minutes ago I finally found mention of a Site Seventeen: a decommissioned Exxon deep-water oil exploration platform in the Labrador Sea, about a hundred eighty miles east of Tuapaat.”
“Owned by?” Lambert asked.
“Working on that right now. The title on the deed belongs to an environmental group out of Australia, but I’m betting that’s just a front.”
Redding said, “Why in the world are they taking Stewart there?”
No one answered for a few seconds, then Fisher said, “Safety buffer.”
“Huh?”
“Where better to handle and experiment with something like PuH-19.” Fisher turned to Lambert. “Colonel?”
Lambert thought for a moment, thumbs tapping the rim of the coffee cup clasped in his hands. “Okay. Suit up. I’ll get Bird and Sandy prepping.”
He reached for the phone.
24
The Osprey bucked to one side, rain slashing the fuselage. Fisher tightened his seat belt and gripped the armrests a little tighter. Into his headset microphone he said, “How’re we looking, guys?”
“Not good,” Sandy replied.
In the background, Fisher could hear Bird muttering to himself, which he did during only the most perilous of situations. “Come on, sweetie, don’t be like that… Ah, now, that’s not nice…”
Sandy said to Fisher, “You hear?”
“I hear.”
Since leaving St. John’s, Newfoundland, with every mile northward the weather had deteriorated, until finally eighty miles south of the Site 17 platform, the Osprey was being battered by sixty miles per hour gusts and horizontal rain. Ten thousand feet below them, the ocean was roiling with fifteen-foot waves.
“Can you get me there?” Fisher asked.
Bird answered: “Hell, yes, I can get you there. Getting there ain’t the problem. The problem is, getting
“In that case, how about we call that plan B,” Fisher said.
“Suits me. We aborting?”
“Nope,” Fisher said. “New plan A.”
“Which is?”
“If we can’t come in from the top, we’ll come in from the bottom.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Bird called, “About three miles out, Sam. Slowing to one fifty and descending through five thousand feet.”
“Any radar?” Fisher asked. However unlikely it may be, Bird and Sandy had been watching their gauges for any EM transmissions coming from the platform.
“Not a peep.”
Fisher reached above his head and hooked his safety tether to the overhead cable, then unclipped his seat belt and made his way to the rear of the cabin. In the middle of the ramp, secured to the deck by quick-release ratchet straps, was a Mark IX ISDS, or individual swimmer delivery sled. To Fisher, the sled looked like a miniature version of a Jet Ski whose tail end had been hacked off, leaving only the nose cone — containing a pair of horizontally mounted propellers driven by four marine batteries — a dash panel, a tapered fairing, and a throttle bar/rudder. Attached to the sled’s underside was a pair of streamlined scuba tanks; attached to each side of the nose cone, a bow plane for depth control.
Fisher pressed the dash’s power button, and the digital gauges lit up, amber on black. A thumb-size screen in the middle of the dash flashed the words SELF-DIAGNOSIS RUNNING. Sixty seconds later the screen flashed again: SELF-DIAGNOSIS COMPLETE. NO ERRORS FOUND.
“Sled checks out,” Fisher told Sandy and Bird. “Prepping.”
“Roger.”
Fisher slipped a one-piece dry diving suit over his tac suit, made sure all the cuffs were sealed tight, then took off his headset, pulled on his hood and face mask, which he tightened for fit, then knelt beside the sled and hooked the loose end of his mask hose into the air-port. He pressed the dash button labeled AIRFLOW ON. Cool, metallic air gushed into his mask. He punched AIRFLOW OFF, then pushed the mask back onto his forehead and put the headset back on.
“Two miles,” Bird called. “Three minutes.”
“Sea state?”
“Running between five and six,” Sandy replied. “Crests to sixteen feet.”
“Give me half ramp,” Fisher called.
“Half ramp.”
“Switching to SVT.” He took off his headset and hooked it on the bulkhead, then keyed the SVT. “Read me?”
“Loud and clear,” replied Bird.
With a hum, the ramp’s hydraulics engaged. The ramp parted from the fuselage’s curved upper rim, revealing a crescent of black sky. Sea spray burst through the opening and misted Fisher’s face. The rain sounded like shrapnel striking the Osprey’s aluminum skin.
“Hold ramp,” Fisher ordered. The ramp stopped. “Lovely evening out there.”
“I love your sunny disposition,” Bird said.
“Everyone does.”
“One mile out. Coming to hover.” The Osprey’s engines changed pitch, and Fisher felt their forward momentum begin to slow, then stop altogether. “Hovering. Stand by… Couplers engaged.”
Sandy said, “We’re at thirty feet, Sam. Sorry. Any lower, and we might net some water.”
“No problem.”
Fisher knelt behind the sled. From the left calf pouch on his dry suit, he pulled a D-ring knotted to some blaze-orange 4mm parachute cord. In his pouch was another 100 feet of it. The sled was buoyant, and in these seas, Fisher wanted to be able to reel it to him — or vice versa — should they get separated during the drop.
“Ready,” Fisher called. “On my mark.”
“Roger,” Bird replied. “We’ll be nearby. Call when you’re done playing.”
“Will do. Give me full ramp.”
The ramp groaned downward until it locked fully open with a dull clunk. Rain whipped through the opening. Fisher could see the sea below heaving and breaking, the wave crests serrated edges of white water.
He popped the sled’s release toggle, watched it slide into the darkness, then counted five seconds and followed after it.
25
Fisher pushed the throttle bar downward. The bow planes responded, tilting forward and driving the sled deeper. The sled’s twin headlights arced through the darkness, illuminating drifting plankton and the occasional curious fish.
When his depth gauge read thirty feet, he evened out, then checked his compass: on course. Above his head the surface of the ocean boiled, a ceiling of undulating white water, but here, a mere ten yards below the surface,
