Underworld

Chapter 1

1

Key West, 23 miles from the coast. Present day.

Being down in the lab always bored the captain. He loved the ship and he enjoyed ferrying the scientists from one exotic location to another but what he hated was being away from the bridge, even for a minute.

Up there he was in charge. Three years previously he had taken early retirement from the U.S. Navy, bought a small boat and planned to sail around the world. Before he could plan his trip properly, however, the offer of a good salary had cropped up, and this for doing nothing more than showing a group of government scientists around the seven seas. With a dead wife and a family of grown-up children he had no real ties to the land and so jumped at the chance.

Instead of taking his forty foot catamaran around the globe at his own expense he now spent his time cruising the oceans of the world in a converted coastal survey ship. She was a 'Bulldog' class ship of 1000 tons displacement, originally commissioned by the Royal Navy in 1968 and manned by a crew of thirty-eight men. After decades of faithful service she was saved from the scrap yard by an American tycoon, eager to convert her into a luxury cruiser. Before completing the refit, his business empire collapsed and he was forced to sell the ship to the highest bidder, namely the United States government.

Now he was her captain and she was his ship. She handled beautifully in all weathers and his sailor's instinct appreciated that more than anything else. The government had needed a good ship to carry its scientists and this one cost them far less than if they had tried to convert any of their own defunct vessels.

His government had even shelled out to fit her with a nominal defence. It wasn't much, just a single 40mm Bofors mounted on the bow and another positioned on the stern but the captain felt better having them on board. Experience had taught him that some stretches of water were notorious for piracy or terrorist attacks and the scientists' research often dragged Hornet dangerously close to some of them. For a science vessel, the firepower was more than adequate.

Leaving the scientists to their dark and dingy surroundings, he went up on the deck for a stroll. There was no real hurry. They weren't even moving at the moment. From high overhead the sun beat down strongly, glaring off of the white, newly-painted hull.

This is me, he thought, my whole working life on the ocean. The air felt warm and clean against his deeply tanned face but he knew he wouldn't really be able to enjoy it until the research submarine was safely back on board.

Barrel-chested and with a tight torso that belied his true age, the captain slicked back a thick head of silver hair and took the ladder leading up to the bridge two rungs at a time. Once inside, he relieved the first officer of the wheel and took control. His first officer gratefully slunk off to grab a cool shower, using the internal stairway instead of the outer ladder, leaving his captain to sweat it out in the glass fronted bridge, blighted by a technical blip in the air conditioning.

After a few minutes spent eyeing the clear blue ocean, the captain flipped a small switch on the panel directly in front of him and picked up a cabled radio hand-set. Keying twice he spoke into it.

‘Hornet calling Apollo. Come in, over.’ For a second there was just static but then a gruff voice cut in, its harsh expression making him wince.

‘Okay Dave, what's up?’

‘Just checking on your progress, over.’

Out on the submarine, Flynn smiled to himself. A brief glance to his left confirmed that his companion was also amused, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards at the captain's fussing.

‘This is the fourth call in three hours. Everything is still fine and we'll be starting back to you in a short while, over.’

The captain acknowledged the call and flicked the radio off. The Apollo, an aluminium-hulled deep-sea submersible, lay about three miles south of Hornet, on the surface, its main assignment being the study of deep ocean currents. To this end the submersible normally spent four hours at a time submerged.

Being on the surface always irritated Flynn but he begrudgingly took the opportunity to let Rachel take over the instruments for a while. Leaving her inside, he clambered out of the top hatch and sprawled himself out, on a towel, across the submarine's hot metal hull. The sea was calm, almost glass-like, and the small vessel barely moved on the benign water.

Off to his left, a pair of flying fish suddenly erupted from the water in an explosion of spray that drenched him with cool droplets. He was glad of the shower. The sun was burning far hotter than he usually liked but he still wasn't missing one of his rare chances to grab some of it. Stripping down to his boxer shorts, he settled down onto his back and prepared to relax.

Half an hour passed in blissful peace and he was just thinking about turning over the cook his back when he glimpsed a flash of light a few thousand feet up, almost directly overhead. He recognised that it was only the reflection of the sun against an aeroplane's fuselage but was at a loss as to where it had come from. He’d been idly staring up at the empty sky for ages and he hadn’t noticed it before, but suddenly there it was, right above him. With no cloud cover, he was flummoxed.

Still, mystery aside, there was nothing else of interest about, not even a bird, and so he fixed his gaze on the plane and followed it. By squinting and shading his eyes with his hands he could see it a little better. A big one, whatever it is, he thought.

Then, as he watched, disaster struck.

For no apparent reason the plane suddenly flung itself into a steep dive, far too steep a dive to have been safely intentional. Watching it arrow down towards the sea, Flynn thought he heard one of the engines cut out but he couldn't be sure. Down and down it plummeted, accompanied by dubious spluttering. The pilot must have collapsed.

Flynn's stomach tightened and he was already clambering back down through the hatch before the old aircraft disappeared into the sea, about half a mile to the east.

The submarine was not a thoroughbred racing horse but anyone could have been forgiven for thinking it was as Flynn gunned her electric motors to their stops, filling a stunned Rachel in on the way. They reached the crash site in a little under fifteen minutes.

Inconceivably, there was no trace of the doomed aircraft. Plane crashes at sea always threw up something, even in bad weather or if a plane sank immediately. Broken pieces of rubber, plastic, cloth and foam seating would all float up to the surface within a few minutes. The sea was still calm, so any debris should have stayed within a few hundred metres of the crash site, Flynn told himself.

Slowly turning widening circles around the spot he’d seen the plane hit the water, they still found nothing. No floating wreckage, lifejackets or splintered pieces of airframe. It made no sense.

There was nothing to break the monotony of empty ocean. All Flynn could see was blue ocean all around the little submarine. Not a hint of wreckage littered the surface, not even traces of oil or aviation fuel. There was nothing but water but Flynn did get the strangest feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was watching their search.

He knew it was ridiculous and shook off such wild imaginings but he also knew he’d seen something real. No mirage or hallucination would have seemed so real, of that he was convinced.

After another half an hour of fruitless searching, the Hornet had joined them, employing its sophisticated sonar and radar systems to see if anything could be picked up on, or below the surface. Again, nothing was detected.

As darkness fell, and the search was called off, the Apollo was hauled aboard by its special crane while Flynn and Rachel headed off to their respective cabins. Flynn was in no mood to discuss the matter with anyone until he’d had time to digest everything that had just happened, quietly and privately.

But he knew what he’d seen…and he also knew exactly what this meant!