Bones took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I guess we should have just high-tailed it outta there in our own sub. We had the go-juice and the breathing gas, and they wouldn’t have been able to follow us very far in this thing.”
“But then we wouldn’t have had the explosion, which is what’s keeping the Typhoon sub from just blowing us out of the water with a torpedo right now.”
“Hey, well that’s good news.” Bones alternated holding one hand higher than the other. “Air…not blown up…air…not blown up…”
“Speaking of air, maybe we should conserve what little we have left by not talking except when absolutely necessary. I’m going to drop the ballast and aim straight up with the thrusters.”
“Do it. The Typhoon’s holding position. They’re not coming after us. Yet.”
Dane dropped the weights the sub carried and put the submersible into a steep powered ascent. They began to rise rapidly toward the surface. Bones called out their depth at significant intervals.
“Two thousand meters…”
Minutes passed in silence where the SEAL duo monitored their equipment and displays. It soon became apparent that it was becoming harder to breathe.
“Fifteen hundred meters…Are we going to lose battery power first or air?”
Dane consulted his gauges, face lined with worry.
“Probably air.”
Chapter 20
Dane tried not to let the headache interfere with his focus. But as the oxygen levels in the sub dropped and carbon dioxide increased, he was all too well aware that the throbbing pain in his temples was going to get worse before it got better. He looked over and saw Bones glance at the depth meter before closing his eyes and rubbing his temples.
“One thousand meters…” he announced without enthusiasm.
“Just about a half mile to go,” Dane said. “We’ll make it.” He tried to sound confident. At least he took comfort in the fact that the water outside their protective sphere was now only black as opposed to pitch black. And looking up, he was pretty sure he could see some gray. Their rate of ascent was increasing, too, although that also meant less control over the sub’s trajectory.
“Vertical thrusters on high,” he informed Bones. Eyeing the compass, he kept the submersible pointed in the direction of their trawler.
Bones glanced at their sonar, which thankfully showed an empty screen. The Russian sub was not yet in pursuit. He knew that a missile could show itself on the monitor, though, for a few seconds before it slammed into them, ending their existence in a single muffled implosion. He was about to voice this concern to Dane when the comforting hum of the sub’s thruster motors stopped. Silence. The cabin lights and instrument displays flickered for a moment, then came back on.
“We lost main battery power,” Dane said, almost panting now. “Reserve kicked on but it’s only got enough juice to run the oh-two pumps and the cabin lights.”
Bones studied their depth gauge. “We’re still rising. 500 meters. I can see light up there,” he said, plastering his face to the acrylic dome while he gazed toward the distant sky.
And then the cabin lights blinked out.
Dane and Bones looked around in the near darkness. The constellation of LEDs and various indicator lights that normally lit up the inside of the sub had been extinguished. Bones waved his hand in front of his face and could barely discern it. Most worrisome of all, their rate of ascent had begun to slow.
“Are we sinking?” Bones voiced their worst fear: plummeting back into the abyss as helpless as a stone, where they would suffocate on the bottom in their acrylic tomb. “No more depth gauge readout.”
Dane stared in vain out through the sub’s spherical window. With no reference points to look at, he couldn’t tell if they were rising, falling, or maintaining position. “Can’t say. I can dump the rest of our ballast, though.”
“Do it.”
It was the closest thing to fear in Bones’ voice that Dane had ever heard. Glad for the fact that the ballast dump was a mechanical system and therefore not dependent upon battery power, he pulled a lever that opened a flap in the buoyancy tubes, releasing hundreds of pounds of lead shot. “There they go.”
“Hopefully they land on Ivkin’s submarine down there,” Bones said. In spite of the situation, Dane laughed. “Clog up the missile tubes, right?”
Bones started to laugh then forced himself to quit. “Stop it, man. We don’t have the air for that.”
They could only stare outside their bubble and wait. After a couple of minutes their eyes had adjusted to the low light conditions, and it soon became clear that they were in fact still rising.
“Getting lighter,” Bones rasped. He craned his neck to look upward, where he saw only a dimensionless, whitish haze.
Dane reached down toward the floor of the cabin. “No mechanical override for the rudder’s joystick. We’re going straight up, which means we’ll probably come up short of the boat.”
“I don’t care where we come up,” Bones gasped, “as long as we come up.”
Dane did not want to vocalize his thoughts. Looking up, he could see that it was definitely getting lighter, but they were perilously close to going unconscious. Peering out the dome, his heart spiked with hope as he saw a school of silver fish dart overhead, their white bellies flashing as they turned. They had left the deep sea zone behind and entered the upper layers of the ocean, the realm where scuba divers could venture.
“I see fish, Bones. Hang in there.” But he heard no response from his fellow SEAL. Bones kept nodding off.
“Bones! Don’t go to sleep, buddy, c’mon!” He gave him a shove.
“Huh…what?”
“Wake up, man! Dane’s voice was at a near whisper. “Almost there.” He pointed up.
Bones supported his head against the cabin dome. Dane’s urge for oxygen was painful now, and he entertained thoughts of throwing the dome hatch open and making a mad dash swim for the surface. Deep down he knew that even if he wanted to try that — or needed to, if the sub began to sink instead of rise — that the water pressure even at shallow depths would prevent them from pushing it open while underwater.
Minutes passed in a haze of shallow breathing. Dane’s headache made it difficult to think straight and Bones hadn’t said anything in a while. He occupied himself by trying to start the dashboard controls; he knew that sometimes batteries would build up a reserve charge after they rested, but now he was having no luck. Then he gazed up through the dome, and there it was.
The surface!
The shimmering underside of the waves sparkled and danced above their rising sub.
“Bones. Bones! Get ready.”
“What?” he whispered without moving.
“One hundred feet! Let’s get ready to crack this hatch as soon as we surface.” The Indian SEAL remained motionless.
Dane saw a sea turtle fly by their window and he could tell that their little sub was moving fast. “Hold on, Bones. We’re gonna pop on out like a champagne cork and splash back down.”
He moved his friend’s hand to a handhold and was relieved to feel Bones grip down on it. He could see his face now and was reassured by the fact that his eyes were open.
Another quick glance at the surface told Dane that they were maybe fifty feet away and closing at some scary feet-per-second rate that would have made their sub instructors furious.
He did not have the breath to put air behind it, but he mouthed the words, “Here we go…”
The Russian mini-sub burst through the sea surface into the realm of sunlight and air. The world was a chaotic swirl of blue sky, water, and a ball of sun. Dane saw the form of their trawler perhaps fifty yards from them, bobbing serenely on the surface.