Hatteras Blue (26 page)

"And I ain't goin' to."

They all looked at him. The big waterman was squatting on one of the lockers. His arms bulged out of his cutoff T-shirt and his thighs bulged out of the cheap nylon swimming trunks. His eyes were red-rimmed from salt. Altogether he looked extremely truculent.

"Shad, you got to do something aboard here. You want a cut, you got to share the work."

'You got my contribution, Galloway. The map was it."

"Shad," said Keyes then. Aydlett looked up at him. Without a word the blond man jerked his head toward the companionway.

Aydlett sat there motionless for i. moment, blinking. Then he got up and went below. A moment later they heard a match scrape and then the rattle of pans.

Galloway looked after him, his face thoughtful. "Okay," he said at last. "The rest of us, let's get these tanks charged."

The long afternoon ended with a spectacular Atlantic sunset, etching high streaks of cirrus fiery against cobalt even after the sun vanished. Now only a pale glow lit the western horizon, and as night gained confidence stars snapped on one by one to the east.

Galloway flipped a switch and the anchor light joined them. He looked aft on the shadowed deck and touched another. A floodlight went on, illuminating three wet suits and heaps of gear laid out for donning. He closed the pilothouse door and went out.

"Nine double tanks aboard, all filled and checked," said Caffey in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Torch?"

"Right here. Plus gas. I tell you, this truck's full, Till, won't another ounce go in her."

"Where's Dick?"

"Taking a leak He'll be right up."

He picked up one of the waterproof flashlights and leaned over the gunwale. The sea's quiet tonight, he thought. No wind. The deck hardly moved. The beam of his light, refracting downward into dark water, showed the anchor line sagging in a lazy arc. He ran the pale circle aft over the vehicle, which bumped gently against the side, then clicked it off and looked up at the Pleiades.

Keyes came up. He glanced around. "You boys ready?"

"Yeah. Let's get dressed."

Galloway took his time. A night dive was different from day work. He gripped each piece of equipment several times, memorizing its geometry and heft. They would be diving by feel, not by sight. He hooked tools into a multipocketed belt, snapping pockets closed over smaller items. Those that were left over he put in a net bag and handed to Jack.

Keyes was ready first. He clambered down, fins in hand, putting them on just before he lowered himself into
Charlene.
Galloway followed him. Caffey, last down, hesitated—there were only two seats. "Hold onto the tail fin," Galloway said in a low voice.

The boy nodded, and made a feet-first entry astern of them. They waited for several seconds after his splash subsided.

"Where did he go?"

Caffey surfaced. "I'm too heavy," he said, spitting out the regulator, which bubbled briefly before cutting off. "Wait a sec." He fumbled with his belt, treading water in the darkness, and then tossed a weight over the gunwale. It thudded onto the deck, just missing Aydlett.

"All ready, then?" said Galloway, and received two brief nods in reply. "Be careful back there, Jack. Stay clear of the prop."

The motor hummed, loud in the calm, and the vehicle moved slowly out of the circle of the floodlight. Hirsch, watching it go, raised a hand and waved.

Galloway ran northwest by the compass for several minutes on the surface, then slowed. He pulled out his light and searched the rippled sea around them. "Anyone see the marker?"

Two other lamps flashed on. "There it is," said Keyes, holding his light on the sphere.

Galloway placed
Charlene'
s nose against it and cut the motor. He leaned out to capture the buoy with a loop of line, then he made both ends fast to the towing padeye and tugged on the knot. It held. He looked over his shoulder at the other two. They were shadows against the stars.

"Regulators," he said.

He tucked his own in his mouth, took a breath, and pulled the plug. Cold mounted from his feet to his waist, his chest. The ocean closed in
^/
silence over their heads; the stars wavered, and were gone.

Entering the sea by night, Galloway thought each time he did it, was like dying. They sank through absolute blackness, made deeper by the dim luminescence of his instruments. The bubble and squeak of their breathing filled the sea. He watched the depth gauge edge downward, too slowly, and valved air from the buoyancy tank. The needle moved more rapidly. Twenty-five. Thirty. As they passed forty feet he reached out and flipped on the headlight.

A brilliant beam lanced into darkness from the vehicle's nose. It created an eerie effect. Despite its power it illuminated nothing, revealed only itself. Tiny living things in the water scintillated, reflecting and dispersing the ray till it became a feeble wash, a ghost, then nothing. The light poured into the utter night into which they sank, but nothing returned.

Fifty. He leaned forward and checked the padeye by feel. The loop still circled the buoy line, dragging along it as they dropped. They were sinking straight and true.

Seventy feet. In the wet suit he felt the thermocline as a sudden cold bathing his face. Eighty. Something silver flashed in front of the beam, gone too quickly to identify, like a bomber through the searchlight of a defended city. He checked the gauge. They were dropping faster now. The air in the buoyancy tanks, in their suits, was compressing, making them heavier as they bored into the sea.

A hand light swept across him from behind. Caffey or Keyes. Galloway looked off into the blackness, seeing nothing, then again ahead. He was looking directly in front of the vehicle when the thing swam through the beam again. He stared after it, his lips set around the mouthpiece. It had been swimming slowly, in its searching pattern.

A hammerhead.

Galloway
had
a sudden
memory of his childhood.
Cape Point,
when he was small.
It
was
a
sudden and
complete memory,
like a
snapshot. In
the background, the lighthouse
and
his father, both looming, both old
and enduring; in the foreground himself, small and new, sand crunching under his sneakers. When the tide drew back her lips the sea left many things for boys, as if to tempt them to her. Splintered baulks of iron-bolted wood, once the ribs of ships. Sea glass, frosted like opals. Salt pools, limpid and calm.

He had found hammerheads in one of them. Tiny things, just born, but even six inches long they were perfect. They were fighting among themselves in the puddle, but when he thrust a stick among them they attacked it instead. He flipped one out and clubbed it, as boys will, to see how it took death. He still remembered the semicircular sjash of jaw under the impossible head, set with row on row of teeth, tiny and as perfectly cut as the edge of a hacksaw. In the dimen-sionless light of the beam he couldn't even estimate how large this one was. Four feet? Six? Possibly more—they reached fifteen feet off Hatteras, and he himself had seen several twelve-footers.

He hoped there were no more of them about.

The luminescent needle swept past 120. He twisted a valve for a moment; air scraped, and the descent slowed to a drift, a gentle settling. The sea grew suddenly icy cold. We aren't a vehicle, he thought, watching plankton glitter upward through the beam. We are a dead creature, falling from the blue realm of the sun toward the endless night of the abyss.

At 160 the periscope shears glowed pink-yellow in the headlight. He oriented himself by them. They had come down pointing roughly parallel to the wreck. He reached forward to tug on the loop. The knot came free.
Charlene
continued to settle. He steered forward and left. The wreck loomed up at the edge of the beam, drifting upward as they drifted down.

At 180 they hit, harder than he'd intended. Sand grated on the rounded bottom. iW vehicle tipped slightly and stopped. The beam steadied, lighting a bare strip of bottom ahead of them. Galloway unfolded himself and swam free, holding the flash. He shoved the grounded vehicle around till the U-boat loomed up ahead of its light. Caffey rocked it, wedging stones under the keel till the beam centered itself on the blown-out entrance to the hull.

Galloway moved steadily, not exerting himself, breathing like a mechanism. Occasionally he squeezed all the breath from his lungs, to avoid carbon dioxide buildup. He pulled out tanks, passing a set to each of the others. They weighed little underwater; each diver could tote his own spare. He checked his watch. Good time so far.

He glanced around. Brilliant shafts of light burst from each diver's hand. They probed the darkness, flashing over sand and metal, but the man behind each remained invisible. He kicked off the bottom and headed for the brightly outlined darkness ahead.

First order of business: Clear the entrance. He brought the cutters into position and set to work, shoving the severed wire back into the dark. A steady
snap ... snap
told him Caffey was following suit to his right. When the last cable fell away he replaced the tool in his belt and swam forward. He wriggled under the bent pipes, as before, and waited inside the hull for the others.

Keyes came through, pushing his air ahead of him. Galloway waved to catch his eye, and motioned him downward. The other glanced up, at the inverted pool of oil, and bubbles burst from his regulator. He sank. Caffey came through next, yanking at his tanks as they caught on an edge; his curses were almost audible. Galloway grinned, then caught himself and steadied down.

He bubbled air, waiting to sink to silty steel before he took another breath. Around the mouthpiece his lips were already wooden. The water was like black ice.

Turning slowly, he directed his light into the dark tunnel that lay ahead.

sixteen

S
hadows loomed at the edges of his beam.

As he propelled himself forward, staying close to the floor, they became massive machines. Motor-gener-ators, he thought. They were in some kind of electrical room.

The door to the next compartment was half open, an elongated crescent of darkness beyond. Galloway reached out, then paused. With light and tools and extra tanks he was just too burdened. He checked the gauge of the set on his back: 800. He began to change off, though it was early. The first, he reasoned, could remain here as a backup. There were clanks and bubbling behind him as Keyes and Caffey followed suit.

When his regulator thudded with new air he thrust his hand through the gap and flicked light into the next compartment. A narrow corridor, dim at the far end. More machinery. He swam through, banging the housing of the light on the coaming. The sound tolled through the long-dead hull like a distant, muffled bell.

He swept the beam from side to side, then upward into a vaulted maze of pipes and valves. The overhead here was free of oil. The silt was thinner too. It lay lightly on the upper rims of valve wheels, on connection boxes. The machinery was outwardly whole. A ball peen hammer lay rusted to the deck. He swam slowly down the passage, noting where a food locker had burst, spilling its contents across the canted deckplates into a pile of unidentifiable debris on the starboard side.

Another watertight hatch, this one closed. Galloway paused, shivering a little as the cold explored down the back of his wet suit, studying the complex doggiiig mechanism.

A hand came over his shoulder. Keyes's. It flipped a toggle down, then jerked the wheel counterclockwise. It resisted at first, then gave way with a grinding noise. Fine rust reddened the water. It spun easily for two or three revolutions, then seized again so solidly both men had to crank it through the final turn.

They were both straining against it when it yielded. The hatch groaned and began swinging to starboard, squealing and rasping on its flaking hinges. The list accelerated it and then it clanged to a halt, dimming the water around it with fine silt.

The first thing Galloway noticed about the compartment beyond was the floor. The deck was divided into meter-wide squares of embossed metal. Each square had semicircular cuts in the outer edge. Evidently they could be lifted to inspect or repair the cells of the heavy battery immediately beneath.

A slow wave of giddiness hit him and he almost giggled. The high, right on time. He pulled himself through the hatch, noting that it had locked itself open. That was good. It couldn't swing closed behind them. He swam rapidly down the center of the compartment, focusing his light briefly around the outline of each plate as he passed over it. They all seemed normal, not even bolted down. Here, beyond the sealed door, there was no silt at all. Save for the rust that glowed russet under his light, all was unmarred by the decades, preserved by the sea.

A vertical tube loomed, like a column supporting the curved overhead. Galloway followed it up with his light to where it penetrated the hull. It was the lower periscope housing. Control room directly overhead, then; they were under the conning tower.

So far, at least, he felt all right. Lighthearted, but within reasonable bounds. Yet he knew he was thinking and acting far more slowly than on the surface. He was in control, but it was the kind of control a man exerts after three martinis at a party. He can, with concentration, still respond to a pass or an insult, but the finer judgments are beyond him. His anxieties drop away, he unstops his ears to the siren songs his conscious denies. Galloway admonished himself sternly to bear down. He swam slowly around the shaft, and stopped.