“Take us down, Commander,” Poseidon said. “But take us down slowly. Easy.”
“Yes, sir.” Brosnan nodded to a waiting tech man. “Flood main ballast tanks.”
The sub’s hull sang with the sound of rushing air as the vents at the top of the ballast tanks flipped open. A rush of seawater entered from the bottom of the great boat and forced the air up and out in a mass of white bubbles.
Poseidon paced back and forth behind the periscope pedestal in the center of the control room. He was doubly excited; the maiden voyage of the Raleigh was under way at last. Once he’d found Cawdor, he’d let the one-eyed man watch as he fired on the commune.
That would show the bastard.
Brosnan’s head was darting back and forth in a nervous birdlike fashion, his prominent Adam’s apple quite visible above the collar of his uniform. His mouth was set in a downward curve as he observed the men under his watch. All of them jumped each time various clanging noises rang out in increasing fashion from the sub’s cylindrical hull. Brosnan couldn’t blame them. The very walls of the Raleigh seemed to vibrate with each metallic creak.
“What was that, sir?” asked one man, looking at Poseidon for reassurance.
Brosnan cut his eyes at the Admiral. The superior officer wasn’t even listening. He was in his own environment now, away from the interior of the sub or even the sea itself.
“It’s the sound of the hull adjusting to the pressure of the surrounding sea,” Brosnan explained. “As the Raleigh dives, it’ll keep going until we reach a holding level. Old as this sub is, it was to be expected. From what I’ve read, even new subs did the same thing until they were broken in.”
The explanation seemed to calm the nervous enlisted man. Brosnan hoped the logic was right. The minisub they had been using was nothing like this dank monster. He would never admit it aloud, but the Raleigh made him nervous. Too unpredictable, even if the voyage had been meticulously planned.
Not to mention Cawdor was somewhere on board, hiding and waiting—but for what?
The submarine was far away from the pens of Kings Point now.
“Engines, all stop.” Poseidon’s tone was flat as he gave the order.
“All stop,” Brosnan directed.
The Admiral himself stepped forward and peered over the pilot’s shoulder as the man dialed the annunciator to a full-stop position.
Outside the submarine, the great propeller slowed, then stopped.
“Commander Brosnan?” Poseidon’s deep bass voice rumbled even more impressively inside the confines of the control room.
“Aye, sir?” Brosnan glanced over at Poseidon. One of the auxiliary pumps alongside was in the red, and the last thing he wanted or needed was another red light glowing on the control board.
“Are you familiar with the child’s game of hide-and-seek?”
It was a strange question, but Brosnan was used to that from his superior officer. “Yes, Admiral.”
“Did you play it?”
Brosnan frowned, trying to free-associate and come up with Poseidon’s line of logic. However, he answered quickly. “Yes, sir, I did.”
“So did I, and I was damned good at the game,” the Admiral replied. No surprise there. According to Poseidon, everything he had ever attempted had been a rousing success. Still, Brosnan knew from observation and evidence that most of the bluster was true. Especially when it came to games—from war games to board games to games of chance.
“You’re good at games, sir,” Brosnan offered lamely. He hated it when Poseidon went into this mode. It made him feel like the worse kind of ass kisser. Which, to a large degree, he was, but he didn’t like having it trotted out so blatantly. Once, the blandly handsome Brosnan had dreams of his own. He was a scholar, a historian. He spent all of his days as a young man in search of information about the past, and his passion had been the military.
When he met the man who called himself Poseidon for the first time, it was like they were two pieces of a larger puzzle that had been joined at last.
But whereas Brosnan had no real taste for becoming a leader, Poseidon did. He made a deal with his friend, telling him in confidence of the still intact base at Kings Point. Poseidon had known of the place since he was a boy, and he had been living on the Georgia coast all of his life.