Return to Atlantis: A Novel (39 page)

“With what?” Nina protested. “They’ve got nail guns and torpedoes, and we’ve got a claw that doesn’t work!”

“Better than nowt.” He looked ahead. Broken metal poked out from the silt, the debris field becoming thicker. They were coming up on the remains of the SBX. Matt turned to avoid something resembling an enormous broken eggshell: part of the giant fiberglass dome that had covered the platform’s main radar antenna.

Eddie looked at the LIDAR again. Their pursuers were still closing, the sub slightly ahead of the deep suit. “Have you explored any of this?”

“Nope,” Matt told him. “It’s a grave site—off-limits. The only people who’ve been allowed down to it are US navy divers.”

“So you don’t know what’s in there?” The engineer shook his head. “Oh well, at least we’ll all be in the same boat. One that’s up shit creek!”

The
Sharkdozer
swerved to skirt a fallen girder standing out of the seabed like a flagpole. One of the SBX’s six gigantic legs rose at an angle ahead. The concrete cylinder was surrounded by a nest of twisted metal. “Eddie, give me some hints here,” Matt said urgently.

Eddie indicated a long beam protruding almost horizontally from the wreckage. “Can we fit under that?”

“Yeah—but there could be anything on the other side.”

“You want to find out what?”

“Not especially.”

Nina saw plumes of bubbles from the diver’s rifle obscure his spotlights on the video monitor. “He’s shooting again!”

“But I want a nail up my backside even less!” Matt
decided quickly, turning the
Sharkdozer
on a course that would take it beneath the overhanging girder. A couple of the six-inch steel spikes clipped the submersible’s back end, but the rest shot harmlessly past. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just go through and make sure he has to go under that beam to come after us,” Eddie said as he took the arm controls. On the monitor, the Mako’s lights were now dazzling as it caught up. Another few seconds and it would be impossible for a torpedo to miss. He raised the remaining manipulator, turning it to look ahead. The long strut stood out clearly in the sub’s floodlights. He brought the arm higher, the paralyzed claw now on a collision course with the beam. “Soon as you’re clear, turn so he can’t get a shot at us.”

“There’s nowhere
to
bloody turn!” The space beneath the leg was choked with mangled debris from the radar platform’s underside.

They were through—

The raised arm hit the girder with a crash, the base of the claw catching its edge—and acting as a pivot. The
Sharkdozer
swung sharply upward, before the strain on the already damaged manipulator became too much and half the claw was wrenched away. Matt jammed the thrusters into reverse to stop his sub from plowing into the wall of curved concrete above.

Behind, the girder shuddered, a mournful groan of metal echoing through the freezing waters … then it broke free and dropped toward the seafloor.

It hit the Mako as it fell. The submersible was slammed to the seabed in a roiling cloud of silt. The impact flung the pilot against his control panel, knocking him unconscious.

Not that anybody aboard the
Sharkdozer
was in a position to celebrate. Even full reverse power was not enough to slow it in time to prevent the collision. Matt tried to swerve to turn a head-on impact into a glancing blow—

There was a hideous crunch as the tubular steel bumpers
protecting the viewing bubble were flattened, the acrylic hemisphere itself grinding horribly against the concrete. Hairline cracks flicked out from the ragged line where the viewport had been abraded into opacity. Another, harder impact threw the sub’s occupants around as the port-side arm was sheared from its mounting, taking an entire section of the outer hull with it and exposing the cylindrical pressure vessel of the crew compartment within. The LIDAR display went blank as the turret housing the scanning lasers was ripped away.

The
Sharkdozer
slewed round, only stopping when it thudded starboard-side-on against part of the SBX’s crushed superstructure. Nina was first to recover. “Is everyone okay?”

Matt clutched his left hand, blood oozing from a deep gash. A red smear ran along a sharp edge of the instrument panel. “Got a bit of a wallop,” he gasped as he attempted with little success to make light of the pain. “Eddie, you all right, mate?”

Eddie had ended up at the back of the compartment beneath the submersible’s entrance hatch. Loose equipment lay all around him. “Took a laptop to the head, but apart from that, just fine,” he said, giving the offending computer a nasty look. “Did we get him?”

Matt moved the
Sharkdozer
away from the wall. The submersible was slower to respond than ever. He managed to turn it about. “Yeah, yeah we did!” The Mako was pinned beneath the fallen girder.

“Great,” said Nina, relieved, but still wary. “So where’s the other—”

Six-inch spikes stabbed into the submersible’s hull.

T
he diver had followed the Mako into the arena and opened up with his ASM-DT. The underwater weapon spat its remaining nail rounds in a line along the
Sharkdozer
’s wounded port side. The cobalt-steel pressure hull was too strong for them to penetrate—though they still hit with enough force for their tips to punch into the metal, jutting like porcupine spines.

But the sub had a weaker point.

The last two rounds hit the viewing bubble. Even though it was thicker than the nails were long, they still tore into the transparent acrylic, stopping less than an inch from the inner surface. Gunshot snaps rang through the cabin as more cracks radiated outward from the points of impact.

“Shit!”
It was the greatest expression of pure fear Nina or Eddie had ever heard from Matt as he flinched back from the damaged port.

Eddie scrambled forward. “How bad is it?”

“It could go at any time!” Even as they watched, one crack slowly lengthened with a rasping squeal.

The diver was changing his gun’s magazine. “One more hit’ll finish us,” Eddie realized. They only had seconds
before the diver reloaded, and no way to stop him—

Except one. The sub itself.

“Ram him!” Eddie barked.

“It could crack the port!” Matt protested.

“We’re dead either way—do it!”

Matt unwillingly pushed the throttles forward. Occupied with reloading, the diver at first didn’t realize the danger—until the increasing brightness of the
Sharkdozer
’s lights made him look up. Startled, he froze for a moment before grabbing the control stalk protruding from his suit’s chest and spinning up his own thrusters—

Too late. The submersible hit him, pushing him backward toward the sunken rig’s leg. The damaged bubble creaked alarmingly.

The deep suit was caught on the
Sharkdozer
’s mangled bumpers. The diver’s thrusters surged, but he couldn’t break free. He hurriedly resumed his attempt to reload the gun, finally seating the magazine. Pulling back the charging handle, he pointed the rifle at the fractured dome—

The submersible drove him against the concrete. Even at a speed of only a few knots, the
Sharkdozer
’s sheer mass was enough to make it a crushing impact. The deep suit’s humped fiberglass back split open, an air hose tearing and releasing a surge of bubbles into the water.

But the diver himself was still alive, protected by the suit’s rigid shell. The collision shook him loose from the bumper, leaving him floating as the sub slowly bounced backward. He raised the gun again—

Eddie lunged over Matt’s shoulder and slammed the controls sideways with one hand—and shoved the throttles to full with the other.

The thrusters pivoted in response, the
Sharkdozer
spinning on the spot. The vulnerable viewport swung away from the diver—and the damaged starboard thruster pod came at him. The exposed screw blades sliced through the water in a vortex of froth—

The submersible juddered, the motor’s whine replaced
by a meaty
thunk-thunk-thunk
before the thruster cut out, clogged. Another red light joined the many already on the instrument panel. Outside, the water also took on a distinctly crimson tint. The rifle slowly spun past, part of a gloved hand still clutching its grip.

“He’s
definitely
screwed,” said Eddie, breathing heavily.

Nina watched the gun land before focusing on something much closer: the damaged viewport. The crash had extended more of the cracks. “Matt, how long before this thing breaks?”

“No way to know,” Matt admitted, backing the sub away from the expanding red haze. “It might last hours—or it could go in two seconds.”

Eddie counted to two under his breath. “Well, we got past that, so let’s hope it lasts for hours, eh?”

“We’re still fucked even if it holds! We’ve only got one working thruster, so it’ll take even longer to get to the surface, and in about five minutes the air’s going to start going bad.”

“How long can we last?” Nina asked.

“Three of us, in a compartment this size? Maybe ten minutes before we pass out, fifteen at most. Twenty minutes, tops, we’ll be dead from carbon dioxide poisoning.”

Eddie pursed his lips. “No way we can fix the air system?”

“Not from inside.” Matt slumped in his seat. “I don’t want to be the one who has to say this, but … we’re dead.”

“What about the other sub?” said Nina. The Mako’s lights were still shining brightly. “Is there any way we can dock with it?”

The Australian pondered the question, then faint hope entered his voice. “It’s got a standard docking connector, so yeah … but we’d have to get it out from under that girder first.”

Eddie returned to the arm controls. “We got enough power to move it?”

“Have to chance it.”

Matt was about to guide the
Sharkdozer
toward the pinned sub when Eddie told him to wait. “Just let me get something first …” He worked the remaining arm, extending the undamaged secondary manipulator. “Take us down, over there. I’m going to pick up the gun.”

“What for?” asked his wife.

Eddie nodded at the other submersible. The pilot was visible through its windows, still unconscious. “Just in case we get aboard and he wakes up.” He lowered the arm to the seabed. It took him several attempts, but the steel digits eventually gripped the weapon. “Okay, got it.” He shook off the dead hand, then moved the manipulator above the
Sharkdozer
and dropped the ASM-DT onto its top hatch with a clank.

Matt brought his injured vessel about and headed for the Mako. For the first time, they got a proper look at their opponent. While designed as a pleasure craft, able to take passengers down to a thousand feet below the surface, this one had been modified for a more aggressive purpose. A rack had been crudely welded to its flank to hold torpedoes, one of which was still in place.

“Bit of a botch-job,” said Matt, scrutinizing the weapon with his engineer’s eye. The torpedo was the underwater equivalent of an improvised explosive device, a length of metal pipe propelled by compressed air. A package of explosives with a simple impact detonator was crammed inside.

“They work well enough,” said Nina, remembering the fate of Hayter’s sub.

“Yeah. Looks like it was put together in a hurry, though.”

“To kill us,” Eddie said. “Or Nina, specifically. It’s this bloke Glas, it’s got to be.”

“But how did he know we were here?” asked Nina.

“Maybe you can ask him when you see him,” said Matt.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s probably around here somewhere. This
sub couldn’t have gotten out here on its own—it doesn’t have enough range. It’s got to have a mother ship. So if the pilot’s still alive, he might tell you how to find it—and Glas.”

Eddie clenched his fists. “He’ll tell us.”

“We’ve got to get aboard it first,” Nina reminded him.

Matt moved the sub closer to the trapped craft. “Eddie, let me do that,” he said, taking the manipulator controls. “This might be a bit tricky …”

He nudged the girder with what was left of the main arm. Their sub swayed beneath them. “I was afraid of that—I don’t know if we’ll be able to get enough leverage with only one thruster. Okay, Eddie, you keep it pushed against that beam. I’ll see if I can shift it.”

A tense minute passed as he applied power, the
Sharkdozer
swinging back and forth as the arm rasped against the girder. The beam slowly ground along the Mako’s hull. “Come on, a bit more,” said Eddie. “We can do it!”

“I’m giving it all she’s got!”

A shrill screech echoed through the water as the arm slipped, gouging a foot-long scratch out of the rusting metal. Eddie choked back an expletive, trying to hold the manipulator in place. The girder was still moving, inch by inch, but he didn’t know if it was enough …

The thruster’s whine fluctuated. “We’re losing power!” Matt cried. “Eddie, push it!”

Last chance—

Eddie shoved the arm forward. The
Sharkdozer
lurched—then the girder came free, scraping noisily over the Mako before dropping off its stern to whump down on the silt and wreckage below.

The
Sharkdozer
drifted to a stop alongside the other sub. “Okay, but we’re not done yet,” said Matt. “We need to lift it up so we can dock with its bottom hatch.”

“But there’s another hatch on the top, right there,” said Eddie.

“Yeah, but we’ve only got a topside hatch, and I don’t think the
’dozer
’ll take kindly to being turned upside
down in the state she’s in! There’s a crane hook on its top—if you can grab it, we should be able to lift it. It’s neutrally buoyant, so it’ll stay put once we’ve moved it. I hope.”

Another precious minute passed as Eddie, craning to see through the viewport, tried to get hold of the hook. Finally, it seemed to be secured. Matt checked the status of the air supply, grimaced, and with a mutter of “Better get on with it, then,” powered up the thruster again.

The arm creaked and strained, but held. In a swirl of sand, the conjoined vessels slowly rose …

A new alarm sounded, a mournful, pulsing honk. “Oh God, what now?” moaned Nina.