“To escape if something goes wrong, of course,” O’Keefe said. “Haakon told me that it was clamped alongside an adjoining module and it was colored red, and that’s how he spotted it.”
Gordon rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to piece together everything that was just said. “Okay, let’s assume it’s a lab or something. Why would they place it down there, without any sort of support that’s easy to do?”
“Beats me.”
“That structure we’re doing repair work on,” Gordon said. “It’s pretty big. What do you think it’s for?”
“Well, it can’t be watertight because of the way it’s built,” O’Keefe said. “Mostly mated concrete slabs around a solid steel frame. Looks to me like we’re just fixing the superstructure in order to keep it all together.”
“Okay, so the inside of that thing is filled with water and has the same pressure as the outside. Now what could be in it?”
O’Keefe let out a deep breath while rolling his eyes. “Your guess is as good as mine, bro.”
“Go ahead, take the first shot at it.”
O’Keefe tapped his fingers on the aluminum table. “It’s a hangar for some sort of experimental submarine? You know, like those stealth fighters the Air Force kept secret for a long time.”
“You’ve got me to thinking,” Gordon said. “I read a science fiction book about the government finding a UFO deep in the ocean.”
O’Keefe chuckled. “Awesome theory, El Gordo. So it’s a UFO that’s down there! No wonder the company people are so clammed up about it.”
“Hey, you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Hoo boy,” O’Keefe said. “Now I can’t wait to go back out there and see a little alien being following me around on the seafloor. I should have brought one of those deep sea cameras so I can take a selfie with him!”
22
CLIVE LIGER OPENED his eyes the moment he heard the knocking outside his cabin door. He had spent all day inside the Queequeg’s sonar room with Dr. Yamamoto, and he was hoping to finally get some much needed sleep, but now the incessant rapping in the middle of the night began to irritate him. Getting up, he quickly put his shoes back on before unlocking the door.
Poole was standing outside, a sign of worry on his pudgy face. “It’s Danny, there’s something wrong with him.”
Liger wasn’t too happy about being woken up after just a few hours of rest, and this latest happening began to gnaw away what little patience he had left. “You’re supposed to be in charge when I’m resting, Pete. Why didn’t you take care of whatever it is that’s bothering the muppet, hmm?”
Poole hesitated before answering. “He… he got some bad news about his family, and he’s saying he wants out. Completely.”
Liger clenched his jaw. “He knows we all have to be together in this, and we’ve got a ton of money coming our way once it’s all finished.”
“I told him that, over and over,” Poole said. “But then he took out his knife and threatened me with it.”
“Is he in his cabin?”
Poole nodded.
“Okay,” Liger said as he moved past his timid subordinate, walked down a short flight of stairs and turned into a corridor. Danny Fitzroy’s cabin was located close to the engine room, and the humming noises coming from the old motors were a constant reminder of their unfinished task. Poole followed a few paces behind as they both finally reached the door near the end of the passage.
The entryway was slightly ajar, and Liger pushed the door in slowly until he could see its occupant.
Fitzroy was taller than him, and he was leaning up against one of the side bulkheads of the small cabin. Disheveled clothes lay strewn about the interior. A broken bottle of scotch whiskey slid back and forth along a lacquered side table, its spilled contents acting as a lubricant to spur the pieces of glass to move around as the entire boat swayed slightly along the swells.
Liger also saw that a laptop and smartphone had been smashed, with broken pieces of these devices scattered on top of the rumpled bed. “What’s all this?”
Fitzroy’s ruffled hair extended over his forehead, partially concealing his puffy, reddened eyes from the dive leader. “Got an email from Ellie, mate. She’s taking the kids and leaving me if I’m not home by tomorrow.”
Liger remained impassive. “She’ll get over it. Didn’t you buy her a brand new car the last time we all had a holiday?”
“That was two bloody years ago, Clive!” Fitzroy exclaimed, before lowering his tone to a whisper. “We’ve been working nonstop out here ever since.”
“And we’re getting paid a lot of money for it,” Liger said. “Enough to let us all retire. All we need is a few more days to tie things up and—”
Fitzroy threw his hands up, interrupting him. “A few more days? You’ve been saying that for weeks. I haven’t seen my children for ages now. One of my sons broke his arm, and I wasn’t even there for him.”
“We’ve dived together for years, Danny. When we were inside the sat chambers we couldn’t go out no matter what either.”
“But we’re not inside those chambers anymore! We’re on a bloody boat, just going around in circles.”
“And you already know why,” Liger said tersely. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Fitzroy looked down at the mess on the cabin floor. It looked like he was about to cry. “I-I can’t take it anymore. I keep thinking about Liam and Aiden. Ellie said she got a call from Liam’s wife, asking about him, and I couldn’t tell her anything!”
“As I’ve explained over and over to you, we won’t say a word about what happened until after this job. That’s the plan and we’re sticking with it.”
“Liam was my best mate,” Fitzroy said, tears beginning to form on his eyelids. “We were all at his wedding too. Now he’s gone.”
“There’ll be time to grieve after this.”
Fitzroy clenched his teeth. “No, there won’t be! Don’t you understand? We’re all going to get killed the next time we go up against that bloody monster—I know it!”
“No, you don’t,” Liger said. “Dr. Yamamoto has got a plan to stun it and we tow it back to the habitat. Easy peasy.”
Fitzroy pointed towards the floor. “What’s left of Liam and Aiden is still inside the ship’s hold, in body bags!”
“Those two got careless, and it was their fault that thing got loose,” Liger said. “Anyway, people die in this industry, so their families will understand when we give them the bad news. The company has it all figured out already, so we don’t have to do much except corroborate the official report when it comes out.”
“We never signed up for this, Clive! Liam and Aiken are dead not because of diver error, they died because that monster killed them!”
“And their families will be well compensated once we’re finished,” Liger said. “You’ve had it easy for a while now, so you shouldn’t even complain about it.”
Fitzroy let out a long sigh. “You don’t need me anymore, mate. Just please bring me to the nearest port and let me go. I promise I won’t say a word.”
“I still need you,” Liger insisted. “Once we disable that thing we’ll be doing some dives to put it back inside.”
The other man shook his head. “There’s no chance in hell I’ll be going back into the water as long as that monster is out there.”
“Look, if we don’t haul that thing back to the base then we won’t get paid. There’ll be no danger to us because the organism will be unconscious.”
“I saw the news about the American submarine going down,” Fitzroy said. “It was the monster that did it, I’m sure. If it c-can take down a military war machine like that, then we’re hopelessly outclassed and we don’t have a chance in hell of getting out of this alive.”