Chapter 32 - Descent into the Abyssal Vault
The hydraulic crane of the *Avalon* screamed as it swung the ADS-2000 atmospheric diving suit out over the churning black water. Lake Tahoe was no longer the serene alpine mirror the tourists paid thousands to gaze upon from hotel verandas; it was an epicenter of violent, boiling gas plumes. Great belches of trapped methane and prehistoric sulfur broke the surface in frothing white swells, rocking the research vessel violently against the granite cliffs.
"Ten minutes, Commander!" Miller bellowed over the roar of the ship’s auxiliary generators. His face was drenched in freezing lake spray and sweat. "Once you cross eight hundred feet, telemetry is going to degrade! The electromagnetic pulse from that vault's auxiliary generators is washing out our VHF channels!"
"Keep the evacuation birds moving toward Carson City," I shouted back, stepping onto the metal footplates of the heavy titanium diving rig. "If that purge detonation fires, the resulting displacement will collapse the northern shelf. Whisper Pines goes into the water, and everything from Tahoe City to Incline Village gets wiped out by a forty-foot wave."
The technician slammed the heavy domed visor shut. The hiss of recirculated nitrox filled my ears, cutting off the howl of the mountain wind. The crane arm plunged me into the void.
The transition from the stormy surface to the subterranean silence was instantaneous. Tahoe’s crystal-clear blue gave way within seconds to an impenetrable, ink-black abyss. My helmet-mounted halogen floodlights cut narrow ribbons through clouds of suspended silt.
Six hundred feet. Eight hundred feet. The external pressure gauge spun steadily upward: three hundred pounds per square inch, then four hundred.
At twelve hundred feet, the temperature outside dropped to thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Through the viewport, the digital heads-up display flashed an ominous timer: *PURGE SEQUENCE: 07:42.*
Beneath me, the silt parted like smoke before a storm.
There it was.
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Looming out of the deep trench like an ancient leviathan was a monolith of ribbed, reinforced Cold War steel. It was wider than an attack submarine, anchored into the subterranean granite by massive hydraulic pistons that had severed their bedrock pilings. Enormous clouds of rust and decades-old mineral deposits billowed around its flanks. Across the primary airlock, stenciled in faded yellow military enamel that had resisted forty years of decay, were the words: *USN PROJECT DEEP ECHO — SUB-SECTOR 4.*
A red strobe light on the outer hatch pulsed rhythmically through the murk, counting down the end of the lake.
