Alison watched Dirk suddenly disappear again. Each time it was for a longer duration. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” replied Lee. “Speak slowly. And assume there’s no voice recognition on our side. There’s too much background noise out here.”
Alison and Chris nodded at each other. Behind them, Captain Emerson quietly approached to observe.
Borger placed his laptop down carefully on one of the ship’s large storage compartments. The faded metal stood nearly waist high and approximately eight feet from the edge. Lee stepped in next to him and looked up at Alison. “Ready to turn it on?”
Alison turned back to Sally, who was still talking excitedly less than ten feet further out. “Hit it.”
Behind her, Lee activated the software and the familiar translation screen came up. The colored, dancing lines that represented IMIS’ translation process with intersecting data points came up on the display. The computer’s system log data appeared in a second pane. As soon as the application started running, the “Translating” button began flashing on the screen. IMIS was instantly taking in the sounds from Sally.
In their lab, most of the translations to and from the dolphins happened very fast, especially since much of their language had now been identified. But the new delay over the satellites meant it would take longer for IMIS to spit Sally’s words back out into English.
Nevertheless, when the first translation of Sally’s frantic words came back through the laptop’s speakers, none of them was prepared for what they heard.
60
Sounds under water. Help need. Hurry.
It took only seconds for Alison to understand what Sally was saying. “Oh my god!” she cried and whirled around to Lee and Borger, who were both staring intently at the screen.
“Does that mean what I think it does?” asked Borger.
Alison urgently pushed past both men and typed a response on the keyboard. “What do you hear, Sally?”
After a long pause, the translation came back from IMIS and was piped out over the underwater speakers. It took even longer to wait for Sally’s response. Hear sound below. Short short short long long long short short short. Many time.
Borger’s face became very serious. “That’s SOS in Morse code!”
It was called a “Gumby” suit and the earliest version successfully used was in 1930, deep in the Atlantic. They were conceived and designed from a single need for sailors trapped in dangerous situations below deck: survival.
Colored bright orange and made from thick, closed cell-foam neoprene, Gumby suits sported a wide opening allowing them to be donned and zipped up in mere seconds. Their high collars sealed quickly over the mouth and nose, and an internal oxygen tank provided up to two hours of breathable air. And Gumby suits had long since become standard equipment for every Navy ship.
The rigid design was inflexible. And without a mask, only a familiar blurriness was visible underwater. But the suits worked. Had they not been stored on the ship’s second deck, neither Clay nor Krogstad would have survived the crushing wave of water that filled the ship when it came plunging down from above.
It was pure luck, as was the large underwater reef off the coast of Georgetown on which the wreckage of the Bowditch had landed, preventing it from descending into a much deeper abyss. But in spite of their initial good fortune, both Clay and Krogstad were now almost out of oxygen.
Movement was extremely limited within the suits, and they could barely see each other’s blurry shapes under the water, against the ship’s dimming emergency lights.
Clay couldn’t communicate with Krogstad, so instead he concentrated on forcing himself past the body’s natural panic reaction. He knew how quickly hyperventilating would use up his precious air and tried to remain calm as possible. But the raw emotion of fear was relentless. He repeatedly felt his body’s survival instincts attempt to seize control, and each time he forced himself through it. He had to think. It was the only way to fight, so Clay floated motionless, going through the logistics. How much air did he have? How fast was he breathing?
He remembered equalizing the pressure in his ears three times on the way down, which meant his depth was probably between eighty and a hundred feet. And that meant his compressed air would not last long. Thankfully, he was in excellent shape, which gave his respiratory system a higher level of efficiency.
He had gingerly reached around in an effort to find something, anything. His thick, gloved hand had brushed several small items before he found a pipe on the floor beneath him. It had been thrown free from one of the maintenance closets after being ripped open by the torpedo blast. With it, he proceeded to tap out the letters S… O… S on what he believed to be a wall close to the outside hull.
After almost an hour of tapping, Clay took another break and cracked open one of his eyes. The red lights appeared to be fading overhead. How long would they stay on? Without them, he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.
But it wasn’t the lights that were fading. It was his brain. The air in the suit was nearing depletion. Clay’s brain was suffering from the inability of his lungs to draw in and supply him with enough oxygen. His thoughts were slowing and becoming more difficult to follow.
He opened his eyes wider and looked again for Krogstad, whose gray silhouette was no longer moving. He was older than Clay, which meant he most likely was drawing his breaths faster. Clay reached out with his foot and bumped the captain. There was no reaction from Krogstad. He simply floated silently a few feet away.
Clay’s body shuddered for a second time. He could feel the beads of sweat forming on his skin. His renewed banging of the pipe against the inside hull was now beginning to slow, until it finally stopped altogether. His eyelids began to close on him and the pipe fell from his grasp.
It was then that Clay could see. He could see Alison’s beautiful face looking at him, saddened. A wave of remorse washed over him. Remorse of what his death would do to her. She didn’t need any more grieving in her life. Alison’s image was replaced by his parents. They were standing together, young, before the divorce, and beaming at him with proud smiles. The feeling of remorse faded and was replaced by something warmer, something comforting. They were waiting for him and ready to welcome him into their eternal arms.
As his remaining air faded, Clay’s last lucid thought was a pleasant one: the image of a dolphin. He would always remember how happy they looked with their curved mouth and perpetual smile.
It took Dirk four tries to navigate through the labyrinth of mangled ship and find where the sound was coming from. Then just as he did, the banging abruptly ended.
There were two of them, surrounded in strange shapes that resembled large crabs. And neither was moving. Dirk knew that when humans became still in the water, it was very bad. He quickly latched his teeth onto the nearest of the two figures and pulled him backward. He then circled around, pressed his nose against the limp body inside, and pushed it forward. Together they moved through the maze, over giant shards of twisted metal and missing decks, and through the fields of floating debris.
Jim Lightfoot was Captain Emerson’s go-to guy for water dives. Lightfoot was part of the research team, and at six foot three he was young and strong. More importantly, he had been a championship swimmer in a former life.
Dressed in nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks, Lightfoot hurtled onto the bench seat on the ship’s stern while several crewmen frantically added his gear. Two men slipped fins on his feet while two more lifted the heavy tanks onto his back. He quickly tested his regulator and nodded, then pulled the mask down over his tan face.