Then Austin caught the break he was looking for. The ship plowed to a stop and floated dead in the water. Jenkins ran his boat as a trawler when he wasn't going after lobsters, and it was fitted out with a drumlike stem hauler to handle the net. With the help of the chief, he got the net in the water. Then the Kestrel got under way again and made a sweep by one side of the ship, a hundred yards off. The maneuver gave those on the ship a chance to inspect the fishing boat at close range. What they didn't see were the two divers hanging off the opposite side of the boat.
After traveling about halfway along the length of the ship, Jenkins cut the Kestrel's engine to an idle and went out onto the deck. He and Howes tinkered with the hauler, as if there was a problem. During the pause, Austin and Trout dropped into the water and dove under the boat. They wanted to get deep and out of the way of the net.
It was agreed that Jenkins would make a sweep by one side of the ship, then trawl for a couple of miles before turning back and returning on the other side. That gave them an hour to get on board the ship and back. They would keep in touch with Jenkins using their underwater communicators to talk to a hydrophone Trout had hung into the water before they went over the side.
They swam deeper, moving their legs in a steady flutter that ate up the distance. They could hear the muffled grumble of the fishing boat engine as Jenkins got under way again and dove to thirty-five feet, where the visibility was still fair.
With powerful scissors kicks, they covered the distance to the ship in a short time.
The gigantic hull emerged from the murk like the body of an enormous whale asleep on the surface. Austin signaled Trout to go deeper. When they were directly under the massive keel, they looked up and snapped their lights on. It was hard not to be unnerved by thousands of tons of black steel floating above their heads.
"Now I know how a bug feels just before someone steps on it," Trout said, gazing up at the massive hulk.
"I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't want to make you nervous."
"Too late. Where do you want to start?"
"If I interpreted the satellite photos correctly, we should find what we're looking for at midships."
They swam slowly upward until the ship's barnacle-encrusted bottom entirely filled the lenses of their face masks. In the beam of his light, Austin saw what he was looking for, a rubber-edged seam that ran across from one side of the flat-bottomed hull to the other. "Bingo!" he said.
When Austin had first looked at the satellite pictures, he'd noticed an open area around one of the derricks that rose from the deck. Someone had carelessly left off a tarp that covered the opening and he could see down into a black void. He was sure he was looking into a "moon pool," a docking space similar to that on the Argo and other NUMA ships.
Austin knew from experience that odds favored the pool's gates being closed. It was standard operating procedure, otherwise the drag from the open sea would slow the ship down. But he remembered that some NUMA ships had a smaller pool used for launching ROVs. He saw what he was looking for on the port side, forward of the larger moon pool, an indented rectangle about twelve feet square. When they swam close, they saw that the gates of the ROV launch well were shut tight.
Austin unclipped the Oxy-Arc cutting torch from his belt and uncoiled the hose. Trout produced the oxygen tank he had been carrying and coupled it to the hose. From his belt bag, Austin pulled out two small powerful magnets with hand grips on them. He attached the magnets to the hull, then he and Trout slipped plastic shades over their masks to shield their eyes from the bright flame. While Austin held on to the magnet with one hand, Trout lit the torch. Even with the protection of the eyeshades, it was like looking at the sun.
Austin began to cut, hoping that the pool cover was thinner than the actual hull. Although the ship wasn't moving, water churned around its great bulk and created eddies of current that pulled at Austin's body. With Trout's help, he had been able to stay more or less in one place, but a particularly violent current twisted him completely around. He had to let go of the magnet and when he made a grab with the other hand in reflex, he dropped the torch.
Trout was having similar problems, only he lost the oxygen tank. They managed to grab onto the magnets and whipped their eyeshades off in time to see the tank and the torch, still lit, plunge out of sight into the depths.
Every sailor's curse Austin had learned in years at sea crackled in Trout's earphones. After exhausting his repertoire of curses, he said, "I couldn't hold on to the torch."
"You may have noticed that I lost the tank. I didn't realize you knew so many cusswords."
Austin managed a chuckle. "Zavala taught me the ones in Spanish. Sorry for dragging you all this way for nothing."
"If I weren't under a giant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Gamay would have me wallpapering our town house. Got any backup plans?"
"Maybe if we knock, they'll open the doors. Or we swim to the surface, look for a ladder hanging down and climb aboard."
"Hardly practical."
"You asked if I had backup ideas. You didn't say they had to be practical."
Austin was about to give the word to head back when Trout let out a yell of surprise and jabbed his forefinger straight down.
Paul's sharp fisherman's eye had seen faint lights rising from the darkness below. The hazy glow reminded Austin of the luminescent fish William Beebe had found on his half- mile dive in a bathysphere. The oncoming object grew larger. They hurried out of its path until they were off to one side of the ship. They turned around and saw a small submarine ascend until it was about a hundred feet beneath the hull of the Ataman ship. The sub was clearly outlined by its running lights.
"I'll be damned," Trout said, recognizing the distinctive silhouette. "It's the NR-1. What's she doing here?"
"More important, where's she going next?" Austin's nimble mind had already sprinted several steps ahead. "Let's go for a boat ride."
Austin angled his body downward and swam behind the hovering sub. He had once made a dive on the NR-1 and knew a camera was mounted forward of the conning tower. He and Trout grabbed onto the stair rungs built into the sail and hung on. Within seconds, a thin glowing line of yellow light appeared above. The moon pool gates were being retracted.
Trout looked up, the illumination from above reflected in his mask lens. "I think I saw this on The X-Files when the aliens abducted a human."
"It's always nice to meet new friends," Austin said, his eyes glued to the line as it widened into a long narrow rectangle, then a square of blazing light.
The sub's vertical thrusters whirred, and the NR-1 rose slowly into the ship. Austin and Trout slid off the deck before the sub surfaced inside the pool. They swam toward a dark area between the circles of illumination cast by the lights inside the ship. At the edge of the pool, they cautiously poked their heads from the water. From the safety of the shadows, Austin took measure. The pool was about two hundred feet long and half as wide. Steel mesh catwalks accessed by short flights of open stairs ran along both sides.
Men in coveralls leaned over the railings and watched the NR-1 emerge from the water. Then the loud grinding of gears filled the enormous chamber as the pool doors closed.
Heavy-duty hoists fitted with steel hooks descended from the ceiling. A door opened in the side of the chamber, and several divers dressed in dry suits jumped into the water. They slid wide yokes under the front and back of the sub. The yokes were attached to the hooks, and powerful winches lifted the sub like the chain falls that were used to yank car engines out.
The hydraulic gates slid shut, sealing the chamber from the sea, and with a mighty grumble, invisible pumps began to suck water from the pool. The powerful pumps cleared the pool in minutes. Then the winches lowered the sub.
Crews of men flowed down the stairs onto the slimy floor of the pool. While some men swept the deck clear of seaweed and flopping fish, others attached cables to the NR-1 and braced it with timbers so it wouldn't shift with the ship's movement. The whoosh of ventilators brought fresh air into the space.
Austin and Trout had scrambled up a ladder when the pumping started, and now they hung above the deck. The weight of their scuba equipment pulled at their arms and fingers. While they huddled in the shadows, below them in the glare of lights men leaned a ladder against the sub. The hatch opened in the conning tower, and a man with a white beard climbed out. He had a revolver holster on his belt and matched the description Ensign Kreisman had given of Pulaski, the phony scientist who'd pulled a gun on the NR-1.
Two more men came out. Austin recognized Captain Logan and the pilot of the NR-1 from pictures he'd been shown. Four more men emerged. They had tough, impassive faces and carried heavy-duty firearms that identified them as guards. The NR-1 men were ushered up the stairs and disappeared from view. Hauling bags of sea debris, the last of the cleaning crew followed. The lights went out except for a glow above their heads.
"What now?" Trout said.
"We've got two choices. Up or down."
Trout looked at the darkness below them and then grabbed the rung above his head and started to climb. The scuba gear seemed to get heavier the higher they got. Luckily, they had to climb less than twenty feet before they reached a narrow landing. With a mighty grunt, Trout pulled himself up and over the rail and slipped off his tanks and weight belt. He gave Austin a hand and they both sat there, catching their breath.
While he sat with his back to the bulkhead, Austin retrieved his Bowen from a watertight pack. Trout carried a SIG-Sauer.9 mm pistol of Swiss design. They walked to where the short landing joined a catwalk at a right angle. The catwalk ran into a well-lit passageway. Seeing that it was deserted, they kept on the move. They came upon a large alcove that sheltered a shiny, white, domed structure with small portholes on its side. They recognized the white dome immediately as a decompression chamber.
After making sure no one was using the chamber, they went back for their scuba gear and stashed it inside. Then they slipped out of their dry suits and stowed them with the tanks. A short distance from the decompression chamber, they found a locker room. Hanging from a thick rod and still dripping with seawater were the suits worn by the divers who had tied down the NR-1. Austin was more interested in the neatly folded sets of coveralls stashed on shelves near the lockers. They pulled the coveralls on over their suit liners.
At six feet eight and 270 pounds, Trout wasn't easy to fit. The legs of his uniform came down to his ankles, and his arms protruded from his sleeves. "How do I look?" Trout said.
"Like a very tall scarecrow. Aside from that, you should fool anyone we meet for at least ten seconds."
He scrunched down. "How's this?"
"Now you look like Quasimodo,"
"That hair of yours isn't exactly inconspicuous. Let's hope anyone we meet is legally blind. What's next?"
Austin plucked a cap from a pile, tossed it to Trout and jammed another on his head, He pulled the visor down over his head and said: "We go for a stroll."
-29- AUSTIN STOPPED AT an intersection and glanced up and down the corridors like a bewildered tourist. "Damn," he said. "I think we're lost."
"We should have left a trail of bread crumbs," Trout said wistfully.
"This isn't exactly a gingerbread house and we're not Hansel and - whoops." Austin jerked his thumb at a door off to the left. His ear had picked up the click of a knob turning.
Trout stepped back, but Austin grabbed his arm. "Too late," he whispered. "Look as if we belong here." He bent his head over a clipboard he'd liberated from the divers' room and kept one hand close to the gun concealed under his uniform. Trout got down on one knee, untied his shoelace and began to tie it.
The door opened, and two men carne out. Austin glanced up from his clipboard, gave them a friendly smile and checked them out for weapons. The men differed from each other in physique, but both wore glasses and their faces had a studious look. They were deep in conversation and only glanced at the NUMA men before they disappeared down a corridor.
Austin watched them go and said, "You can stand now. Those two looked like techies. We've got a major problem. It could take days to search this ship properly. The longer we're here, the greater the chance someone will see through our highly imaginative disguises."
Trout stood and rubbed his knee. "To say nothing of the toll to be exerted on my aging joints. What do we do now?”
Austin stared off past Trout's shoulder, and a smile replaced the frown on his lips. "For starters, I'd suggest that you look behind you."
Trout grinned when he saw the diagram on the wall. It was a map showing the ship's layout as seen from above and in profile. "We're apparently not the only ones who need help finding their way around this little houseboat."