Chapter 67 - Combat at Fifty Feet
In the freezing depths, movement was slowed by hydro-drag, but human reflexes forged in naval dive school had to be faster than mechanical actuators.
I kicked hard against the concrete face of the caisson, pushing myself down and under the charging submersible's lower hull. The craft surged over me, the violent backwash of its ducted propellers throwing Miller off his balance and tumbling him along the rocky shelf.
The mini-sub’s pilot realized he had missed. The craft halted with a sharp reverse thrust, churning the water into a blizzard of bubbles and silt, its robotic claw swiveling to track me.
I didn't have heavy ordnance underwater. My sidearm was useless at this depth. But on my thigh rig, I carried a high-pressure pneumatic emergency cutting torch—designed for underwater salvage and hull repair.
I kicked upward, catching the edge of the sub’s external sensor fairing with my left hand. The pilot tried to shake me off, thrashing the thrusters in erratic bursts, the g-forces pulling hard against my shoulder joint.
With my right hand, I slammed the magnesium ignition tip of the thermal cutter against the sub’s forward viewport—a thick sheet of reinforced acrylic.
I squeezed the trigger.
A blistering four-thousand-degree chemical flame erupted underwater, illuminating the murky lake in an eerie, brilliant violet glow. The acrylic didn't shatter; it began to bubble, boil, and liquefy under the extreme thermal shock.
Inside the cockpit, illuminated by the blinding flare of the torch, I saw the pilot's eyes widen in sheer horror. He was wearing an unmarked black flight suit, his face masked by a tactical rebreather.
The acrylic gave way with a sickening, muted pop.
The immense hydrostatic pressure of fifty feet of water punched through the softened viewport. A violent torrent of freezing lake water exploded into the cockpit. The sub’s electrical systems instantly shorted, showers of underwater blue sparks crackling across the hull before the main thrusters died completely.
The craft lost buoyancy, tilting forward and sinking like an iron stone into the sheer chasm that dropped eight hundred feet down into the lake's abyssal floor.
I kicked away from the sinking wreck, breathing heavily through my regulator, watching the single dimming light of the sub plunge into the endless black void below.
Miller swam up beside me, his tactical light illuminating my suit. "Commander! You good?"
"I'm clear," I breathed, my pulse pounding in my ears. "Check the caisson hatch. The sub wasn't here to retrieve anything. They were here to blow the vault before we could open it."
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We swam down to the titanium hatch. The locking wheel was engaged, but the electronic solenoid bypass was exposed. Using Miller’s tactical pry-bar, we forced the hydraulic release.
With a hiss of trapped air and ancient lake grease, the heavy titanium hatch swung open.
