Eden's Gate (23 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

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The man they identified as Ernst Baumann met them at the door, an impatient, suspicious expression on his Teutonic features. He dismissed the two guards and escorted Frances into the soaring living room.
“You can wait here, Miss … ?”
“Frances Lane. Are you the owner?”
“No, that's Mr. Sloan,” Baumann said. “We've notified the Kalispell tower that you landed safely and telephoned the Big Mountain Resort. They're sending someone for you and your aircraft.”
“If we can leave it parked here for the night I can get a tow back into the air first thing in the morning. The thermals are really quite terrific just after dawn.”
“Work lights are being set up now, and your glider will be disassembled by the time the truck arrives.” Baumann gave her the faintest of smiles. “May I offer you a glass of wine?”
“Sure. In the meantime, is Mr. Sloan here tonight? I'd like to thank him in person.”
“I'm sorry, but Mr. Sloan is—”
“Right here,” Speyer said, coming into the living room. Like the others, Baumann was dressed in fatigues, but Speyer wore faded jeans, a UCLA sweatshirt, and moccasins. He looked preppy in the clothes, almost boyish, and, Frannie thought, almost handsome. He also was very happy, practically bubbling over with good cheer and enthusiasm.
“Mr. Sloan, I'd like to thank you, sir. You're a lifesaver. If there's anything I could do for you.”
“Anything to help a pretty lady, which is reward enough of itself.” Sloan kissed her hand and grinned as if he had said something super-charming. “Was it harrowing, your landing?”
“It certainly could have been dicey without your runway. Quite stupid of me, actually.”
“Yes, it was,” Gloria Speyer agreed as she came languidly down the stairs. She wore soft pink satin lounging pants, matching low-cut blouse, and high-heeled slippers. She looked ludicrous, and Frances stopped herself from laughing.
A look of irritation briefly crossed Speyer's face. “Darling, come say hello to our guest, Miss Frances Lane.”
“I think that you've already said hello for both of us.” Gloria
gave Frannie a critical once-over as only one woman can give another. Frances, a half-smile on her lips, did the same.
“Good evening, Mrs. Sloan. A lovely outfit.”
Gloria's lips tightened, but she nodded curtly. “Do all lady pilots dress like you?”
Frannie's jumpsuit was skin-tight and left very little to the imagination. It had had the effect she'd wanted on the two men at the airstrip, on Baumann and now on Speyer, who couldn't keep his eyes off her. Speyer's wife knew it.
“I fly a glider, Mrs. Sloan. Excess weight is very important.” The comment was meant to be vicious considering the differences in their ages and physiques, but Frannie couldn't help herself.
Baumann had gone to fetch the wine. When he came back, Frannie gave him a sweet smile.
“I think it might be best if I pop back to the runway and help with my airplane,” she said.
“That's a ducky idea,” Gloria said, and a faint suggestion of recognition came into Speyer's eyes but then was gone.
“Thanks again for your hospitality, Mr. Sloan,” Frannie said.
“My pleasure,” Speyer mumbled, and Frannie left with Baumann. She half expected to be called back. It was her damned accent. It was possible that they'd heard her talking to the hotel clerk at the Grand just before the shooting. She'd seen the spark of recognition in Speyer's eyes. But he wasn't sure.
“Don't try to land here again, Miss Lane,” Baumann warned her on the way down to the airstrip. “Your reception might not be as warm next time.”
 
Lane dropped to the ground and froze as a half-dozen floodlights switched on at the end of the runway. He was in the scrub brush and rocks between the barracks and the house.
Two more men came out of the hangar and drove a golf cart to the glider, which was lit up as bright as day. A minute later Frances and Baumann pulled up in a jeep. It quickly became clear that neither Frannie nor the glider were staying the night, as the two men began removing the starboard wing. Someone from the resort was probably coming down with a truck to haul the glider away.
Making sure that no one else was coming down from the house, Lane eased farther back into the darkness, and then, keeping low, raced to the rear of the barracks. He peered in one of the windows. A dozen men, some of them in their skivvies, lounged around. Some
of them watched television, one of then was shining his boots, and four were playing cards. It did not look as if they were planning on going anywhere soon.
He backed away from the window, and took a couple of minutes to make certain that there were no guards out and about. All the activity was taking place at the end of the runway, where both wings were already folded back. Frannie stood to one side watching.
He circled around behind the house, keeping well away from the spill of lights from the windows, and headed straight across to the hangar. The windows across the back of the big structure had all been painted over on the inside, and a rear service door was locked, so he made his way to the front.
The Gulfstream was parked on the apron between him and the men working on the glider, partially masking his movements. The main doors were partially open, but the inside of the hangar was in darkness. There was nothing inside except for what looked like a couple of big tool carts and a pickup truck.
He was about to slip inside to get a better look when he happened to glance over his shoulder in time to see one of Speyer's people heading up from the glider with the golf cart.
He ducked around the corner of the building and raced to the back, where he settled down to see what would happen next.
 
Speyer stood at his bedroom window drinking a dark beer and smoking a cigarette as he watched the activity at the runway. The truck from Big Mountain Resort had arrived and they were lifting the disassembled glider onto its flatbed.
The more he thought about it, the more he suspected that the woman's landing here as she had was not an emergency. It had been a contrived act. And her voice—he had heard it somewhere before, but for the life of him he could not remember where or when.
“You should have insisted that she stay the night,” Gloria said from the door.
Speyer didn't bother turning around. He could see her reflection in the dark window glass. She had brought a bottle of champagne and a glass up from the kitchen. It looked as if she was already well on her way to becoming drunk. “Perhaps I should have.”
Gloria kicked off her slippers and padded across the room to the chaise longue where she flopped down. “Look at me when I'm talking to you,” she demanded.
Speyer turned to her. Her eyes were starting to go fuzzy and her face was becoming slack. He hated her like this, and she knew it. “You're drunk.”
She chuckled. “No, but I'm getting there.” She focused on him. “Did you want to fuck her, Helmut? Peel that cutesy little jumpsuit off her hide. Have her whisper sweet nothings to you in that fake accent of hers?”
“The thought occurred to me.” He looked out the window. A group of them were standing around the truck talking.
“I'll bet it did.”
They were breaking off now, the truck driver and another man, plus the woman climbing up into the cab of the truck. “Go to bed, Gloria. We have a busy day ahead of us.”
“She was at the hotel when John killed that old Jew.”
The truck was heading out, and the others were heading back to work in the hangar. Ernst was on his way back to the house. What Gloria had just said suddenly penetrated, and he turned back. “How do you know that?”
“I recognized the voice. She called the clerk ‘ducky.'”
Speyer remembered, too; a very cold knot formed in his stomach. He slammed his drink down and raced downstairs as Baumann came in.
“Call out the guard,” he shouted.
Baumann stopped in his tracks, confused. “Sir?”
“The woman was a diversion. We've probably been breached.”
Baumann went to the phone on the hall stand. “Should we stop the truck?”
“No. It'd cause too many complications. But I want every square centimeter of the compound searched. Now!”
 
Lane waited until the truck was gone before he retraced his path from the hangar, behind the house, past the barracks, and across the field that sloped down to the apple orchard. Lights suddenly came on all over the compound and men poured out of the barracks. They were fully dressed and even from where Lane crouched in the trees he could see that they were armed.
He speed-dialed Frances and she answered on the second ring.
“Hello.”
“They're on the move. Are you at the highway yet?”
“Oh, hi, sweetheart,” she said without missing a beat. “I'm just
fine. Not even a scrape. As a matter of fact we're on the highway now. Should be back to the resort in a half hour or so. How about dinner?”
Lane grinned in the darkness. He was married to a remarkable woman. “Sounds good, love. But I have to run now. Ta-ta.”
“Should I ask Tommy to join us?”
Speyer's troops were concentrating around the house and the hangar for the moment. “I don't think so. See you in an hour.”
“Take care.”
“You, too.”
The flight was long, and Frannie didn't seem to be herself. She was withdrawn and Lane couldn't get much out of her except that she was tired.
It was Saturday afternoon, the weather delightful and traffic light as they took a cab straight to the Naval Observatory where Tom Hughes was waiting for them.
“I'm glad that you're back in one piece. I was damned worried about both of you the entire time.”
“There wasn't an exciting moment,” Lane told him. “The only part that made me nervous was Frannie's landing right at dusk. She cut it a little close, and they sure as hell weren't going to turn on the runway lights for her.”
“I had all the lift in the world,” she said absently. “And I got to speak to Speyer just as we hoped I would.”
“Are you going to keep me in suspense, my dear?” Hughes asked.
Frannie gave him a wistful look, then went into the back room where she got a paper cup of water and took a couple of aspirin. They were waiting patiently for her when she got back. “Headache,” she explained.
“I shouldn't wonder, with all you've been through,” Hughes said.
“Helmut Speyer is one jolly soul, though I wouldn't give you a farthing for his marriage.” Frannie shook her head. “Whatever happened aboard that boat was not a disaster for the man. He got what he was after and he's on track. Either that or he's a very good actor.”
Lane perched on the edge of Hughes's desk. “It didn't look like
they were getting ready to bug out any time soon either. And that doesn't make any sense to me. If he got the diamonds to Cuba he would have stayed there. Unless he's up to something else.”
“But you said you hid the box in a locker and Baumann knew nothing about it.”
“He told me that they fished the box out of the bilge.”
“Maybe they switched boxes,” Hughes suggested.
“There was no reason for Speyer to do something like that. Not unless he was planning to kill Horst Zimmer and the crew from the start.”
“That's a distinct possibility we should consider, William,” Hughes replied earnestly. “Let's turn it over to the Germans right now. We've gone far enough.”
“My pig-headed husband isn't about to do anything so sensible as all that,” Frances said.
Lane was taken aback by the bitterness of her remark. “Are you okay, Frannie?”
“I'm just saying that Tommy is dead on. We're simply not equipped to fight an entire army.”
“I'm not going to let it go after we've come this far. Even the Germans seem to want to sweep this under the rug. We can't get anything out of them about what really went on down there in that bunker.”
“You're going to follow this wherever it leads?”
“That's what we're in business for.”
“We're in business to serve Great Britain and the United States of America,” Frances flared. She was on the verge of tears.
“Speyer is operating on U.S. soil. He had the bartender at the Grand murdered. And he's probably got the help of the Kalispell chief of police and maybe a high-ranking FBI officer. That makes it our business.”
“Okay, kids, time for a truce,” Hughes broke in. “The ink is barely dry on your marriage license and you're arguing like an old married couple.”
“Sorry,” Frances mumbled.
“Me, too,” Lane said.
Hughes was troubled by the outburst. “What do you have in mind, William? What's our next step?”
“There are three possibilities. If Speyer switched the boxes as you suggested, he either took the diamonds to Cuba, or he brought them to Montana. Short of that they're still on the bottom of the Atlantic.
That's going to be the easiest to check out. As soon as Tony locates her I'm going down in a submersible and take a look in that locker.”
“There's a fourth possibility, William,” Hughes suggested.
“What's that?”
“The one thing that we haven't thought of yet, because it hasn't occurred to us.”
“We'll take them one at a time,” Lane said. “In the meantime I'm going to take my grouchy wife home, feed her dinner and put her to bed.”
Hughes clapped his hands in delight. “Good idea. I'll call you as soon as I hear something from the
Deep Sound.
”
They got their Range Rover from underground parking, and he drove Frannie back to their small, but very well furnished, three-story brownstone on Rock Court in Georgetown. All their calls were forwarded to The Room when they were gone, so there was nothing on the answering machine in the hall, and only a couple of bills and a few magazines including
Time
,
Scientific American
, and
Foreign Affairs
on the floor in the front vestibule.
“I'm going to draw a bath,” Frances said, heading upstairs.
“Red or white?”
“White,” she said.
Lane left their bags in the hall and made sure that the house had not been disturbed in their absence. He got a nice bottle of vintage pinot grigio from the wine locker, opened it, got a couple of glasses, and went upstairs.
Frances was in the bathroom, the door half-open. Lane could hear the water running as he poured a couple of glasses of wine, kicked off his shoes, and went in to her.
She was naked, standing in front of the full-length mirror looking at her body while tears streamed down her cheeks.
“My God, Frannie, what's wrong?” Lane demanded, setting the wineglasses aside and taking her into his arms.
“I'm ugly,” she sobbed.
“Don't be ridiculous, you're beautiful.”
“I'm fat.”
“You're not.”
She looked up into his face. “I'm preggers.”
 
 
After their bath they made slow, gentle love on the big bed while Tchaikovsky's violin concerto played on the stereo. “We're getting a little long of tooth to be starting a family,” she said, her head on his chest.
“Nonsense, I'm forty and you're barely thirty-six. I'd hardly call that doddering.”
“You know what I mean. Having kids is for younger people in different sorts of occupations.” She looked into his eyes for his reaction.
“Well, you're going to be out of the business, at least for the time being.”
“Like hell I'll quit, you sexist pig.”
“One word to Moira and your goose is cooked.”
“She already knows,” Frances said. “And she agrees with me that unless you and Tommy get all stupid on me, I'll do field work until my seventh month, and office work right up to term.”
“And that's another thing, I want those nasty comments to stop, hormones or not.”
She softened. “I am sorry, William.”
“Pickles and ice cream?”
“Gads, no. But maybe a peanut butter sandwich … with anchovies.”
He caressed her face. “I love you, Mrs. Lane.”
She smiled. “And I love you, Mr. Lane. But at this moment I'm starved out of my mind.”
They put on robes and went downstairs, where Frannie sipped her wine, the last, she promised, until after the baby was born, while she sat at the counter watching her husband fix them a light supper of toasted french bread, thinly sliced salmon with cream cheese, capers, onion slivers, and corchinons.
“What happens if the box is where you hid it, but when you bring it up it's empty?”
“Then we go to plan B, which is putting pressure on Speyer and his merry band to see what shakes out.”
She shuddered. “I see why you think diving in a couple of thousand feet of water is the easier alternative. People could start getting killed.”
“Which is why you're on the sidelines as of now.”
She held her peace, watching him, but when the time came she would damned well make up her own mind.
Lane hitched a ride to Key West aboard a Navy VIP Beechcraft bizjet, then rented a Chevy Caprice for the forty-five mile drive back up the Overseas Highway to Marathon. The Augusta-Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was sitting on the pad at the Key Vaca Oceanographic Institute when he got there just before noon. The day was brutally hot, no breeze, the ocean a hazy flat calm blue. The chopper's pilot, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, was doing her walk-around. Lane watched her for a couple of minutes. She was young, very tall and thin with a runway model's figure, but she moved around the machine with an air of experience and confidence.
He got out of the car, the heat immediately plastering his Abercrombie and Fitch short-sleeved safari shirt to his back, and walked over to her. “Good morning. Are you my pilot?”
The woman glanced over her shoulder at him, and then went back to what she was doing, checking the fuel filters for water and other contaminants. “I am if your name is Bill Lane.”
“In the flesh. And you're Ms … ?”
The woman buttoned up the access hatch and turned with a smile. “Actually it's
Doctor
Susan Hartley. I'm the chief scientist here.”
“Open mouth, insert foot,” Lane said with a grin. “Sorry about that, but nobody told me.” They shook hands.
“No problem, Bill. I'm not the usual pilot, but I was heading out to the
Deep Sound
anyway, so I decided to hang around until you showed up.”
“This isn't a scientific mission, Doctor.”
“It is now,” she said. She glanced at the overnight bag he carried. “Is that all your gear?”
“I travel light,” Lane said. “This could get a little dicey.”
“That's what Tony told me. Maybe you can explain the deal to me on the way out.”
The haze began to clear ten miles off shore, and at three thousand feet there was some relief from the heat, though not much. Dr. Hartley was a relaxed, competent pilot. But Lane didn't want her on this mission.
“Are you going to tell me exactly who you are and what's going on?” she asked. They wore headsets so they didn't have to shout.
“We're going after a cargo ship that sunk last week in about six hundred fathoms. There's something aboard that I have to bring up.”
“They found her yesterday.” She gave Lane a pensive look. “Funny, there was nothing in the newspapers about it.”
“It's going to stay that way. And once I get what I came for, the
Deep Sound
is getting the hell out of there before the Cuban navy comes sniffing around.”
“Why don't you ask our Coast Guard for help? That would hold the Cubans at bay.”
“We don't want to advertise what we're doing. The
Deep Sound
is a research vessel out there doing science and nothing more.”
She nodded as if Lane had given her the answer she'd expected. “That's good, because I'll really be doing research. We're catching sharks for Mote Marine over in Sarasota.” She looked at him again. “You work for the government. CIA?”
“Something like that,” Lane said. “But I want you to drop me off and then get back to the institute. You can have your ship back tomorrow.”
“Not a chance,” she said easily.
“This isn't going to be fun and games. The captain and his entire crew went down with that ship. They were murdered. The, people we're going up against aren't screwing around.”
Dr. Hartley concentrated on her flying for a minute, obviously working out what she'd just been told. When she turned back to Lane she had a nervous but expectant look on her narrow but pleasant face. “Unless you mean to swim down to the wreck, you're going to need me,” she said. “I'm the submersible driver.”
 
DEEP SOUND II
A slight swell was running in the Gulf Stream, but the 230-foot research vessel held her position with bow and stern thrusters. The speed and direction of the ocean currents, the size and bearing of the waves, the speed and direction of the wind, and the picture from the sonar showing the exact location of the wreck were all fed into a computer which in turn controlled the thrusters.
Dr. Hartley planted the Bell Ranger's landing gear firmly on the rear deck helipad, and even before the rotors came to a complete halt a couple of crewmen were chocking the wheels and tying the chopper down.
“The captain's up in the center,” one of the crewmen told them.
Dr. Hartley led the way up to the research center on the bridge deck. Captain Tony Riggiro and another man were studying a large-scale chart. A half-dozen technicians and scientists were monitoring a lot of expensive-looking electronic equipment jammed into the big room.
Riggiro looked up with a big grin. “About time you finally got here.” He and Lane, who towered a full head over him, gave each other a warm hug. “How's Frannie?”
“Fine. We missed you at the wedding.”
Riggiro was sharp, and very good looking with his dark hair and dreamy Italian eyes. “I didn't want to give my girlfriends any ideas.” He glanced over at Dr. Hartley. “Bill and I go a long way back. He saved my life.”
“We saved each other's lives,” Lane corrected.
“I'd like you to meet Gary Lenz, my first officer. He keeps me sober and honest.”
Lenz looked like a football halfback, with a friendly smile. “Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking hands. “But unless you've got jet lag or something, I think we should jump on this right now.”
“We might have some company,” Riggiro explained. “There's been a Cuban gunboat sniffing around just over the horizon since before dawn. We picked up her lights while it was still dark, and our radar detectors have been going crazy since then.”
“I'll get
Sounder
ready to dive,” Dr. Hartley said. “Is there any special equipment we'll need?”
“That depends on how the
Maria
is lying,” Lane said.
Lenz pointed to a position on the chart. “She's in five hundred-eighty fathoms of water, listing about eighteen degrees on her starboard side.” He handed Lane a couple of photographs taken yesterday afternoon from an unmanned submersible. “She looks to be pretty well intact. Whatever happened blew the bottom out of her about midships, and punched a smaller hole in her bow. The props were probably still turning as she started to go down which drove her bow first. But she somehow straightened out before she hit bottom and stayed more or less in one piece.”
“We didn't see any bodies,” Riggiro said. “What happened to the crew?”
“I'm not sure, but I think that they were sealed in the crews' mess, amidships, when the explosives went off.”
Riggiro and his first officer exchanged a significant look. “Whoever pushed the button was a bad man.”
“That's why I'm here, Tony.” Lane showed one of the photographs to Dr. Hartley. “What I'm looking for is stashed in a fire equipment locker on the bilge deck just to the port of the center line aft.”
“Maybe we can get to it down one of the passageways from the main deck. What is it?”
“A metal box, about two feet on each side. Weighs about a hundred pounds.”
“Take a heli-arc torch and cut a hole in the hull,” Riggiro said. “Bill can go in with the dizzy.” The deep sea environmental suit, dizzy for short, was designed by NASA to take a man to depths of three thousand feet or more. It was constructed like a space suit, except that its rigid body was made of a super-strong and very light titanium alloy. The National Security Agency had asked for the suit to retrieve a spy satellite whose top-secret core had splashed more or less intact into the Indian Ocean.
“Have you ever used one before?” Dr. Hartley asked skeptically.
“Bill helped design it,” Riggiro said.
Dr. Hartley grinned. “Open mouth, insert foot. I believe that's the proper phrase,” she said. “I'll get
Sounder
ready.”
 
The
Sounder
was an oddly shaped submersible designed for depths well in excess of ten thousand feet. It looked like an insect with two very thick bubble eyes made of a transparent metal alloy, a number of legs which were actually sensors and tools, a pair of skids to set down on the deck, and ten electrically driven ducted propellers for maneuvering. Divided into two sections, the upper two-thirds was for the pilot, crew, and passengers. The lower section, built like a diving bell, contained two diving suits along with some other diving and emergency equipment, and a large well that could be opened to the sea.
Lane climbed into the seat next to Dr. Hartley as the hatch above them was sealed and she put pressure in the craft. They donned headsets. “We're going to be at thirty-five hundred feet, so everything that you do has to be exactly correct. One mistake and you're dead. No second chances. Have you been there before?”
“Once or twice,” Lane said.
“I want you to do everything exactly as I tell you. My life depends on your actions as well. Tony gives you high marks, but he'll be safely topside.”
“I have a job to do down there, Doctor. I neither like it, nor am I looking forward to making the dive, but it has to be done. I'm not here to interfere with your science or to give you a hard time.”
“Okay,” Dr. Hartley said. “Anyway, the name is Susan.”
“Fair enough.”
Susan Hartley opened the channel that provided a comms link with the
Deep Sound II
via the tether. “
Deep Sound,
this is
Sounder
, how do you copy?”
“You sound good, Susie,” Riggiro came back. “I'm showing a green board.”
She scanned her instruments. “So am I. Let's go diving.”
“Stand by.”
A big deck crane lifted the
Sounder
off her cradle, moved her into position over the broad slot in the hull, and lowered her gently into the water. For the first thirty or forty feet there was plenty of light, but it began to grow dim out their windows below 150 feet, and by 500 feet it was hard to see much of anything. At 1,000 feet they were in an alien world of perpetual darkness.
“We'll be approaching the bottom in fifteen minutes,” Susan Hartley said. “I'll wait until then to turn on the outside lights. We don't need them now.”
“I'll go below and get suited up,” Lane told her.
“Like I said, Bill, by the numbers. We're not here to take unnecessary risks.”
Lane climbed down to the lower compartment, sealing the massive hatch above him. “I'm sealed,” he said into his mike. “The pressure is coming up.”
“I'm showing green,” Susan Hartley came back.
Because of the light alloy it was made of, the dizzy weighed only one hundred pounds, but it was bulky and had to be put on one section at a time, starting with the torso shell. The chamber was warm because of the increasing pressure. Lane was sweating profusely by the time he had donned all but the helmet.
“How are you doing?” Susan Hartley asked.
“I'm suited up except for the helmet. But it's hot down here. I could use a cold beer.”
“I'll buy you one when we get topside,” she promised. “I have the ship on sonar now. I'll switch on the lights. You have a TV monitor in the overhead equipment bay.”
“Got it.”
“I'll pipe the picture down to you.”
 
“We're going to have company real soon,” Lenz said, looking up from the radar screen.
“The Cubans?” Riggiro asked.
“I think it's one of their foil boats. She's doing forty knots.” Lenz studied the horizon to the south through binoculars. “There,” he said after a couple of minutes.
Riggiro took the glasses and studied the oncoming ship. “Cuban navy all right,” he said. “She's a Russian-made
Turya
-class hydrofoil cutter. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't outrun her.”
“Guns?”
“A pair of twenty-fives forward, and a pair of fifty-seven millimeter cannons aft,” Riggiro said, lowering the binoculars. “That's not counting four torpedo tubes and a crew of thirty.”
“Do we call in the reinforcements?” Lenz asked. The other crew members and technicians shot them worried glances.
Riggiro shook his head. “We'll trust Bill on this one for the moment.” He looked at the others. “We're a research vessel doing legitimate science in international waters.
Capisce
?”
They nodded.
“Make sure that we're ready to send out a distress signal the instant I give the word, though,” Riggiro said as an aside to his first officer. He picked up the mike and called the
Sounder
as he watched the Cuban warship closing with them. “Susie, are you at the wreck yet?”
“Just got there.”
“We have company.”
“Who is it, Tony, the Cubans?” Lane's voice broke in.
“It's a Turya-class cutter coming in fast on our starboard bow.”
“Have they tried to make contact by radio, or blinker lamp?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, you know the drill. No gunplay. We're scientists on a legitimate mission.”
“Don't drag your feet, they might want us to get the hell out of here.”
“I'm sure that's exactly what they're going to want,” Lane said. “Stall them.”
“I'll do my best.”
 
 
The light from the industrial cutting torch, along with the massive amount of gas and debris it produced, was enough to completely blot out the image on Lane's monitor.
“The steel plate is very thick here,” Susan Hartley said.
“Not as thick as it would be if it weren't a double hull. How much longer?”
“Five minutes, so you'd better get ready.”
Lane donned the helmet, cocking it thirty degrees to the right until the collar threads were engaged, and then he twisted it left and engaged the locking slides. The suit automatically pressurized with the same oxy-helium mixture as the
Sounder
was on. It made their voices sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Once he left the
Sounder
he would not be tethered. He could still communicate with the submersible via aquaphone, but that would not work very well once he got inside the
Maria'
s hull. For all practical purposes he would be on his own.

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