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“Reverse double half twist with a full gainer,” he deadpanned. “We’ve got two fish so start recovery operations while we cycle through the air lock.”
“Affirmative.”
The men could feel water swirl below them as Linda crept forward in the Nomad.
Without an effective dive mask, Cabrillo was guided by Linc down to the air lock, and he let the Chairman enter first. He wedged his considerable bulk through the tight opening, reaching over his head to secure the hatch. When an indicator on the wall turned green, he opened the valves that drained the chamber.
Cabrillo yanked off his helmet as soon as the level dropped below his chin. The air was cold and crisp, refreshing after an hour of breathing the chemically tainted atmosphere trapped in the dry dock. Despite the tight quarters, he managed to wriggle out of his tank without giving Linc too many bruises, so when the air lock was empty he was ready to join Linda in the cockpit.
“Welcome aboard.” She threw him a saucy smile. “How’d it go?”
“Piece of cake,” he said absently, sliding into the reclined seat in his wet Syrian Navy uniform. The computer monitor between them displayed a closed-circuit television shot from below the mini-sub.
The low-light camera slung under the Nomad showed Linda that the sub was slightly off center of the first torpedo. She made an adjustment so that one set of the curved grappling arms Max had installed were directly above the three-ton weapon. She hit a control, and the tungsten-steel claws curled around the torpedo and clamped it tight to the Nomad’s belly.
Juan helped her by pumping out one of the ballast tanks to regain neutral trim. Linda eased the Nomad to the side, using its directional thrusters, a corner of her lip pinched between her teeth.
She cursed under her breath when the sub lurched past the torpedo. “Tide’s coming in,” she explained, and reversed power to back the submersible over her target.
A light on the air-lock control panel went from red to green. Eddie and Max were aboard.
For the second time, the Nomad drifted beyond the torpedo, forcing Linda to ramp up the power in order to fight the tidal waters swirling into the dry dock. The eddies and crosscurrents played havoc with the little sub. Juan was confident that if Linda didn’t think she could do it, she’d ask for his help. He let her do her job, and, on the third try, she vented air and set the submersible atop the second torpedo. She closed the claws around its tubular shape and dumped more ballast.
With a self-satisfied smile, Linda said, “Third time’s the charm.”
Juan extended the manipulator arm and used its dexterous fingers to gather up the four slings they’d used to move the torpedoes and stow them in a bin under the Nomad’s chin. As soon as the arm was returned to its default position, Linda jammed the joystick hard over to rotate the Nomad in the dry dock. Signals from the LIDAR system allowed her to squeak through the partially open door and into the open water of the port.
Juan checked their battery status, their speed through the water, and speed over the bottom. He tapped the numbers into the computer to get an approximation of the Nomad’s range. Behind them, his team was getting out of their wet suits and dressing in fresh clothes they had packed earlier.
With the tide coming in harder than they’d estimated, the little submersible would have just an hour of reserve power by the time they reached the Oregon. It was an uncomfortably close margin, and one Juan was going to make worse. He had a bad feeling about the Iranian response and wanted to put distance between his ship and the Strait of Hormuz.
“Nomad to Oregon,” he radioed.
“Good to hear your voice, Chairman,” Hali Kasim replied. “I take it everything went well?”
“Like stealing candy from a baby,” Cabrillo said. “How’s the reconfiguration going?”
“Like clockwork. The fairing over the bow is gone, the funnel’s back to normal, and we’ve got a good jump on folding up the containers.”
“Good. Hali, in about thirty minutes I want you to get under way, but take her out at about three knots.” The Nomad was making four. “We’ll make our rendezvous a little farther down the coast.”
“That will put us pretty close to the shipping lanes,” Hali pointed out. “We can’t stop out there to pick you up.”
“I know. We’ll do the recovery on the fly.” Surfacing the Nomad in the moon pool was dangerous enough, but doing it with the Oregon under way was something Cabrillo would only risk if he felt it was absolutely necessary.
“Are you sure about that?” Max asked, leaning into the cockpit.
Juan turned to look his old friend in the eye. “My right ankle is acting up.” That was their code for the Chairman having a premonition. He’d had the feeling before accepting an assignment from NUMA that cost him his right leg below the knee, and in the intervening years both men had come to trust Juan’s instinct.
“You’re the boss,” Max said, and nodded.
It took an additional two hours to reach the Oregon, as she slowly steamed away from the Iranian coast. The Nomad passed under the dark hull forty feet below the keel. The moon-pool doors were fully retracted and flattened against the hull, and red battle lamps within the ship cast the water in a scarlet glow. It was almost like they were approaching the gates of hell.
Linda slowed the submersible to match the Oregon’s sluggish pace, centering the craft beneath the opening. In a normal recovery, divers would enter the water to secure lifting lines to the Nomad, and it would be winched into the ship. Though making only three knots, it was too much of a current to dive safely in the moon pool’s confines.
When she was comfortable with the speed, she dialed off ballast, pumping the tanks so slowly that the Nomad rose in fractional increments.
“Not to add pressure or anything,” Hali called over the comm link, “but we have a turn coming up in less than four minutes.” The shipping lanes within the Strait of Hormuz were so tight that any deviation was simply not tolerated.
