Checkmate

7

Grimsdottir’s panicked voice was immediately in his ear: “Sam, I—”

Fisher reached up and hit his transmit switch twice, then once, telling Lambert and Grimsdottir, Radio silence; wait for contact.

In or out, he commanded himself. If he got out now, they’d lock the dock down and his chance would be lost. If he stayed on mission, he’d be facing a security force on high alert, hunting for an intruder. It was an easy decision. This is what he did.

He quickly shut the scuttle, then pushed off the wall and finned downward, hands outstretched. When he touched the rough concrete of the dock’s bed, he rolled to the right and kept swimming. He had one chance and one chance only. The shed was divided by a main watercourse bracketed on both sides by working piers. If he could find a hiding place deep within the pier’s pilings, he might be able wait out the security sweep.

Above him, the water went suddenly from dark green to turquoise as the dock’s security lights came on, bathing the interior in bright light. He heard the muffled pounding of boots on the dock and voices shouting back and forth to one another.

His fingertips touched wood: a piling. He hooked his arm around it and pulled himself under the pier. The water went dark again. He switched on his task lights and was engulfed in hazy red light. He kept swimming, weaving his way through the pilings. Covered in mottled gray barnacles, they reminded him of elephant legs.

Somewhere behind him he heard multiple splashes. Divers in the water. The dock’s security team was well trained and moving fast. Keep going.

The inner wall of the dock appeared before his faceplate. He looked up. Above his head he could just make out the understructure of the pier, a warren of crisscrossing girders and conduits.

Fisher finned around the piling nearest the wall, then switched off his lights and broke the surface. He shed his fins and clipped them to his harness. Now the hard part, he thought. Here was where all the hours of grueling exercise to keep his forty-something body in shape would pay off. He hoped.

Arms and feet braced against the wall and the piling, he began inching himself upward, using only the tensing of his muscles as leverage. Known in the mountaineering world as a chimneying, the manuever took supreme concentration. Fisher felt sweat running down his back inside the wet suit. His set his jaw and kept climbing.

Out in the watercourse he heard more splashing. To his left he saw a black wet-suit-covered head break the surface. A flashlight beam played over the pilings. Fisher froze. The beam passed over him, paused for a beat, then two, then three, then moved on. The diver turned and kept swimming.

Fisher pushed himself up the wall a few more feet and looked up. The understructure was within reach. He reached up, grabbed a water pipe, and let his legs swing free.

Somewhere nearby, a radio squelched: “Dock Boss, this is Diver Two-One. Approaching north wall, section nine. I’m going into the pilings. Thought I saw something.”

“Roger, Two-One.”

The diver had turned back. Hanging perfectly still, Fisher scanned his eyes left. The diver was there, head just above the surface, flashlight playing over the water as he made his way through the pilings toward him.

Quick and quiet, Sam. Go.

He tensed his abdominal muscles, drew his knees up to his chest, then hooked his ankles over the pipe and began inching his body along it until he was tucked tight against it. He looked down. The diver was almost directly beneath him.

With one palm pressed against a neighboring pipe for leverage, Fisher rolled his body until he was balanced lengthwise atop the conduit. He went still again. The diver’s flashlight appeared again, closer yet, casting slivers of light and broken shadows through the understructure.

Fisher closed his eyes and willed himself invisible.

Nothing here but us pipes, pal, Fisher thought. Swim along now.

After what seemed like minutes, but was likely less than twenty seconds, the diver clicked off his flashlight and finned away. Fisher let himself exhale.

With nothing to do until the security sweep was completed and the stand-down order given, he had to choose between sitting still and waiting it out, or doing a little exploring. He decided on the latter.

A quick check of his OPSAT confirmed what he’d predicted: The pier’s understructure wasn’t included in the dock’s blueprints. He scrolled through the schematics to be sure. There was nothing.

He set out.

He crawled along the maze of conduits until he intersected a grated maintenance catwalk. All around him he heard the gurgling of water through pipes, the hissing of steam, and the low hum of electricity. The ceiling, a mere four feet above the catwalk, dripped with condensation and was covered with tiny stalagtites of mineral deposits. In the distance he could hear the crackle of acetylene cutting torches.

He keyed his subdermal: “I’m back.”

Grimsdottir said, “Thank God. I was worried.”

“Didn’t know you cared.”

“Dummy. Sam, I don’t know what went wrong. I was sure I’d covered the alarm redundancies.”

“The curse of modern technology. No harm done.”

Lambert said, “Are you in or out? Scratch that; dumb question. What’s your status?”

“Doing a little spelunking while they finish their security sweep.”

“Okay, stay—”

A voice came over the dock’s PA system. Fisher told Lambert, “Wait,” then listened: “All hands, security alert stand down. Security Alert Team report to control for debriefing.”

Lambert said, “I heard. Stay safe and stay in touch.”

Fisher signed off.

Hunched over, occasionally ducking under valve junctions or cloverleafs of piping, he began picking his way down the catwalk. He paused every few seconds to switch his trident goggles to infrared for a quick scan of the area ahead; with the swirling steam, he found the NV unreliable. Aside from the red and yellow heat signatures of the conduits, he saw nothing.

With a screech, a parrot-sized rat scurried across his path and darted down the catwalk. Fisher realized he’d drawn his SC; he holstered it. Constant training made for good reflexes and a lot of almost-dead rats.

After another fifty feet he came to a T-intersection. He switched to IR. Clear. Ahead, the catwalk continued to who knows where; to his right, a ladder rose from the catwalk and disappeared.

Thank God for maintenance hatches.

The ladder was but a few rungs tall and ended at a manholelike opening. He took out his flexi-cam, plugged the AV cable into his OPSAT, waited for the image to resolve on the screen, then snaked the camera through one of the cover’s holes.

It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. A boot; a black leather boot. He froze. Standard Navy-issue Chukka, size 12. He knew the model only too well. He’d worn out three pair during BUD/S, the Navy’s six-month SEAL boot camp.

Ever so slowly he eased the flexi-cam back through the hole.

Above him, the sailor’s boot was joined by a second. Fisher could smell the tang of cigarette smoke. “They find anything?” the first sailor asked.

“Nah. You know how it is: They always say, ‘This is not a drill,’ but it almost always is.”

“Yeah. So what’s the deal with this ship? What’s with all the guys in space suits?”

“That’s biohazard gear, idiot. The Master Chief says its an exercise, but I don’t buy it. I think there’s something—”

A grizzled voice interrupted. “You two! Got nothing to do, I see. Follow me. I’ll find you something.”

“Come on, Chief, we’re just taking a break.”

“Break’s over, ladies. Back to work.”

Fisher waited for the count of thirty, then slipped the flexi-cam back through the hole. The boots were gone. He switched to IR and did a 360 scan. There was nothing. No bodies, no movement.

Using his fingertips, he gently lifted the manhole cover, slid it aside, and crawled out.