But this one was way different.
They were crossing into that weird zone where anything might happen, and Dex couldn’t help getting caught up in the anxiety coloring that realization.
A submarine.
The idea they were diving on a previously unknown sub made Dex feel like a kid who’d just found a bunch of his uncle’s old army stuff in the attic. He couldn’t help imagining what it might be. The most likely possibility — an old pre-World War II American ship that had been used for target practice or training destroyer crews to use depth charges. Problem was those old subs were nowhere near the size of this one. Same went for the German U-boats. Nothing this big.
Hell, thought Dex. This thing was ringing up bigger than the hunter-killer Navy jobs — the 688s were around 350 feet, and the hull looming just below was even bigger than that.
So what was going on here?
Russian? Chinese?
Considering that possibility made Dex reach out and grab the safeline, and put the brakes on his descent. “Hey,” he said softly into the mask-mic. “Hold up a sec.”
Mike Bielski reached out, braked himself on the nylon rope. He looked at Dex.
“What’s up, guys?” said Don through the base unit. Whenever he piped in, it was like he was the voice of their conscience.
“I was just thinking…” said Dex. Then he briefly brought everybody up to speed on his extrapolations. The notion they might be diving into the hot zone of a nuclear reactor cracked open like a bad egg chilled him. He paused to let it sink in, then: “Is Kev around?”
“He’s already got his suit on,” said Don. “Can’t wait to spell you guys. He’s right here.”
“Put him on the horn, would you?” said Dex, as he absently checked his Princeton Tec — the timer which told him how much time he had left in his double tanks. So far, so good. Plenty of air and time left.
There was a pause and a brief sound of movement and rustling about, then the lazy Baltimore drawl of Kevin Cheever oozed through the earphones. “Okay, boss, whatcha wanna know?”
“You sure about the size of this thing?”
“Chirp side-scan sonar don’t lie,” said Kevin. “418 feet long’s gonna be the number. Right on the money.”
“C’mon, Don,” said Dex. “You heard what I was saying — so what’s the chance we’re over a Russian or a Chinese sub?”
“It’s a chance, but pretty damned slim. I think our spy-guys would know about anything like that just about the minute it happened. A bogey sub would attract a whole lot of attention.”
“You sure?” said Mike.
“As sure as my faith in the natural superiority of our Navy and NSA and the rest of the ‘alphabets.’ Listen, guys,” said Kevin. “There ain’t no way the Bad Guys lose a nuke-sub and we don’t know about it. No fucking way… it just doesn’t happen. We knew about the Kursk before Moscow, for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay,” Dex said, breaking the silence. “So we can take your word for it… we’re not gonna be glowing in the dark anytime soon…”
“Hey, I’m coming down right behind you. That proof enough it’s safe?” Kevin chuckled into the mic. “I’m signing off so I can finish up with my tanks, okay?”
“Roger that,” said Dex. “Mike and I’re heading down.”
“I’m staying on the line,” said Don. “Watch yourselves…”
Dex looked at Mike through the murky water, pointed downward.
Nodding, Mike tilted toward the wreck below, started kicking his legs, and descended.
Dex followed him down, hand-over-hand on the safeline. The beam of his lamp traced out the widening contours of the sub’s conning tower. The amount of accumulated undersea crud attested to its age — pretty much a safe bet it had been down here a long time. Which allayed his fears about any stricken nuke sub. That said, it was still considerably wider than most of the old Word War II boats, and it even had a thick, glass viewing port on the control deck. That was ultra-sophisticated for something that could be more than seventy years old. He could see Mike Bielski just below him, in the dim, ambient light, his mask facing the side of the wreck. And even though it was encrusted with layers of solidified silt and micro-organic marine life, Mike and Dex could not miss the partially obscured insignia on the side of the tower. He rubbed away more of the collected algae and other barnacle-like stuff.
“Oh shit,” said Mike. “Is that what I think it is…?”
“What?” said Don Jordan through their earphones. “Is that what?”
“I see it,” said Dex. He felt himself suck in a little more air than his regulator wanted to let him have.
“Is that an Iron Cross?” said Mike.
“Sure looks like it,” said Dex.
“Son-of-a-bitch…”
“What’d you say?” said Don from topside.
“Looks like an Iron Cross,” said Dex.
“As in Germany, I’d say,” said Mike.
“Tell Kevin and the rest of the guys,” said Dex. “This thing looks like a Nazi job.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Uh-uh. Serious as cancer.” Dex inched his way across the surface of the conning tower. “Give us a minute or so to get deeper and closer, okay?”
“Hard to see for sure,” said Mike. “Don’t see any numbers…”
“You won’t,” said Dex. “They didn’t put their U-numbers on the boats.”
“Hang on…” said Don. “Kevin’s jumping in. So’s Andy. They’ll be coming down the line, so keep an eye out…”
“What?”
“Wait a sec!” said Dex quickly. “Tell those guys to hold off! They’re too early!”
“Too late, Dex…” said Don. “They’re already in the water.”
“C’mon, boss,” said Kevin Cheever, cutting into the link. “You think we’re going to let you and Mike get all the glory?”
“Yeah,” said Andy, doing his best to chuckle in his mask. “We know the laws of salvage, don’t we, Kev?”
“Okay, okay,” said Dex. “It’s just that we wanted to get maximum time on this thing by stretching out our tank-times as far as possible, remember?”
“Yeah, but this is something special, I’d figure,” said Kevin.
“Roger that,” said Dex, giving up. There was no arguing with those two. “Take your time and watch for my lamp.”
“Hey, Dex…?” Don’s voice seeped through earphones.
“Yo…”
“Without a number, I guess there’s no way I can check some databases on the ’net, huh? How do we ID this scow?”
“There’re ways, but it might be tougher than you think.” Dex checked his Tec timer out of habit, and was pleased to see he still had enough time to stay down for awhile. He also noticed, in a flash of rare self-objectivity, how utterly calm he was. Here he was floating over what could be a possibly historic discovery, and he was acting like it was business as usual.
But (came a thought from another part of his mind) staying calm was exactly the way he had to be if he wanted to stay alive down here. As the unofficial “chief” of the dive club, it had become his unspoken responsibility to watch out for the other guys, to make sure they never forgot how to keep themselves alive under the water.
Especially Andy Mellow and Kevin Cheever.
They both moved through the day-to-day with an unconscious sense of invincibility — Andy because he was a big, tall guy; Kev because he was smart and perceptive. Neither were arrogant in an aggressive way, but they both gave off unspoken “attitude”—they were big enough or smart enough to withstand whatever the world threw at them.