Sea of Greed

The submersible with the tanker truck on top was inching upward into a gap cut in the first of the three spheres.

“Now what?” Joe asked.

“What else,” Kurt replied. “We see what’s inside the sphere.”

37

VOLKE WAS at the helm of the submarine he and the crew called the Wasp. It had no official name, but it possessed a bulbous bow, pointed stern and a pinched waist like the insect.

Volke would have preferred they call it something more accurate — like the Wallowing Hippo. It was hard to maneuver, top-heavy, with the tanker mounted above it, and given to rolling badly on the surface, even in the slightest waves.

Thankfully, it was far more stable when the ballast tanks were full and it was operating beneath the water. Only, that made it slower than ever.

After they navigated into the hull, it took hours to line up with the gap in the docking sphere. When that was done, Volke grabbed the radio.

“Docking Sphere, this is Volke,” he said into a microphone. “Anyone awake up there?”

A scratchy signal carried the response. “We’re ready for you, Wasp. Cleared to surface.”

Volke eased the Wasp upward until it cleared the waterline. “Shutting down,” he called out. “Pull us to the dock.”

Inside the sphere, a group of crewmen, walking on metal grates, jumped aboard the bow, tied the line off and pulled the submersible to the dock.

“Equalizing pressure,” the copilot said.

Volke felt his ears popping.

“Pressure matched. Releasing the hatch.”

A hatch opened directly above them. The copilot went out first, followed by Millard. Volke went through last and found the nearest crewman. “Is the next shipment ready?”

“You’ll have to check with the foreman,” the crewman said. “There was a problem with the new cultures.”

Volke glared at Millard for a moment. He suspected the problem was the scientist’s doing. “Come with me.”

With Millard in tow, Volke walked along the metal grate, each footstep echoing off the curved steel walls around them. They made their way to the opening of a steel tube six feet in diameter. This was the conduit that had been welded into place between the docking sphere and the tank next to it, which they called the control sphere.

“After you,” Volke said.

Millard disappeared into the tube and Volke followed just a few steps behind.

• • •

KURT AND JOE slipped through the gap in the bottom of the docking sphere far more easily than the bulky submarine.

Looking upward, Kurt noticed the same shimmer on the sonar readout that he’d seen when looking to the surface before. There was air on the other side of that shimmering line. “They’ve turned this into an underwater habitat.”

“We should examine their work,” Joe said.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Kurt shut off the sonar system and studied the layout, using only the visible light. The submarine with the tanker was docked above them to the left. The illumination was brightest in that area. On the other side of the sphere was another submersible, the small, disk-shaped craft they’d battled in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Follow me,” Kurt said.

He swam beneath the disk submersible and surfaced behind it. As expected, there were no crewmen in that area. Joe surfaced moments later and the two of them gazed across the water toward the larger submarine with the tanker on its back.

Three crewmen were working on it, blasting jets of hot air into the couplings of the tanker truck and then following that up with another gas.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Kurt asked.

“Nitrogen,” Joe said. “They’re making sure there’s no water or other impurities in the couplings that might contaminate what they’re about to load. Assuming it’s the bacteria Paul and Gamay discovered, I can’t say I blame them.”

With a second hose connected to the tanker, the men sat down on overturned buckets and waited while the entire truck was pumped full of inert gas.

“How long do you think that will take?”

“Depends on the pressure level,” Joe said. “Speaking of which”—he looked at the screen on his arm—“we have eleven minutes down here before we’re going to need to make a decompression stop. Wouldn’t want to have to tread water at sixty feet with this group chasing us.”

Kurt nodded. “Eleven minutes should be plenty of time to throw a monkey wrench in their plans.”

“What do you suggest?”

“This crew isn’t exactly on high alert,” Kurt said. “You go play Flipper and distract them from the water, I’ll sneak around behind them and put them to sleep.”

“And then?”

“We steal their overalls and walk around like we own the place. Possibly pressing a few buttons and throwing a few levers and doing whatever we can to put this place out of whack.”

Joe slid back into the water while Kurt took off his fins, climbed carefully onto the decking and crept around the semidarkened sphere to a spot behind the three crewmen who were servicing the tanker.