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He rapped on the glass with his LSU class ring, and, within seconds, a figure threw itself into the pilot seat and a light flipped on, revealing Eddie Seng. He had a bruise near his temple that was starting to swell up like a pigeon’s egg. He quickly reached a piece of paper from a stack next to his control panel and held it up for MacD to read.
Lawless blew out his breath when he saw what Eddie had written and scrambled to the surface as fast as he could.
The instant his face cleared the water he shouted, “Mark, stop!”
He heaved himself out of the water and up onto the bobbing hull in one powerful lunge. Lawless saw Mark kneeling over the air lock hatch, his bands poised to crack the seal. “Don’t open it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s fully pressurized, and, if you do, not only will it blow the hatch into your skull but it’ll turn Mike Trono into a meat bomb.”
Murph carefully pulled his hands away from the locking wheel and let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “What about Juan?”
“No idea. Eddie just held up a note saying Mike is in the air lock. It’s got to be pumped up to about two hundred psi.”
“Hold on.” Mark leapt back over to the RHIB and grabbed another piece of electronics he’d taken from the Oregon. He uncoiled a length of wire from the device and handed its end to Lawless.
“There’s a communications port directly above the auxiliary electrical port. Both are near the large external air intake port. Can’t miss it,” Mark said with a grin and shoved MacD in the chest so that he tumbled back into the water.
MacD gave him a scowl and duck-dove with the cable in his hand. He surfaced thirty seconds later and shoved the swim mask up onto his forehead. “Give it a go.”
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“Eddie, can you hear me? It’s Murph.”
“Never been so glad to hear your voice,” Eddie responded. “You got the message?”
“Yeah. What’s Mike doing in the air lock? And where’s the Chairman?”
“Long story. As for the Chairman, he’s still down on the wreck.”
“He was outside when the torpedoes hit?”
“Not the first one, but he went out to free us just before the second one exploded.”
“Is he alive?”
“Don’t know. Listen, we don’t have time for this. Mike’s breathing off his own tanks. We need to get this tub back to the Oregon and get him some trimix so we can start decompressing him out of there.”
“Right. MacD and I are out here on a RHIB. The Oregon should be over the wreck by now. We’ll tow you over and lift you aboard with the deck crane.”
“That’s good. Mike and I have been chatting, using Morse code. He’s kept his breathing shallow and figures he’s got another half hour or so.”
“Tell him he’ll be fine. Talk to you later.” Mark gave MacD a look, and the newest member of the team knew what he had to do. He pulled his mask back over his eyes and went to retrieve the cable.
Just a minute later, they took the Nomad under tow. The RHIB was designed for speed rather than torque, but they still managed to get up to fifteen knots pulling the ungainly hull through the water. Mark had radioed ahead, so when they motored under the shadow of the Oregon’s lee side, the most powerful of the ship’s forward derricks had been swung out and lifting hooks lowered to the water.
The mini-sub was pulled from the Atlantic as easy as a babe from a cradle, water sluicing off its sides, dousing the two men in the RHIB.
Lawless gunned the motors to steer them into the boat garage as the mini-sub cleared the rail and was lowered into the main cargo hold. Once they were aboard, Murph grabbed a towel from a storage bin, dried his hair and face as best he could, and headed for the hold, figuring Max would handle the Chairman’s rescue while he figured out how to open a particularly dicey can of worms.
Down in the moon pool, Hanley was securing two spare trimix tanks to Little Geek with nylon webbing.
“Okay,” he said at last, “try it.”
A tech at Little Geek’s controls spooled up its three propellers and maneuvered them on their gimbals to make certain they didn’t become fouled by the extra burden the ROV would carry.
“Looks good,” Hanley said, getting to his feet. “Give me a hand.”
