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“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Jump!”
Juan pushed the pack over the side and followed it into the slipstream.
The sound of the plane receded quickly and was replaced by the sound of the wind buffeting him in free fall. The pack exerted less resistance to the wind than his body, so it dangled below him, dragging him toward the water. He imagined Tate watching him fall, scrambling to get whatever plans to capture or kill him in motion.
He wouldn’t have much time once he hit the water, so he was going to open his chute as low to the surface as possible. A thousand feet was the target. The altimeter counted down every five hundred feet in his ear. It went awfully fast.
Juan took a moment to verify that the pack was still securely attached to his harness. During D-Day, U.S. paratroopers invading Normandy were given heavy equipment bags that strapped to their legs. Apparently, they’d never been tested in battle conditions before because most of the bags ripped loose when the chutes deployed. The packs then plummeted to the ground and were lost in the darkness.
If Fred the Dummy detached prematurely, Juan would plunge right to the bottom of the harbor, and his mission would fail almost as soon as it began. He’d never tested this scenario out in a real-world environment, either, but his buckles seemed latched and tight.
“Two thousand,” the mechanical voice called out. “Fifteen hundred.”
Juan anticipated the thousand announcement and pulled the ripcord when it came. The parachute yanked him upward, as the harness around his chest and waist cut into his wetsuit, but it held. The pack swung wildly beneath him. Tate was surely wondering what it was.
The water came up fast, and Juan took one last glance around him. No boats were anywhere close to him. He pressed the RECALL button on his wrist, which started the remote control on the RHIB. The speedy boat would now be heading his way. At the same time, Tiny would be descending to land as backup.
When he splashed down, Juan pulled the release on the chute and turned around until he saw the small buoy indicating the location of the diving bell. He swam to it, trailing the floating pack behind him.
When he reached the buoy, he removed a tiny tank called Spare Air that was clipped to his harness. It was for divers to use in the case of emergency and held enough air for fifteen breaths. That was all Juan would need.
He put in the mouthpiece and cracked the pack containing the dummy to release the air inside. It sank and pulled Juan down with it.
Juan snapped on his headlamp and saw the yellow diving bell resting on the muddy harbor floor.
As he got closer, he spotted the bomb stuck to the hull. As he expected, it was Tate’s fail-safe. But Juan’s old CIA partner wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to kill him. At least that’s what he was hoping.
When he got to the top of the diving bell, he took out a small electronic device and clamped it to the cable carrying the interior and exterior camera feeds from the bell to the buoy. The unit was designed to insert itself into the middle of the connection, buffering the video and then rebroadcasting it. The display indicated that it was successfully intercepting the signal.
Juan double-tapped twice on the molar mic with his tongue to indicate that the feed was in place.
“Acknowledged,” Eric said from the Nomad’s cockpit. “Two hundred meters out and approaching.”
Juan double-tapped again and lowered himself to the window of the diving bell. He saw Overholt inside, alive but looking worn out. The interior wheel of the hatch had been removed. Juan caught Overholt’s eye and held a whiteboard up to the window.
Stay perfectly still for one minute.
Overholt knew not to ask questions. He nodded slightly and remained in his seat, looking blankly at the wall.
Juan pressed the button on his remote, and the unit was now recording the video from the diving bell and any cameras on its exterior. In a minute, it would begin broadcasting that video as a loop. To Tate, it would look like nothing was going on in the capsule.
Juan opened the pack and extracted Fred’s inert form. As promised by Kevin Nixon, the dummy’s hair and facial prosthetics had stayed in place. From any distance farther than ten yards, it would look like a soaked version of Overholt.
He dropped the pack and looked at his watch. Based on his math, the RHIB should be approaching any moment, which was great because he only had one or two breaths of air left in his mini-tank. Then he heard the engine of the speedy boat as it raced toward him.
As he rose to the surface, he saw the headlights of the Nomad below him as it approached the diving bell.
* * *
—
Linc and Eddie were in scuba gear holding on to the railing around the Nomad’s air lock hatch. The diving bell came into view as the submersible’s lights focused on its resting place on the seabed. Silt rose behind them, mixed into the water by the Nomad’s propellers.
Eric, who was driving the sub, brought it to a halt only a few yards away from the bell and expertly hovered there.
“I’ll turn around while you go get him,” Eric said.
“On our way,” Eddie replied. He and Linc were wearing full-face masks so they could talk.
