Chloe glanced at him in surprise. “Really? It’s going to be another two thousand kilometers and you might miss Sally’s birthday.”
“Ah, what the heck,” Ethan said. “We’ve always been looking to test the Sedna in every part of the world’s oceans so we might as well go all the way.”
For the first time in days, Chloe smiled. “Thanks, Ethan. This means a lot to me.”
“Hey, maybe we could even pull a surprise on your brother while he’s doing a dive,” Ethan said. “We’ll just bring our submersible down and hover right beside him while he does his welding and assembly. Morgenstern Oceanic won’t be able to gag us down there.”
Chloe giggled. “Gordon’s a scaredy-cat, we’ll probably give him a heart attack if we take the submarine down there and meet up with him.”
“Yeah, well—”
Their conversation was interrupted when Captain Deke Owens poked his head out from the slightly opened door. Owens had been a former professional surfer, and had become the skipper of the Wanderer through pure merit. “We’re getting an incoming call on the radio. It’s from a Commander Joshua Thomas, US Navy.”
Ethan gave Chloe a look of mild surprise before walking back into the bridge. “He’s one of my contacts. I was introduced to him during a RIMPAC conference in Hawaii last year.”
Chloe followed him into the Wanderer’s bridge. Despite having barely any sleep, her senses immediately heightened while standing beside him as Ethan took the call and identified himself.
Commander Thomas’s voice was both friendly and businesslike. “Nice to hear from you again, Ethan. I understand your boat is currently at port in Banda Aceh, over?”
“That’s an affirmative,” Ethan said. “We were testing a new deep sea submersible in Sydney, but when we heard the news we figured it might be prudent to get closer and offer our services just in case we’re needed, over.”
“You’ve got a submersible? That’s great. How deep can she go, over?”
“About a thousand meters, over.”
“Any detection gear on her, over?”
“Yes,” Ethan said. “She’s modular, so she can be equipped with sonar pods. Our sub can also deploy an ROV while underwater for an extended search range. The Wanderer also has a towed sonar array and a magnetic anomaly detector so we can help from the surface, over.”
“That’s good,” Thomas said. “We lost contact with one of our older Los Angeles-class attack boats a little over a week ago. She was supposed to check in after doing a patrol in the southeastern portion of the Arabian Sea. We’ve deployed a search and rescue task force into the area and the Australians will be joining us, but we can always use some extra help, over.”
“We’d be glad to help, over,” Ethan said.
“Alright, we do appreciate it,” the Navy commander said. “The task force flagship is the USS Port Royal. I’ll relay her coordinates to you and tell them you’ll be coming over to help. How soon can you get to the Arabian Sea, over?”
Ethan glanced at the flat paneled display as Captain Owens switched it over to a satellite map of the nearby oceans. “As soon as we refuel we ought to be in the area in about… seventy-two hours, over.”
“Sounds good, now about the paperwork with regards to civilian contracts—”
“Forget about that for now,” Ethan said, cutting him off. “What’s important is we find those boys first and see what we can do to rescue them. All that legal stuff can wait, over.”
“I like your attitude, Ethan,” Thomas said. “Okay, I’ll relay your intentions to the captain of the Port Royal, and I’ll contact you again to coordinate things in a few hours time, over.”
“No problemo, Commander,” Ethan said as he turned and gave Chloe the thumbs-up sign. “By the time you contact us again, we should be on the way there, over and out.”
Chloe grinned. When the base of her palms started to hurt, she looked down and realized she had been clenching her fists very tightly throughout the whole conversation, and the tips of her nails had dug deeply into the fleshy part.
24
INSIDE THE WET POT, Gordon grimaced while sitting on the toilet seat. He had been woken up only minutes before, and now it was imperative that he finish his ablutions before the dive. It was an ongoing joke within the community that the ideal diver was someone who could defecate on command, but the turd inside his bowels just wouldn’t come out.
A tap was heard coming from the side hatch. “El Gordo—hurry up, dude! We gotta get into the bell soon.”
Goddamn it, Gordon thought as he pushed down with all his might. After what seemed like an eternity, his bowels finally let loose, spilling their contents into the toilet. Now he could breathe easy once more since there wouldn’t be any problems in the water.
The moment he was done he closed the lid and flooded the toilet until it was half full before tapping the intercom system. “Flush please.”
“You got it,” the life support technician said over the line. The toilet contents were quickly flushed down to a holding tank and depressurized.
The side hatch opened, and O’Keefe slid into the wet pot portion of the hyperbaric chamber wearing only his boxer shorts. “About time, dude. I thought we’d be running late again.”
“Shut up,” Gordon said. “I’m not a human dump machine like you.”
O’Keefe shifted sideways as he grabbed his hot water suit from its hanger and began putting it on. “No, you’re not. You just bottle up all that brown stuff until it comes out of your mouth, tight-ass.”
“Maybe I’ll be more like you, and let my girlfriend stick a flagpole up my butt so I can open it up like you can.”
“Promises, promises.”
Langley’s voice was heard from the other side of the hatch. “I forgot to tell you guys, there’s more and more shrimp swimming around out there than ever before. Good luck.”
O’Keefe shook his head as he sealed the side hatch. “Less visibility for us. That’s gonna suck.”
Gordon took his own hot water suit from the hanger at the side of the chamber and began to put it on. “What happened to your gung-ho attitude, dude?”
O’Keefe rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, we ought to bring a net outside the bell, catch a whole bunch of those things and have a shrimp barbeque!”
“How we gonna cook them out there?”
“With our welding torches, of course!”
Gordon cursed as he pulled the diving suit up to his waist. “Goddamn it! This thing’s still wet!”
O’Keefe chuckled. “What did you expect, luxury room service?”
Matt Mullins’s voice came over the intercom. “You guys all set? The bell is now mated to the top hatch.”
Gordon stabbed the intercom’s reply button. “Who’s the freaking tender who was supposed to dry my suit, Mullins?”
“I don’t know but I could check,” Mullins answered.
“Fire him for me, willya? My suit’s still wet.”
Mullins’s voice remained unemotional. “Will do.”
GORDON AND O’KEEFE sat on opposite sides of the diving bell as it went past the Aurora’s moon pool and plunged down into the shadowy depths. Mullins had told them that the repair work was now ahead of schedule, and everything would be completed in another two or three shifts.
The entire dive team was exhausted, but their elation remained high since they could now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once their work was done they’d spend another week inside the chamber while the life support crew gradually lowered the atmospheric pressure and cycled them back to a normal gas mix. After decompression, the crew would unlock the outer hatch and allow them to go back out into the normal world once more.