Reaching up, he opened the blow valve, which ought to let the remaining air trapped in the airlock out… then drew his knife. Clumsily one-handed, because he needed to keep the air mask pressed in place, he began turning the wheel on the underside of the outer hatch… then felt someone turning it from the other side.
The hatch swung up and open, and the last of the escape-trunk air belched out, heading for the surface. Randall allowed himself to be carried with the rush, left hand holding his air tank, right holding his knife.
Wet-suited figures surrounded him … three… no four men. Not SEALs, then. There were only two SEALs aboard the Pittsburgh, so these guys had to be Russkis. He stabbed at the nearest with his knife, felt himself grabbed from behind, felt hands close on his arm and twist his weapon away.
He struggled, trying to break free. One of the men pressed his face close against Randall's face, the faceplate of his mask actually bumping Randall's nose. Randall could hardly see. There was almost no light at all, and the salt water was burning his eyes.
But the eyes he could see behind the faceplate were familiar.
Hell… that faceplate was a full-face rig. A SEAL rig….
McCluskey?…
The other man grasped his upper arm and gave a reassuring squeeze. They were SEALs. The two additional men… realization hit him. Pittsburgh carried her own complement of divers. They must have all come out to look for him.
He was having trouble with the emergency air mask. One of the Pittsburgh divers — they wore standard masks that covered the eyes and nose alone, leaving the mouthpiece free — passed him his mouthpiece and let him draw a deep, full breath of air at the right pressure and flow. Gratefully, he sucked it down, then handed the mouthpiece back.
Randall stopped them, though, as they cleared the Russian crawler sub, tugging at McCluskey's arm and pointing. Someone broke out a light, shining it into the murk as Randall pointed.
He might not be thinking clearly, but he was still a SEAL. Still buddy-breathing with one of the Pittsburgh's divers, he led the group to the west side of the crawler, pointing to indicate where they should shine the light.
It took about ten minutes of searching — the mud was so thick here after the fight, and still hadn't been cleaned out by the current — but at last they found the bodies of three Russian Spets divers … and Tom Nelson.
SEALs never left their own behind, not even their dead.
Together, with Nelson in tow, the five men swam through darkness, leaving the flooded crawler sub behind.
Gordon crouched next to the rack. "How are you feeling?" he asked Randall.
The SEAL was lying in the bunk, an oxygen mask over his face. "Better now, sir." His voice was muffled by the mask. He winced, rubbing the inside of his elbow. "Some joint pain."
Chief Allison nodded. "A slight case of the bends. Too many jumps from two atmospheres to one, in too short a time."
"There wasn't exactly time to play it by the book," Randall said.
"Shit," Gordon said. "We're a long way from a decompression chamber."
"Shouldn't be a problem, Captain," Chief Pyter said. "If we can pop him back into the escape trunk for a few hours."
"Will that work, Doc?"
"Ought to. When you dive deep enough, and stay down long enough, the pressure forces nitrogen from your gas mix into your blood, where it stays in solution. Come up too fast, without giving the nitrogen time to be processed by your breathing, and the drop in pressure lets the nitrogen come out of solution… as bubbles that collect in your joints and a few other places like your brain, where they can cause some serious problems.
"It looks like our SEAL friend only picked up a mild case of decompression sickness. If we get him to the escape trunk, we can pressurize that back up to two atmospheres, then bring the pressure back down slowly."
"How long?" Randall and Gordon chorused together. They glanced at each other self-consciously, then laughed.
"Four or five hours should do it," Pyter said. "Just to be on the safe side."
"Four hours!" Randall exclaimed. "My God… you want me back inside that steel closet for another four hours?… "
"Well, it's that or crippling joint pain, and the chance of an embolism in your lungs or brain."
"Into the escape trunk with you," Gordon said. "That's an order."
"Aye aye, sir." But he didn't sound happy.
"I need to check some things with the COB," Pyter said. "Wait here, Mr. Randall. I'll be back for you in a minute."
"As if I have a choice." When the corpsman had left, he looked at Gordon. "Thanks for coming after me, sir."
"We couldn't very well leave you. I'm sorry about your buddy."
"Nelson. Tom Nelson" he said it as though it were important that Gordon remember the name. "That's the breaks of the game, I guess."
"Damned dangerous game." Gordon was fast becoming sick of the idea of this being a game.
"I'm just sorry I didn't get more intel on that Russian crawler while I had the chance. There were charts, circuit diagrams, even that fancy underwater pistol that nailed me…. "
"Well, you can hardly be blamed for not bringing that stuff out. You were pretty badly hurt."
"Wasn't that. I just wasn't thinking."
"Couldn't be helped. I'd say you did pretty damned well. Anyway, I imagine they'll debrief you when you get back to the world, and you'll be able to pass on a lot of what you saw in there."
"Maybe. But charts and a fancy rocket pistol would've been better. Damn, we could have learned a lot."
"Is that because you seriously think we need the intel? Or are you trying to justify a stunt as crazy as boarding and capturing a Russian minisub?"
Randall managed a weak smile. "I've been wondering that myself, sir. I… I guess it… I guess Tom's death would mean something if I'd been able to bring anything out except memories."
"He died doing what he believed in, what he thought was right. True?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then his death meant something."
"Maybe Fitch and McCluskey could go back across to the crawler. Those charts could be exactly what the Agency people were looking for when they set this recon up."
"That's a negative," Gordon said. "We were under way thirty seconds after the last of you locked aboard. We have some bad guys coming this way, and they're pissed."
"ASW forces? Do they have you spotted?"
"Hard to tell at this point. My guess is that they knew we were here … or knew we were going to be here, and are trying to flush us into the open."
"'Knew we were going to be here!' Christ, Captain! You mean the op was compromised?"
"That's exactly what I mean."
"Then… then our packages must have been captured. You think they talked?"
"I think it's worse than that. The Russians knew they, and we, were coming ahead of time, before we even entered the Sea of Okhotsk. That means the mission was compromised before we even left Mare Island."
"Shit!"
"The question is why."
"To capture the CIA people?"
"I think they want something bigger, something higher-stakes. I think they want the Pittsburgh? "God in heaven… "
"Makes sense. The Russians are pissed because we've been penetrating areas like Okhotsk and the Barents and White Seas for some years now, waters they think of as their national territory. Whether the law is on their side or ours is immaterial. They think of these incursions as just that — incursions into their territory. They haven't been able to stop our operations, but maybe they can expose what we've been doing. And embarrass us for some good old-fashioned Cold War propaganda in the bargain.