He couldn’t afford to search for the others yet. The water sloshed around his chin and he ripped off the fins, jamming them in the side of the seat. He turned on the instrument panel, plugged his breathing apparatus into the sub’s air outlet and put the mouthpiece in his mouth. He breathed in the oxygen, his mouth under the water more than not. The vessel leaned heavily and slid down into the next trough. If he didn’t bring the nose around into the waves it would tip over. Very inconvenient. He flipped the power switch and gave the propeller full throttle, twisting the rudder hard over.
The sub responded well, then seemed to stall. Stratton could feel the powerful electric motor working, yet the nose didn’t want to come around. The vessel slammed into the bottom of another deep seawater trench. As it came up the other side the nose suddenly turned as if it had been nudged by a greater power. The sub went almost vertically up the wall of water and gouged into the dark mass of the peak. It levelled out for a moment before tipping over to nose down into the next trough. He had it under a semblance of control.
Stratton looked out of the cockpit for any sign of the others. Two of them were hanging on to the passenger cabin and struggling to get inside. He twisted in his seat to look through the grille behind his head and saw movement. Something grabbed at his arm and a heavy limb struck him as Jackson scrambled unceremoniously in through the other side of the cockpit. The man’s size didn’t help. The tumbling rodeo-bull sub yawed at his arms as it lifted him and then dragged him under. No amount of training could have prepared him. Certainly not the bathlike waters of Puerto Rico where the US SEALs often did their initial mini-sub training. Jackson fell into the seat but then lost his fins after a wave smashed in through Stratton’s side of the cockpit and ripped them from his fingers. He almost drowned when a brute of a wave filled the cockpit before he’d found the end of his breathing tube. Stratton realised that the man was in trouble. He grabbed hold of Jackson’s mouthpiece, using the strap around his neck, found the end of the tube and plugged it into the panel outlet. Jackson put the mouthpiece between his teeth and coughed and spluttered as he fought to inhale. He’d nearly had it.
Stratton looked back outside the vessel to see that the bodies had gone. He hoped that meant they were all inside. He glanced up to see the rear of the Chinook, its ramp still open, a figure leaning out of the red glow. Stratton extended a thumb towards George, a gesture which looked to him as if it was returned. The huge chopper thudded away into the darkness and the sound of its rotors, a constant background noise for the past few hours, was replaced by the roar of the wind, the thrashing of the sea and the sizzle of the rain coming down in heavy sheets. Another streak of lightning lit up the sky and the rolling thunder that followed it seemed to surround them.
A hand came through the grille near Stratton’s face, its thumb in the air. It was Jason indicating that everyone was on board and connected to the sub’s air supply. Stratton blew the ballasts and the submarine began to sink.
The roller-coaster effect quickly reduced to nothing as the boat dropped beneath the water and away from the influence of the heavy swell. Stratton increased the throttle and the sub eased ahead under the power of its propellers.
Stratton plugged in a cable connected to his throat microphone and earplugs and looked over at Jackson who appeared to have gathered himself. He nudged the man and offered him a thumbs-up. Jackson returned the gesture, accompanied by a nod to confirm that he was okay. Stratton indicated his own mouth and mimicked talking with his fingers. Jackson searched for the ends of his throat-mike cables and plugged them into the sockets.
‘Can you hear me?’ Stratton asked, his voice sounding slightly strange.
‘That’s fine,’ Jackson said.
‘I can hear you both,’ another voice interrupted. It was Jason in the rear cabin.
‘Everything okay?’ Stratton asked.
‘Smithy’s lost a fin. We almost lost him. Otherwise all is well.’
‘Okay. Sit back and relax. The real ordeal is coming up.’ Stratton checked the positioning device, a sophisticated gyroscopic motion sensor that monitored and recorded the sub’s every move in every direction, constantly recalculating its position from memory. This negated the need for the sub to break the surface to get a GPS fix. He turned on the Doppler sonar, a sonic equivalent of radar, and a screen on the panel lit up, illuminating the faces of the sub’s occupants in a green-blue hue. The Doppler provided a three-dimensional image of the sub’s surroundings at various ranges. Stratton carried out a full scan as per operational procedure. As expected there was only one blip on the screen.
‘How far from the Morpheus?’ Jackson asked.
‘Just over three miles. We can’t get too close to the rig in these conditions or we’ll hit the anchor cables. We’ll drop out of the sub a klick uptide and float in. Jackson will reposition downtide. He’ll wait there until he gets your signal to break surface. He should be able to hold position until first light but you will be heading towards him long before that.’
‘Understood,’ Jason said.
Stratton pulled up the platform’s preprogrammed position and the navigation system gave the direction in the form of an arrow at two o’clock to their heading.
‘It’s all yours,’ Stratton told Jackson.
Jackson took over the controls. He struggled at first to maintain the correct depth but it was not long before he had the hang of it.
Stratton unplugged one of the cables. ‘What’s it like being back in the mob?’ he said.
Jackson glanced at him, suspecting that he was talking to him yet concerned at the same time. He looked down to see that the internal communications cable was unplugged and the conversation was purely between the two of them.
‘My guess is air force,’ said Stratton.
‘How did you know?’
‘A number of clues.’
‘I stayed in college until I got my master’s but I always wanted to be a fighter pilot. Couldn’t get it out of my system. So I joined up for a few years. It was pretty fantastic - everything I’d wanted as a kid. But I couldn’t help handing in design suggestions for weapons-guidance systems. One day I got a call from an office in London. The rest is history.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Stratton said.
‘This has the new periscope system, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s no good in these waters. We don’t need it, anyway.’ Stratton checked the navigation system and the distance to the Morpheus. ‘This tide is moving.’ He plugged Jason’s voice cable back in. ‘You ready back there?’
‘We’re ready.’
‘In one minute Jackson’s going to stop the props. We’ll drift with the tide and be relatively stopped. We’ll have two minutes to clear the sub before Jackson will have to start the props again and get out of the track or hit the rig. I’m going to join you at the door. Hand me the grapnel launcher. You take the ladders and snag line. We’ll all go straight to the surface. You happy with that, Jason?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jackson?’
‘Yes.’
‘The signal to surface on completion of the task?’
‘Two thunder bombs.’
Stratton checked the navigation system again. ‘Okay. Put your tail to the platform and kill the speed.’
Jackson manoeuvred the vessel while Stratton pulled on his fins, disconnected the communications cable, removed his breathing apparatus and replaced it with the breather attached to the bottle strapped to his side. He eased out of the cockpit, a far less complicated exercise than climbing in, and moved along the casing to the cabin opening. The four scientists crammed inside the dark chamber looked at him. He indicated for them to exchange their breathing systems. They felt for the portable breathing teats.