Looking out to the pair of swirling white wakes left behind by the Pigeon’s dual propeller shafts, Mac shook his head.
“It sure isn’t Kauai.”
“Tell me about it, partner. You still living the good life out there?”
“I certainly am. Since I saw you last, we finally moved into our new place on Turtle Bay.”
“How do those twins of yours like it?”
Mac grinned.
“They love it! You should just see them take to the water. Why, they already have matching surfboards! But I’ve got to admit that their latest passion is baseball.”
“I’m glad to hear everything is going good for you, Mac. I’m still the perennial bachelor, bunking wherever the Navy sends me. Though I did meet this Thai babe in Bangkok while I was on R&R there. She could make an honest man out of me yet.”
“I seriously doubt that,” said Mac, who suddenly remembered that he had met one of Crowley’s associates recently.
“By the way, Richard Sullivan sends his regards.”
“No kidding,” returned Crowley.
“You must have been down under, then.”
“Almost. I met up with the Avalon in the Marshalls.”
“Did ole’ Dick get your feet wet, Mac?”
Unwilling to go into the operation in any detail, Mac merely nodded that he did, and was somewhat thankful when Crowley pointed to the horizon and abruptly changed the subject.
“There’s the Lynch. We should be getting close now.
What do you know about this K-l that we’ll be rendezvousing with?”
Mac eyed the clean lines of the Conrad-class oceanographic ship in the distance.
“She’s one of the newest deep-diving submersibles that we’ve got. She was built for the Office of Naval Research and is operated by Woods Hole. K-l is the prototype of an entire fleet of such vessels, and is 22 feet long, 8 feet wide, weighs 13 tons, and has room for a pilot and two observers.”
“What kind of range does it have?”
“About 15 to 20 miles. And that’s at a top speed of 4 knots and a maximum submergence time of 24 hours. I had a bit of say when it came down to outfitting her, and made certain that she carried scanning sonar, a closed-circuit television system, an articulated manipulator arm, and a fully operational underwater telephone.
“Right now, we’re extremely fortunate to have Kl with us. She was having her electrical system overhauled when the B-52 went down. Somehow they got it pieced back together in time to load the vessel into a C5-A and fly it out here.”
“It sounds like a potent little package,” observed the veteran DSRV pilot.
“But for my money, I’ll still go with the Mystic any day of the week. We might not be so high-tech, but we get the job done all the same.”
A nearby telephone began ringing, and Crowley picked up the handset and crisply spoke into its transmitter.
“Mystic Fishing Club… Yes, Captain. In fact, we can see the Lynch right now… We’ll be there, sir.”
As he hung up the handset, Crowley pushed back his hat and yawned.
“Duty calls, partner. Shall we?”
With fishing rod and cooler in hand, the Mystic’s pi247 lot looked more like a beach bum than a naval officer as he led the way. They stowed their gear in the hangar, where both of them slipped into matching dark-blue coveralls. Sewn on the chests of these jumpsuits were golden embossed patches showing a pair of dolphins surrounding a DSRV, crowned with a trident.
They entered the Mystic by way of a hatch set beneath the humped casing on the DSRV upper deck. A ladder brought them down into the central pressure capsule. Mac needed no guidance as he squeezed his way feet first into the copilot’s chair. The tight confines of such a vessel was getting most familiar to him as he buckled his harness and clamped on his miniature headphones.
Matt Crowley was in the process of activating the Mystic’s electrical system when a tinny voice emanated from the headset.
“We’re over the target and preparing to put you in the water. How do you read me? Over.”
“Loud and clear, mother hen,” returned the gruff voice of Matt Crowley.
“We’re ready whenever you are.”
A series of green lights mounted into the console showed that all systems were primed and operational, and Crowley initiated a quick test of the vessel’s hydraulics.
He smoothly pulled the steering yoke back into his lap, and satisfied with what he felt, pushed it forward once again.
“This little lady’s ready to go to work,” said Crowley as he donned a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap.
There was a slight dropping sensation as the DSRV was lowered into the water. The Mystic began to roll slightly, and the pilot’s face lit up when the voice on the other end of the intercom curtly announced, “Release complete.”
“Hit those port ballast tank switches for me, will you, partner?” asked the pilot.
Mac reached forward and depressed two toggle switches. As the pilot activated the pair of switches set on his side of the console, the DSRV command capsule filled with a loud hissing sound. This was followed by a muted gurgling roar as the now empty ballast tanks began filling with seawater.
His glance riveted on the depth gauge, Mac monitored their descent. At fifty feet, his body pitched forward as Crowley pushed down on the steering column and pointed the Mystic’s rounded bow straight down into the awaiting depths. This dive was in drastic contrast to the gentle descent he experienced off the Kwajalein Atoll, and Mac grinned as he remembered that he was now being driven by the infamous “Angles and Dangles” Crowley.
The depth gauge had just passed five hundred feet, when their headphones next activated. The voice that broke from the miniature speakers was coming from the the USS Lynch. Much like an air traffic controller, this individual proceeded to guide the Mystic to its rendezvous with the K-l, aided by the oceanographic ship’s three-dimensional sonar capability.
At seven hundred feet, Crowley snapped on the DSRV’s powerful spotlights. Mac stared out the viewing port, fascinated by the glowing plankton, beady-eyed shrimp, and luminescent fish. It was soon after an immense skate passed by them that Mac saw a trio of soft white lights glowing ethereally in the distance. Seconds later, their controller called down from the Lynch, notifying them that they should be getting a visual sighting of K-l shortly.
It was at this point that Crowley switched radio frequencies and spoke into his chin-mounted microphone.
“Did someone down here order a large pepperoni pizza to go?”
The steady voice of a woman answered back.
“That was supposed to be anchovy-and-onion. Would you mind returning it and bringing what we ordered?”
“Angel,” retorted Crowley.
“You couldn’t tip me enough to make it worth my while.”
“I don’t know about that,” purred the female seductively.
“Would you please clear this channel and keep your chatter limited to the job at hand?” interrupted the cold voice of the controller.
“Oh, lighten up, for God’s sake,” mumbled Matt Crowley as he looked over to his copilot disgustedly.
“K-l, we want you to follow Mystic on the final approach.
And please, both of you, proceed cautiously.
Our bathymetric model shows the contact to be situated on a subterranean ledge that overlooks a trench 900 feet deep in some spots. If the contact is our broken arrow, we certainly wouldn’t want to make it any harder to retrieve than it already is. Do you copy that?
Over.”
“We read you loud and clear,” replied Crowley, who pushed his microphone aside and addressed his copilot.