craft a stiff shove and the big black tube, its top at shoulder height, moved towards the rear opening like some kind of organ of death. When the nose reached the edge of the cabin George gave it another push and it dipped down onto the ramp. Stratton kept tight to the bulkhead to avoid the large flotation pack fixed to the sub’s side. It tipped ungracefully off the end and dropped nose down towards the roiling water.
When it hit, Stratton stepped to the very edge of the ramp, the others following close behind. Everything that Stratton had told them about the next phase went through their minds. The seconds crammed together. The point of no return had arrived.
As the sub stabilised, the two inflation bags attached to either side of the body aiding its buoyancy, Stratton placed one fin on top of the other, leaned forward and dropped into the blackness. It seemed to take longer to fall than it should have. When he struck the water he disappeared beneath the surface. The others hesitated until he came back up.
Binning was first to follow, holding the plastic box tightly, closely followed by Jason. Rowena came next, with Jackson beside her. Smithy paused on the edge and looked as if he might refuse. Had George not given him a shove he might well have done. The skinny scientist let out a cry as he fell, arms and legs spinning like bicycle wheels, out of control.
Stratton pushed off hard with his fins to grab the side of the mini-sub. He had to release the flotation bags. Taking hold of the cable coupling, he yanked down on it. The bags drifted, the swell and the wind taking them into the darkness.The vessel dropped into a trough and Stratton pulled himself along it to the cockpit. The sub rose up the steep wall of the next wave, which broke over it, almost turning it over. Stratton was thrown into the cockpit. He struggled in the confined space to manoeuvre himself into the seat, hating how cramped the damned boats always felt when he was wearing operational equipment.
He couldn’t afford to search for the others yet. The water sloshed around his chin and he ripped off the fins, jamming them in the side of the seat. He turned on the instrument panel, plugged his breathing apparatus into the sub’s air outlet and put the mouthpiece in his mouth. He breathed in the oxygen, his mouth under the water more than not. The vessel leaned heavily and slid down into the next trough. If he didn’t bring the nose around into the waves it would tip over. Very inconvenient. He flipped the power switch and gave the propeller full throttle, twisting the rudder hard over.
The sub responded well, then seemed to stall. Stratton could feel the powerful electric motor working, yet the nose didn’t want to come around. The vessel slammed into the bottom of another deep seawater trench. As it came up the other side the nose suddenly turned as if it had been nudged by a greater power. The sub went almost vertically up the wall of water and gouged into the dark mass of the peak. It levelled out for a moment before tipping over to nose down into the next trough. He had it under a semblance of control.
Stratton looked out of the cockpit for any sign of the others. Two of them were hanging on to the passenger cabin and struggling to get inside. He twisted in his seat to look through the grille behind his head and saw movement. Something grabbed at his arm and a heavy limb struck him as Jackson scrambled unceremoniously in through the other side of the cockpit. The man’s size didn’t help. The tumbling rodeo-bull sub yawed at his arms as it lifted him and then dragged him under. No amount of training could have prepared him. Certainly not the bathlike waters of Puerto Rico where the US SEALs often did their initial mini-sub training. Jackson fell into the seat but then lost his fins after a wave smashed in through Stratton’s side of the cockpit and ripped them from his fingers. He almost drowned when a brute of a wave filled the cockpit before he’d found the end of his breathing tube. Stratton realised that the man was in trouble. He grabbed hold of Jackson’s mouthpiece, using the strap around his neck, found the end of the tube and plugged it into the