Ingles and the other divers had been working with the Navy for a year after their initial recruitment, but oddly enough, they had been trained at different locations and had not worked as a team. It was part of the overall strategy put forth, ironically, by a team of psychiatrists on Kane’s payroll. According to Swigart; from his understanding the ‘bosses’ wanted it that way, believing that too much familiarity among team members in such a high-risk, high-stress situations as they faced guaranteed slip ups, that a dive team too closely aligned by fidelity, friendship, and loyalty were less likely to follow protocol in a negative event—the latest euphemism for foul up. In essence, that was what had happened to Ingles’ buddy in Japan. Perhaps it would not have happened had absolute protocol been followed, but then again who knew for sure? Certainly not the commission put together to study the mishap, whose thousand-page report made for sleep-inducing prose suited only for the toilet. They hadn’t overlooked admonishing Ingles for failing to follow protocol when things went south, yet the commission praised him for saving the others, all but Terry Wilcox.
David stared into the small mirror on his compartment locker and told himself, “You can do this.” He had worked hard on getting this right, diligently and long, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. Lou Swigart had made himself clear. “A good dive team is a tool, Ingles—another arm for the scientists to utilize. No one under my command is going to be some hot dog. First sign of such shit, and you’re on a chopper outta here.”
Reacting to a loud kick at his door, David snatched it open to find his roommate, hands filled with his duffel and a couple of huge biscuits piled with jam and butter balanced on a paper plate. “Need a hand—Bowman, isn’t it?”
“Got it… got it… OK maybe if you took the plate… thanks.”
“So you guys drew straws and ‘the black guy’got to share a room with me, eh?” David joked.
“You know how it goes; black dude always gets the shaft,” Bowman immediately shot back, laughing good- naturedly as he worked himself and his bag into the cramped quarters. “I see you’ve staked out your claim.”
David placed Bowman’s biscuits onto his small desk. “First come, all that.”
“Help yourself to a biscuit,” offered Bowman who then extended a hand to shake, adding, “Name’s Will… Will Bowman.”
“Yeah, I’ve studied your bio. Wanted to know who I’m working with.”
“Need to know who’s got your back—agreed.” He lifted the paper plate with biscuits precariously balanced toward David, again offering him a bite.
“No thanks—not hungry. Too nervous to eat in fact.”
“I know… exciting times.” Bowman looked pleased that David hadn’t taken half his food, and he quickly began to devour what was on the flimsy plate, and was soon licking his fingers of butter and unpacking when he heard a strange noise, followed by a woman’s voice cursing outside their door, sending David investigating. He swung open the inward hinged hatchway to find Dr. Kelly Irvin stooped over and picking up a spilled fanny pack she’d dropped; she’d spilled all manner of feminine items, and among the debris two pill bottles.
David went to his knees to help her pick up her runaway items.
“Hello, Dr. Ingles,” she said from her kneeling position, hardly able to turn and twist in the narrow passageway. “I heard there was breakfast in the galley,” she continued as she replaced everything in her pack.
“No one calls me Doctor, Dr. Irvin,” he countered. “It’s David. As to breakfast? Sounds good.”
Her eyebrows lifted, her smile widened, and she offered her hand but quickly realized she needed it back before he could take it. “Kelly then it is, David. I didn’t know you were—well you—unitl I saw you in the debriefing room with the other divers.”
“Oh yes, well I read your file sometime back and assumed you were Dr. Irvin when I saw you topside. Remembered you from your photo.”
“I should hope not! Oh my God, that mug shot? Say, David, why don’t you join me for ham and eggs?”
“I’ve just begun unpacking,” he lied, noticing that Bowman smirked at this, “but I am hungry… so what the hell, sure.”
Bowman closed the door on the couple with a little shake of the head. With the door closed, they could not make out his final remark, but the laughter was clear.
“Thought we oughta get to know one another to some degree,” she said. “This notion we should have absolutely no concern for one another—to act like, I dunno, cyborgs on the job—I just don’t fully agree with those damn shrinks. Do you?”
“Have you told that to Lou?”
“Course not, but you’re dodging the question.”
A pair of crewmen squeezed past them, which gave David time to consider this question in more depth. “It’s probably a good policy—to be honest.”
“I suppose so.” Still she frowned, started to add a word, hesitated, and put hand to mouth as if to stop herself.
“Up to a point, you mean?” he said and laughed. “They haven’t been able to completely brainwash the idea into your head, eh?” He opened his cabin door and gestured for her to lead the way.
She moved along the tight corridor and spoke over her shoulder. “Well, you of all people, Dr. Ingles—David— you can’t completely agree with the notion, can you? That to be efficient in our jobs, we have to give up being human?”
“Well it is 2012, you know, and any ahhh… human foul up could bring on the earth falling off its axis and a collapse of the entire world according to Vice President Reardon and Wall Street insiders. I mean now that we’re no longer as ready to believe ancient Mayan beliefs and that fellow Nostradamus.”
This got a laugh out of her that reverberated up and down the corridor, and he reacted with a smile. “There… there it is, a human moment between us. Frankly, I don’t think even Lou Swigart can enforce what they’re talking about to begin with, but that’s just me.”
David nodded. “There is that little thing called trust; kinda necessary and absolutely human.” They continued along the corridor single file, when he asked, “So how do you like sucking down liquid air?” He used the crude Navy term for the use of oxygenated perflourocarbons. Cutting edge applied research, the end result of experiments and failed attempts at finding breathable liquid for divers, research begun in Jacque Cousteau’s day.
“That stuff may not taste like Champaign, but damn it’s miraculous once you get there.”
“But getting there is hell.”
“Yes—no matter how many times I do it,” she confessed, “I’m sure it’s my last breath. How ’bout you?”
“It sucks—literally! But miraculous, it is. Makes me feel like Aquaman or Cousteau’s dream of a race of fish- men!” It was not entirely a lie. But each time he used the OPFC back-pak of breathable liquid, which had replaced failed heavy oxygenated liquids of previous years, results of which had given a diver less than an hour and made movement and work underwater nearly impossible. The problem had always come down to failure to ventilate carbon dioxide, and to marry the oxygen levels in the bloodstream with temperature and pressure levels—and using humans in experimentation.
For generations, the US Navy had kept such experiments under wraps.
David thought of Terry Wilcox, and how this new technology—had they had it in Japan—would have saved his life, and he wondered too, how many anonymous sailors had given their lives for this step in human evolution that would return mankind to the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean.
His friend Terry had suffocated in his suit as his air ran out, and David had been unable to get to him in time on the return down after getting Peterson and DeVries out and up. Although David had risked his own life doing a second dive too soon, leaving him with the bends, it simply had not been enough. Time itself killed Terry.
Nowadays, with the new technologies at hand, the bends were no longer a worry during a dive. No matter how fast one descended or ascended. The new lightweight tanks and what they carried did indeed return a man to his origins once the ‘death grip’ was reached and suppressed and gotten past. With ‘liquid air’ as it was called, your mask filled with liquid that covered mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. You were literally ‘drowned’ inside your Cryo-suit, your every pore and orifice in the “pour” house, taking in the liquid oxygen.
Many a rat and monkey before human experiments had also given their lives in the effort to get the formula right—413 attempts since the 1960’s in an on-again, off- again set of trials. Years of tests went into OPFC-413 even after proven until now that divers using the stuff confidently knew they’d be coming out on the other side with eyes open, heart beating, brain functioning, while the skin crawled. But you were alive, and soon your eyes cleared, brain fog lifted, and your heart rate sought its rhythm. And that horrible feeling that you were being turned inside out like
