The Athena Project

CHAPTER 3

The entry point was Nino Bianchi’s boat garage. But getting in wouldn’t simply be a matter of swimming under the doors and popping up on the other side. Bianchi took his security much too seriously to allow that sort of thing to happen.

The brightly painted wooden doors, which looked like any others along the Grand Canal, hid two sheets of titanium, three inches thick, descending several feet below the water level. The titanium doors came to rest upon a wall of metal bars that went all the way down and were bolted to the bedrock beneath the canal bottom.

Under the murky water, Cooper and Casey unloaded their gear. When they were ready, Casey said over the radio, “I’m going to wrap the bars.”

“Roger that,” replied Rhodes, who was concealed in the window of an apartment across the canal. She adjusted her face against the cheek pad of her rifle and prepared to take Bianchi’s guards if they noticed what was going on below them.

Gripping the bars, Casey inched herself up as close to the surface as she dared. Though it was evening and the water cloudy, there was still a lot of ambient light spilling onto the surface. If she was seen, that would be the end of the entire operation.

Identifying the bars that they’d be working on, she wrapped them as tightly as she could with Ti wire to keep them from spreading.

Using the bars to guide herself back to the bottom, she wrapped the two bars again with wire halfway down.

Rejoining Cooper, she said, “Bars are wrapped. Let’s spread ’em.”

Cooper positioned a small, submersible hydraulic jack with titanium tubular extension poles between the two bars and went to work, silently creating an opening big enough for them to swim through.

They checked in repeatedly with Rhodes to make sure no one up on the dock had any idea what was going on. Each time, Rhodes replied, “You’re still good to go.”

After the bars had been spread far enough apart, Casey rose halfway to the surface to make sure that there was no sign of the breach. So far, so good. The wire had held.

As Cooper packed the jack back into her scooter, Casey unloaded two waterproof dry bags from hers. When they were ready, they swam through the opening, with Casey in the lead.

They quietly broke the surface of the water inside the boat garage, they came up only to eye level and took a long scan of the dimly lit room to make sure no one else was there. From what they could tell, they were alone and unnoticed.

Suspended above them, in order to keep its hull clean, was Bianchi’s twenty-nine-foot 1965 Riva Super Aquarama runabout.

Casey flashed Cooper the thumbs-up and they swam to a corroded ladder at the front of the slip.

Cooper climbed out first. After removing her mask and peeling back her hood, she took off her rebreather, reached down, and accepted the two dry bags from Casey. Quickly, the two women undressed.

They wore next to nothing beneath their dry suits. Unzipping the larger of the two bags, Casey pulled out Cooper’s cocktail dress and handed it to her, along with a pair of heels, jewelry, and makeup. They were followed by an inside-the-thigh garter holster, and a 9 mm Taurus “Slim” pistol.

Casey fished out her dress, heels, makeup, weapon, and holster and starting getting dressed as well.

“I hope you’re right about this guy wanting to show off his boat,” said Cooper.

Casey stepped into her dress. “You know what they say. The only difference between men and boys…”

“I know. The size of their toys.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll want to show us his toy.”

Cooper smiled. “But what if he doesn’t?”

Casey turned her back so her teammate could zip her up. “Then we’ll improvise. We’ll tell him we want to go skinny dipping.”

“In Venetian canal water?”

“Lex, you worry too much. Trust me, if we do this right, he’ll follow us anywhere.”

“And if we don’t, this guy is going to do everything he can to make sure we don’t leave this building alive.”

Casey shook her head. “Won’t happen.”

Cooper was easily the most serious member of the team. She was a planner and didn’t care much for improvisation. “Have you always been this sure of yourself?” she asked.

Handing her one of the miniature earpieces, Casey replied, “No, but I am this sure about men. Are you ready to go?”

“I’m guessing you don’t have a hair dryer in that bag, do you?”

“No hair dryer,” said Casey as she filled the larger bag with their dive equipment, weighted it down with a couple of items from the garage, dropped it into the water, and watched it sink out of view. “Dry suits may keep you bone dry, but the hoods are hell on your hair. Just run your fingers through it. You’ll be fine.”

“Easy for you to say,” responded Cooper as Casey searched for a place to hide the smaller dry bag. “You always look great.” In addition to being the most serious member of the team, Alex Cooper seemed to be the most critical of her own good looks.

The tarp for the Riva had been set in the corner of the garage, and Casey decided to hide the bag underneath. It contained everything the two women would need for their exfiltration: two masks, two waterproof, red-lens flashlights, and small “spare air” supplemental oxygen bottles with built-in mouthpieces for each of them. There were also restraints and a “spare air” bottle for Bianchi.

The plan was to get him back to this point, get him restrained, and get him into the water as quickly as possible. Once they had him below the surface, they would retrieve the rest of their gear, fire up their scooters, and get out of there as quickly as possible.

Casey pushed her tiny earpiece transmitter into her ear. It was about the size of a pencil eraser, and once it was in place it was virtually impossible to detect.

They tested the signal strength between them, and then outside to Rhodes and Ericsson. Satisfied that everything was ready, Casey smoothed over her rather revealing cocktail dress and said, “Okay ladies, it’s showtime.”