SDV evolutions, however, rarely had the luxury of light save for the faint green luminescence coming off the console instrumentation, and there was nothing beneath him now but the blackness of a night unchanging across a span of time measured in tens of millions of years. The bottom along this part of the central North Sea averaged forty fathoms—240 feet. The sensation was less like being aboard a small submarine than like what Johnson imagined it would be flying through the depths of space.
Certainly, this wasn’t what he’d dreamed about before joining the Navy, exploring the ocean depths and the wonders of the sea. There was almost nothing whatsoever to see here; his vision through the sub’s tiny forward window was sharply limited. His breathing sounded harsh in his ears. The submarine’s cockpit, like its passenger compartment aft, was flooded. Johnson was wearing a full-face mask, one equipped with a radio. His backpack rebreather had been switched off, and his mask hooked to the SDV’s life support.
“Tagalong, Tagalong” sounded in his earphones. “This is Big Brother. Do you copy?”
Peering ahead and up, he could just make out the vast shadow of the Horizon—Big Brother — churning through the water forty yards ahead. The sound of her screws was a pounding, hollow thunder.
“Big Brother, this is Tagalong,” Johnson said. His own voice sounded strangely muffled inside his mask. “I copy.”
Normally, the SEALs would have avoided communications this close to a target… but the link this time was by cable, not radio.
“Okay, Tagalong,” the voice said. “We’re five miles out now. We can see the complex fine. Any closer, and they might spot the tow. The boss says it’s time for your guys to let go.”
“Roger that,” Johnson said. “Any word on what the reception’s going to be like?”
“They’ve given us permission to come to one hundred meters” was the reply. “Don’t imagine they’ll sink us right off, not if they want to negotiate for their friends back on shore. But they don’t sound friendly.”
“Copy that. I’ll pass it on.”
“Right. Here’s the skinny. Your target is at a bearing of three-five-five true, range five miles. Any questions?”
Johnson took a last look at his instrumentation — not that he had that much to look at. The Mark VIII SDV didn’t pack that much in the way of fancy electronics. “Ready when you are, folks,” Johnson said. “Let ’er rip!”
“Hold on t’your hats, then, mates. Cast off!”
For the past four and a half hours, ever since leaving Middlebrough, Johnson had been riding the SDV’s diving and control planes to keep the vessel at a depth of between thirty and forty feet, but nothing else had been required of him in the way of steering. The Horizon had four times the SDV’s maximum speed and far, far more endurance.
It was for that reason that Murdock had suggested the idea of having an anchor tug tow the SEAL recon team most of the way to the objective.
Johnson hit the shackle release. There was a rattling clank from somewhere above his head, then a sudden lurch and a loss of forward velocity as Horizon’s cable slid free. His communications headset went dead too as the simple jack popped free of its receptacle on the SDV’s hull. The control yoke assumed a life of of its own as the vessel’s nose tried to come up, and Johnson forced it down.
The SEALs were all alone now.
Reaching to the channel select, he switched on the SDV’s intercom system. “Yo,” he called. “How’s the ride back there?”
“I’ve seen coffins with roomier amenities” came back the reply. A few feet behind Johnson’s back, in a separate compartment, four SEALs were crammed into a space only slightly larger than a typical phone booth. “I just hope those other guys can drive.”
Johnson chuckled. “Roger that. They said the target was in sight. Range five miles.”
“Yeah,” Roselli’s voice added. “Assuming, of course, they found the right rig. Don’t know about them, but all those derricks look the same to me!”
Johnson leaned forward, peering upward through murky water. The wake was thinning overhead in a churning wash of gray light. The Horizon was pulling away. Gently, gently, he eased the SDV’s yoke forward, taking the vessel deeper.
By craning forward and looking up, he could see the surface, a vast, shifting ceiling of liquid silver stretched overhead, with occasional shafts of pale light slanting through the water, illuminating myriad specks of drifting gunk. Below, the light faded rapidly into pitch blackness. The thunder of the Horizon’s screws were fading into the distance, and in another few moments, near-silence descended on the tiny undersea craft. The only sounds were Johnson’s breathing and the high-pitched whine of the Mark VIII’s electric motor. Like a World War II glider cast off from its tow plane, the bus was now on its own.
The bus was a Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, an SDV in military-speak. Standard equipment for the Navy SEAL teams, it was nonetheless an awkward compromise between politics and practicality — a compromise that more often than not was practicality ignored for political considerations.
The submarine navy had lobbied long and hard — and with complete success — to keep the Navy SEALs from appropriating money for submarines of any kind. Yet the SEAL Teams needed a vehicle that could travel underwater and undetected to its target, carrying the commandos and all their gear. They needed a vehicle that could travel hundreds of miles, so that the process of getting the thing launched wasn’t under observation by the enemy, and they needed one small enough that it could be transported by air anywhere in the world at virtually a moment’s notice. SEALs were trained to insert into an enemy area in many ways — by HAHO and HALO parachute drops, by helicopter, by the ubiquitous SEAL IBS. But SDV insertions theoretically gave the SEALs a covert insertion shared by none of the other services, one that they should have been able to use to supreme advantage.
And would have, had it not been for the infighting over the proper definition of a submarine, and over who got to use them.
As a result of the infighting, the SEALs were not allowed to acquire any dry submarines at all, meaning enclosed boats sealed against the sea that would allow their passengers to travel in relative safety and comfort for the hundreds of miles usually necessary in this sort of a deployment.
SEALs had to ride in boats that, while enclosed for streamlining purposes, were filled with seawater, their passengers and drivers breathing off life-support tanks stowed behind the bulkheads. Every minute in the water — especially in cold water — sapped a man’s strength and endurance, even when he was wearing a supposedly cold-proof dry suit, which meant that the time spent traveling to the objective had to be counted against his overall dive endurance time.
It was, Johnson reflected, a perfect example of the ancient adage learned by every recruit in boot camp: There were just three ways of doing anything in the Navy — the right way, the wrong way, and the Navy way.
As Johnson steered the SDV left, angling out of the Horizon’s wake, the little vessel lurched hard, rolling momentarily to starboard.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Johnson said into his face mask mike, “and thank you for flying with SDV airways. We will be traveling today at an altitude of minus forty feet, so please make sure your cigarettes are extinguished, your seat belts are fastened, and your seat backs are in their full upright position… ”