Chapter 134 - The Submerged Drydock
I reached the bottom of the maintenance shaft at six hundred feet below lake level. The catwalk ended at a massive hemispherical pressure door bearing the insignia of the Office of Naval Intelligence, alongside a classified project seal: *PROJECT TRENCH LINE - UNIT 02.*
I hammered the manual seal override. The heavy steel latches uncoupled with an ear-splitting mechanical groan, and the hatch swung open into an enormous cavern carved directly out of the lakebed granite.
My breath hitched in my chest.
Suspended inside a pressurized subterranean moonpool was a submarine unlike anything officially registered in the United States naval registry. It was eighty feet long, coated in matte-black radar-absorbent skin, and designed with a faceted, stealth-hull profile that resembled a dagger carved from obsidian. Hydraulic support arms clamped the vessel tightly against a concrete loading pier.
Through the clear acrylic dome of the moonpool's observation deck, I could see the murky, deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe's bottom. Submerged floodlights cast long, shimmering beams through the twilight of the trench, revealing schools of deep-lake fish darting away from the steel monster docked beneath the mountain.
Footsteps echoed sharply from above.
Not from the catwalk I had just descended, but from an auxiliary access pipe connected to the boathouse at the water line. The door at the upper gantry buckled under a hydraulic breaching ram.
"Clear the lower catwalks!" a harsh voice barked through a respirator. "The target is down here! Secure the command deck before the sub’s reactor reaches critical parity!"
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Three armed operators dressed in black maritime combat suits dropped from the overhead gantry, their assault carbines raised. I pressed my back against the titanium support stanchion of the docking arm, raised my P226, and squeezed the trigger twice into the lead diver’s chest plate.
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