OUTCAST Ops: The Poseidon Initiative

TWENTY-EIGHT

The ride out to the oil rig didn’t take long, but it was unnerving having guns pointed at you in a bouncing boat. The boat driver slowed the craft as they neared the rig, and the leader addressed Jasmijn on the boat’s aft deck.

“Set up your equipment while we are en route to the dive site.” The Dutch terrorist indicated a rack of scuba tanks and a bag of gear, then looked to Jasmijn to see if she would object.

“He’s going with me.” She looked at Dante, who nodded.

The terrorist shook his head. “You will go alone.”

Jasmijn raised her voice. It seemed to come from a place of genuine anger, not merely an act. “I have never before dove alone. I would not be able to collect the required specimens without a dive partner because I’d be too distracted out of concern for my safety.”

“If safety is your concern, you are arguing with the wrong man.” The terror monger dropped his hand down to his holstered pistol.

Jasmijn gave a laugh that she hoped would sound defiant but it just came out sounding anxious. “I suppose you have a point there. Being shot and dumped overboard isn’t very safe, either, I get it. But the fact remains that if you want me to collect the specimens I require to complete my work on the antidote, then I need to dive with someone who has scientific scuba experience, and that’s Dante.”

She thrust an elbow in his direction. Although Dante was a certified diver and in peak physical condition, his experience was not in the line of duty as a former Secret Service agent, but rather recreational only, in tropical places where the drinks on the beach come in coconuts with little umbrellas on them, where the water is warm and the dives are shallow, the only objective to look at the pretty fish swimming over the rainbow coral reefs. He had absolutely no idea what was meant by scientific diving, and he had never done a dive as demanding as an oil rig in the bone-chilling cold of the North Sea.

He nodded confidently and said, “Let’s do this.”

The Hofstad group leader summoned over another of his three henchmen and conferred with him in soft tones for a few moments. Dante saw the man who had come over turn to glance at him once while the other man was talking.

Then the leader said to Jasmijn, “Very well. You and he will dive. We will be following your air bubbles to see where you come up.”

She nodded. “Good. We don’t want a long swim back to the boat in this freezing water. Speaking of which,” she went on, pointing at an exposure suit on deck, “these are dry suits, correct? A wetsuit isn’t going to cut it down there at a hundred feet.”

The leader looked to one of his other men, a young Dutchman in his mid-twenties, for an answer. That man nodded.

“Yes. Put them on. Get going.”

“And you have the transport tank for the specimens like I asked?”

The same man who had assisted with the drysuit question lifted a hinged lid on a compartment and pointed to the bubbling water within. “Oxygenated livewell.”

Jasmijn nodded. They were normally used for fishing to keep bait alive. “That’s good for the trip back to the dock, but then we’ll still need something to keep them alive on the drive back to the lab. At least a cooler full of seawater, preferably with an aerator.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The man backed away. For a moment it was almost as if there was a regular working atmosphere aboard the boat, but that was quickly shattered.

“Enough delays! Collect the specimens!” The Hofstad leader aimed his pistol at Jasmijn. He stood there and leered at her while she stripped her pants off, leaving her jacket on to cover up while she stepped into the drysuit.

Dante put his suit on as well and then they were attaching buoyancy compensators and regulators to tanks, hefting them on, adding weight belts. After adjusting the straps on the gear and doing a check of each other’s equipment, Jasmijn clipped a mesh collecting bag to her belt and announced they were ready.

They stepped over to the rear of the boat onto a platform where they put on their fins. Two of the Hofstad men stood immediately behind them on the boat deck, monitoring their movements. The leader stood back at the wheel, watching from a distance.

Jasmijn pointed to the nearby oil rig. “So we’ll swim to that pillar there and drop down. The anemones we need should be attached to the structure about fifty feet down.”

Dante squinted at the oil rig just before he pulled his mask on. “Do we need to watch out for moving parts down there, like getting sucked into a pipe or something like that?”

Behind him one of the guards laughed softly.

Jasmijn shook her head. “I’ve dived on this rig before. This one has been slated for decommissioning and so there’s no active drilling anymore. I’m not even sure if there are any people on it,” she said, giving his foot a subtle stamp with her own as she looked over at the rig. “Active ones have a lot of boat traffic and as you can see, there’s none of that.”

“Enough talk!” The leader shouted from the wheel. “Get on with it!”

Jasmijn turned to Dante. She could see in his eyes that he was a little nervous. “We’ll swim on the surface closer to the pillar to conserve air, then we drop down next to it. Ready?”

Dante nodded as he gazed out over the surface of the ocean. At least it was calm, by North Sea standards. Three-to-four foot swells.

Jasmijn nodded in return and the two of them splashed into the water.