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That was the plan anyway.
The sub was cruising slowly, likely to make it easier to drop the barrels in a regular pattern along the length of the Roraima.
“Linda,” Max said, “send our surprise.”
The deafening ping blasted forth, audible even in the op center.
“I hope you got the message, guys,” he said under his breath.
—
Eddie and Linc had been discussing why Max was being so cryptic when the ping hit the dome’s fabric so hard that it temporarily caved in. The sound inside the PUH was loud enough to make their ears ring. Eddie couldn’t imagine how loud it would have been in the water.
“That must be the cue Max was talking about,” Linc said.
They quickly donned their masks and drew their SPP-1 underwater pistols. “You take the port side of the sub and I’ll take starboard. We should assume they’re armed as well.” The SPPs couldn’t be reloaded on the fly, so each of them had brought a pair of the pistols that held four bolts each. The disadvantage was that at this depth, the weapons had an effective range of only twenty feet.
They ducked under the surface and emerged from the PUH to see the white sub gliding fifty feet above them. Through the Roraima’s remaining intact girders, Eddie could make out the silhouette of a scuba diver thrashing from the effects of the sonar disruption.
An object was tumbling down toward them. It looked unsettlingly like a depth charge, which meant it had to be one of the barrels that Max had mentioned. It crashed into a rusted girder, which collapsed and sent a pile of metal down with it. The tangle of steel landed on the barrel. It was only twenty feet from the location where MacD said he had spotted the object he thought might be the corner of the tin holding the photographic plates they were looking for.
There was no time to search for it now. Their priority was to eliminate the threat from the divers holding the sub passengers hostage. Eddie and Linc pumped their legs to intercept their targets before they regained their senses.
Linc angled away toward the port side of the sub while Eddie swam straight toward the scuba diver, who was still holding his hands to his ears. Blood tinged the water from the man’s ruptured eardrums. He saw Eddie swimming toward him and fumbled with a small speargun that dangled from his wrist, but Eddie shot two bolts into his chest before he could fire. More blood, and the body went limp.
Eddie kicked for the sub, where he saw another barrel teetering over the edge of the stern platform. He caught the bottom of it with his shoulder and pushed it back up before it could fall.
The diver next to the barrel, who had been struggling to wrestle it over the side in his diminished state, was shocked by Eddie’s sudden appearance. He reeled backward and managed to get his finger on the trigger of his speargun just as Eddie’s bolt lanced through his mask. His spear fired harmlessly into the pontoon.
Eddie checked the diver and saw that his mask was outfitted with a bone-conduction communications device. Even with a ruptured eardrum, the man would still be able to hear a signal transmitted from another diver. Eddie had to assume all of the divers were similarly equipped.
He turned and spotted a third diver by the bow. The diver was paying no attention to him but was instead fumbling with a device in his hands. The light from the sub’s interior illuminated him enough for Eddie to see that it was a shaped charge of plastic explosives.
The diver must have gotten the message that they were under attack and was attempting to destroy the sub.
Eddie dolphin-kicked toward him, the SPP-1 outstretched. He fired at thirty feet, but the bolt clanged against the sub’s hull. He dropped the pistol and whipped the spare from his belt. He fired all four bolts in rapid succession, hoping one would hit before the diver could trigger the bomb.
Three of the bolts hit the target, one in the arm and two in the torso, but at this range they lacked the punch needed to disable him. The diver slapped the plastique against the sub and flipped the trigger.
The explosion was small but powerful. It ripped the diver to shreds and knocked Eddie back. He shook his head, and saw that the sub’s hull hadn’t been torn apart. In his haste and disorientation, the diver had placed the charge on an electrical conduit instead of the main body of the hull itself.
The sub was moderately damaged. A huge chunk had been gouged out of the conduit and the hull dented inward. Eddie didn’t see any signs of a leak.
He went to the cockpit dome and knocked on it, startling the pilot. Eddie gave the thumbs-up, the diver’s gesture to surface. The pilot shook his head and started babbling in French. He gesticulated toward the location of the explosion and then back toward the controls. Eddie didn’t have to know the language to understand that the blast had disabled the sub.
He inspected the site of the explosion and found severed wires jutting from the hull. The sub wasn’t going anywhere on its own.
The pilot ran from the cockpit into the sub’s passenger cabin and Eddie swam along outside to follow. The pilot freed a groggy young man from bondage and then went over to the barrel of explosives. Eddie realized with horror that he was about to open it without knowing if it was booby-trapped.
He pounded on the window to get the pilot’s attention. Eddie shook his head vigorously and made an exploding motion with his hands. The pilot got the message and backed off. He came over to the window and pointed to the barrel and then his watch. He flashed five fingers three times.
Eddie nodded. Fifteen minutes left before the barrel exploded.
Linc swam into view. Eddie waved him over and they touched masks.
“I took care of the three on the port side,” Linc said. He saw the damage from the explosion. “That must have been the thump I heard.”
“The sub’s too damaged to move,” Eddie said. “And we’ve got fifteen minutes until that barrel of explosives inside goes off.”
