As Dex sat in the belly of the Osprey, a single thought kept whispering though his mind like the passage of a scythe: maybe they already did. Because Dex already knew a lot more than civilians were ever allowed to know.
That would be very bad news. Despite having very much enjoyed his time in the Navy, he’d called it quits on the military life, and had carved out a nice existence for himself in the civilian world. To think that might all be taken away chilled him.
He could feel the Osprey reaching altitude as its engines smoothed out, climbing above the turbulent cloud cover. Dex tried to get comfortable in the functional but not accommodating seat. Best thing would be to get a few hours sleep. It was going to be a long ride, and he was starting to feel his old alarm instincts kicking in.
Never a good sign.
Chapter Forty-Six
A clang! woke him from an uneasy sleep. It was a sound he had known since his earliest days at sea — the latch being thrown on a watertight bulkhead door. But there was one difference, this one had also been locked from the outer corridor.
Looking up, Erich saw the door swing open to reveal a swarthy merchant seaman, who could be Portuguese or perhaps from a North African country. He banged his hand on the metal wall and gestured for Tommy to come forward.
“What’s goin’ on?” said the young firefighter, who was sitting up on the edge of his bunk.
The man said nothing, but reached into his insulated vest and pulled out a pair of plastic restraints.
Tommy looked at him with mild disgust as he extended his wrists. “What, again? We’re on a boat in the middle of nowhere — I’m not goin’ anywhere, okay?”
Erich watched the crewman secure Tommy’s hands together, then indicate he should step into the corridor. The seaman pointed at Erich, giving him the same message. As soon as he did so, he saw another crewman waiting for them with two extra greasy-looking parkas. Where were they taking them now?
“Put. On,” he said.
A frigid draft of air snaked through the corridor, and Erich gratefully slipped into the heavy, insulated coat with a fur-lined hood. As he’d gotten older, he’d found cold weather increasingly difficult to bear, and the temperature even inside the ship’s passageway was close to intolerable.
“Where’re we goin’?” said Tommy.
“Shut. Up. You. Go.” The second crewman looked at him, pushed him forward toward a case of steel stairs leading abovedecks.
Erich followed him. Feeling the pitch of the deck beneath his feet, as he moved, he felt overwhelmed by memories of gaining his “sea legs” when he was so much younger.
Within minutes, they had reached the hatch leading to a wide, flat waist deck aft of the fo’c’scle. There were huge steel hatch covers sealing off an array of cargo holds, overlooked by the superstructure of a massive crane. On one of the hatch covers, crewmen were busy rigging a strange-looking boat — surely a submersible craft — to the cargo crane. The sky above the scene was gray and flat, whipped by a blistering, arctic wind.
Erich shuddered.
In an eyeblink, the memory of being corralled on the exposed deck of the 5001’s conning tower iced through him. He had never imagined suffering that terrible cold again.
He stood with Tommy, flanked by two rough-looking seaman, who both appeared to be awaiting further orders. Across the waist deck, a bulkhead door beneath the bridge swung open and two familiar figures emerged — the tall, muscular black man and the shorter red-haired man with the pasty complexion. Erich found them to be an incongruous pair, but that did not keep them from radiating an air of true menace. Especially the smaller, pale-faced man. His dark eyes appeared pressed into his face like raisins in dough, and they regarded everything with a terrible flat gaze that reminded Erich of a shark. The eyes of something capable of killing you without a thought.
The two men wore jumpsuits under their parkas, and they paused to give the submersible and crane assembly a quick evaluation. Behind them, four men carrying automatic weapons emerged from the bulkhead door. They escorted a thin man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, carrying an aluminum attaché or instrument case. As this second group began boarding the submersible, the black man approached Erich and Tommy.
“Captain Bruckner,” he said, his deep voice cutting under the wind. “I think you have some unfinished business.”
Everyone had moved with smooth, quick precision, getting Tommy strapped into a jumpseat along the rear compartment of the small submarine. One of the armed men assisted Erich into a seat in the forward cabin with the huge glass viewports that looked like the bulging eyes of a deep sea predator. His seat was center, middle, behind the two forward positions — one of the armed escorts sat to the left, the surly black man to the right.
While both men had excellent views through the glass, Erich could duplicate what they saw on one of several screens. The interior of the sub was far roomier and comfortable than he would have ever imagined, and he was coolly regarding the details of its controls when the crane jerked it off the deck and slowly swung it out past the gunwale of the Isabel Marie.
As the cable payed out, dropping the vessel very slowly into the angry arctic chop, Erich’s stomach resisted the sudden motion. He distracted himself by concentrating on the array of controls and digital display screens, looking to see if he could detect any of its armaments. Such a vehicle had been inconceivable the last time Erich had been beneath the waves.
Beneath the waves.
The notion touched a chord deep within him, resonating with memories of the sour-pickle confines of his U-boats. The last time he’d cruised under the cold sea, he’d been a young, young man. Erich shook his head.
Barely out of boyhood, really. It did not seem possible. Had it really happened like that? Had he ever been so young? And had such boys really been in charge of such killing machines?
He watched through the glass bubble and also the screens as the submersible slipped deeper into the dead dark sea. Here was a rattle and a loud snap as the crane’s cables and grapples released them, then the crewman in the left seat assumed control by activating four powerful halogen beams to guide their descent.
The black man touched his throat-mic, spoke into it. “Topside… and Relay, we are a go. Scanners clear. Please advise if your data contradicts that.”
“Our instruments confirm — clear.” A voice sounded from unseen speakers.
“Looks like we beat ’em to the punch,” said the pilot.
The black man shook his head. “Unless they’re already deep under the shelf. Already waiting for us.”
The pilot smiled. “Well, I think it’s time we found out.”
Erich watched the black man pull a note pad from his pocket, check it, then enter a few strokes into a keyboard. “Coordinates keyed-in. Going to a-nav… now.”
For the next ten minutes, no one spoke. All attention remained fixed on the digital screens which displayed a startling variety of real and computer-generated views of the massive shelf of ice under the surface. Erich felt the vessel move with grace and precision in almost total silence and with unimagined speed. He felt a tightening in his gut, and he could almost hear his own pulse pounding behind his ears.