With a last hurried glance at the wind-whipped whitecaps threatening his vessel, Guerrero retreated belowdecks and ran to the cargo hold. His feet sloshed through rank bilge water. He could have assigned crew to do this, but he wanted to personally supervise the securing of his most distinctive gifts. Reaching the wooden crates piled high with ore, he double-secured the ropes lashing the crates to the deck, then added more. He did not wish them to spill over and rip a hole in the hull. Satisfied, he was about to turn on a heel and head back topside when he paused.
Reaching into the nearest crate, he tossed chunks of ore aside until he found a flatter one and removed it. He used the tip of his machete to carve his initials into the rock, slicing a finger once when the rocking of the ship caused the blade to slip, and then thrust it into a pocket of his pantalones.
Were his dead body ever to be brought back to Spain, he desired proof that Juan Diego de Guerrero, the boy who had labored for his entire childhood as a petty dockworker fetching items for sailors, had now retrieved something that would one day light the world on fire.
NASA space capsule Liberty Bell 7 dangled from its drogue parachute at an altitude of 1,200 feet. Returning from a successful suborbital flight in a demonstration of emerging United States space power, it was now about to land back on Earth as planned, by splashing down into in the Atlantic Ocean. A small flotilla of support ships and helicopters waited below to retrieve the capsule as soon as it hit the water. Inside the spacecraft, Gus Grissom, among the first wave of a new breed of fliers known as “astronauts,” spoke into his radio, his gravelly voice exuding a calm professionalism.
“Atlantic ship Capcom, this is Liberty Bell 7, do you read me, over?”
The reply was near instant. “Bell 7, this is Atlantic ship Capcom. I read you loud and clear, over.”
“Roger that, Capcom. My rate of descent is twenty-nine feet per second, fuel has been dumped for impact, over.”
“Copy that, Bell 7. We are tracking your descent. Everything looks A-okay, over.”
For the next few seconds, all eyes on the support ships and aircraft were focused on the falling space capsule. Then the radio channel crackled again.
“Capcom reporting: Splashdown! We have splashdown! Bell 7, a helicopter will reach you in about thirty seconds, over.”
The space capsule, shaped roughly like the American iconic symbol for which it was named, complete with a “crack” painted down its side, was about as seaworthy as a cork. It bobbed helplessly in the water, capable of nothing more than drifting until it could be picked up by a helicopter. A tense couple of seconds passed while those listening to the radio frequency waited to see if the astronaut inside the capsule had been knocked around too badly upon hitting the water to reply.
But then Grissom said, “Roger that, ‘chute has been jettisoned. I’ll be going over my post-flight checklist. As soon as that’s done I’ll be ready for evac, over.”
Broadcast radio commentators intended for audiences listening around the world remarked how thorough and professional Gus Grissom was, that he would rather complete his checklists before leaving the capsule for the comforts of the helicopter and ships even after all he’d endured. The big Huey hovered overhead until they heard Grissom’s voice over the communications line once again.
“Liberty Bell 7 to Capcom. Now prepared for evac, over.”
The Huey moved into position over the floating capsule. A cable was lowered from the helicopter.
Suddenly the hatch cover of the spacecraft was seen popping off the craft.
Fitted with explosive bolts for emergency evacuation from the inside, under normal circumstances it was meant to be opened not by the astronaut but by rescue personnel once the capsule had been secured back aboard its transport ship. That ship was aircraft carrier USS Randolph, and from its bridge a mission recovery team coordinator frowned beneath a pair of binoculars.
“Grissom’s out of the capsule, he’s in the water!” he told the radioman, who promptly relayed that message to the pilot of the helicopter, who was told in no uncertain terms to pursue the capsule. Grissom’s spacesuit was designed to provide him with flotation, but they had no way of knowing now whether it really worked. What they did know was that without the hatch cover in place, America’s space race investment was rapidly flooding with water and would soon be lost to the depths if not secured.
A helicopter crewman descended from the aircraft and connected a cable to the spacecraft. While Grissom floated nearby, buffeted by rotor wash that whipped up the sea surface into a frothy foam, the rescue crew member was winched back into the chopper. The Huey’s pilot then managed to lift the capsule a few feet out of the water, but could gain no further altitude, the entire rig slanting dangerously toward the sea.
“Capsule’s full of water, we can’t lift it!” came the frantic radio transmission to mission support personnel. One more attempt at airlifting the swamped spaceship was made, but to no avail. The laws of physics, to whose mastery the entire mission owed its success to this point, could not be broken. The helicopter could simply not provide enough lift, and the rescue craft itself started to wobble precariously scant feet above the waves.
“Cut the cable, cut the cable!” came the command from Capcom, but the quickness with which the task was carried out made it likely that the helicopter crew hadn’t been waiting for orders.
The cable was severed. The capsule dropped back into the sea.
The chopper’s pilot, now free of his weighty burden, quickly regained control of the aircraft and maneuvered to pick up the floating astronaut.
Gus Grissom was hauled aboard without further incident, while below them all, Liberty Bell 7 continued its mission alone to the distant seafloor.
Chapter 1
U.S. Navy SEAL Dane Maddock tightened his grip on the submersible’s control joystick as he eased the Deep Surveyor III into a narrow crevice nearly a mile beneath the Pacific. His co-pilot in the two-person craft, fellow SEAL Uriah “Bones” Bonebrake, pointed off to their right where the rock wall of the submarine canyon they’d been following slid past them mere feet away.
“Easy bro, maybe two feet clearance on this side,” Bones warned.
“That’s more room than I usually have to park at those sleazy clubs you drag me to.”
Surprisingly to Dane, Bones remained silent. The six-and-a-half foot tall Cherokee rarely worried about anything, a testament to the fact that he did not consider being a mile underwater in a plastic bubble to be the time or place for levity. Dane cast a sideways glance to Bones’ side of their acrylic sphere, where he kept a sharp eye on the irregular canyon wall.
This outing was to be their checkout dive for an intensive program that capped four straight weeks of submersible pilot training. Completing the dive’s objective would earn them a new qualification, and Bones in particular was not looking forward to failing.
“Just stay focused, man. This isn’t really a course I want to repeat.”
Dane looked over at his co-pilot. “You mean you don’t think this is fun?”
“Never been this deep in one of these things. Plus, I have to trust your driving.” He let out a loud sigh. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it sooner or later.”
“You wound me. I thought we were like two peas in a pod in here!”
“I’d sell all my naked photos of your mom if it would buy me the amount of room a pea must have compared to this. And you’ve got quite a bit more legroom than me.”