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Abduction

Robin Cook

ISBN:0-7865-1678-X

For Cameron.

Welcome to life, “LITTLE LITTLE”

CHAPTER ONE

An odd vibration roused Perry Bergman from a restless sleep, and he was instantly filled with a strange

foreboding. The unpleasant murmur put him in mind of fingernails scraping down a blackboard. He

shuddered and threw off his thin blanket. As he stood up, the vibration continued. With his bare feet on

the steel deck, it now reminded him of a dentist’s drill. Just beneath it he could detect the normal hum of

the ship’s generators and the whir of its air conditioning fans.

“What the hell?” he said aloud, even though there was no one within earshot to provide an answer. He’d

helicoptered out to the ship, theBenthic Explorer, the previous evening after a long flight from Los

Angeles to New York to Ponta Delgada on the Azorean island of San Miguel. Between the time zone

changes and a long briefing about the technical problems his crew was experiencing, he was

understandably exhausted. He didn’t like being awakened after only four hours of sleep, especially by

such a jarring vibration.

Snatching the ship’s phone from its cradle he punched in the number for the bridge. While he waited for

the connection to go through he peered out the porthole of his V.I.P. compartment on his tiptoes. At five

foot seven Perry didn’t think of himself as short, just not tall. Outside, the sun had barely cleared the

horizon. The ship cast a long shadow across the Atlantic. Perry was looking west over a misty, calm sea

whose surface resembled a vast expanse of beaten pewter. The water undulated sinuously with low,

widely separated swells. The serenity of the scene belied the goings-on below the surface. TheBenthic

Explorer was being held in a fixed position by computer driven commands to her propellers as well as to

her bow and stern thrusters over a portion of the volcanically and seismically active Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a

twelve-thousand-mile-long, jagged range of mountains that bisects the ocean. With the constant extrusion

of enormous quantities of lava, submarine explosions of steam, and frequent miniearthquakes, the

submerged cordillera was the antithesis of the ocean surface’s summer tranquillity.

“Bridge,” a bored voice responded in Perry’s ear.

“Where’s Captain Jameson?” Perry snapped.

“In his bunk as far as I know,” the voice said casually.

“What the hell is that vibration?” Perry demanded.

“Beats me, but it’s not coming from the ship’s power plant if that’s what you’re asking. Otherwise I

would have heard from the engine room. It’s probably just the drilling rig. Want me to call the drilling

van?”

Perry didn’t answer; he just slammed the phone down. He couldn’t believe whoever was on the bridge

wasn’t moved to investigate the vibration on his own. Didn’t he care? It irked Perry to no end that his

ship was being operated so unprofessionally, but he decided to deal with that issue later. Instead he tried

to focus on getting into his jeans and heavy wool turtleneck. He didn’t need someone to tell him the

vibration might be coming from the drilling rig. That was pretty obvious. After all, it was difficulty with the

drilling operation that had brought Perry here from Los Angeles.

Perry knew that he had gambled the future of Benthic Marine on the current project: drilling into a

magma chamber within a seamount west of the Azores. It was a project that was not under contract,

meaning the company was spending instead of being paid, and the cash hemorrhage was horrendous.

Perry’s motivation for the undertaking rested on his belief that the feat would capture the public’s

imagination, focus interest on undersea exploration, and rocket Benthic Marine to the forefront of

oceanographic research. Unfortunately, the endeavor was not going as planned.

Once he was dressed, Perry glanced in the mirror over the sink in the cubbyhole bathroom. A few years

ago he wouldn’t have taken the time. But things had changed. Now that he was in his forties, he found

that the tousled look that used to work for him made him look old, or at best, tired. His hair was thinning

and he required glasses to read, but he still had a winning smile. Perry was proud of his straight, white

teeth, especially since they emphasized the tan he worked hard to maintain. Satisfied by his reflection, he

dashed out of his compartment and ran down the passageway. As he passed the doors to the captain’s

and first mate’s quarters, Perry was tempted to pound on them to vent his irritation. He knew the metal

surfaces would reverberate like kettledrums, yanking the sleeping occupants from their slumbers. As the

founder, president, and largest shareholder of Benthic Marine, he expected people to be more on their

toes while he was on board. Could he be the only one concerned enough to investigate this vibration?

Emerging onto the deck, Perry tried to locate the source of the strange hum, which was now merged

with the sound of the operating drill rig. TheBenthic Explorer was a four-hundred-fifty-foot vessel with a

twenty-story drilling derrick amidship that bridged a central bay. In addition to the drilling rig, the ship

boasted a saturation diving complex, a deep-sea submersible, and several remote-controlled mobile

camera sleds, each mounted with an impressive array of still cameras and television camcorders.

Combining this equipment with an extensive lab, theBenthic Explorer gave its parent company, Benthic

Marine, the ability to carry out a wide range of oceanographic studies and operations.

Perry saw the door to the drilling van open. A giant of a man appeared. He yawned and stretched

before hoisting the straps of his coveralls over his shoulders and donning his yellow hard hat, which had

SHIFT SU-PERVISORwritten in block letters over the visor. Still stiff with sleep, he headed in the

direction of the rotary table. He was obviously in no hurry despite the vibration coursing through the ship.

Quickening his pace Perry caught up to the man just as two other deckhands joined him.

“It’s been doing this for about twenty minutes, chief,” one of the roustabouts yelled over the noise of the

drilling rig. All three men ignored Perry.

The shift foreman grunted as he pulled on a pair of heavy work gloves and blithely walked out across the

narrow metal grate spanning the central well. His sangfroid impressed Perry. The catwalk seemed flimsy

and there was only a low, thin handrail to block the fifty-foot drop to the ocean surface below. Reaching

the rotary table, the supervisor leaned out and placed both gloved hands about the rotating shaft. He

didn’t try to grip it tightly but rather let it rotate across his palms. He cocked his head to the side while he

tried to interpret the tremor transmitted up the pipe. It took only a moment.

“Stop the rig!” the giant shouted.

One of the roustabouts dashed back to the exterior control panel. Within a moment the rotary table

came to a clanking halt and the grating vibration ceased. The supervisor walked back and stepped onto

the deck.

“Chrissake! The bit’s busted again,” he said with an expression of disgust. “This is fast becoming a

goddamned joke.”

“The joke is that we’ve only drilled for two or three feet in the last four or five days,” the remaining

roustabout said.

“Shut up!” the giant intoned. “Get the hell over there and raise the drill string to the well head!”

The second roustabout joined the first. Almost immediately there was a new sound of powerful

machinery as the winches were engaged to do the foreman’s bidding. The ship shuddered.

“How can you be sure the bit’s broken?” Perry yelled over the new noise.

The foreman looked down at him. “Experience,” he yelled then turned and strode off toward the ship’s

stern.

Perry had to run to catch up. Each of the foreman’s strides was double his. Perry tried to ask another

question but the foreman either didn’t hear or was ignoring him. They reached the companionway and the

foreman started up, taking the stairs three at a time. Two decks above he entered a passageway and then

stopped outside a compartment door. The name on the door was MARKDAVIDSON, OPERATIONS

COMMANDER. The foreman knocked loudly. At first the only response was a fit of coughing but then

a voice called out to come in.

Perry pressed into the small compartment behind the foreman.

“Bad news, chief,” the foreman said. “I’m afraid the drill bit’s busted again.”

“What the hell time is it?” Mark asked. He ran his fingers through his messy hair. He was sitting on the

side of his bunk dressed in skivvies. His facial features had a puffy look, and his voice was thick with

sleep. Without waiting for a reply he reached for a pack of cigarettes. The air in the room was imbued

with stale smoke.

“It’s around oh-six-hundred,” the foreman said.

“Jesus,” Mark said. His eyes then focused on Perry. Surprise registered. He blinked. “Perry? What are

you doing up?”

“There’s no way I could have slept through that vibration,” Perry said.

“What vibration?” Mark asked. He looked back at the foreman, who was staring at Perry.

“Are you Perry Bergman?” the foreman asked.

“Last time I checked,” Perry said. Sensing the foreman’s unease gave him a modicum of satisfaction.

“Sorry,” the foreman said.

“Forget it,” Perry said magnanimously.

“Was the drill train rattling?” Mark asked.

The foreman nodded. “Just like the last four times, maybe a little worse.”

“We only have one more diamond-studded tungsten carbide bit left,” Mark lamented.

“You don’t have to tell me,” the foreman said.

“What’s the depth?” Mark asked.

“Not much change from yesterday,” the foreman said. “We’ve got out thirteen hundred thirty-three feet

of pipe. Since the bottom is just shy of a thousand feet and there’s no sediment, we’re down into the

rock about three hundred and forty feet, give or take a few inches.”

“This is what I was explaining to you last night,” Mark said to Perry. “We were doing fine until four days

ago. Since then we’ve gone nowhere, maybe two or three feet tops, despite using up four drill bits.”

“So you think you’ve hit up against a hard layer?” Perry said, thinking he had to say something.

Mark laughed sarcastically. “Hard ain’t the word. We’re using diamond-studded bits with the straightest

flutes made! Worse yet is we got another hundred feet of the same stuff, whatever it is, before we get to

the magma chamber, at least according to our ground-penetrating radar. At this rate we’ll be here for ten

years.”

“Did the lab analyze the rock caught in the last broken bit?” the foreman asked.

“Yeah, they did,” Mark said. “It’s a type of rock they’d never seen before. At least according to Tad

Messenger. It’s composed of a type of crystalline olivine that he thinks might have a microscopic matrix

of diamond. I wish we could get a bigger sample. One of the biggest problems of drilling in open sea is

not getting a return of circulated drilling fluids. It’s like drilling in the dark.”

“Could we get a corer down there?” Perry asked.

“A lot of good that would do if we can’t make any headway with a diamond-studded bit.”

“How about piggybacking it with the diamond bit. If we could get a real sample of this stuff we’re trying

to drill through, maybe we could figure out a reasonable game plan. We got too much invested in this

operation to give up without a real fight.”

Mark looked at the foreman, who shrugged. Then he looked back at Perry. “Hey, you’re the boss.”

“At least for now,” Perry said. He wasn’t joking. He wondered how long he was going to be the boss if

the project came to naught.

“All right,” Mark said. He put his cigarette down on the edge of an overflowing ashtray. “Pull the drill bit

up to the well head.”

“The boys are already doing that,” the foreman said.

“Get the last diamond drill bit from supply,” Mark said. He reached for his phone. “I’ll have Larry

Nelson get the saturation dive system up and running and the submersible in the water. We’ll replace the

bit and see if we can get a better sample of what it is we’re drilling into.”

“Aye, aye,” the foreman said. He turned and left while Mark lifted his phone to his ear to call the diving

commander.

Perry started to leave himself when Mark held up his hand to motion for him to stay. After finishing his

call to Larry Nelson, Mark looked up at Perry.

“There’s something I didn’t bring up last night at the briefing,” he said. “But I think you ought to know

about it.”

Perry swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. He didn’t like Mark’s tone of voice. It sounded like more

bad news.

“This might be nothing,” Mark continued, “but when we used the ground-penetrating radar to study this

layer we’re trying to drill through like I mentioned before, there was an unexpected incidental finding. I

got the data here on my desk. Do you want to see it?”

“Just tell me,” Perry said. “I can look at the data later.”

“The radar suggested that the contents of the magma chamber might not be what we thought from the

original seismic studies. It might not be liquid.”

“You’re joking!” This new information added to Perry’s misgivings. It was by accident the previous

summer that theBenthic Explorer had discovered the seamount they were presently drilling. What was

so amazing about the find was that as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the area had been extensively

studied by Geosat, the U.S. Navy’s gravity measuring satellite used to create contour maps of the ocean

bottom. Yet somehow this particular undersea mountain had evaded Geosat’s radar.

Although theBenthic Explorer crew had been eager to get home they’d paused long enough to make

several passes over the mysterious mount. With the ship’s sophisticated sonar they did a cursory study of

the guyot’s internal structure. To everyone’s surprise the results were as unexpected as the mountain’s

presence. The seamount appeared to be a particularly thin-skinned, quiescent volcano whose liquid core

was a mere four hundred feet beneath the ocean floor. Even more astounding was that the substance

within the magma chamber had sound propagation characteristics identical to those of the Mohorovicic

discontinuity, or Moho, the mysterious boundary between the earth’s crust and the earth’s mantle. Since

no one had ever been able to get magma from the Moho, although both Americans and Russians had

tried during the Cold War, Perry decided to go back and drill into the mountain in hopes that Benthic

Marine might be the first organization to sample the molten material. He reasoned that the material’s

analysis would shed light on the structure and perhaps even the origin of the earth. But now hisBenthic

Explorer ’s operations commander was telling him that the original seismic data might be wrong!

“The magma chamber may be empty,” Mark said.

“Empty?” Perry blurted.

“Well, not empty,” Mark corrected himself. “Filled with some kind of compressed gas, or maybe steam.

I know extrapolating data at this depth is pushing ground-penetrating radar technology beyond its limits.

In fact a lot of people would say the results I’m talking about are just artifact, sorta off the graph so to

speak. But the fact that the radar data doesn’t jibe with the seismic worries me just the same. I mean, I’d

just hate to make this huge effort only to get nothing but a bunch of superheated steam. Nobody’s going

to be happy with that, least of all your investors.”

Perry chewed the inside of his cheek while he mulled over Mark’s concern. He began to wish he’d

never heard about Sea Mount Olympus, which was the name the crew had given the flat-topped,

underwater mountain that they were trying to poke a hole into.

“Have you mentioned this to Dr. Newell?” Perry asked. Dr. Suzanne Newell was the senior

oceanographer on theBenthic Explorer. “Has she seen this radar data you’re talking about?”

“Nobody’s seen it,” Mark said. “I just happened to notice the shadow on my computer screen

yesterday when I was preparing for your arrival. I was thinking about bringing it up at your briefing last

night but decided to wait to talk to you in private. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a bit of a morale

problem out here with certain members of the crew. A lot of people have begun to think that drilling into

this guyot’s a bit like tilting at windmills. People are starting to talk about calling it quits and getting home

to their families before the summer’s over. I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.”

Perry felt weak-kneed. He pulled Mark’s chair out from his desk and sat down heavily. He rubbed his

eyes. He was tired, hungry, and discouraged. He could kick himself for betting so much of his company’s

future based on so little reliable data, but the discovery had seemed so fortuitous. He’d felt compelled to

act.

“Hey, I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news,” Mark said. “We’ll do what you suggested. We’ll try to

get a better idea of the rock we’re drilling. Let’s not get overly discouraged.”

“It’s kind of hard not to,” Perry said, “considering how much it is costing Benthic Marine to keep the

ship out here. Maybe we should just cut our losses.”

“Why don’t you get yourself something to eat?” Mark suggested. “No sense making any snap decisions

on an empty stomach. In fact, I’ll join you if you can wait for me to shower. Hell! Before you know it

we’ll have some more information about this crap we’ve hit up against. Maybe then it will be clear what

we ought to do.”

“How long will it take to change the bit?” Perry asked.

“The submersible can be in the water in an hour,” Mark said. “They’ll take the bit and the tools down to

the well head. Getting the divers down there takes longer because they have to be compressed before

we lower the bell. That’ll take a couple of hours, more if they get any compression pains. Changing the

bit is not hard. The whole operation should take three or four hours, maybe less.”

Perry got to his feet with effort. “Give me a call in my compartment when you’re ready to eat.” He

reached for the door.

“Hey, wait a sec!” Mark said with sudden enthusiasm. “I got an idea that might give you a boost. Why

don’t you go down with the submersible? It’s reputed to be beautiful down there on the guyot at least

according to Suzanne. Even the submersible pilot, Donald Fuller, the ex-naval line officer, who’s usually a

tight-lipped, straight-arrow kind of guy, says the scenery is outstanding.”

“What can be so great about a flat-topped, submerged mountain?” Perry asked.

“I haven’t gone down myself,” Mark admitted. “But it has something to do with the geology of the area.

You know, being part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and all. But ask Newell or Fuller! I tell you, they’re

going to be ecstatic about being asked to go back down. With the halogen lights on the submersible and

the clarity of the deep sea water, they said the visibility is between two and three hundred feet.”

Perry nodded. Taking a dive wasn’t a bad idea since it would undoubtedly take his mind off the current

situation and make him feel like he was doing something. Besides, he’d only been in the submersible

once, off Santa Catalina Island when Benthic Marine took delivery of the sub, and that had been a

memorable experience. At least he’d get a chance to see this mountain that was causing him so much

aggravation.

“Who should I tell that I’ll be part of the crew?” Perry asked.

“I’ll take care of it,” Mark said. He stood up and pulled off his T-shirt. “I’ll just let Larry Nelson know.”

CHAPTER TWO

Richard Adams pulled a pair of baggy long johns from his ship’s locker and kicked the door closed.

Once he had the underwear on he donned his black knit watch stander’s hat. Thus attired he left his

compartment and banged on Louis Mazzola’s and Michael Donaghue’s doors. Both responded with a

slurry of expletives. The curses had lost their sting since they constituted such a large percentage of these

crew members’ vocabularies. Richard, Louis, and Michael, professional divers, were the hard drinking,

hard living sort who regularly risked their lives by welding underwater if that were required, or blowing

things up like reefs, or changing bits during submarine drilling operations. They were underwater

hard-laborers and proud of it.

The three had trained together in the U.S. Navy, becoming fast friends as well as accomplished

members of the Navy’s UDT force. All had aspired to become Navy Seals, but that turned out not to be

in the cards. Their predilection for beer and fistfights far exceeded that of their fellows. That the three had

grown up with alcoholic, brutish, abusive, bigoted, blue-collar, wife-beating fathers was an explanation

for their behavior, but not an excuse. Far from being embarrassed by their patriarchal examples, the three

looked upon their harsh childhoods as a natural progression to true manhood. None of them ever gave

even a passing thought to the old adage: Like father like son.

Manliness was a critical virtue for all three men. They were ruthless in punishing anyone they perceived

as being less manly than they who had the nerve to enter a bar in which they were drinking. Their

judgment fell heavily on “shyster” lawyers and fat-assed Army personnel. They also condemned anyone

they deemed a dork, a nerd, or a queer. Homosexuality bothered them the most, and as far as they were

concerned, the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy was ridiculous and a personal affront.

Although the Navy tended to be lenient with divers and tolerated behavior it wouldn’t brook with other

personnel, Richard Adams and his buddies pushed the envelope too far. One hot August afternoon the

men retreated to their favorite hole-in-the-wall diver’s bar on San Diego’s Point Loma. It had been an

exhausting day of difficult diving. After numerous rounds of boilermakers and an equal number of

arguments about the current baseball season, they were shocked and dismayed to see a couple of Army

guys jauntily walk in. According to the divers at their court-martial, these men proceeded to “love it up”

in one of the back booths.

The fact that the soldiers were officers only made the divers’ outrage all the more impassioned. They

never asked themselves why a couple of Army officers might be in San Diego, a known Navy and

Marine town. Richard, their perennial ringleader, was the first to approach the booth. He

asked—sarcastically—if he could join the orgy. The Army men, mistaking Richard’s meaning—which

was for them to get the hell out—laughed, denied any orgy of any sort, and offered to buy him and his

friends a round of celebratory drinks. The result was a one-sided brawl that put both Army officers into

Balboa Naval Hospital. It also put Richard and his friends into the brig and eventually out of the Navy.

The Army men happened to have been members of JAG, the Army’s Judge Advocate General corps.

“Come on, you assholes!” Richard yelled when the others still hadn’t appeared. He glanced at his diving

watch. He knew Nelson would be pissed. His orders on the phone had been to get to the diving

command center ASAP.

The first to appear was Louis Mazzola. He was almost a head shorter than Richard, who stood six feet.

Richard thought of Louis as a bowling ball kind of guy. He had meaty features, an omnipresent five o’

clock shadow, and short dark hair that lay flat on his round head. He appeared to have no neck; his

trapezius angled out from his skull without any indentation.

“What’s the hurry?” Louis whined.

“We’re going on a dive!” Richard said.

“So what else is new?” Louis complained.

Michael’s door opened. He was somewhere between Richard’s rawboned silhouette and Louis’s

stockiness. Like his friends he was well muscled and in obviously good shape. He was also equivalently

slovenly, dressed in the same baggy long johns. But in contrast to the others he had on a Red Sox

baseball cap with the visor angled off sideways. Michael hailed from Chelsea, Massachusetts, and was

an avid Sox and Bruins fan.

Michael opened his mouth to complain about being awakened, but Richard ignored him and set out for

the main deck. Louis did likewise. Michael shrugged and then followed. As they descended the main

companionway, Louis called ahead to Richard: “Hey, Adams, you got the cards?”

“Of course I got the cards,” Richard shot back over his shoulder. “Have you got your checkbook?”

“Screw you,” Louis said. “You haven’t beat me in the last four dives.”

“It’s been a plan, man,” Richard returned. “I’ve been setting you up.”

“Screw the cards,” Michael said. “Have you got your porno mags, Mazzola?”

“You think I’d go on a dive without them?” Louis questioned. “Hell! I’d rather forget my fins.”

“I hope you checked to make sure you’ve got the mags with the chicks and not the dudes,” Michael

teased.

Louis stopped abruptly. Michael bumped into him.

“What the hell are you saying?” Louis growled.

“I’m just checking to make sure you brought the right ones,” Michael said with a wry smile. “I might

want to borrow them, and I don’t want to find myself looking at any shlongs.”

Louis’s hand shot out and he grabbed a handful of Michael’s long johns top. Michael responded by

grabbing Louis’s forearm with his left hand and balling his right hand into a fist. Before it could go further,

Richard intervened.

“Come on, you dorks!” Richard yelled, inserting himself between his two friends. With an upward blow

he knocked Louis’s arm aside. There was a tearing sound, and Louis’s hand came away with a torn

swatch of Michael’s undershirt clutched in his fingers. Like a bull seeing red, Louis tried to push past

Richard. When that didn’t work he tried to grab Michael’s top over Richard’s shoulder. Michael howled

with laughter and ducked away.

“Mazzola, you meathead!” Richard yelled. “He’s just trying to pull your chain. Chill out, for chrissake!”

“Bastard!” Louis hissed. He threw the swatch of torn fabric he’d yanked out of Michael’s undershirt at

his tormentor. Michael laughed again.

“Come on!” Richard said with disgust as he continued down the passageway. Michael reached down

and picked up the piece of fabric. When he pretended to stick it back onto his chest, Louis laughed in

spite of himself. Then they ran to catch up to Richard.

When the divers emerged onto the deck they could see that the derrick was raising the pipe.

“They must have broken the bit again,” Michael said. Both Richard and Louis nodded. “At least we

know what we’ll be doing.”

They entered the diving van and draped themselves over three folding chairs near the door. This was

where Larry Nelson, the man who ran all the diving operations, had his desk. Behind him, on the

right-hand side of the van and extending all the way down to the far end, was the diving console. Here

were all the readouts, gauges, and controls for operating the diving system. On the left side of the van’s

dash were the controls and monitors for the camera sleds. Also on the left side was a window that

looked out on the central well of the ship. It was down this central well that the diving bell was lowered.

The diving system on theBenthic Explorer was a saturation system, meaning the divers were expected

to absorb the maximum amount of inert gas during any given dive. That meant that the decompression

time required to rid themselves of the inert gas would be the same no matter how long they stayed at

pressure. The system was composed of three cylindrical deck decompression chambers (DDC), each

twelve feet wide and twenty feet long. The DDCs were hooked together like enormous sausages with

double pressure hatches separating them. Within each were four bunks, several fold-down tables, a

toilet, a sink, and a shower.

Each DDC also had an entrance port on the side and a pressure hatch on the top where the diving bell,

or personal transfer capsule (PTC), could mate. Compression and decompression of the divers took

place in the DDC. Once they had reached the equivalent pressure of the depth where they were to work,

they climbed up into the PTC, which was then detached and lowered into the water. When the PTC

reached the appropriate depth the divers opened the hatch through which they’d entered the bell and

swam to the designated workstation. While in the water the divers were tethered with an umbilical cord

containing hoses for their breathing gas, for hot water to heat their neoprene dry suits, for sensing wires,

and for communication cables. Since the divers on theBenthic Explorer used full face masks,

communication was possible, although difficult, due to voice distortion in the helium-oxygen mixture they

breathed. The sensing wires carried information about each diver’s heart rate, breathing rate, and

breathing-gas oxygen pressure. All three levels were monitored continuously on a real-time basis.

Larry looked up from his desk and regarded his second team of divers with disdain. He couldn’t believe

how slovenly, brazen, and unprofessional they invariably appeared. He noted Michael’s jaunty baseball

cap and ripped shirt, but he didn’t say anything. Similar to the Navy, he tolerated behavior in the divers

that he would not tolerate with other members of his team. Three other divers who were equally

aggravating and obstreperous were still in one of the DDCs, decompressing from the last dive on the well

head. When diving to almost a thousand feet, decompression time is measured in days not hours.

“I’m sorry to have awakened you clowns from your beauty sleep,” Larry said. “It took you long enough

to get down here.”

“I had to floss my teeth,” Richard said.

“And I had to do my nails,” Louis said. He flapped his hand in a swishy, loose wrist fashion.

Michael rolled his eyes with mock disgust.

“Hey, don’t start!” Louis growled while eyeing Michael. He poked one of his meaty fingers in his

friend’s face. Michael batted it away.

“All right, listen up, you animals!” Larry yelled. “Try to control yourselves. This is going to be a

nine-hundred-and-eighty-foot dive to inspect and change the drill bit.”

“Oh, something new, eh, chief?” Richard said in a high, squeaky voice. “This is the fifth time this dive’s

been done and the third time for us. Let’s get on with it.”

“Shut up and listen,” Larry commanded. “There’s something new involved. You’re going to be

piggybacking a corer on the diamond bit so that we can see if we can get a decent sample of whatever

the hell we’re trying to drill into.”

“Sounds good,” Richard said.

“We’re going to speed up compression time,” Larry said. “There’s some brass aboard who’s in a hurry

for results. We’re going to see if we can get you down to depth in a couple of hours. Now I want to hear

immediately if there’s any joint pain. I don’t want anybody playing macho diver. Understand?”

All three divers nodded.

“We’ll lock in chow as soon as it comes up from the galley,” Larry continued. “But I want you guys in

your bunks for the compression, and that means no screwing around and no fights.”

“We’re going to play cards,” Louis said.

“If you play cards do it from your bunks,” Larry said. “And I repeat: no fights. If there are any, the cards

are coming out. Do I make myself clear?”

Robin Cook - Abduction

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