“Gear up,” said Jonah as he shoved a slim inflatable life vest into Vitaly’s arms. “Make sure your loadout includes survival suits, flotation, helmets, climbing gear, harnesses, and any computer tech you’ll need on the inside.”
“We use scuba gear?” asked Vitaly.
“Pony bottles only,” said Jonah. “Keep it on your person, not in your mouth. If you get stuck underwater you’re probably fucking dead anyway.”
“How about first aid?” suggested Alexis, pointing to a red-crossed sling pack hanging from a hook on the nearest bulkhead.
Jonah shook his head. “We can’t get bogged down with wounded — not even for an initial triage. We’d never make it to the bridge or engineering in time to accomplish anything.”
Alexis scowled as she pulled her neoprene survival suit over her boots, wiggling the thick orange waist up and over her hips. “I’m just going to point out that anybody who knows a good goddamn about operating the Scorpion is heading out the hatch with you.”
“Noted.”
Sun-Hi and Marissa approached from the corridor, the pair holding one marine radio for each of the salvage team.
“You’d better not disappear on me again,” said Marissa, shoving one of the radios into Jonah’s hands. “No turning up in three years on the other side of the goddamn world.”
“Or else what? You’ll get engaged to an accountant without doing me the courtesy of breaking it off first?”
“Or I’ll kick your fucking ass, that’s what,” retorted Marissa. “And he’s not an accountant; he’s an equity trader at the largest hedge fund in Seattle, you dick.”
“Sounds an awful lot like an accountant to me,” said Jonah as he grabbed a length of rope from the wall and slung it over one shoulder.
“Some of us work jobs that require more than a sledgehammer and two brain cells to knock together,” shouted Marissa, starting to lose control of her temper as she jabbed an outstretched finger towards Jonah. Sun-Hi stepped between them before Marissa could launch any further verbal onslaught, handing Alexis and Vitaly the two remaining radios.
“The radio maybe not work inside Japan ship,” she said hesitatingly. “Very much interference.”
“Makes sense,” whispered Alexis with a shiver. “I figured we’d be on our own the moment we stepped onto that carrier.”
Jonah wasn’t prepared for the heat. The tilting helicopter carrier belched a fresh slick of flaming aviation fuel with every swell, swirling against the hull of the Scorpion like a halo of fire. He swam towards the sinking ship, trying to ignore the taste of diesel in his mouth, the burning chemicals against his skin. The control tower was on the high side of the flight deck, looming over them at an impossible angle, as though it could snap off and tumble into the sea at any moment.
Nor was he prepared for the bodies. Seeing them from the deck of the Scorpion as they drifted by was one thing, but the seas were thick with dead men, forcing Jonah and Vitaly to push aside blown-apart arms and legs as they slowly made for the carrier. Alexis stopped following him for a moment, treading water in place as she vomited bile from her empty stomach.
A wave picked them up and carried them forward, swirling more eye-watering diesel in Jonah’s mouth and nose. His hands and feet were already numb from the frigid cold, but his face cracked and pulsed with dry, blinding heat from the fuel fires just a dozen feet away. And then he caught the chain railing, bracing his feet to pull himself halfway out of the sea, helping Alexis and Vitaly onto the slick flight deck. They slumped, catching their breath as they leaned against the nearest towering dome-headed Phalanx gun.
The white, pill-shaped gun dome was peppered with small-arms fire, the bright white plastic torn away to reveal sophisticated semi-autonomous radar technology within. The entire robotic emplacement faced the wrong direction. Black, six-barreled cannons smelled of cordite and carbon, and the odor of old gunfire penetrated Jonah’s nostrils even over the burning oilfield below.
Alexis gasped for air as she stole a look back towards the Scorpion and then up to the distant bridge tower above. “We can’t get up that incline,” she shouted over crackling fire and slapping waves, filthy seawater dripping from her lips as she spoke. “Has to be a fifty, sixty degree angle.”
“This way,” said Jonah, pointing towards a massive platform elevator a short distance across the deck from their tenuous position. Used to transport helicopters and equipment up from the hanger deck below, the half-descended elevator had now become the only entrance to the black maw of the carrier’s destroyed interior.
“No way,” said Vitaly, shaking his head furiously. “Is— is suicide!”
Part of Jonah agreed with the bleak assessment. Waves swirled and slapped against the tilted, open elevator shaft like sea cave. They’d need to swim under the lip of the flight deck in order to make their way into the dark interior.
“Use your pony bottle,” he instructed. “There’s too much oil and debris in the water to see, so feel your way along the side edge and then come straight up once you’re inside.”
“Easier said than—” began Alexis, but Jonah was already underwater, swimming into the mortally wounded ship. Impenetrable darkness swirled around him as he guided himself by touch alone, fingers brushing against freezing metal railings and the interior bulkheads of the partially submerged hanger deck.
He surfaced within hell itself. The cavernous hanger deck was illuminated by plumes of burning aviation fuel and the flickering red tones of the failing emergency lighting. It had become a River Styx of churning waves, bodies, and floating equipment. Unconnected aviation battery packs snapped and sparked, electrical arcs leaping into the oil-soaked waters. Waterlogged, destroyed helicopters and missile dollies were crushed together against the low side of the hanger, roiling in the dark, nightmarish flood.
Jonah brushed aside the thick strap to his uninflated life vest and flicked on an anglehead flashlight. The powerful light illuminated a too-small patch of churning seawater as Alexis and Vitaly surfaced behind him.
Alexis wiped the filthy water off her face, coughing as she sucked in a lungful of smoky air. “Christ,” she exclaimed, her eyes taking in the destruction as she secured her pony bottle.
“This way,” shouted Jonah over the din of waves, shrieking metal, and crackling electricity. He pointed towards a wide bulkhead hatch forty feet above the waters, no doubt the stairwell entrance to the bridge tower. Jonah began to climb hanging cargo webbing, using the thick nylon straps to pull himself out of the water and towards the dark, tilting stairwell above. He reached down, pulling Vitaly and Alexis up and through the threshold of the massive entrance.
The trio paused for a moment, sitting on a wall as they caught their breath and prepared for the next ascent. The climb up the flight control tower wouldn’t be easy — nearly five stories of sideways metal stairs separated them from the command deck above. The darkness inside was infinite and all encompassing, penetrated only by their powerful flashlights. If the carrier heeled over and turned turtle, it’d be over in seconds — a gush of foamy waters as the seas flooded in, trapping them as the carrier plummeted into the abyss below.
Jonah led Alexis and Vitaly upwards, climbing the railings of the angled stairwell as they slowly made their way towards the command deck. “We’ll try to see if we can get the emergency generators running,” he heaved, his breath exhausted from his lungs. The smell of oil and aviation fuel was everywhere, in every pore. “We’ll pump water from the flooded holds into the dry ones, see if we can get this carrier stabilized. She’ll ride low, but it could give her just enough time for more help to arrive.”