Nina confessed, "She told me she knew everything that happened during that year I can't remember. If I do this, she'll tell me."
"Ah, so there is a big secret or two. Is that it? I suppose she has faith, then, in your motivation. The good news is I don't think our conspirators are going to be too hard to find. A few more pieces of the puzzle and we…" Gordon's voice trailed as he checked the instruments on the dash, thought, and slowed the Sleekcraft. "A few more pieces of the puzzle and I think everything is going to come into view."
The high-powered boat stopped and drifted on calm seas. The bow slowed its bobbing; their wake faded.
"This is it," Gordon checked his wristwatch and added, "Right on time, too."
Nina grabbed a pair of binoculars from the starboard settee and raised them to her eyes. She revolved in a complete circle, scanning the horizon in all directions for any sign of activity.
"There's nothing out there."
Gordon glanced at his watch once more and suggested she, "Look again."
A vibration shook the Sleekcraft. Fifty yards off the port bow the water bubbled and foamed. A groaning klaxon echoed. A spout of water shot like a geyser, followed by a mammoth beast jumping from the sea like a killer whale performing at Sea World.
Black and gray, two eye-like windows at the front, sixty feet long with a bow shaped like a hammerhead shark that hovered in the air for a long second then slapped the water's surface with a heavy splash. The spray fell across Gordon and Nina like a sheet of rain.
The submarine sat on the surface where there had been nothing seconds before. Its sleek body resembled an alligator floating with its spine poking above the surface and its eyes scanning for prey. It made Nina think of a smaller version of Captain Nemo's Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; a book her father had read to her nearly thirty years ago.
Gordon said, "Barracuda fast attack sub. First one went into service two years ago."
Nina knew of the vessels and rattled off, "Crew of twelve, used primarily for coastal patrol, designed specifically to combat underwater hostiles. Oh, and it runs on something called a magnetohydrodynamic drive that makes it quiet and fast. The military has about a dozen."
Knox added, "And Intelligence has a couple, too."
He turned on the twin Mercruisers again and guided the boat closer to the new arrival. As they closed the distance, a pair of hatches on the smooth skin of the man-made beast popped open. Four men in black wet suits stood on the deck. Gordon maneuvered the Sleekcraft alongside and threw the stern line to one of the seamen who held it secure to allow boarding. Gordon told Nina, "You go ahead. I'll wait here." "Huh? These are your friends, aren't they?" "It's your mission, Captain. I'm just here to help. Are you afraid of going in there alone?" Nina narrowed her eyes and then swung her leg onto the sub, refusing a helping hand from one of the crewmen in the process. Gordon called, "Ask 'T' where they were!" She glanced back at him before eyeing the dark portal leading below. Nina crouched and lowered herself inside.
Two decks comprised the small sub. Nina did not know about the lower level but the upper one felt cramped and humid. It was, in essence, a long tube. She saw two wheelmen sitting at helms in the two 'eyes' that were actually darkly tinted windows. Consoles and monitors lined the walls manned by crewmen who leered as she entered their world.
A small, raised platform with a chair sat in the center of the cramped chamber. A white man in a dirty shirt with a Captain's hat occupied it, chewing on a toothpick. When she took a step in his direction he pointed her toward the rear of the deck and a heavy door amid pipes and wires and valves and storage compartments. Nina knocked. The crew laughed. Nina did not wait, she turned the knob and entered.
The room probably served as the Captain's quarters but someone else had usurped that privilege from the boat's master. He sat behind a desk with a big grin revealing one gold tooth. He wore his hair in long dreadlocks and dressed in a blue, short-sleeve shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal a scar across his black chest. A shoulder holster displayed an ivory-handled revolver.
Papers, curled maps, and a laptop computer cluttered the desktop. Closed metal cabinets and a chart table occupied the rest of the space but enough room remained for a metal seat in front of the desk.
Nina still felt the leers of the men on her back. Without looking, she reached and closed the door. The man at the desk found that very funny. He laughed and spoke with a Jamaican accident, "Hello! Gordon did not come himself?"
"He's outside…waiting."
"That is too bad. You tell Gordon that 'T' sends his best. You tell him that he still owes me fifty continentals and I will not forget, no matter how he tries to avoid me. Understand?"
"I will," Nina said trying hard to hide the feeling of being trapped in a floating tomb.
"This is what you came for, I think."
The man with the gold tooth-'T'-opened the lap top. The black screen of the hibernating computer came to life and showed line after line of numbers.
"Tell Gordon that his suspicions are correct. These are back up files from two tracking stations in New Jersey, understand? Something did trip the alarms way up there but no one seems to know nothing. Well, except for you and I now, I think."
She peered at the data tables, easily translating date and times while assuming the rest to be coordinates.
"I'll tell you what it says so that you can get off this little boat of mine before the men start going crazy. They have been at sea for a month so it would be best if we speed this along, understand? One something trips the wire in New Jersey not long before the assassination. Then not long after, another something trips the wire again on the way out."
Nina said, "But this doesn't tell me what that something was. I'm just saying, this is all a bunch of numbers. Nothing concrete."
"Oh, now I would not be saying that, I think. It tells you that there was an unidentified flying object that slipped its way into our air space and then out again, all on a heading that would have taken it first right toward D.C., and second right away from D.C., if you start drawing lines on charts and whatever. But what it really tells, I think, is that someone who was operating the switch for all this high tech mumbo jumbo decided not to report these numbers."
Nina wondered, again, why Ashley entrusted her with this job.
'T' popped open the laptop drive, slipped the disc in a jewel case, and handed it to Nina.
"And there you are. Now as much as I enjoy a visit from such a lovely woman, I think you should be leaving now. I have a trip to make to Trinidad with a hold full of weapons for the resistance. Quite a problem for the Hivvans, I think."
She stood but paused, remembering, "Gordon wanted me to ask where you were."
The man with the dreadlocks smiled again and stooped to grab something. He handed an unlabeled bottle of red liquid to Nina who accepted the unknown substance with caution.
"Wine from the Rhone Valley. Tell him that our friends at Camelot are waiting, but with all that has happened here in the last month I think they may be waiting a long while for us."
She studied the bottle for a moment then hardened her face, opened the door, and marched past the leers of the sailors again, climbing from the humid, shadowy confines of the submarine's interior to the warm, sunny deck.
Nina jumped into the Sleekcraft where Gordon Knox waited.
"I think your friend gave us some good stuff, but I'm not the expert. He says it's evidence of a second plane or ship of some kind entering our air space then leaving again."
Gordon powered on the engines and moved them away. Nina heard that klaxon again and the fast attack sub slipped below the waters.