Page 26 of Twister

She gave him a nod and started for the tail section. Twister and Dagger were patrolling the area around them. It would get a bit murky once they started stirring up the silt. It was good that they were getting a feel for the area while the water was clear.

She swam down to the ragged tail section, careful not to snag her suit on any rusted metal. It was clear that the depth chargehad totally damaged the engines and completely blown off the tail section. Navy divers were finding parts of the sub where it had gone down as they searched the bottom for remains. Her light illuminated the complete darkness where fish swam in and out of the ragged hole. If there had been torpedoes in the aft room, they would have either been expelled or exploded on impact. The charring and damage attested to that.

She swam forward into what would have been the motor room, and without this vital part of the sub, along with the propellers, there had been no hope. She reached the first watertight door. The hatch had been damaged, the door blown off its hinges, lost somewhere in the sea. It gave her access to the engine room. Everything in here was completely intact. She moved through the compartment past the four-diesel engine housing. Sea life had invaded here, again swimming freely in the now murky water.

Something came out of the dark and startled her, brushing along her cheek, sleek and soft-bodied. She reacted by moving away from it. When she reached the watertight door, this one was also open but still intact, barring her way into the next compartment. There was no way to proceed this way. She decided she would have to swim to the top of the boat to access the hatch that led into the crew quarters.

She backtracked, careful of her umbilical as she exited the tail section. “I can’t get any further than the engine room from that access. I’m going to the hatch to see if I can get in that way, but it’s probably rusted.” She looked up. Twister and Dagger were still patrolling. She finned to the hatch door, noting the amount of rust on the exterior of the sub and the hatch. She reached down with her gloved hands and tried to muscle it open, but it was stuck tight. She looked up again, motioning to Twister. He caught her attempts to call him over and swam powerfully down to where she was. She altered her head so herlight wouldn’t blind him, and through gestures, she indicated she wanted help with opening the hatch.

He nodded. It was so strange to be in this watery world with him, his presence offering a strong mix of contradictions. Verbal silence, but silent communication. Distance, but a strange kind of closeness. In preparation for what she would find behind this hatch, Sadie drew on his silent strength, repeatedly warning herself to stay vigilant and aware.

With their combined strength, the hatch moved with a grinding, squeaking turn. They each got another hold of the rounded metal and twisted again. It moved easier, until it was finally released. If the compartment hadn’t already been flooded, the seal would have been impossible to move, but since the door had been damaged, they were able to release it.

She squeezed his forearm in thanks, and he smiled at her before he swam back to his patrol.

She was about to descend into the past, into the place where these doomed men had breathed their last breaths, including her great-grandfather. She took a deep, cleansing breath and descended into the hatch, which was wide enough for her and her tanks since this entrance had been fashioned for broad-shouldered men. Swimming down alongside the rusted and filthy ladder to another pitch-black compartment with no light except from her headlamp, she illuminated tables and benches bolted down to the submarine deck. The light extended weakly to the square form of the galley. On the deck, white porcelain gleamed, broken parts of mugs. She turned toward the crew’s quarters and entered. Bunks ran the length of the room to the compromised watertight hatch, shadowy silhouettes in the eerie glow of her light. No one had been in this room in seventy-nine long years.

The covers, mattresses and bedding were gone, disintegrated in the pervasive saltwater, nothing but rusty steel bones. She heaved a breath, gritting her teeth.

“Sadie? All well?” Neil’s voice reached her, but she felt a million miles away, lost in the past.

She swallowed hard. “All’s well,” she said, to let him know that she was all right. She looked at her timer and realized that she was getting close to the shift threshold. They would have to surface soon. She went deeper into the compartment. There was a lot of debris in the corner, and when she swam over to check it out, she discovered shaving brushes, many of them, along with several rusted razors. When she pulled at some debris, silt rose up, momentarily blinding her. She felt around and froze when her fingers found something long and thin with knobs on each end.

She gasped, and again had to reassure Neil she was fine. She brought the find to her facemask to confirm it was a bone.

Her thoughts immediately homed in on the remains. Caught in a time warp, she tried to release the sudden tightness in her chest. Sorrow filled her, a rendering of grief that hit her hard. Her great-grandfather had been nothing but a man in a photograph, but now, as she held this bone in her hands, the fact that even this could be his physical remains made her eyes sting with unshed tears.

That lump in her throat got thicker as she thought about the monumental load all these men carried and how each of them was dedicated, gallant, and heroic in the missions they carried out. Her great-grandfather’s generation served during a terrible, costly war as the golden age ended. They boarded this vessel with the aim to devastate the Japanese, and they had accomplished that mission, harassing an enemy thousands of miles from their home shores, only to cruelly perish days before that country folded and surrendered. That bomber had deprivedeighty-five families of their loved ones, put them all into a limbo as to what had happened to them, and buried them under an unrelenting ocean.

“Sadie!” Neil’s frantic voice broke through her momentary lapse in duty. She started, looking around, the feeling of being suspended in a dark bubble closing in on her. Her world compressed into a few feet of thick brown water that her light couldn’t penetrate. No up, no down, just confusion, compounded by her emotions taking over her common sense.

Suddenly, a hand came out of the mass of swirling water, gripping her shoulder, then Twister’s face came into view. He was close to her, his eyes stormy with his concern, draining into that soft bronze as he connected with her eyes. He gestured to her if she was in distress. She made the sign back that she wasn’t. But he was. She could see the strain around his eyes and the encroaching panic as he fought to contain it. Her heart squeezed. She wanted to know what was causing this strong, mentally tough man to dissolve into panic while in enclosed places. She was dying to talk to him, spend time with him, get under his skin, get her hands on his body, dive deep into that mind of his, and her breath suspended, find his soul that was so apparent to her, the most beautiful part of him. God, she wanted him as much as she wanted her next breath.

With everything she had in her, she calmed herself, realizing that she was fine, she was safe, but it was best to get him out of this situation pronto.

He tapped his dive watch, and she realized with a terrible start that they must be past their time to rise to the surface. She felt like a sentimental fool, embedded in the thoughts and signs of all that had been lost in this compartment.

She lifted the bone, and Twister nodded, then she pointed down to the deck. He nodded again, getting the message that there were more remains to be gathered. He kept close to her asshe reached down, searched, and placed everything she found in her dive bag. When she was sure she’d gotten everything in this part of the crew’s quarters, she turned to him and pointed up with her thumb.

He turned, indicating that she should follow him as he used her umbilical cord to get them back to the hatch and out into the open ocean. Still feeling like a fool, still shaken from the discovery and the overwhelming emotions, she waved to Neil, and the tenseness left his body. “I’m sorry, buddy. Comms were a bit spotty there for a minute.” She couldn’t admit out loud that she had been lost in her own ruminations regarding the past, lost in her memories of her great-grandmother’s pain, and lost in the sacrifice they had all made for freedom.

“No worries. Just glad you’re okay.”

It was at the point that they would have to stage-decompress. When she caught Twister’s eyes, she pointed up and touched her gauge. He nodded, signaled Dagger, and they moved to the first stop, spending a few minutes to clear excess nitrogen, a rush of bubbles and normal slapping surface sounds mixed in with her gurgling breath, and she and the other three divers bobbed to the surface in front of theGuardian.

“Bali base, Bali base, all divers are up,” the master diver said as the support crew started working on getting them into the boat.

The minute she was on the deck, David and the master chief approached her. “What happened down there,” David snapped. “You were unresponsive for almost a full minute. We were about to send down more divers.”

“Comms were spotty inside the sub, or my equipment malfunctioned.” She perpetuated the lie because if they knew she was emotionally tied to this sub by her great-grandfather, she was going to be sent on leave, the very leave she refusedbecause of this particular discovery. David gave her a narrow-eyed look.

Twister stiffened next to her, but he didn’t say anything, and she felt the pull of his magnetic force. It was obvious from the look on his face that he also didn’t like David’s tone. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, he was interrupted.

“Leave her alone,” Neil said. “She’s fine, and she brought up a lot of stuff. We should be preserving that, not bullying the diver who brought up the remains.”

“No one’s bullying her,” David said.

“Right,” Neil commented as he walked past and gave her a bolstering look.

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