“Ali?” called Chris. “Sally is trying to talk to you.”
Alison blinked and abruptly reached down to turn the vest’s speaker back on. “What is it, Sally?”
Alison. You help, yes?
She gulped. “I’m trying to, yes.”
You help now.
Geez, she thought. They were not giving up.
“Like I said, it will take time. I have elders too.”
Talk heads soon, Alison?
Alison nodded inside her mask. “I will. I promise.”
Behind Sally, the two elders turned and moved away, followed by the shorter, stubbier dolphin. When they were beyond the range of the humans’ talking metal, one of the elders slowed and allowed the shorter one to catch up. It was not just its size. The dolphin with the misshapen melon was also noticeably slower.
When it caught up, both elders waited for it to speak. And when it did, the message was brief.
“She say truth.”
43
Elgin Tay peered at the floor below him in bewilderment. With each step, the familiar green glow emanated from beneath his foot, rippling out before fading again. And he could see something else.
Appearing as part of the floor, or embedded within it, were…lines. Dozens of lines surrounded each foot as he moved. All of which appeared to be perfectly straight. Some continued forward while others broke off at ninety-degree angles before disappearing as soon as the glow faded.
Tay tilted his head, stepping several times in one place to study the patterns. These lines looked oddly familiar, resembling something he had seen before. They looked similar to the conductive lines etched in computer circuit boards. But these appeared in a variety of sizes. Some seemed barely wider than a strand of hair.
Tay paused and looked up. He reached forward, stretching out to touch a nearby wall, and was fascinated to find the same line patterns illuminated by the glow around his hand. They were everywhere.
He continued, reaching the end of the small walkway where the walls opened into a larger area. There was another slight but perceptible change in the air––cooler and denser. He could feel it in his lungs as he breathed.
Below his feet, with each step, the glow provided enough ambient light to sense an emptiness in front of him. Yet he had a distinct feeling that something was waiting in the darkness, just out of sight.
Tay stepped back. There was also a slight angle to the floor. A gentle slant suggesting the ship was not entirely level. Had it been situated that way intentionally, or had it settled over time atop an uneven ocean floor?
Tay stopped and inhaled slowly, feeling an unpleasant creeping sensation. A subtle loss of awareness warning him that without more light he could easily get lost. Darkness had a way of quickly enveloping a person and robbing their sense of direction. It was the reason so many people died while cave diving. Even experienced divers could lose their bearings within minutes. And then begin to panic.
But there was a simple solution. If the person could manage to remember it before the panic set in. Always keep one hand on the wall.
No matter where they were, or how lost, if a diver could manage to keep one hand on the wall and move in the same direction, eventually they would find the exit. Presuming, of course, they had enough air.
Fortunately, Tay did.
He placed his hand on the wall and moved to the right, leaving faint trails glowing behind his fingers. Stay right.
44
Alison had almost reached the surface when she was startled once more by two sudden plunges into the water several feet away. She saw the fins first, followed by two sets of powerful legs, then finally the bodies and illuminated masks of SEAL divers Corbin and Beene.
Neither man seemed to notice Alison’s look of surprise and instead briefly waved as they turned, kicking away from the edge of the ship. A few moments later, a large shadow appeared overhead, quickly roiling the surface with its much larger splash.
It was some kind of signaling apparatus. Less than a foot thick, it contained a wide grid made up of what appeared to be nine square ceramic plates on each side. Thick yellow and red cables traveled upwards from each plate. They then combined into a much thicker black cable from which the device was supported.
As it dropped several feet below the surface, both Corbin and Beene grasped the metal frame on either side and without a word, guided the device further out, while it continued to descend.
Alison watched the men as they quickly sank with it into the darker water below. “Well, that was interesting.”
“What’s that?”
“Corbin and Beene just jumped in and rode something big down.”
After a pause, Chris’s voice replied. “Smitty says that’s a hydrophone array. They’re using it to pinpoint where Lieutenant Tay is inside the ship.”
“Ah.”
“Which means we won’t have to use our dolphins anymore.”
Alison continued watching. She grinned at the swarm of dolphins who hastily approached and began circling excitedly around them. “I guess we should have told them. It looks to me like they’re ready to go again.”
A deeper voice came through her earbuds. “Alison, this is Corbin. Can you ask our friends to guide us down to where they heard the sounds? That should be close enough to pinpoint.”
“Sure.” Alison relayed the message and heard Dirk’s reply from within the cluster below. She watched as a few shapes broke away and chased the men downward.
“They’re coming to you. You’ll need to hold on.”
Corbin and Beene looked curiously at each other.
“One hand on a fin.”
Both men acknowledged and reached out to wrap a gloved hand around a dolphin’s dorsal fin.
“Now hold on.”
“Whoa!” Beene said, suddenly accelerating. “These guys are fast.”
Behind him, Corbin scrambled for a better grip on the hydrophone as Dirk took off. He noticed small specs in the seawater as they sped past his helmet’s lights. He turned to see dozens of other dolphins following behind, their outlines visible against the sparkling sunlight above. He grinned inside his mask. “I think I’ve found my preferred mode of transportation.”
As both SEALs faded into the dark blue, Alison was left floating alone near the surface. She glanced above at the glittering surface of the water, almost dancing with millions of tiny splashes against the surface.
Raindrops.
45
“Captain. Satellite is showing wind speeds at almost fifty miles an hour. Still a tropical storm but building.”
Emerson frowned. “What’s the path?”
“Northwest. Unless it changes, it shouldn’t pass closer than a couple hundred miles. Probably sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
The captain nodded. Hurricanes that far south were not uncommon. Fortunately, they were well out of the path. And the storm was still technically closer to a tropical depression than a first stage hurricane. Neither of which were enough to bother Emerson.
What did bother him were the ripple effects the storm would bring as it passed. Tropical storms, even tropical depressions, could still release a lot of energy. Currents or surges in the water were powerful and could last for days after a storm passed. Not necessarily a problem for the Pathfinder, but they were a very real concern for anything happening below the surface. Like a manned rescue mission.
“Get Ackerman on the comm.”
“Aye, sir.”
***
Below deck, a corded black handle was instantly pulled from its cradle. “Ackerman.”
“Commander, this is the Captain. Are you watching this storm?”
“Yes, sir. We are.”
“And?”
“Corbin and Beene aren’t reporting much of a surge yet. With any luck, we can get in and out before it gets too bad.”
Emerson stared out through the bridge windows with a solemn expression. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that luck on the ocean doesn’t
usually swing in our favor.”
“Yes, sir. But if we don’t do it now and things get worse, we may not be able to try again for days.”
“How do our chances stand now?”
“Still in our favor. We’re going with the fastest option, which gives us the longest possible window.” Unfortunately, they had only two divers with enough experience to pull the operation off, and they could only stay down for so long.
“All right. Do it. But at the first sign of trouble, you get everyone out of there in a hurry. If we have to wait, then we wait.”
“Yes, sir.” When the line went dead, Ackerman reached forward and replaced the receiver. The captain’s words had just created a knot in his stomach.
The message was clear. Do everything he could to save Lieutenant Tay, but if push comes to shove, abort the mission and leave him inside. At least until they could try again. But by then it could be too late. Because regardless of how enthusiastic Tay might be after establishing contact with them, his lack of food and fresh water was about to become life-threatening.
***
“Alison, are we sure we’re in the right area?”
She called down to Dirk and waited for the response. “Yes, they say the hydrophone is very close.”
Both SEALs glanced down from above through their clear masks. The hydrophone was now almost a hundred feet below them, its thick black cable pulled taut and descending past both men into the blackness below.
Corbin grabbed his pipe and proceeded to knock it hard against the hull, slowly and methodically spelling out three letters.
T-A-Y
When he was done, they waited for a reply.
Above them, aboard the Pathfinder, engineers Smitty and Odonnell watched the screen together, waiting for a return signal from the hydrophone.
There was nothing.
Chris turned back to his own microphone. “Ali, are the dolphins hearing anything?”
After a pause, she replied. “No. Nothing.”
Ackerman’s wide frame appeared in the doorway. “Any reply?”
“Not yet.”
“How’s their oxygen?”
Smitty checked another screen. “Both have enough air for a good twenty more minutes.”
The dreariness on Ackerman’s face deepened. “Keep them down as long as possible. And keep repeating every sixty seconds.”
Why wasn’t Tay responding? The engineering commander began working his way through the possibilities. Beginning with the most likely. After several seconds, he checked his watch. The DSRV was en route, which meant almost six hours before they could attempt the rescue.
And it had taken barely thirty minutes for their first problem to arise. If they could not restore communication with Tay and get a lock on his location, their chances of getting him out alive would begin dropping quickly.
46
Tay didn’t hear the sounds. Not at first.
He had counted twelve right turns in the almost pitch blackness, and a downward slant, before stopping to regain his bearings. He tried hard to push past the pain in his leg and maintain a mental grip of the map still inside his brain.
It was only the silence between his breaths that allowed him to hear the faint echoes from Corbin’s steel pipe.
He instantly turned. Crap!
Tay immediately scurried back the way he came. As fast as he could manage with one hand straight out in front of him. Glowing rings rippled under each foot in faster succession.
His hand lost contact with the wall again on his way up the ramp, and he frantically searched for it again.
I have to get back! If they didn’t get a reply, they could think something had happened to me.
Tay found the corner and immediately rounded it. The divers couldn’t stay down long if they were using regular gear. Maybe twenty minutes. And he had no idea how long they’d been calling him.
Tay ignored the throbbing in his leg. Instead, he plowed nervously through the darkness, working backward from memory.
Around the next corner. Then another.
Tay stopped to listen. The banging had ceased.
***
“We’re getting nothing.”
Ackerman’s face grew more solemn. “Is it even working?”
“Yes,” Smitty nodded. “The hydrophone’s picking up Corbin’s sounds but nothing from Lieutenant Tay. Nothing at all.”
Ackerman shook his head. Son of a bitch! Did something happen to him?!
“How much longer?”
“Corbin is down three minutes. Beene maybe four.” Smitty looked at the Commander. “Unless we want them to stay longer.”
He shook his head. It wasn’t about the air. It was about the nitrogen. “We can’t. We need them for the rescue, and if they absorb too much nitrogen now, we lessen the amount of time they can stay down later.”
Next to Smitty, Odonnell pressed a pair of thick headphones against each side of his head. “They’re asking what the decision is.”
Ackerman didn’t answer. If Tay was unable to communicate, it was a serious problem. If he was seriously injured, it could be catastrophic.
Even if they could get a line and harness inside, it would be up to Tay to reach it and secure himself in. If he couldn’t do that, there was no way they could get him out. And they sure as hell weren’t about to risk sending someone else in.
“Bring them up.”
Smitty, Odonnell, and Chris Ramirez all stared at the commander.
“We have no choice,” Ackerman said. “If he’s alive we’ll try to get someone else back down to communicate the plan. But as of this moment, we need those two for the DSRV rescue.”
“Whoa!” Smitty nearly missed it but suddenly jumped when the hydrophone’s data stream spiked on his monitor. A moment later, the red and blue waves peaked again, signaling another sound.
Each spike was followed by another, and all four men watched transfixed as the computer began painstakingly transcribing each incoming letter.
47
Will Borger barely seemed to notice the abrupt drop of the airplane, so pronounced it instinctively caused Lee Kenwood in the seat next to him to grab his laptop from the tiny seat-back tray. A moment later, Borger glanced around at the other nervous passengers but quickly returned his eyes to his small satellite phone.
Lee bumped his arm excitedly, as he placed his computer back down. “We just got a successful test!”
“What?”
“On the emulator your friend, Mr. Roland, gave us. I just ran the first module for the deep learning algorithms, and it was successful.”
“You mean the pictures?”
“Exactly. A few hundred pics of animals and it successfully identified not just the different species, but even different breeds.”
Borger nodded. “Any errors?”
“Not yet, but it was a small test.”
“Still impressive. Those are pretty subjective features that even humans can have trouble with.”
“Agreed. I stole this piece of code from a university’s website. It works in layers. The lower layers run through basic shapes and sizes. The higher levels try to differentiate between more subtle features like ears, tails, fur, those sorts of things. It’s been used by a lot of other teams, so the code has been pretty well vetted. Of course, it doesn’t have to just be pictures of animals. That’s just what a lot of developers like to use.”
“More importantly, it verifies the code can work on HPE’s new platform,” said Borger.
“Yep. Just as Mr. Roland said it would. Which means IMIS’s deep learning computer code should also work. Although some of those modules are going to be harder to convert than others.”
“Well, at least we have our proof of concept.”
“Right!”
Borger nodded again before turning to peer through the thick double-paned window next to him. A ray of sunlight shone through the oval Plexiglas and crept slowly up his face, highlighting Borger’s growing beard, and eventually hitting his haz
el-colored eyes. “Now we just need the hardware.”
Lee continued typing. “Mr. Roland said he could probably get some systems turned up for us next week when he got back.”
“Let’s hope so. Assuming he can find a place to hide them. We can’t exactly put them on a plane and take them to our bunker in Puerto Rico.”
Lee stopped typing. They had the same problem trying to figure out where to relocate IMIS. But this time they had an advantage with the HPE hardware. It wouldn’t actually be translating anything and therefore didn’t need any dedicated feeds into it. It didn’t even need to be encrypted for that matter. All the HPE systems would need was a simple connection to the internet and time to scour, looking for deeper connections between data points. Lee suspected that even if someone did stumble upon the hardware, without knowing what it was doing, all of the information would just appear like random data. After all, even Rick Roland didn’t know what they were using it for.
“With any luck, soon we’ll have something ready, so we can try things out.” Realizing Borger was still peering out the window, Lee frowned. “Is everything okay?”
“I think we have a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone is still trying to find me.” He held up his satellite phone. “I don’t know if they can crack our encryption, but if they do, they’ll know exactly where I am.”
“How bad would that be?”
Borger shrugged. “I’m not sure. These phones are not connected to any of us, in any system. And yet someone seems to have figured out which device is mine.”
Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5) Page 16
