His watch read seven-fifty-five a.m. He should arrive at the mother ship by nine, barring any whale mishaps. It was too damn early by his book, but the pay and mystery of his mission drove him forward, one adrenaline shot at a time.
Fifty minutes later, without incident, he heard the motors slow, felt the Glider tilt upward; he was approaching the Trident Tine. His heart raced, anticipating the docking. He reached to the surface camera switch and turned it on. The screen flared in the early morning sun. He was floating on the surface in four-foot waves, rocking and pitching as they passed by. Ahead he could see the enormous mother ship, the Trident Tine; he estimated its length at nearly a hundred yards, a football field long. It resembled an aircraft carrier but it had only a small raised platform on its aft deck; a strange double rotor helicopter was parked there. “My God,” he mumbled, “where do I load this thing?” He searched around the ship for the docking platform, usually hanging from cranes on thick visible cables, but he saw nothing. Then he noticed a uniformed figure on the deck high above waving two colored flags. It’s semaphore! He flew through his memory back to his Navy days, and started to decode the flag sequence. P — O — R — T — S — I — D — E — D — O — C — K. Amazed that he remembered so quickly and accurately, he steered the sub around to the port side and saw the suspended dock he expected should be there. He had seen pictures of them, but had never used one. As he motored slowly toward the cradling rail dock, it submerged so that he could float over it. He moved over it, between the four huge cables hanging from above, and stopped. Then it lifted slightly, locking the Canyon Glider in its rails.
Seconds later, he was airborne, watching the ship’s almost vertical white hull pass him by, as he rose to the deck. He took the opportunity to unlock the overhead hatch and throw it back. Through the opening, he looked up and watched one of the two massive cranes hovering above, lift his twenty-ton submersible. Dizzy, he looked down. Soon he felt a bump, a shaking in the cockpit, signaling his arrival on deck. Before he could release his harness, a head popped through the open hatch, looking in.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Cross. How was your trip? Short and sweet I hope.”
He squinted up into the light, his eyes still adjusting, and saw a uniformed man peering in. His hand was out, offering assistance. He could see four gold stripes on the sleeve. Only a Naval officer, a Captain, would wear them.
“Thank you, Captain. My trip was uneventful, as usual. That is, until I arrived here. I couldn’t find the floating dock. I knew there had to be one. Then I read the semaphore message and it brought me right in. Thanks for that.” He grasped the hand and rose from the cockpit into the morning sunlight. It felt warm, refreshing to him, countering the cool sea air.
“Good. We took a chance that you knew the flag code. Grab your gear and follow me.”
He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder, climbed from the Glider and followed the uniformed man, wearing a sparkling white coat and pants with razor-sharp seams, across the spacious deck. His shoes reflected the passing deck features like mirrors.
There were several two-man bathyspheres, hard diving suits, and reels of long breathing hoses to the side of their path. He wanted to stop and examine them, but the captain sped onward to a stairwell, surrounded by a small shelter.
“We go down here.”
Double stepping behind him to keep up, he followed the captain down the stairs into a long hallway. Armored lights hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, lighting their way.
“There’s the head, if you feel the need,” said the captain, pointing to a passing room.
“No, I’m okay. Thank you anyway.”
They moved on, passing a long row of closed doors until the captain stopped and ushered him into an open door. It was the mess hall. It smelled of coffee, eggs, frying bacon, and pancakes. It was what he wanted to see. He had spent the last half-hour of his trip listening to his stomach growl.
The Captain led him past tables of uniformed men, eating breakfast, to the serving line. He grabbed the tray offered him, and shuffled down the long row of steaming food pans. They looked surprisingly good. He ordered one of everything until his plate was full, then filled a coffee mug and followed the captain to a private table, off to the side of the room.
Before sitting, the captain said, “I’m Captain Tim Broward, commander of this ship. You’ll be seeing a lot of me in the next few weeks, so get used to my face. My crew says that I’m a grisly bear on the outside and a teddy bear on the inside. I’ll let you be the judge of that. Sit.”
Cross nodded, smiled and ate. It was the best shipboard meal he’d tasted in a long time, and that included his four-year stint aboard Naval ships of all kinds and sizes.
As they finished their plates, he stretched and yawned. “I can get used to this. You run a tight ship here, Captain.”
“Well don’t get too used to it. Your trip is just starting,” said Broward.
“Wh-what do you mean sir?”
“Did you see the aircraft on our aft landing pad?”
“The helicopter? Twin rotor?”
“No, it’s an Osprey V22A tilt-rotor VTOL. Takes off and lands like a helicopter, but once it’s in the air the rotors tilt forward and it becomes a twin turboprop. Forward speed up to three-hundred knots. Should get you to your final destination in a little over an hour.”
He shook his head. “Boy, the Navy’s really changed since I served, apparently for the better.”
“Yes, Matt, if I may call you that, you’ll see quite a few advances in our air and sea technologies. This ship is one, designed to support all kinds of submersibles: bathyspheres, mini-subs, UUVs and even UAVs. We also carry a few hard-shell diving suits for those difficult-to-reach places. Most of our equipment is passive, unarmed. We let the fighting ships take care of that end of the business.”
“Yes, please call me Matt; I’m used to that.” He sipped his coffee. “So where am I going next?”
“You’ll be taken three-hundred miles south to the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, near Los Angeles. That’s all I can tell you. We’ll follow you down. Be there tomorrow morning, anchored off the coast, about five miles out. Then, I guess, we’re all going to search for something pretty important. That’s all I know.”
He downed his last sip of coffee, pondering his unknown mission. Funny that a Navy Captain had not yet been informed of the search task.
“So, when do I leave?”
“They’re warming the engines now. Are you ready?”
“Yep, as ready as I’ll be.”
“Grab your kit bag and follow me.”
Walking toward the stern and the helipad, they passed rows of small submersibles ranging from three to sixteen feet in length, all resting in locked cradles on the open deck. Broward stopped and pointed them out in passing, “Those are our submersible search vessels: ROVs, UUVs and AUVs. We deploy them when needed. The long yellow ones are Bluefin-21 AUVs, the shorter multicolor UUVs are the Remus 600 series drones and the boxy ones are ROVs from various subcontractors. The ROVs and UUVs are mostly tethered, controlled from our SCC, submersible control center; the UAVs are preprogrammed for a task, similar to a torpedo, but they don’t explode or self destruct. They simply do an assigned task without human control and return. But they can be externally controlled if needed; aborting missions, returning them to base, etcetera.”
He cocked his head. “I’m not sure why you need me with all those drones. I’m sure they can run circles around me.”