divers to the tunnel entrance. Before she would allow him to vanish, Tisa stepped forward, leaning over the bomb strapped to the suit’s torso, and left a lipstick kiss on Mercer’s helmet. With her face inches from his there was no mistaking the words she mouthed.
“I love you.”
Adrenaline surged through Mercer’s heart. But before he could react the A-frame crane hanging over the stern took up the slack and the cradle rolled back on tracks embedded in the deck. The drizzling rain couldn’t smear the impression of her mouth from the plastic.
He shook thoughts of her words, and his reply, from his head and concentrated on the task at hand. With a quick glance he checked the electronic monitors ringing the bottom of his helmet. Power, oxygen and coolant levels were all in the green. Condensation formed on his faceplate. Mercer used the finger controls to adjust the ventilator and concentrated on slowing his breathing. He had more than enough air for the dive, but Scott, and his scuba instructor months earlier, cautioned about taking nothing for granted.
The cradle reached the end of the track and the crane lifted the large basket into the air. Mercer and Scott stood solid as statues as the heavy-duty hydraulics raised them up and over the crane’s apex and held them suspended over the scummy water. With the suits in a neutral hunched position, Mercer could just see the ocean under his feet.
“Okay, Jim, we’re set,” Scott radioed. “Lower away. Just keep an eye on the tow spool.” The drum of thick cable was bolted just below the crane’s legs.
“Here you go.”
The crane unwound its line and the basket sank past the deck height. In a moment they could see where the service boat’s name had been painted on her stern and then the top few inches of her rudder. Inside the armored suits there was no sensation when water began to fill the lifting basket and surge around their legs. Mercer watched it climb higher, past the bomb on his chest and up his torso. A weak wave splashed filthy water against his helmet. Tisa’s kiss washed away.
And then they were submerged. The water was completely black, choked with sediment. The lights atop the cradle gave them barely two feet of visibility.
“It’ll clear when we get under the layers of ash,” Scott remarked.
The cradle and crane acted like an elevator, dropping the divers into the abyss without them having to rely on their suit’s batteries. When the mission was over they’d be able to climb into it again for the ride to the surface.
The descent took ten minutes, but with no references it felt much longer. The water was as cloudy at this depth as it was near the surface. Mercer and Scott would have to work virtually blind.
“Jim, we’re here,” Scott reported after turning on his suit’s powerful halogen lamps. “I can see the vent opening. It’s right in front of us. Only problem is the water temperature is up to ninety degrees.”
“The suits can take it,” Jim reassured.
“I know the suits can, but I just don’t want to get cooked alive in this thing.”
“We’ll serve you like lobster with drawn butter and corn on the cob. We’ll even put your picture on the little plastic bibs.”
“You’re one sick man.”
McKenzie knew how to banter to keep his people from thinking too much about their jobs, but not too much to lose their concentration. “We’ve got five hundred fifty feet of cable stripped from the drum and enough floats to keep it neutrally buoyant. Proceed when you’re ready.”
“Roger,” he replied. Then to Mercer he said, “I’ve got the end of the tow cable. Take your grip about ten feet back. Don’t forget the thumb toggle lets you lock the pincer so you don’t need to maintain pressure.”
Impossible to move on the boat, the NewtSuit’s joints were amazingly flexible underwater, thanks to their ingenious fluid-filled design. Mercer raised his arm and took hold of the inch-thick cable where Scott had requested then locked the mechanical claw so it wouldn’t slip. “Got it.”
“Let’s go.”
Propellers on Scott’s suit burst into life and he lifted himself from the cradle before pitching the swivel nacelles back and moving off into the gloom.
Mercer applied pressure with the toes of his right foot. Like the rocket packs worn by shuttle astronauts, the NewtSuit gently skidded from the cradle and entered the realm for which it was designed, indifferent to the hundreds of pounds of pressure bearing down on its thick aluminum skin.
The water cavitated off the multiple propellers on the back of Scott’s ADS as Mercer followed him into the volcanic conduit. The bubbles seemed sluggish as they rose through the soupy water.
“I’m in,” Scott said when the glow from his lights was swallowed by the cave.
Mercer followed him, trailing the long tether behind him. Scott’s suit was taking the strain of dragging the cable through the water. Mercer was there only if he needed a bit of extra leverage.
“The temp’s up to one ten.”
Mercer couldn’t feel the heat. His suit had an integrated meshwork of water pipes that circulated either cold or warm water depending on the conditions. C.W. had said it could keep a diver comfortable in temperatures up to two hundred degrees. In fact, the climate-control system could take more than that; it was the plastic faceplate that began to melt above two hundred.
“How you doing, Mercer?”
“No problems.” With gyroscopes keeping the ADS upright, and Scott steering their little train, all Mercer had to do was keep even pressure on the foot switch. This dive was far easier than his foray into the flooded DS-Two mine with Booker Sykes.
“We’re in two hundred feet.”
McKenzie’s reply was garbled.
“Say again, Jim.”
Static filled Mercer’s helmet.
Scott wasn’t concerned. “Interference from the rock. We planned on this.”
At three hundred feet from the vent opening the temperature had climbed to one hundred thirty degrees and the cave had constricted. Scott walked Mercer through the procedure for adjusting his trim so the NewtSuit floated at an angle to reduce its height. Before Mercer got it right he flew into the floor of the cave, grinding the warhead against the rock.
“Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” he said.
“That thing better not be ticking.”
Their pace into the volcano had slowed because of the weight and drag of the towline. Motors on Scott’s suit were overheating, but rather than wait to let them cool, they switched positions on the cable so Mercer had the lead and his suit did the lion’s share of the work. His steering lacked Scott’s finesse, but he managed to keep the suit from scraping the side of the tunnel again.
They rounded the first gentle bend in the otherwise straight shaft and found
“And that’s why we brought the tow cable.” There was about three feet of clearance from the top of the robot to the cave roof, almost but not quite enough to climb over in the bulky suits. “It has to get dragged back until the cave is wide enough for us to get past.”
“We’ve been down twenty minutes,” Mercer said. “Wouldn’t it be quicker if we smashed off the top struts and removed some of the gear to climb over right here.”
Glass didn’t answer.
“Scott, I said wouldn’t it be-” Mercer stopped talking when he heard the dive leader make a wet choking sound. “Scott? Scott?”
It took a minute to swivel the suit in the tunnel so he could face his partner. Mercer beamed his lights into Scott’s helmet but could not see the man’s face. The suit had filled with some dense white gas.
“What the-?”
Suddenly Scott pressed his face to the thick plastic. His eyes were smeared with bloody tears and his tongue was swollen to twice its size. “Something shorted,” he croaked. “I can feel wires burning.”
Scott Glass’s greatest fear was being realized as he was parboiled in the suit. His skin turned red and began
