“Agreed,” said Marissa. “I know some local ports in Indonesia where we can lay low, maybe even do some business.”
Jonah scratched his short beard and glanced at the navigational console as the crew waited for him to speak. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he began.
“Let me guess,” said Hassan, shaking his head in frustration. “Fleeing is exactly what the Japanese would expect, and we’re going to do something much more hazardous instead.”
“I’m all for running when the time comes — but the doc is goddamn right,” said Jonah. Marissa and Alexis both groaned, rolling their eyes in hunger and frustration. “Running is what they’d expect. They’ve no doubt already encircled the area with submarines, helicopters, and satellites. They’re closing in on us as we speak, and, they’ll find us if we run for it. But the last thing they’d anticipate is for us to stay right where we are.”
“Because it’s fucking insane,” said Alexis. “Every floating asset the Japanese have is going to converge on this location within hours.”
“But captain has point,” said Vitaly. “Much noise when ships arrive, easy to hide. Much safer than — what you say? Run gauntlet?”
“We couldn’t save the carrier — not with her systems turning on us — but we may be able to show it wasn’t us,” said Jonah. “Running will only make us look guilty. I want to stay, dive the carrier, and try to salvage the central hard drives. They won’t last long in these waters, and there’s no way the Japanese can mobilize a dive team in time.”
“If running away looks guilty, staying at the scene of the crime looks straight up suicidal,” mumbled Alexis. “I can’t even imagine what they’re going to do if they find us down here.”
“It’s settled,” boomed Dalmar, folding his arms. “We cannot win when we cannot fight. And we cannot fight when we do not know our enemy.”
“What’s the depth of the ocean bottom?” said Jonah.
“Maybe five hundred fifty feet?”
“Can we risk a ping?”
“Why not?” said Vitaly. “In for penny, in for pound.” He punched the button, a single acoustic ping erupting from the Scorpion’s bow to echo over the underwater landscape below. The computer churned through the returning data, slowly drawing a green three-dimensional digital wireframe of the upright carrier on the ocean floor deep beneath them.
“There,” said Jonah, resting his fingertip on the top of the sunken carrier’s flight deck. “I want you to land the submarine right there.”
Jonah secured the last zipper of his thick neoprene diving suit. He twisted the hot water supply valve back and forth with his fingers, satisfied that it turned easily. Unlike a wetsuit, which used a diver’s own body heat to warm a thin layer of water, the hot-water suit would continually inject a steady supply of electrically-heated water through a web of tubing — a necessity when breathing a heat-robbing mixture of oxygen and helium at depth. The system wasn’t perfect as there were always cold spots in the suit, but, that was diving.
“Are you certain swimming into the carrier is the best option?” said Hassan, leaning against the hatchway as he tapped a foot in nervous anxiety. “I’ll have you know I nearly died at just half this depth.”
“Well, you didn’t know what you were doing,” said Jonah dismissively as he pulled on one oversize Wellington boot after another over the neoprene suit feet. “I do. Plus, this isn’t scuba diving — it’s saturation diving. Sat divers don’t swim, they walk. Once under pressure, my soft tissues and bloodstream will take on dissolved oxygen and helium to the point of saturation. I’ll breathe an exotic gas mixture, mostly helium.”
“Because helium is inert?”
“Yep. It doesn’t make you high like nitrogen, or kill you like higher concentrations of oxygen — but it does make you cold as a motherfucker, believe me. I’ll be physically attached to the Scorpion by umbilical for my heat and air needs. The helmet has a built-in camera and microphone setup, too, so we’ll be in touch every step of the way. No sweat.”
“I am familiar with the principles of hyperbaric medicine,” sniffed Hassan. “As well as the myriad of associated medical risks.”
“Sure,” said Jonah as he hefted the bulky fifteen-minute emergency air tank over his shoulders and secured it with a snap. Marissa stuck her head through the hatchway, watching him as he assembled the gear. “High pressure nervous syndrome, aseptic bone necrosis, decompression sickness… and that’s just the obvious stuff. I’ve known guys who got crushed, froze to death, explosively decompressed. Hell, I once heard about a guy who got his intestines sucked right out his O-ring when his tender flushed the toilet at the wrong time.”
“I’d never consider doing that to you,” laughed Marissa as she made an obscene flushing gesture with her hand.
“Quite the ghastly image, that,” said the doctor.
“No shit. The Scorpion is capable of supporting a saturation diver on a limited basis, but this won’t exactly be a textbook operation. We’re essentially using a converted escape trunk, not a proper diving bell, and there’s no hyper-baric lifeboat if things go tits up.”
“I’ll make sure we have plenty of fresh water and a change of clothes upon your return,” said Hassan. “I’m not certain what else I can do to be useful.”
“Thanks,” said Jonah as Marissa passed him a tool belt. He secured it around his waist beside a clanking rack of carabineers and nylon webbing. “And don’t forget the reading material. I’ll be decompressing at roughly six vertical feet per hour, so I’m looking at upwards of four days in the lockout chamber.”
“Four days?” sputtered Hassan.
“Maybe throw a couple of Cosmos onto the stack? I’ve read all the Better Homes and Gardens at least three, four times through. It’s worse than a dentist’s office down here.”
“He’s always liked the quizzes,” added Marissa.
Jonah caught himself taking great satisfaction at Hassan’s baffled frustration. “Just be careful. Can you at least agree to that?” the doctor finally said.
“I promise to not get killed or whatever,” said Jonah, rolling his eyes. “But only if you go worry somewhere else. Marissa and I have some pre-dive checklists to get through.”
“Very well. Goodbye, then.”
“Later, Doc,” said Marissa. She pulled a thirty-pound Kirby Morgan diving helmet off the shelf as the doctor ducked his head underneath the low hatch and left the armory without another word.
“Is he always so uptight about everything?” asked Marissa, tilting her head toward the now-empty hatchway.
“He grows on you. I wasn’t exactly the doc’s biggest fan when we met, but he’s a good man. Better than me, at least the way I figure things.”
“Never thought I’d go back to being your dive tender,” said Marissa with a faint smile. She considered the helmet in her hands, not quite ready to pass it to Jonah.
“You were good at it. I think we spent the better half of our relationship on opposite sides of a bariatric tank glass.”
“It was the job. It was the life we had — until it wasn’t.”
Jonah sighed. “I don’t want to be an asshole here, but you can’t possibly think we’d still be together if I hadn’t disappeared on you. Don’t get me wrong — when things were good, they were the best. But we also put each other through a metric ton of shit. You and I were a delayed fuse. We were always going to blow up in the end.”
Marissa turned away for a moment before shooting him an angry look. “Maybe, maybe not. You never gave us chance to find out like a normal couple. Not to belabor a point, but you were dead as far as I knew.”