“Sir, the dive shack reports they’ve lost contact with the bell,” yelled the third officer, whose face trickled blood from a shattered window.
Alarm bells blared, and flashing console lights indicated sections of the ship already flooded. Knight ground his molars as he absorbed the growing damage. There was no avoiding the inevitable.
He turned to the communications operator. “Issue a Mayday call! Relay that we are sinking and require immediate assistance.”
Knight picked up a transmitter and spoke over the ship’s public-address system. “Fire control teams, report to your stations. All remaining hands prepare to abandon ship.”
“Sir, what about the diving bell?” the third officer said. “And there are three more men in the saturation chamber.”
“There’s an emergency pod built into the saturation chamber. Get the men into it at once.”
“What about the bell?”
Knight shook his head. “Those boys will have to sit tight for now. There’s nothing we can do for them.” He gave the hesitant officer a stern gaze. “Go get to that chamber. Now!”
The dazed crew and roughnecks made their way aft to a pair of enclosed lifeboats. Several men who were burned or injured had to be lifted into the boats, a task made more difficult by the ship’s steep list. Knight raced through the vessel, calling off the firefighters, ordering all men to the boats while ensuring nobody was left behind. At the base of the accommodations block, he found the chief engineer emerging from belowdecks.
Knight yelled over the roar of nearby flames. “Is everybody out?”
“Yes, I think so.” The engineer was breathing heavily. “She’s flooding fast, sir. We best get off at once.”
Knight shrugged him off. “Get to the boats and launch them. I’m going to make a final pass forward.”
“Don’t risk it, sir,” the engineer yelled. But Knight had already vanished into a swirl of smoke.
The stern was rising precariously as he stepped across the deck. Through the smoke, he caught a brief glimpse of the bow already awash. He ran to the waterline, scanning the deck for any last crewmen. A pair of loud splashes told him the two lifeboats had jettisoned. The realization gave him a sense of relief—and terror.
The acrid smoke burned his eyes and choked his lungs. He called out a last plea to abandon ship. As he turned to move aft, he noticed a boot protruding from behind a deck crane. It was his executive officer, a man named Gordon. His clothes were charred and his hair singed. He peered at Knight through glassy eyes.
The captain tried pulling him up. “Gordon, we have to get off the ship.”
The exec screamed at his touch. “My leg!”
Knight saw that one of Gordon’s legs was twisted at an obscene angle, a bloodied piece of bone protruding through his trousers near the knee. A knot twisted in the captain’s stomach.
A crash disrupted his thoughts as a bundle of drill pipe broke free and tumbled into the water. Tortured groans emanated from belowdecks as the hull strained under the imbalance of the rising stern. The deck shuddered beneath Knight’s feet as the ship tried a last-gasp fight to stay afloat.
Slipping an arm around Gordon, Knight tried to raise the injured man. Gordon let out a raspy grunt before falling limp in Knight’s arms. The captain struggled to lift the officer, but his own knees, weakened by an ancient football injury, wouldn’t allow it. The two sagged to the deck as a generator broke loose and slid across it, missing the men by inches.
The Alta had but seconds left. Knight resigned himself to a mortal ride to the seafloor.
Then a crisp voice cut the air. “I’d suggest a quick exit before we all get our feet wet.”
Knight snapped his head toward the voice, but a thick cloud of smoke obscured his vision. Then a tall, dark-haired man emerged from the haze, his luminous green eyes surveying the scene.
“Where . . . where did you come from?”
“The R/V Sargasso Sea,” Pitt said. “We received your distress call and came at full speed.”
He looked at Gordon and then at Knight, noticing his shirt’s shoulder insignia. “How bad is your man hurt, Captain?”
“Broken leg.”
A deep rumble shook the ship as its stern tilted higher. Pitt rushed over to the two men, clutching a safety harness attached to a rope. He secured the harness around Knight. “Can you hang on to him?”
Knight nodded. “As long as I don’t have to walk.”
Pitt hoisted Gordon’s limp body and draped it over Knight’s shoulder. “I’m afraid you may have to get a little wet after all.”
He pulled a handheld radio from his belt and called to the Sargasso Sea. “Bring it up gently.”
The deck lurched. “She’s going under!” Knight yelled.
The Alta’s captain saw the harness line pull taut as the ship began to slide beneath his feet. He felt a hand shove him as the water rushed up to him. It was Pitt, pushing him toward the rail.
He clung tightly to Gordon as they were pulled underwater. They banged against a ventilator box, and Knight felt the harness jerk as a boil of water rushed around them. The water suddenly calmed as the harness continued to strain against his chest. Then they broke free and were dangling above the waves.
Knight looked up to see a turquoise-colored ship pulling them to safety, the harness line attached to a crane that stretched over the side rail. He tightened his grip on Gordon’s body, which felt noticeably heavier. The first officer retched, and his gasps confirmed that he was still breathing.
Knight rotated to see the last of the Alta, its bronze propeller cutting the empty sky, just before the ship plunged beneath the surface amid a grumble of twisting metal and escaping air. The ship’s twin lifeboats and the floating decompression chamber pod bobbed nearby, safely clear of the sinking ship’s suction.
Knight focused his gaze on a ring of bubbling water that marked the ship’s demise. A few bits of flotsam drifted to the surface, but there was no sign of the man who had just saved his life.
7
Pitt felt like he was riding the nose of a freight train barreling through a dark tunnel.
After pushing Knight and Gordon clear, he tried to get himself over the rail. But the plunging vessel moved too quickly, and the rush of water threw him against a deck-mounted crane. The acceleration of the sinking ship kept him pinned as the water hurled against him.
He ignored a pain in his ears from the increasing pressure and pulled his way along the crane. A cacophony of muffled metallic sounds vibrated through the water as loose materials smashed into the ship’s bulkheads. A severed stanchion came hurtling into the crane, missing Pitt by mere inches.
Reaching the bottom of the crane, he set his feet and launched himself off the corner, stroking furiously toward the unseen side rail. A hard object collided with his leg, then he was free of the maelstrom. The sinking ship rushed past him on its sprint to the bottom, more felt than seen in the dark and murky sea.
The waters around him were a disorienting swirl, but Pitt remained calm. He had been a diver most of his life and had always felt comfortable in the water, as if it were his natural element. Panic never entered his mind. He tracked a string of bubbles rising toward a faint silver glow. Orienting himself, he swam toward the surface but found it receding.
Pitt was being drawn down by the Alta’s suction. He swam hard against the invisible force. His head began to throb. He needed air.
His body bumped against something and he instinctively grabbed it. The object was buoyant and, like Pitt, fought the grasp of the ship’s suction. As his throat tightened, Pitt knew he must break free and surface quickly.
With his lungs bursting and his vision narrowing, he continued to kick with a fury. He felt no sensation of ascending, but he realized the surrounding air bubbles were not rising past him. He looked up. The luminescent surface was drawing closer, and
the water felt warmer. The gleaming surface dangled just beyond reach as every blood vessel in his head throbbed like a jackhammer. Then suddenly he was there.
Bursting through the waves, he gulped in air as his heart slowed its pounding. A small motor buzzed nearby, and in an instant an orange inflatable roared up beside him. The smiling face of Al Giordino leaned over the side.
He laughed as he easily pulled Pitt into the boat. “That’s a new take on riding the range.”
Pitt gave him a confused look, then peered over the side. Bobbing beside them was a bright green portable outhouse from the Alta that he had ridden to the surface. Pitt smiled at his dumb luck. “I think it’s what they call ascending the throne,” he said.
The Sargasso Sea had already hoisted aboard the Alta’s emergency decompression chamber pod and was rounding up the lifeboat survivors when Pitt and Giordino boarded. Captain Knight spotted Pitt and rushed to his side. “I thought you were gone for good.”
“She tried to take me for a one-way ride, but I managed to hop off. How’s your partner?”
“Resting comfortably in sick bay. You saved both our lives.”
“That was quite a fire aboard your ship. Do you know what started it?”
Knight shook his head. The image of the exploding ship would haunt him for the rest of his days. “Some sort of explosion. It set off the forward fuel bunker. Can’t imagine what caused it. Miraculously, everyone seems to have gotten off the ship, even the men in the saturation chamber.” A tortured pain showed in his eyes. “There are three more men on the bottom. Divers.”
“Were they in the water?”
Knight nodded. “Working out of the diving bell at depth. The initial explosion severed the lift cable and umbilical. We never had a chance to warn them.”
“We’ve called the Navy’s Undersea Rescue Command,” Giordino said. “They can have a submersible rescue vehicle on-site in ten hours. We’re also searching for any nearby commercial deepwater resources.”
“Assuming no injuries or problems with the bell, the divers should be safe for at least twenty-four hours,” Pitt said. He pointed to a small yellow submarine on the stern deck. “We best see how they’re making out. If nothing else, we can keep them company until the cavalry arrives.”
Pitt turned to Giordino. “How soon can we deploy the Starfish?”
“About ten minutes.”
“Let’s make it five.”
8
The two-man submersible dropped below the choppy surface and began its slow descent, driven by the pull of gravity. Pitt barely had time to slip into some dry clothes before Giordino had the Starfish prepped for diving. Climbing into the pilot’s seat, he rushed through a predive checklist as the submersible was lowered over the side.
“Batteries are at full power, everything appears operational. We are approved for dive,” Pitt said with a wink as seawater washed over the top of the viewport.
Giordino flicked on a bank of external floodlights as they sank past the hundred-foot mark. The descent felt painfully slow. As men who worked in and around the sea, they felt an affinity for the unknown divers lost on the seafloor. Several minutes later, the taupe-colored bottom materialized.
“The current pushed us east during our descent,” Giordino said. “I suggest a heading of two hundred and seventy-five degrees.”
“On it.” Pitt engaged the Starfish’s thrusters.
The submersible skimmed over the bottom, driving against a light current. The seafloor was rocky and undulating but mostly devoid of life.
Pitt noticed the terrain change a short distance ahead. “Something coming up.”
A parallel band of rippled sediment appeared, stretching across their path like a recessed highway.
“Tread marks,” Pitt said. “Somebody had some heavy equipment down here.”
Giordino peered into the depths. “That says we should be close to the wellhead.”
They traveled a short distance before the hulk of the Alta appeared in the murk. The bow was crumpled from hitting the seafloor, but the ship was otherwise intact, sitting upright at a slight list. Pitt wasted no time inspecting the ship’s damage and circled around its stern. He was immediately met by an underwater junkyard.
Debris from the Alta was scattered across a rocky shallow, joined by a conglomeration of pipes, compressors, and cables jarred free at impact. There were large steel gas cylinders, most containing helium or oxygen in support of the Alta’s saturation chamber. Dozens of the green, brown, and black cylinders lay scattered across the bottom.
As they glided over a buckled tin shed, Giordino called out. “Strobe light, off to the right.”
Pitt turned the submersible toward the flash. A raised structure, sprouting pipes from its center, partially blocked the light. Pitt navigated around the wellhead riser and blowout preventer to find the diving bell wedged against the structure, jammed at an obtuse angle, with one of its drop weights still in place.
Giordino shook his head. “They sure got themselves into a nice pickle.”
A small light wavered in one of the bell’s viewports. Pitt flashed the submersible’s lights as he eased closer, cautious of the wellhead’s protruding fittings.
“I think I see two men in there,” Giordino said.
“Let’s see if we can raise them on the emergency channel.”
Pitt activated the emergency transponder that operated on the same frequency as the diving bell’s. “Submersible Starfish to Alta diving bell. Do you read me?”
A high-pitched, garbled voice replied in the affirmative.
“Their helium-speech unscrambler must have been topside,” Giordino said. “Hope you watched a lot of Disney cartoons growing up.”
The voice of Warren Fletcher blared over the speaker in a Mickey Mouse tenor. Pitt lost much of the verbiage but made out that one man was injured and that the bell had lost most of its emergency gas. He slid the submersible to the side and saw for himself. A half-dozen gas cylinders were piled on the sand below the bell, a large gash evident in the bottles’ storage rack.
Pitt eyed the spent tanks. “They have a serious air problem.”
“Somebody just held up two fingers to the glass,” Giordino said. “Two hours.”
It was a problem they hadn’t expected to confront. Pitt’s objective had been to find the bell and give the men encouragement until a deep-sea rescue team could arrive. But those resources were at best eight hours away. By the time outside help arrived, the men in the bell would be long dead.
“Poor buggers,” Giordino said. “The Navy’s hours away. Those boys will never make it.”
“They can if they swim to the surface.”
Pitt radioed the bell. “Alta divers, can you abandon the bell and dive to the surface? We have a deco chamber topside. Repeat, we have a deco chamber topside.”
Fletcher replied in the negative, explaining that the hatch was blocked from the outside.
Pitt and Giordino surveyed the exterior and saw the hatch was blocked shut by the bell’s bent base frame, which had also jammed the ballast weight in place.
Pitt studied the heavy-gauge steel. “No way we can straighten that out. Do you think we can pull them off the riser?”
“It’s worth a shot. We can’t access the lower frame, where they’re pinned. Of course, the bell won’t ascend far dragging all that cable.”
“They’ll have to break free sooner or later.” Pitt moved the submersible around the diving bell. Approaching from above, he hovered the Starfish just above the bell.
Giordino went to work, extending an articulated robotic arm and grasping a secondary lift eye on the bell. “Got it.”
Proceeding gently, Pitt angled the thrusters down and tried lifting the diving bell. The dive capsule rocked but refused to budge. Pitt tried adjusting the angle of lift, but each time the bell remained fixed to the
wellhead riser.
Pitt eased the submersible lower and Giordino released the grip on the lift point.
“That bell probably weighs as much as our submersible,” Giordino said. “We just don’t have enough horsepower to pull it off.”
“She just needs a good tug from above.”
“I agree, but it ain’t going to come from us.”
“That’s right,” Pitt said. “It will have to come from the lift cable.”
“You mean raise the cable? There’s over six hundred feet of steel cable. It probably weighs ten times as much as the bell. No way we could drag that to the surface.”
“Not drag. Float,” Pitt said with a twinkle in his eye.
Giordino studied his partner. He had seen that look before. It was the never-say-die gaze of a man who had cheated death many times over. It was a look of determination that spouted from his friend like Old Faithful. Pitt didn’t know the men in the diving bell, but there was no way he would stand by and let them die.
Giordino rubbed his chin. “How can we possibly do that?”
“Simple,” Pitt said. “We just raise the roof.”
9
Feeling as if he had been abandoned to die in a cold steel coffin, Fletcher watched the lights of the NUMA submersible recede across the seafloor.
“They’ll be back,” he said, trying to convince himself.
He could do little but focus on his breathing, every inhalation a reminder of their limited air. Like most professional divers, he wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but little by little the diving bell seemed to compress around him.
He gazed at Tank, who had slid to a sitting position beside him and stared at the floor in resignation. To lessen his own anxiety, Fletcher remained standing, his face pressed against the viewport while tracking the submersible. What was it up to? The vessel seemed to be just moving back and forth, stirring up silt. Whatever they were doing, it seemed to have nothing to do with saving him and his partners.