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The inflatable's crew expertly hauled it up after them, flinging rope hand over hand. They deflated it, trampling out air in a demented sombrero dance, then stuffed the wet rubber mass into a seabag.
It was all over in a few moments. They were jumping back into their vast steel warren, like rats. Henderson hustled
Laura over a hatch coaming onto a recessed floor. It sank beneath their feet. The hatch slammed over her head with an ear-popping huff and a squeal of hydraulics.
They emerged from the elevator shaft into a vast cylindrical warehouse lit with sullen yellow bulbs. It had two decks: a lower floor, beneath her bare feet, of solid iron, and an upper one of perforated grating. It was cavernous, two hundred feet long; every ten feet it was cut, left and right, by massive bulging elevator shafts. Shafts nine feet across, steel silos, their bases stuck with plugs and power cables. Like bio-tech tanks, she thought, big fermenters.
Two dozen sailors padded silently in foam-soled deck shoes on the narrow walkways between the silos. They were work- ing on the drones in hushed concentration. An incense stink of hot aircraft oil and spent ammunition. Some scrambled vibe of war and industry and church.
The compartment was painted in sky blue, the tubes in spacy midnight indigo. Henderson headed aft. As he hauled her along, Laura touched the cold latex surface of a tube, wonderingly. Someone had painstakingly stenciled it with dizzy five-pointed stars, comets with whizzing comic-book tails, little yellow ringed Saturns. Like surfboard art. Dreamy and cheap.
Some silos had been welder-cut and, hung with arcane repair tools-they were retrofitted for drone launches. The others were older, they looked intact. Still serving their origi- nal function, whatever that was.
Henderson spun the manual wheel in the center of a water- tight door. It opened with a thermos-bottle thump and they ducked through. Into a coffinlike chamber plated with egg- carton antisound padding.
Laura felt the world tilt subtly beneath •her feet. A river rush of ballast tanks and the distant whir of motors. The sub was diving. Then a startling junkyard chorus of pops, harsh creaks, glass-bottle clinking, as pressure began to bite into the hull.
Through the chamber into another room flooded with clean white light. Supersharp fluorescents overhead, that strange laserish light of three-peak spectrum radiance, casting everything into edgy superrealism. Some kind of control room, with a Christmas-tree profusion of machinery. Vast tilted consoles loomed, with banks of switches, flickering readouts, needle-twitching glassy dials. Sailors with short, neat haircuts sat before them in sumptuous padded swivel chairs.
The room was full of crewmen-she kept noticing more and more of them, their heads peeking out through dense clusters of piping and monitors. The room was jammed floor to ceiling with equipment and she couldn't find the walls. There were men in it elbow to elbow, crammed into arcane little ergonomic nooks. People sockets.
Acceleration hit them; Laura staggered a little. Somewhere, a faint high-pitched whine and a liquid trembling as the great steel mass picked up speed.
Just before her was a sunken area about the size of a bathtub. A man sat in it, wearing bulging padded headphones and clutching a knobbed steering wheel. He was like a child's doll surrounded by pricey stereo equipment. Just above his head was a gray gasketed lump with the stenciled legend
ANTI-COLLISION LIGHT-SWITCH TO FLASH. He was staring fixedly at half a dozen round glass gauges.
This was the pilot, Laura thought. No way to look outside a submarine. Just dials.
Footsteps on a curved stairway at the back of the room- someone coming down from the upper deck. "Hesseltine?"
"Yo!" said Henderson cheerfully. He tugged Laura along by the wrist, and she slammed her elbow jarringly into a vertical column. "Come on," he insisted, dragging her.
They threaded the maze, to meet their interrogator. The new man was portly, with black curled hair, pouting lips, his eyes heavy-lidded and solemn. He wore shoulder tabs, elabo- rate sleeve insignia, and a round black-brimmed sailor's cap with gold lettering. REPUBLIQUE DE MALI. He shook Henderson
Hesseltine's hand. Maddeningly, the two of them began speaking fluent French.
They climbed the spiral stairs, walked down a long dim stifling corridor. Hesseltine's shoes squelched loudly. They chattered in French, with enthusiasm.
The officer showed them into a set of narrow shower stalls.
"Great," said Hesseltine, stepping in and pulling Laura after him. For the first time, he let go of her wrist. "You up to taking your own shower, girl? Or do I have to help?"
Laura stared at him mutely.
"Relax," Hesseltine said. He zipped out of his utility vest.
"You're with the good guys now. They're go
Some kind of double-agent scam?"
"No, of course not!"
"You got some special reason to regret those criminals?"
The moral vacuity in it stu
Hesseltine pulled off his shirt, revealing a narrow sunta
She stole a sidelong glance at his utility vest. She knew he had a gun in it somewhere.
He caught her looking and his face hardened. "Look.
We'll make this simple. Get in the shower stall and don't come out till I say. Or else."
She got into the shower and shut its door and turned it on.
She stayed in it for ten minutes, while it squeezed out maybe a quart of buzzing ultrasonic mist. She rinsed salt from what was left of her clothes and ran some thin acrid soap through her hair.
"Okay," Hesseltine shouted at her. She stepped out,-wear- ing .the raincoat again. Hesseltine was neatly groomed. He wore a midnight-blue naval uniform and was lacing his deck shoes. Someone had laid out a gray terry-cloth sweatsuit for her: drawstring pants, a hooded pullover.
She stepped into the pants, turned her back on him, threw off the raincoat, and tu
Not with lust or even appreciation-there was a chill, vacant look on his face, like an evil child methodically killing a bug.
As she turned back, the look vanished like a card trick.
He'd never sneaked a glimpse at all. Hesseltine was a gentleman. This was an embarrassing but necessary situation that the two of them were working through like adults. Somehow
Hesseltine was managing to say all this to her, while bent over and tying his shoes. The lie was radiating out of him. Out of his pores, like sweat.
A sailor waited for them outside, a wiry little veteran with a gray mustache and faraway eyes. He led them aft to a tiny cabin, where the hull formed a rounded, sloping roof. The place was about the size of a garden tool shed. Four deathly pale sailors, with their sleeves rolled up and collars open, were sitting at a tiny cafe table, silently playing a checker game.
The French-speaking officer was there. "Sit down," he said in English. Laura sat on a cramped wall bench, close enough to one of the four sailors that she smelled his floral deodorant.
Across the cabin, stuck to the curved ceiling, were idealized portrait posters of men in elaborate uniforms. She had a quick look at two of the names: DE GAULLE, JARUZELSKI.
Meaningless.
"My name is Baptiste," said the sailor. "Political Officer aboard this vessel. We are to have a discussion." Pause, for two beats. "Would you like some tea?"
"Yes," Laura said. The mist-shower hadn't offered enough for drinking. Her throat felt leathery with seawater and shock.