The water was sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, cool, comfortable in moderate doses with the protection of snug bodysuits. Finally the last SEAL was down.
'Grab the line, people.' Clayton's voice, now quacky from high-pressure heliox, rang through transducers at Jeffrey's temples. Jeffrey reached up and groped with his hand. Good, got it, the rope that led back to the stern.
The big hatch swung closed, killing the red battle light. Jeffrey saw eight eerie cyalume glows, greenish, plus his own on his arm, but nothing more past his amber mask display. The water appeared fairly clear here, as Ilse had predicted.
'Take a minute, get acclimated,' Clayton said.
Jeffrey steadied his breathing. He realized he was starting to sink, so compacted was he by the crush of the water — he let a smidgen of gas into his soft-pack redundant-bladder buoyancy compensator. He felt for the flat underbelly of the ASDS as a reference point, then floated horizontally.
Jeffrey brought his free hand to the flexible part of his mask, pinched his nose through the rubber, and swallowed. He unsealed his nostrils and exhaled into the mask. There, that's better. It took care of the Squeeze, helping his body adjust. It was years since he'd been down this far, outside an SSN hull.
'Comms check, status check, sound off,' Clayton said.
'One, good to go,' the first shooter said.
When Jeffrey's turn came, he said, 'Four, good to go,' distorted by the helium's high speed of sound, filling his mouthpiece and larynx. Ilse was Five, Clayton Six. Finally the last SEAL said, 'Nine, good to go.' The digitized gertrude was working. Jeffrey wondered idly if it could somehow be programmed to compensate for the effect of the gas on their voices. But at least this way they avoided nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxemia at depth, and too- strict limits on bottom dwell time from nitrogen infusing their tissues and blood. Rapture of the deep, oxygen seizure, decompression sickness — Jeffrey knew all were killers.
'Move aft and mount up,' Clayton said.
Ilse had swum with dolphins before, but it was something else to be one, riding inside the dolphin-shaped robotic swimmer delivery vehicle. She let her legs follow the motion, up and down again and again as her stealth SDV drove her forward. Its flukes and flippers gave tremendous momentum, far faster than the sustained one knot the best combat swimmer could do, far more efficient than the best man-made shafted rotary propulsor. Ilse smiled to herself inside her mouthpiece, the Draeger now feeding pure oxygen as she maintained shallower depth. She rushed for the surface and sprinted and blew. She felt like a mermaid, a water nymph.
On her augmented dive mask display, plugged into the onboard computer, she could see the rest of the team arrayed in an arc, like a pod of natural cetaceans. They made twelve knots over the bottom, steering course three two five, but actually moving on course two nine five, because of the leeway of the current. The water was warmer now, near the surface, 72°F.
The active sonar in the SDV 's head, just like a real dolphin's melon, gave off whistles and clicks, mapping the sea and its floor. Some emissions were ultrasonic, but Ilse could feel them nevertheless, slight tickling on
her scalp and chin as she rested her forehead on sorbothane padding. The dolphin was equipped with glass eyes, optical-quality portholes. Each time she breached she watched lightning bolts shatter the sky.
'Form up more tightly on me,' Clayton called. 'We'll ride on a wave, conserve power'
Ilse flexed her elbows and worked the hand controls mounted on both sides of her head. She aimed a bit more to the right. As the mechanical dolphin edged into the turn, the stowed equipment bags pressed on her hips, not uncomfortably but enough to know they were there. She could hear the slight whirring of drive motors, and her eardrums felt each change in depth. The SDV was free-flooding, through blowhole and anus, quite anatomically correct — its jaws didn't open, its face was fixed in a grin. With a knob on the control grips she fine-tuned the air bladders, adjusting her buoyancy and trim.
'Go deep,' Clayton ordered. 'This roller is breaking.' Ilse and the others obeyed. She could hear the roller crashing, feel the jumbling tug of its surge. She pitied a sailor adrift in such seas— each cubic meter of plummeting ocean weighed just over one metric ton.
'Patrol craft coming in,' the SEAL chief's voice sounded.
'I see it,' she heard Clayton say. She saw it too on her sonar, now that they were under the waves. It was off to port, undoubtedly laboring hard. It gradually drew in closer.
'Let's give the lookouts a show,' Clayton said. 'On my mark, when the range falls to two hundred yards, we'll close and then caper a bit off her bow'
'Watch out for the pounding and yawing,' Ilse heard Jeffrey say, 'and also watch out for her screws.'
Now Ilse saw the coast on her sonar. Bearing three three zero relative were two rocky corners of land, slowly drawing closer as the robotic dolphins worked their way across the Agulhas Current. Between those two contacts lay the tidal estuary at the mouth of the Ohlanga River.
'Outer reef approaching,' Clayton said. 'Maintain twenty-five-foot depth. The surf here's terrific.'
Ilse worked her handgrips, complying. She saw the reef in outline on her mask display, ten to twenty feet farther down, a hundred feet across, stretching as far north and south as her sonar would go. The sonar picked up biologics, looking like static or snow on her screen. Her dolphin was jostled by turbulent water, swells piling up to explode. She'd dived these reefs in better days, in much better weather, for fun, and she'd tanned on the yellow sand beaches. She knew there were beautiful coral formations beneath her here, and tropical fish in breathtaking colors. Now all was blackness.
'Okay,' Clayton said. 'We're through. The sandbar's next. Form line ahead. Watch out for what's left of the shark nets.'
The water was deeper again, some seventy feet, but suddenly shelving, the boulderstrewn inner surf zone coming up. Ilse shifted into position, the fifth in the column of dolphins of war.
'Now's the toughest part, people,' Clayton said. 'We're past high slack water because of delays. There are strong rips working against us, and even this close to spring tide it'll be very shallow.'
Ilse saw on her mask that her pulse had gone over a hundred. This was the first time she really felt scared. She moved a bit closer to the dolphin in front of her, Jeffrey's.
'Six, Eight, I'm at bingo battery charge,' she heard over the gertrude.
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey called, 'I'm close to it too. This storm is more work than the model predicted.'
Ilse glanced at her own amp-hour levels. She was doing better, she weighed less.
'Keep going,' Clayton said, and then something garbled.
'Six, Five,' Ilse called. 'Repeat, please.'
Clayton's answer was unintelligible. The outgoing tide, the gale from the west unobstructed over the estuary, the Ohlanga's rain-bloated outflow, all made the swells pile up hard. The wave action on the inner bar was ruining sonar conditions, so thick was the air and sand being mixed with the water. Ilse's ears crackled constantly, though her range to the bottom was constant. They were all drifting now to the north, a strong longshore countercurrent inside the reef that was spoiling the dolphins' formation. Suddenly reception came back for a moment. ' — fast,' Clayton shouted. 'This one's a rogue wave! Pull back, Three, pull back!'
'I'm out of control!' Three said. Three was the SEAL chief, Clayton's salty second-incharge. Ilse heard the roar of the plunging breakers getting louder, a crescendo in the darkness. There was a crashing concussion, a million tons of angry seawater falling mercilessly in on itself — the shock of it rattled her bones.
'Everyone circle between the reef and the bar,' Clayton said. 'Get down to four zero feet. That should be under the surge and the set.'
Ilse turned tightly and dived. Her pulse read 128. Her respiration was 30, too fast. She switched back to heliox — if she kept hyperventilating, pure 02 this deep would give her convulsions for sure.
'Three, Six,' Clayton called. 'Three, Six…' Nothing. 'Where's Three? Does anybody see Three?' No one answered.
'One, Six,' Clayton said, 'come in. Two, Six, come in.' Nothing.
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey's voice said, 'I was watching on sonar. I think One and Two made it through.'
Then someone said, 'Christ, I felt something snap.' 'Give me a proper report,' Clayton said.
'Six, Three, I'm damaged.'
'Where are you, Three? Pulse on active.'
Ilse saw him signaling off to her left, down near the bottom.
'I'm moving to help,' Jeffrey said.
