“I’ll tell Lou that we should explore Titanic’s interior together—the four of us keeping watch on one another—for safety’s sake.”
“I’ve already told him as much, before we left from the surface. Maybe if we all can overpower Mendenhall when he makes his move, we’ll be OK.”
“But we can’t touch him. You just said—”
“Overpower with weapons, I meant. I’ve brought a spear gun for protection.” She held the weapon up. “Swigart approved it, for protection against any ‘natural’ creatures we might encounter down here, but honestly, I brought it to kill that thing inside Mendenhall.”
“You’d better be damn sure before you put one of those in him.”
“Did you see how he tried to avoid the group shot?”
“I noticed, yes, but all the same—and what about Lou and me? We have no weapons.”
“Pick one up—along the way. There’re pipes and all manner of tools inside the wreck—has to be.”
The lock flushed out all the seawater and filled again with liquid air, allowing them to open the inner door to the airlock.
“We could lock them both out,” she suggested once they were inside.
“You mean lock them all out—sacrifice everyone?”
“They sacrificed over 1500 on the Titanic, David.”
“We can’t do that, no. We go after Mendenhall when the time is right.”
She nodded, sighed, and put a finger to her lips to indicate they were back online and that any and all could now hear them.
Mendenhall and Swigart were already in the airlock. Any thought of sacrificing the entire dive team had passed with the opportunity.
Once all four divers were back inside and manning their respective stations, David caught Kelly’s eye, and they exchanged a knowing look as the others searched the debris field below them and watched for the other end of Titanic to greet them. Swigart searched for a place to ‘park’ the submersible, while the others searched for the best and safest entries to Titanic’s interior.
By now the first team away was already penetrating Titanic’s aft sections.
“How lucky are we?” said Kelly. “We get to see the ballroom.”
“You mean what’s left of it?” replied David.
From their vantage point with Max pulling away, they watched the quickly fading light around the aft section of Titanic. Moments before they entered total darkness ahead of them, David saw that Jens had found what appeared a likely entryway, and he and Kelly had watched Steve Jens wave Bowman, Lena, and Fiske to enter the wreck ahead of him.
“What is it?” Kelly asked David, seeing the concern in his eyes.
“Nothing… just felt my stomach churning like a clothes dryer. What if one of those four is the creature? Just biding its time for a second dive, a dive to the bow section where the freezer units are?”
“What’re you two yammering about?” asked Lou. “All I hear is static.”
“Talking about the other away team, Lou,” replied Kelly.
David quickly added, “They’re being smart and cautious, Lou—the four of them sticking close to one another. I suggest our away team do the same.” Even as he said this, David realized how very little they knew about Steve Jens who’d been put in charge of the first away team. He certainly seemed overly polite under the circumstances as if wanting the others in front of him instead of at his back; then David realized just how horrible his suspicions had become—that it’d become a force of its own, leaking into every synapse of the brain. A force out of his control.
The sub moved off at high rate of speed now, making short work of locating the other destroyed half of Titanic. In fact, with guidance from above at Scorpio control, the sub made the trip near instantaneously, handily locating the enormous bow section of the shipwreck. Here again the sub came face to face with the wall that was Titanic. They would have to maneuver Max up and over the deck in search of a landing site—the well known one that Ballard had used—the riveted metal rooftop of the officer’s quarters.
At the moment, little to nothing save the hull of the ship could be seen in the distance outside the bubble and on the periphery of their lights. For an odd, strange moment, the wall looked like a blue-black iceberg lurking here to destroy them. Commenting on how like an iceberg in the night it looked, David muttered “Irony of ironies, eh?”
“No doubt about it, kiddies,” Swigart said now. “I’m going in with you three, and Forbes’ fears be damned.”
“But who’s going to be in contact with the surface?” asked Kelly.
“You can stay back, Dr. Irvin; in fact, let’s make it an order if you like. As for the surface, they can see what’s going on, and they can monitor us from there—all of us. Mendenhall, let’s have at it, shall we?”
Mendenhall who had not smiled for the photo and had maintained an eerily stoic demeanor throughout replied, “Ready… I’ve been ready all my life for this.”
“Good… good! What about you Ingles?”
David was busy contemplating the full meaning of what Mendenhall had said. “Ready sir; following your lead.”
“Irvin? Make up your mind.”
Kelly hesitated a moment before saying into her com-link, “I’m with you, sir. Just worried if a rogue current were to come along… what with no one at the controls…”
“It’s not that strong; monitors say normal. Listen, all of you,” began Swigart, “we all know the score here. We are two and a half freakin’ miles below the surface. At these depths, no matter our grand technology, a slip up means death. We also know that despite all our training that in the end during such operations it can come down to every man for himself. So take all due precautions, people, but let’s have at Titanic’s insides, shall we?”
This didn’t sound like the Lou Swigart of the boardroom, the Lou who had meticulously trained them on the interior lanes and passageways within the monster ship now before them. David guessed the murders of Alandale and Ford had affected Lou more than he had dared let on.
Each of them—armed with the Titanic’s manifest—knew what was in Titanic’s holds and stores. Each had also committed architectural diagrams of the ship’s interiors to memory. In point of fact, every diver knew his section of the wreck as well as anyone might. Now each diver must deal with the weight of this moment, the historic significance of it all. No one had ‘walked’ here before—not a living soul—not since Titanic went down a hundred years before.
“Look there, Kelly,” Mendenhall said, pointing out the large cross portal at the nose of the sub.
David swiveled to put up a hand to silently warn her to keep her distance from Mendenhall, but she got in close enough to see what he was pointing at. A sturgeon fish at these depths was a surprise. Max’s camera caught it as it swam past Titanic’s still-in-place anchor.
“Good Ol’ Bob Ballard was right about one thing,” said Lou, distracting David.
“What’s that?”
“Titanic’s way too far slammed into the ooze to ever ‘raise’ her.”
David stared out at the knife’s edge of the bow that’d plowed into the mud and silt. “Looks to be about sixty feet under.”
Swigart expertly brought the submersible up and around the nose. “Port and starboard anchors on either side of the bow in place.”
“Will ya look at that?” asked David, “A single link in the anchor chain’s gotta be the size of a cathedral door.”