Mark of the Devil (30 page)

“That nor’easter the other day pretty well cleared everything out. Looks good for the next two to three days.”

“Perfect, and Roland,” Matt said, “don’t forget the old saying.”

“What’s that?”

With an index finger to his lips, he said, “Loose lips sink ships.”

Wednesday, 7 November

Native Diver,
still bearing some of the scars from its earlier confrontation with AFI, headed south with the distant lights of Jacksonville’s several beachfront communities off its starboard beam. Matt was relieved that the wind from earlier that day had dropped to little more than a breeze, allowing favorable seas for what they were about to do. And, thank God, no moon; only the stars to light their way. He couldn’t have asked for a better night if he’d paid for it. And with the
Sea Rover’s
anchor lights hovering protectively above the sunken U-boat less than a mile to the southwest, darkness and calm seas were a vital part of making it to the submarine and safely away without being detected.

“Five minutes,” Steve Park called from
Native Diver’s
topside controls.

“We’ll be ready,” Matt answered as he completed buckling the twin, stealth-black, 80-cubic-foot air tanks to the backpack mounted at the rear of the BC. “Need help?” he asked Roland Davis.

“No sweat,” Davis answered, his fins, BC and tanks, regulator and gauges, and full facemask already positioned for easy donning. “You’re a good teacher. Just hope I don’t get down there and lose control of the DPV,” he added. At the same time, Davis pointed toward one of two international orange, five-foot-long, torpedo-shaped diver propulsion vehicles Matt had received that morning via UPS Air Express from NAARPA headquarters. Both machines were nestled in slings extended from small, manually operated swinging booms installed the night before on
Native Diver,
one DPV on each side of the boat just forward of the stern dive platform. Park’s sandy haired son, Steve Jr., slightly larger but with the same rugged look of his dad, stood silently by the starboard boom.

“Don’t worry. Steer it with your body like you did this afternoon,” Matt said to Davis, “and the saddle will keep your legs from flying up behind you. That’s what I like about the Farallon Mark Eight. Relatively comfortable DPV and easy to maneuver.”

Matt had been impressed with how rapidly Davis caught on to working with the DPV during their training session that afternoon. Timing the release of the slings holding a 110-pound DPV with his own entry into the water had taken several runs, but the fourth time was the charm. That, coupled with how quickly Davis had taken to an unfamiliar full facemask with its finally repaired integrated communication system, had definitely increased Matt’s confidence in the man.
Seventy-seven years old. Fantastic!

The whine of the repaired diesel engine dropped to a steady hum as the boat slowed, turning sufficient rpm’s to barely maintain headway. Park leaned over the back of the topside control area and said, “Using
Sea Rover
as my point of reference, three minutes to drop. Wish I was going with you, but my ankle—”

“Excuses, excuses,” Matt kidded.

“Tread lightly, my friend,” Park warned, jokingly. “Not nice to speak ill of the walking wounded.”

“Walking wounded, my ass,” Matt said, his words punctuated with a chuckle.

“Anyway, drop-off point’s one-half mile due east of the site. I can’t slow much more, or
Sea Rover’ll
get suspicious. Better believe they’re looking at us right now on radar to see if we’re just passing through.”

Matt nodded. “Understood.”

“Get your gear on, and we’ll do a comm check.”

Matt turned to tell Davis, but Davis was already buckled into his BC, with his regulator air hoses connected to the BC and full facemask. The mask’s straps were snugged tight around his head with the radio transceiver mounted over his left ear.

Within less than a minute, Matt was geared up. His final action was to ensure the six-inch, serrated dive knife was securely holstered in the plastic scabbard strapped to his inside left leg and a foot-long crowbar was tight inside a sheath against his right thigh. Naturally, as soon as the full facemask was on, his nose began to itch. “I can’t believe it! Soon as I get this damn thing on…” He wrinkled his nose to stop the itch, knowing once he was in the water, the itch and everything else would be secondary to the mission.

Matt heard Park’s voice through the transceiver. “This is Frog Base, radio check.”

Having set both diver transceivers to the voice-activated mode, bypassing the
push-to-talk
button on the side of his mask, Matt answered, “This is Frog One, loud and clear.”

“This is Frog Two,” he heard Davis say. “Read you five by five.” He could also hear the rhythmic inhale and exhale of Davis’s breath, the only drawback of the voice-activated system.

“This is Frog Base. Tank check.”

“Frog Two, here. Three thousand pounds, each tank.”

Matt made a final check of his air gauges. “Frog One’s got a squinch over three thousand each tank.”

“This is Frog Base, one minute to drop. Lower DPVs, and prepare to disembark.”

Matt made an unwinding motion with his hand and index finger to Steve Jr. who worked the starboard boom first, then hurried across the deck to the port boom, lowering both DPVs to where they were barely skimming the water. “DPVs lowered; waiting release from slings,” Matt said as soon as he got the a-okay sign from Steve Jr.

Park’s voice sounded in Matt’s ear. “You’ve got a ten-minute runin, ten minutes out, forty-minute bottom time once you go to depth. No longer, or we could be looking for a recompression chamber.”

“Gotcha,” Matt said, finishing with “Frogs One and Two on the dive platform.”

“Thirty seconds to drop,” Matt heard Park say through the transceiver. Nodding to Davis and getting a thumbs-up, he gripped the sling release and positioned himself to drop immediately behind the starboard-side DPV as Park’s voice counted, “Twenty seconds…ten…five, four, three, two, one, go!”

The luminescent dial on the compass, mounted just forward of the DPV’s dual, wing-shaped speed controls, showed a reading of 275 degrees. Matt had picked that course to compensate for the earth’s westerly magnetic variation shown on the chart of the area. His only worry was, at this distance and if wrong by even a degree, they’d never find the U-boat in the dark. And with
Native Diver
already moving south…Fortunately, there was little or no current to affect their directional progress.

Checking his dive watch, Matt determined that, with five minutes in the water and an estimated speed of just over two miles per hour, they were approximately a quarter mile out from the U-boat. That also meant they were no more than 500 yards from the brightly lit
Sea Rover.
With their bright orange DPVs running at only ten feet beneath the surface, they might be seen if they got too close. As he and Davis had rehearsed, it was time to descend to the bottom.

With the shadowy outline of Davis just off to his right and the constant sound of Davis’s breathing in his ear, Matt said, “Okay, Frogman, time to go down.”

“With you,” Davis replied.

As they had practiced, Matt tilted the DPV’s nose downward at a 20-degrees angle, leveling off at 40 feet, between 5 and 10 feet above the bottom based on his memory of the chart’s depth readings. At this depth, however, what had been the specter-like figure of Roland Davis at ten feet was now lost in the inky blackness. “Still with me?” Matt asked.

“Hope so,” Davis answered. “See this?”

The tiny red flash of a personal locator light blinked on and off, only feet from Matt’s right-hand side.

“Great. Keep it flashing, but under your body so they can’t see it from
Sea Rover.
I’ll do the same with mine.”

From there, it was a matter of maintaining compass direction, keeping track of time expended, and a periodic glance at Davis’s flashing locator light. Alternating between compass direction and stopwatch numbers flying by on the lighted lower quadrant of his watch, Matt counted the remaining minutes. Seven…eight…nine…“Almost there,” he said. “Time to slow.”

At this point, Matt had no choice. Operate blind or risk a light. Matt switched on the pistol grip lamp attached by a stretch cord to his BC, pointing it ahead, but at a downward angle. He watched the sand bottom slide by, not more than five feet beneath the nose of the DPV. Without warning, the bow of the sunken barge took shape out of the gloom. “We did it, Roland,” he said. “That’s the barge we told you about, and so far, no sign of AFI divers.”

“Good thing. Where’s the U-boat?” Davis asked.

“Hard turn to your left and…” Matt’s light cut through the darkness until the mound of mud and sand ringing the U-boat came into view. “Up and over we go, and there you have it.”

Davis stopped his DPV, added a punch of air to his BC for additional buoyancy, and hovered just above the conning tower. “Fantastic!”

“Better believe it—U-Twenty-five thirty-seven.” Matt maneuvered forward over the tower, stopping just above the narrow bridge area. “They’ve chain locked the hatch, but we couldn’t fit through with twin tanks anyway.”

“What about the doors on the side of the tower?” Davis asked.

“Forward and aft. Last time Steve and I were down, padlocked from inside.”

“Torpedo-loading hatch?”

“That’s how we got in before. There’re some ladder rungs on the side of the conning tower. Let’s hitch these ponies to the rungs and see if the torpedo hatch is still unlocked.”

“What if it’s locked?”

Matt patted the small sheath attached with two Velcro straps to his right thigh. “We’ll have to see if this little crowbar of mine can do the job.”

Sea Rover’s
operations control center was dark except for the pale green light of the ship’s surface-search radarscope. Its muted glow lent an eeriness to the silence between the three men watching the scope, a silence finally broken by Eric Bruder. “I don’t like it, Captain.” To the radar operator, he asked, “Where is it now, Thomas?”

Thomas worked the various dials on the face of the radar as he tracked the slowest moving of four white blips on the scope, the other three much farther out to sea. The contact’s brightness increased with each pass of the scope’s sweep line, then dimmed momentarily as the radar’s topside antenna continued its rotational cycle. “Two miles southeast, on a course of one-eight-five degrees, speed four knots. Looks like it’s headed for St. Augustine Inlet.”

“But why so slow? And why did it slow to less than two knots when it was a half mile east of us? Almost dead in the water.”

“Not sure what you’re looking for or, to be honest, why we’re out here at night,”
Sea Rover’s
captain said, “but it could have slowed for any number of reasons. Fish net over the side, people partying, engine trouble, most anything.”

“Knowing Berkeley, I wouldn’t put it past him to…” Bruder paused a moment. Thinking out loud, the words slipped through his lips in a near whisper. “Half mile out.”

“Long way to swim in the open sea if that’s what you’re thinking,” Thomas said. “Have to be one helluva strong swimmer, currents and such.”

“And better than any man I’ve ever known with a compass underwater at night if he’s trying to reach the U-boat,” the captain added before asking, “Is that why we’re here? You think this man Berkeley’s going to try to get to the sub?”

Bruder’s face remained impassive. Deep in thought, he massaged his temples with the middle fingers of each hand as though the skin-to-skin friction would generate increased mental agility.