crew.
The ship started to gently shudder as the commander transferred thrust to the jet propulsion systems. The Omega Deep was heavily connected to the seafloor, and they needed to break the suction of the soft sandy bottom in order to move the ship up into the water. He set an initial power as a baseline and waited, monitoring the readouts on the screen before him. He called orders to Veyron and Matthew, asking for adjustments of the ballast, rudder, and bow planes. He sought to extract every bit of movement he could from the ship, without stressing her hull too much. He had been aboard this ship since it was three giant pieces in a Massachusetts hangar by the slipway. He knew exactly how much she could and couldn't withstand. With his hand gripping the edge of the control island, he felt his ship’s pulse as the power started to build.
They all waited. Commander Bower stood as a solid rock of determination, unmoving.
Taking his right hand to the screen the commander directed more power to her thrusters. The shuddering of the ship built to a humming crescendo. Again, he waited. It was a huge mass of steel he was trying to move, he wanted to do it as gently as possible — and his sixty-five years had given him patience.
He increased power to the starboard jets and steadily increased throttle at the stern. He was trying to unlock Omega Deep from the seat into which she listed with her 9,000 tons without destroying her driveline. Clouds of mud and sand started to swirl around the ship, clouding the vision from the remote cameras at the stern. The hum in the ship built to a discordant vibration.