Quest for the Nautilus

by Jason Henderson

  Gabriel put his hand in a recess in the cocoon and felt for a small latch, then backed up in the water as the cocoon split open, both sides parting and clicking into place against the hull.

  Hanging in front of them were navy-blue motorcyclelike personal craft.

  Misty swam to one of the Katanas, touched the engine button on the handlebar, and it throbbed to life, water churning out the back end. Then she unfastened the bike and it dropped down. She climbed on and only then unhooked her tether from the ship.

  Gabriel let his tether go as he climbed on the other bike and watched the two towlines slide back into the dive iris. The Obscure moved steadily above them, and he dove at the same time Misty did, heading westward, so that they were well away from the aft of the Obscure and it left them behind.

  They rode for a moment underwater, watching the shadows of the Obscure and the pod of whales moving steadily away. “Okay, let’s go meet the Alaska,” Gabriel said.

  He felt it before he saw it, a vibration in the water that was impossible to ignore. And then a faint ghost of a shape appeared in the distance, and as they got closer, the Alaska came into view—so large it was impossible to see the whole thing by the time they were able to make out the gray of its hull. It was like a train that kept coming and coming, moving from their right to their left as they slipped toward its port side.

  “Easy does it,” Gabriel said. “We’re just a couple of tiny porpoises far from home.” It was unlikely that the Alaska would detect two craft as small as his and Misty’s Katanas, but the hair still tingled at the back of his neck under his suit.

  The Alaska was patrolling the waters slowly. Soon they were right beside the submarine as it moved along, making its way.

  “The lockout trunk should be forward about sixty feet on the starboard side,” Misty said. They sped up and dove, moving under the great submarine and coming up the other side. Gabriel reached out his hand to run it along the smooth metal hull of the great submarine as he remembered the schematic that Peter had found for them in the Nemo database. There were openings in a submarine, but very few they could use. The hatch above, used for normal everyday comings and goings while docked, would probably open to one of the busiest areas of the ship. No way they could sneak through there. There was also a thirty-inch-wide tube for dumping compressed canisters of garbage, and twenty-two torpedo tubes. Both the garbage tube and the torpedo tubes would be closed until opened by machinery from inside, and even if you could get into one, they were dangerous, because at any time a torpedo could be loaded, or a canister of garbage shot out at deadly speed. But there was one other candidate: the lockout trunk, a hatch that divers from the sub used when they needed to go out. That was their chance.

  “There.” Gabriel pointed as a sealed door, subtly curved with the hull, came into view. By the time they reached it, Gabriel could see it was about half again his height and about four feet wide. They shot forward on the Katanas, then counted down.

  “Three, two, one.” Misty and Gabriel slapped padded magnetic cushions onto the hull of the ship. The cushions were there to the buffer the collision of the metal of the Katanas with the hull. The magnets made only a soft thump as they attached, and now they were riding along tethered to the sub. They cut their engines.

  Gabriel unscrewed the end of his handlebar, and as it fed out a line, he immediately began shimmying back to the hatch. Misty followed about three feet behind him.

  They scanned the door and found a recess for human hands—it was at Misty’s head, so she gave the thumbs-up and grabbed on. They counted down. On one, she stopped.

  “Are we sure it’ll be flooded?” Misty asked. “If not, it’ll cause an explosion.”

  “It’s always flooded.” The lockout trunk was like an airlock, full of water that the divers dropped into. “And if it weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to open it anyway, because the pressure would keep you from turning the handle.”

  She nodded and yanked on the handle, and it slid easily around. The door began to open out like any door might. But it was heavy and needed them both. Gabriel grabbed the seam, and together they pulled it open wide. They let go of their tethers and swam into the flooded space beyond. They were inside now, floating in a small metal room barely lit by their headlamps.

  “Should we leave the door open?” Gabriel wondered aloud. They had discussed it but had no idea if it would swing closed on its own.

  “Shut it,” Misty advised. “We don’t know if they have sensors indicating it’s open.”

  He agreed, nodded, and swam over to grab the circular hatch handle on the inside of the door. With a lot of effort and bracing his feet on a seam in the floor, he dragged the door shut.

  They hung in the water for a moment, looking up. Gabriel could see shimmering light in a room above, but no movement. If there were people in the dive room, the mission would be over before it started. He didn’t need to look at his wristwatch to feel time melting away. “No time like the present.”

  Gabriel and Misty kicked and surfaced a few yards above. They treaded water in a pool in the center of a large, oval room hung with diving equipment, giant pipes and tubes running along the ceiling. The whole place was silent. Each of them took out their rebreathers, basking in the fresher air.

  Gabriel touched a button on the side of his mask, opening a channel to the Obscure.

  “Peter,” Gabriel whispered into the microphone at the bottom of his mask, “we are aboard the Alaska.”

  “Copy that,” Peter came back. Gabriel nodded to Misty and saw that she was listening, too. “I’ll try to stay just outside—”

  The door to the dive room swung open, and Gabriel cut the mic, hearing Peter’s distant voice go silent. Gabriel prayed he’d killed the radio soon enough as someone stepped inside.

  13

  89:07:35

  THEY DIDN’T FREEZE. They knew better than to freeze. As a sailor in US Navy coveralls entered just a few feet away, Gabriel and Misty smoothly, instantly dropped back under the water. Gabriel didn’t dare move to put his rebreather in—he held his breath, looking up through the water into the dim room. The sailor stepped around the corner of the pool, scanning the walls.

  Misty was holding her breath, too, and she glanced from the air above to Gabriel and back. How long would they have? A minute, maybe. Gabriel hadn’t taken a big breath when he dropped under the water, and he figured Misty hadn’t, either.

  The sailor had one hand up, idly running it across the equipment in the room, taking his time.

  Gabriel felt his foot bump against the bottom of the pool, and he jerked his leg away.

  Misty’s eyes grew wide. For a moment, the sailor looked over his shoulder but didn’t look down. He returned to his search.

  Gabriel’s air was turning acidic. Soon his lungs would be on fire. Take it easy. Take it easy. Sometimes pain is telling you something vital. But sometimes it’s just chemicals firing in your body. You know everything that’s going on. So the pain is nothing. It is there, but right now it is not important.

  Misty slowly moved her arms, keeping herself situated at the middle depth. Her eyes blinked rapidly.

  He looked back up as finally the sailor seemed to settle on a shelf and choose a wrench. He took it, shrugging, and turned around.

  And then stopped. Gabriel bit his lips, his lungs beginning to burn for real now. Come on!

  The sailor put the wrench back and grabbed a different one. He hefted it, nodded, and turned again. He opened the door and disappeared, closing it behind him.

  Misty and Gabriel shot up to the surface, gasping for breath while, at the same time, trying to keep the noise down. Anyone could come in again at any moment. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Gabriel whispered. They grabbed the edge of the pool and scrambled out.

  Gabriel looked down. There was a puddle of water at their feet. Once they were gone, if someone came in, they’d see the puddle. He looked around. “Do you see anything we can use to wipe this up, like a mop?”
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  “Here.” Misty hurried to the wall, pulling down a set of work coveralls that was hanging among several just like it. She tossed it to him, and he knelt, sweeping the water into the pool and soaking up the rest. He looked at the wet coveralls. “We should wear these.” He hung the wet pair and took down two more, and they put them on over their wet suits. He found a pair of hats, and by the time they were at the door, they looked, at least at a distance, like crew members.

  “What now?” Misty asked. “If that guy came in, there’s got to be more.”

  “There are hundreds more,” Gabriel agreed. “So remember the schematic—what’s the quickest way to the golden path?”

  On a submarine, there’s the path everyone takes, the regular corridors and ladders, and there’s a second set of paths just for the captain. A nuclear sub skipper had to be able to move all around the ship at a moment’s notice. In smaller subs, this was accomplished through sheer courtesy—people just got out of the captain’s way. On a ship like the Alaska, you had the golden path. Completely different, direct paths around the ship marked with a bright yellow stripe that only the captain was allowed to use. But there was only one captain. So they could brave the hallways and hope their disguises would keep them unnoticed, or they could take the golden path and avoid just one man.

  Misty gestured directions as she seemed to remember the schematics. “Down this corridor, then there’s a door at the end that opens up to the captain’s ladder. Then we’re in.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You know the way, you lead.”

  She put her hand on the door. “Remember, any door you go through, don’t open it slowly. Open every door like it’s the most casual thing in the world.”

  Gabriel nodded. Misty had done a lot of reading about spying in her regular pursuit of—who knew what she was trying to become, but it involved an awful lot of disparate skills, from Chinese to, apparently, sneaking around—and one thing she’d said to him had struck him as remarkable. She told him that no one stops a guy carrying a clipboard, and if you don’t have a clipboard, just walk like you know where you’re going and you need to get there now. Because everyone pays attention to their own needs and their own work, and they don’t spare much time to second-guess the people who pass them by.

  They counted to three, then Misty opened the door and stepped into the corridor. She started walking, Gabriel falling in behind her. Sure enough, the door was at the end of the corridor. But then he saw a sailor coming their way.

  Another set of footsteps behind them.

  They couldn’t head onto the golden path when someone was watching, so they needed the sailor behind them to pass them before they reached the door. Misty turned around, and Gabriel stopped as Misty gestured with her hands like she was explaining something. They kept the brims of their hats low as the submariner behind them stepped around without a word. The other one stepped around them in the other direction, and they started moving again. By the time they reached the end of the hall, it was clear, and Misty grabbed the lever and wasted no time in opening the door. She ducked into the stairwell, and Gabriel followed, closing the door behind him. The whole trip from the lockout trunk to the golden path had taken less than a minute.

  The ladder was empty, a hollow tube not much wider than Gabriel himself, slick with thick gray paint on the walls and bars. He heard no sound except the soft hum of the submarine itself and his own breath. Misty started climbing, Gabriel behind her.

  Although the sub was six hundred feet long, everything they needed could be found in the ops compartment, the two-hundred-foot-long forward where most of the submariners lived and worked.

  They followed the path Misty had memorized. Up two levels, then through a door into an empty corridor. This time they opened the door gently and slowly to peek around. Only one man would be in these corridors, and there would be no explaining their presence. But Commander Boutros was nowhere in sight. Probably in the control room.

  The corridor they stepped into was long and metal-paneled, and their feet echoed on the floor. They stopped at a door about halfway down. “The captain’s quarters should be right across the hall,” Misty whispered. They cracked the door …

  Two crew members were walking in this new hall, and Gabriel and Misty shut the door and waited for the crew members to turn the corner. Then they poked out again.

  Gabriel felt a surge of relief: In old movies he’d watched with his mom, the captain’s personal berth would have guards in front of it. But that was the movies. The captain’s quarters were right across from them and unguarded. A dull plastic plaque, CAPTAIN, marked the spot.

  They went straight to the door, a matter of steps. Tried the handle. It was locked.

  Gabriel looked around. The coast was clear. Misty pulled a pair of pins from the diving suit under her coveralls and went to work. Picking locks was one of her best tricks.

  Gabriel heard sounds. Someone coming from around the corner. Two people, talking. They were going to get caught right there. “We need to hurry,” he whispered.

  “Really?” she scoffed as the lock clicked, and she opened the door. “You gotta have more faith.”

  They hustled through and swiftly, gently closed it behind them. Then they turned around to survey the captain’s quarters.

  The stateroom was barely bigger than Gabriel’s library on the Obscure, about fifteen feet long and eight feet wide, with a desk and a bed and a table and a chair.

  And a bookshelf, right in the back. On this bookshelf was a glass case.

  It was an ocean lover’s dream, someone’s personal altar to the sea. Gabriel felt a moment of kinship with the captain of the Alaska as he drew closer, stepping around the edge of the tightly made bed to take in the contents of the glass case. Behind the sliding glass, he could see scrolls; a compass, no doubt of some historical significance; a fragment of an antique wooden steering wheel, blackened with age; a wooden tackle block from a sailing vessel; and a stack of books. All of them looked old.

  Misty slid on a pair of gloves she drew from her pocket and touched the glass, sliding it aside. “Which one is it?” There were about six books.

  “The journal should be oxblood, deep red,” Gabriel said. “And half-burnt.”

  Misty found two books with oxblood spines, but only one was damaged. She held it out, turning it over. The back cover and many pages were torn away. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  He took it and opened the front cover. The Journal of Mickey Land. Bingo. He stepped back as she replaced the other book and slid the glass case closed. He wasn’t paying attention, though. He was staring at the book. He swore he could feel it vibrate in his hands.

  “This is it,” he said. If they had figured everything right, this burnt book would lead them to the one thing they needed to save Mom. Gabriel knew they should go right away, but … he had to look. He opened the journal and began to thumb through the pages. But all he saw was:

  112169 45978 46773

  50 90138 67173 673672 346

  … and on and on. On every page but the title.

  Could nothing. Ever. Be simple.

  “Ugh,” Gabriel said.

  “What?”

  “It’s in code,” Gabriel replied, resisting the urge to smash the journal to the ground. It’s in code? In code? We don’t have time to mess with codes! His mother was waiting. He looked at his wristband. He had less than ninety hours to go.

  “It’s okay.” Misty put her hand on his shoulder as she looked at it. “Put it in the sleeve behind your back, and let’s go. That code was probably common; we can solve it in no time once we’re gone.”

  “Okay.” He couldn’t hide the fierce, crushing disappointment in his voice. “Okay, you’re right.” He dropped the coveralls from his shoulders, slid the book into a pocket on his back, and turned around so Misty could zip it shut, keeping it watertight.

  “Don’t worry, Gabriel. We’ve got this.”

  He turned around and pulled up his coveralls, touching
his hat. “I believe you.”

  They were turning away from the bookcase and were just passing the desk as the door of the captain’s quarters opened and a sailor walked in.

  The crewman stopped, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. He had a bottle of cleaner in one hand and a small electric vacuum under his other arm. Gabriel realized that he must be the steward, there to clean the room. All three of them froze for a moment as they stared at one another in shock.

  “Okay…” Gabriel raised a hand.

  The steward dropped everything he was holding, grabbed the whistle hanging at his neck, and started to blow.

  14

  88:42:36

  GABRIEL WAS ALREADY moving before the cleaning supplies hit the floor. Running forward, he dove into a slide. His feet smacked into the steward’s shins and sent the man toppling. The steward tumbled to the ground as Misty came running up behind, leaping over him. They didn’t look back, only heard the man’s grunts as he hit the deck and shouted, “Hey!”

  Misty slammed the door shut behind them as the steward blew his whistle again. They weren’t lucky enough to be alone this time. There was a sailor coming from the right of the door, passing in front of the door that opened onto the golden path. The sailor heard the whistle and stopped. Gabriel stared as the man started to run down the hall. “We gotta find another way.”

  The crew member started chasing them instantly. Gabriel heard the captain’s door open and the steward yell, “Sound the alarm—stowaways!”

  Gabriel and Misty burst into the stairwell at the end of the hall. He grabbed the rails of the stairs and slid with his feet dangling in the air, down twelve feet. He bounced out of the way as Misty slid down behind him. Gabriel glanced up to see the steward making his way down. They went through another door and found themselves in another empty corridor, the yellow stripe indicating it as part of the golden path.

  “Which way?” Gabriel asked, more thinking aloud than asking. His heart was pounding. They couldn’t afford to get caught. He hesitated, pointing. “That way, then left.”