“Where did you get this image?” asked Gunner, turning to Jackal.
“Woods Hole accessed the Sea Searcher’s onboard computers to retrieve footage from the three-man submersible sent to the bottom of the ocean to inspect the ship. One of the members of that crew, Walt Ballard, a NASA astronaut, walked the wreckage in an exosuit that was equipped with video and still cameras.”
Cam, who continued to stare at the images displayed on the large monitors, suddenly walked toward them and pointed. “Pause it! That one, right there. Can you zoom in on the deck around the submersible?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the analysts replied.
“Do you see it?” she asked, swinging around toward Ghost and Gunner.
“The silver canister?” asked Gunner.
“Yeah. You’re a diver. Have you ever seen an air tank like that?”
Gunner walked forward until he was only a few feet away. “I don’t think it’s an air tank. It’s too small. Look at it in relationship to the body lying next to it. A scuba tank is the diameter of a man’s thigh, only longer. This canister is comparable to the body’s forearm, again slightly longer. Besides, a tank like this would never be used on a dive that deep.”
“Everyone, I just received more raw footage of the submersible’s dive and the exosuit’s recordings,” said Jackal.
“Bring up the exosuit first,” said Gunner. Ghost nodded his agreement.
The video began to play.
“He’s within the conning tower,” Bear began to narrate as Ballard moved slowly through the sub’s interior. “Now the bridge. I can’t believe the detail we can see and the condition considering this wreck is almost a century old.”
“He’s going deeper into the sub,” interrupted Cam. “Toward the crew quarters?”
“No, that would be in the bow, if I remember correctly,” said Bear. “He’s headed toward the stern, which appeared to be pretty torn up from the first image we—whoa! What the hell are those?”
“We’ve found our canisters,” said Ghost.
“Hundreds of ’em,” added Bear.
Gunner walked forward and focused on the rows and the number of racks visible through Ballard’s recordings. “Maybe a thousand or more.”
“Why aren’t they rusted or even destroyed after all these years?” asked Cam.
“Titanium, most likely,” replied Gunner. “Whatever is inside those canisters, the Nazis wanted to make sure it was protected from the corrosive effects of salt water and sea spray.”
His eyes darted from one screen to the next, studying the deck of the ship and the submarine’s interior. He turned to the team.
“We’re going back in the water.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Aboard Gulfstream C-37A
Two Hundred Miles Southwest of Bermuda
North Atlantic Ocean
“We’re ridin’ in style today,” said Bear as he relaxed in the spacious interior of the Gulfstream aircraft. The C-37A, the military equivalent of the Gulfstream V, known as the G-five, was ordinarily reserved for high-ranking Coast Guard and Homeland Security officials. The team reviewed what they’d learned in their briefing in the Den.
After breaking down the videos from the Sea Searcher’s computers and examining the dead from afar, it was clear to Ghost and his superiors that some type of deadly toxin had been released aboard the research vessel. If the team’s theory was correct, the source of the toxin was the shiny metallic canisters seen in the wreckage.
“Here’s a message from Ghost,” said Gunner. “The Woods Hole people have another ship en route to assist. It’s the Sea Searcher II, a larger boat with rescue and recovery capabilities. It also has a submersible identical to the one used in the dive to the U-boat.”
Cam leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. “I have to ask. Is there any chance this is radiation poisoning? I mean, we were working with nuclear materials at that time. Maybe the Nazis were running their own parallel version of the Manhattan Project.” The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons, led by the U.S.
“That’s very possible,” replied Gunner. “It would also explain why this sub was full of titanium canisters. According to Jackal, that would’ve been very rare back then. This took some intense planning and forethought.”
“How did the U-boat get taken out?” asked Bear. “Our naval commanders were pretty good about recording their kills.”
Cam scrolled through the complete briefing materials sent to her by the Den. “There’s no recorded sub kills in this particular area during the war. Most of the activity was farther north off the coast of New England or, as Ghost mentioned, in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“It could’ve simply failed. Maybe a malfunction of some kind?” asked Gunner.
“Possible. Or it was the damn Devil’s Triangle,” replied Bear.
Cam threw a pillow at Bear. “Come on. That’s a bunch of superstition and stories made up by drunk sailors.”
“No, it’s real. I saw this episode of Ancient Aliens once. They showed evidence of ancient structures a mile below sea level that might be Atlantis.”
Cam shook her head in disbelief and looked to Gunner. “Why do we even listen to this crap?”
Gunner laughed. “Anything is possible, Cam. At the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose nearly four hundred feet until present day. During that period, the inhabitants of these cities would never have known what hit them.”
“Yeah, Plato said it too,” added Bear.
Cam rolled her eyes. “Who? Plato? Gimme a break.”
“Seriously, Cam. Plato wrote about violent earthquakes and floods,” explained Bear. Then he adopted his best television narrator’s voice. “In just the matter of a day and night, the great city of Atlantis sank into the sea.”
Cam leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Jesus, take the wheel.”
Gunner asked, “Did the scientists at Woods Hole give our people any ideas of what they think happened?”
Cam navigated on her iPad to that portion of the report obtained from Woods Hole, titled “Marine Geography.” She handed it to Gunner.
“You understand this stuff better than I do.”
He took the
