Two hours later, Murdock found the spot he wanted on Goleta Point to park his Ford Explorer. It was another two hours until dark. He had a burger and a milk shake and took a quick combat nap in the cab of his SUV. At dusk he put on his full wet suit, boots, and cap and then shrugged into his Draegr. It was the new type that mixed nitrogen and oxygen according to the depth you were diving. At a hundred feet it was a 32 % mixture. If you went deeper it changed. It meant you didn’t have to set the depth mixture you wanted as you did on the older Draegrs.
He’d had special Velcro flaps put on the wet suit on each thigh. One held an ultra-short speargun. It was powered by CO-2 cartridges and fired a steel shaft that looked like a ten-inch dart. It had three shots. Accuracy was good up to twenty feet. Beyond that it was plain luck. On his left thigh he positioned an old reliable Colt Detective Special .38-caliber with a two-inch barrel and six rounds. He checked the loads and put rounds in all six holes. Firing a pistol underwater wasn’t the smartest move. It was a last-ditch defense. He checked his KA-BAR to be sure it was in place. He put in earplugs and carried his flippers to the edge of the water. The point was deserted. He slipped into the channel just as complete darkness fell.
As he waded out, he spotted the lights of the two drill rigs in the immediate area. The one they called 27 was to the left, and farther out to the right would be the mystery tower, 4. The lights on both towers glowed in the darkness of the channel and the faint islands beyond. He figured it at two miles at the most.
For the first mile, Murdock swam on the surface. It was faster and there was no way his splash would be noticed. He had just passed the first platform when he went underwater to his normal fifteen feet and powered forward toward the second tower. He had no idea what he would find there, but he would start out deep and check around. He would constantly keep watching his back, and if any divers showed up, he’d be ready for them.
He came up once more to check his course, changed it slightly to the right. He was two hundred yards from the tower. It looked benign enough. Lights everywhere. He could see men working, hear the clang and roar of motors and steel hitting steel. Nowhere could he see any security lights bathing the channel waters around the tower legs. To detect any movement in the water around the tower would take a series of sonars, and he doubted if this outfit had them. But how else would they know there was a swimmer in the water near the tower? He gave his silent mind a point. All right, they had sonar, and highly sophisticated so it could tell the difference between a shark and a man swimming.
When he could see the lights through the fifteen feet of water, he surfaced once more and checked the oil rig. He was so close now he couldn’t see the top two levels. He could spot nobody on the first story. One more long look around, then he swam down and worked toward the depths. He leveled off at what he guessed was eighty feet and did a slow circle, watching every way around the compass. He spotted no swimmers, but his visibility was no more than five feet down this deep. He could still see the lights of the tower above, although now they were faint and wavering.
Time to start up. The sonar should have picked him up by now. Where did they have the sonar setup? How powerful was it? He leveled off at fifty feet. No swimmers, no spearguns, no bang sticks. He wondered if a bang stick would disable a man as well as a shark? He knew it would. The CO-2 set off by a shotgun shell would slam through a wet suit and gush inside the body cavity, expanding rapidly. It probably would collapse both lungs and balloon the body, sending it floating quickly to the surface. He should have a few for the SEALs.
At thirty feet he paused again, then swam around the square legs of the tower. No enemy divers. Why? If they had regular scuba gear they could easily go to thirty feet. The old Draegrs were set to work at a maximum of thirty-five feet. He looked upward watching for any shadows crossing the pattern of light from the hundreds of bare bulbs burning on the platform. Nothing. The third time he swept the area he found a swimmer. High up, maybe at fifteen feet.
Could the ones running the sonar communicate with a swimmer in the water? He didn’t know. If they had sonar, they might have a way to use voice through the water to a swimmer. He’d have to check that out. Upstairs. They were watching for him up there. They? He watched for another fifteen minutes and saw three swimmers. They came together for a conference evidently, then parted. Two went out of sight and the third one stayed on Murdock’s side of the platform.
He knew now the swimmers were there. Time for more surveillance. He swam down to the bottom. He wasn’t sure of the depth as he began to swim around the tower in ever-widening circles. Out about fifty yards on the west side of the tower, he found a strange structure on the sea floor. It was a dark blob, but definitely man-made. He didn’t want to use the one waterproof light he had. Up close he estimated the concrete-looking dome of a building was fifty feet square and fifteen feet high. There were no pipes, tubes, or wires extending from the structure on any side he could see, and no entryway on the sides or top. He pulled away from it and swam toward the tower and upward.
At fifty feet he paused again and watched for the shadow divers above him. Once more they gathered, probably exchanging notes on write boards, flashing small lights. Then they parted. Murdock drew his KA-BAR and powered upward at the lone diver on his side of the tower. The guard swimmer moved slowly back and forth as if walking a post. Murdock came up beneath him and touched his foot. The man reacted at once, drawing a knife and turning to face Murdock. The Navy SEAL powered straight at the surprised diver, batted away his knife hand, feinted one way, then drove in the other way, his KA-BAR slashing and tearing at the diver’s face mask and air tube. The man wore air tanks and was clumsy in his turns. Murdock dodged one way, surged upward as the airless diver clawed his way toward the surface. Murdock caught him and drove his blade deeply into the man’s stomach, then jerked it out.
He saw a second diver coming from his left, and pivoted around in the water. Murdock pulled the speargun from his leg, and when the diver was ten feet away and waving his fighting knife, Murdock fired the first ten-inch steel shaft. It hit the attacking diver just under his clavicle, missing his heart and lung. The diver soared upward out of the fight. Murdock waited, but no third diver appeared. He had no prisoner. He swam down to fifty feet and moved away from the tower. After a hundred yards he surfaced to get his bearings, angled more to the southeast, and began stroking for the shore.
Twice he came to the surface from his familiar fifteen feet, and adjusted his course to hit the point. It was easy to see from the water, being just up a ways from the Goleta campground where there were a dozen beach fires blazing brightly.
He stopped just offshore and checked the landing area. His Explorer was where he had left it. Nobody seemed to be around it. No one on the beach. He swam the rest of the way, walked out of the water, pulled off his fins, and carried them.
A man surged out of some shadows to his left straight at Murdock, swinging a baseball bat. Murdock spotted him at once and threw his swim fins at the man, knocking the bat out of his hands. Murdock pulled his KA-BAR, and was about to challenge him when he saw a second man come from directly in front of him with a knife. He ducked the charge, threw up his left arm, and felt the knife hit it, but the blade didn’t cut through. He whirled and found a third man charging toward him.