I felt the slightest of tugs against my back, as if little nudges to let me know that more pulling was to come, which I knew to be true, although the oxygenation of the liquid I was breathing wasn’t completely compatible with clear thinking. Mentally, I asked myself how one could possibly isolate one’s own intellect or consciousness to evaluate one’s intellect or consciousness, but as I was slowly pulled above the long gray object sitting atop the ocean’s floor, I bore down and concentrated on returning to the surface.

I moved, but not of my own volition. The object, always blurry, became indistinct from the bottom, both of the same gray color. The lights were turned off by those above me, and I waited in darkness, feeling the movement of water passing by me. I was passing through it, I knew, but that was not the feeling I experienced in that darkness. I concentrated. I did not look up, although I knew that the attachments I wore connecting me to the tender were drawing me upward, so there was no question about direction. I concentrated on waiting. I counted. I hadn’t counted going down, so I had no reference. I imagined the reference. It was like calling artillery in by imagining I was in another location from where I was, but using a different position to allow for ‘danger close’ fire. I wondered if I was too foolish to really be afraid. Was I going to encounter one of the dreaded things I’d mentioned to Werner? One of those things I didn’t know that I didn’t want to know?

I was not cold, as the water flew by, seeming to increase in velocity as I was pulled up ever higher. I thought I should be cold. 98.6 was my temperature before the dive, and the water was at 54 on the bottom. I should have cooled but I couldn’t feel that. My torso felt warm.

It suddenly came to me. Heated fluorocarbon liquid. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I was breathing or inhaling and exhaling the heated liquid, which meant that heat must not affect the necessary elements of oxygen and nitrogen for me to survive. The unseen scientists behind the technology of the dive were ahead of me. They’d wanted me fully ‘tactile’ as they’d messaged to my trainers, so I’d been sent down without much of any real body protection. My feelings were as important to the mission as my ability to know and then keep the secret of its existence. I thought about the movie called ‘Right Stuff.’ I was like the pilot of the first rocket-powered plane to break the sound barrier. Far more than secrecy and participating at a professional willing level, the scientists back then had needed what Chuck Yeager felt when he was flying right on through that barrier, and then after. Chuck broke the barrier and penetrated straight to the heart of America and then on to great fame. I smiled in my mind at that thought. Somehow, I had chosen those things in life that required the same sort of gumption and possibly bad judgment because so far in life, the things I’d done, although ostensibly sounding rewarding, were not that at all. I was a supposed war hero with no admirers, or admirers in name only. I was at the bottom of the ocean, making love to a nuclear bomb that had about as much caring emotion as most of the men who trained and prepared me for the strange union.

My body was dragged ever upward, bare rays of light appearing above, like the dimmest bad lighting in a night club filled with cigarette smoke.
Light appeared rapidly, and my existence seemed to change. I no longer had to concentrate on not going into a fearful panic state, one that might demand that my body attempt to draw in too much liquid too fast. A lung bursting, an endema, or even an emphysema, where the outer wall of the lungs broke loose from the surrounding muscle, bone, and tissue, would likely be fatal, as surfacing was a lengthy process. Either condition would induce coughing uncontrollably, which would prove fatal without immediate draining of the liquid and trained medical intervention…not that any medical personnel had any experience or training with such a condition.

I concentrated on Nguyen and Kingsley waiting aboard the tender, the two men in the entire operation who had only my best interests and survival fully at the forefront of their presence and thinking. Several times in the past I had been put into the hands of supposedly qualified and experienced scientists, only to discover that those highly touted people either were wrong in theory, execution or implementation of what they were claiming, either that or claiming those things in order get my cooperation in doing what I as supposed to do. I promised myself, if I lived, to never willingly get into such situations in the future.

Breathing in and out had become superfluous as I came to let the sensing and pumping Machinery exchange the liquid going through my lungs all on its own. I could finally see around me, not that there was anything to really see, as I could not rotate to look up while I was being dragged toward the surface. The resistance of the water was too great to work against, and I was more fatigued than I thought possible after doing what I considered almost no work.
Reaching the surface, still face down, was anticlimactic, as for some reason I’d never doubted that I would be fine throughout the mission. Lying, bobbing up and down as the large but gentle swells swept by, I wondered why, following the trauma of the war and recovering from my injuries, I could be so confident that everything would turn out alright.

Being pulled up and hauled aboard and strung upside down, my angles strapped into padded and buckled restrainers, was uncomfortable, just as was the removal of the equipment from my mouth. My lungs drained, and I breathed for real again, gasp after gasp, a slight feeling of lightheadedness, no doubt caused by the likely fact that the liquid transferred more oxygen to my lungs than aspirating air at normal pressures did. That passed, and after only a minute or two, I was lowered, the restraints removed, and I was left to huddle under a Navy blanket and wait for my mind and body to be part of the breathing functioning upper world again.

My clothes were back at the blockhouse training center, which took only a few minutes to reach by using the same longboat that had brought me to the tender. Nobody spoke to my until I was inside the center.

My first question, once I could talk without coughing, was about my wife. Doctor, if she was a real doctor, Hitachi would have been replaced by a Naval officer wearing a single silver bar on each color. I had the feeling,, in looking at him while I was still upside down, that my stature had gone down considerably as soon as my part of the mission had been completed.

‘I’m sorry but you will have to speak to either your control officer or Commander Doris about anything not mission-related,” he said, carrying what appeared to be the same clipboard that I had never seen Hitachi without.

“The mission is mine,” I reminded him, although I felt as weak as a newborn kitten and even less powerful.

“That mission is complete, sir,” the lieutenant replied, almost sounding like he was sorry, but not quite.

Slowly, two of the UDT ‘real’ divers lowered me to the deck, one of them guiding my body so I could come comfortably to a seated position, the concrete floor cold, bare and now covered with a layer of liquid fluorocarbon as well as some of my own unidentifiable liquids.

“We need to get an immediate twelve-lead EKG on you and a more sensitive portable Geiger counter reading. The EMT team is en route from Tripler Hospital.”

I sat cross legged on the surface with one of the UDT guys bringing over a blanket and placing it around my shoulders.

“Hang in there sir, you have the courage of a lion, and we’ll back your every play,” he whispered, staring into my eyes before looking over to his partner or co-worker. The man nodded at me.

I realized that it was the first time I felt like I was among real friends. I considered what to do next, as nobody was considering moving me until the medical staff arrived to check me out. I did not understand the EKG or the Geiger counter. I’d presumed that the umbilical, like with astronauts aboard rockets taking off, supplied my unseen handlers with everything about me and the area I’d been in on the sea floor.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes of resting in my puddle I was able to rise to me feet and navigate to what passed for a locker room, although it was in reality just a bathroom with some lockers screwed to one wall. When I was dressed, I went back out to encounter Commander Doris, who paced back and forth in front of the door just outside.

My wife and family were at the forefront of my mind but I didn’t make my first inquiry of him about them. One word kept playing back and forth in my mind. The word was ‘that,’ the first word of the lieutenants comment made to me when I was recovering.

“What is it you people have in mind now, commander?” I asked as a result of my conclusion about the usage of that word in addressing me. The word quite possibly presupposed the potential of a second mission to follow the one I’d just concluded.

“Your family is fine. I spoke to your wife a few minutes ago. Your people sent out an agent to look after their security while you’re working with us here.”

I appreciated his going right to assuaging the foundation of my primary concern, but I also caught the fact that he’d changed the subject with respect to the question I’d put to him, which gave me a queasy feeling. That Herbert had somebody looking after Mary on Kauai surprised me as I hadn’t thought the Agency would be that accommodating or understanding about my personal concerns and consideration.

“Who was assigned?” I asked, playing along while I waited for the nervous commander to get back to answering the question he was partially answering by his delay.

“A decorated Navy Seal,” the commander said, as if any family of mine rated such highly trained and specialized protection.

I stared at the man, frozen in place, almost unable to speak.

“Is the man’s name Marcinko?” I asked, my voice squeaking a bit.

“I believe so,” Doris replied, seemingly uninterested, “but don’t hold me to it.”

All of a sudden what I wanted to do most in the world was get to Kauai and the Princeville Resort in particular, my mind creating a scene where my wife was in one of her most revealing bikini swimsuits by some million dollar pool with Marcinko laying on a chaise lounge nearby wth a great predatory and Chesiree cat expression on his face. How was this bad penny of a man reappearing in my life over and over again? I forced myself to get back in the reality I was still in.

“He said that mission, which means something is coming next. What is it, or am I imagining things that aren’t there?

Commander Doris paused for a few seconds before answering in his roundabout way.

“We’ve sent down three UDT divers,” he began, “before you arrived. They all turned out to be allergic to the liquid. They can’t go back down and we’ve got to have someone down there as the ROVs can only provide us wth so much data in the murky water that’ll be caused by the remote equipment we’ve designed to retrieve the object. We need you to go back down. You’re the only human living and available immediately who’s a proven quantity.”

The man stared at me, his expression one of waiting. He knew we were a ways from being done talking.

My shoulders slumped. I didn’t want to be needed anymore. I just wanted to go to Kauai, get rid of Marcinko, and lie by the side of the pool or lie with the kids in it.

“What were their symptoms?” I asked,

“Atrioventricular block, bradycardia and T-wave depression,” Doris said, telling me that he was well informed and also that he’d been expecting the question.

I now understood why they had ordered up a twelve-lead ECG and my exposure to a very sensitive Geiger counter. The exposure had caused heart problems in three very physically fit human specimens.

“How soon did the symptoms appear?” I asked, with some trepidation.

“Immediate,” Doris replied, with no delay.

“I have no symptoms I’m aware of,” I informed him, going as internally as I could to feel anything abnormal inside myself.

“Hence why we’re having this discussion,” Doris responded, sighing after saying the words, like he was uncomfortable with his position in the process of bringing me aboard on another mission so soon after the last one. I still hadn’t showered or gotten dressed.

“My family,” I said, not going on.

“Take the tests here in a few minutes. If you pass, and I think you will, the fully fueled CH-53 is waiting on the Ford Island airstrip, turbines hot and spinning. The flight to Kauai is about half an hour. You spend the afternoon and night with your family, and we go down in the morning. It will take that long to get the special recovery equipment accurately placed on the bottom.”

The man looked at me, and I went back to Tom Thorkelson’s ‘assumed close’ argument. Assume the potential client is going to say yes but do not ask for the answer, instead start filling out the application and asking the relevant questions, assuming the client, by answering them is giving his or her tacit consent.

“Who’s going to ask me and when?” I asked, staring into the man’s dark eyes. I didn’t blink and waited for his own eyes to let his lids fall, which they did.

Once, and then several times quickly in a row, but still he said nothing.

I got shakily to my feet and headed for the showers without waiting for an answer or even the question I’d posed for him to put forward. I wasn’t dealing with a decision-maker any more than CIA leadership assumed me to be.

I turned the water on as hot as it would go, which was still not hot enough to burn away my thoughts about going back down. Mary was the most equipped and brilliant woman I’d ever known. Marcinko was no match for her, and there was little point in my being jealous or concerned, I knew. She would likely wear her skimpiest bikini and enjoy teasing the hell out of him, unaware that she was a master at such things. Her sense of humor about the weaknesses of men was arcane and deeply disguised.

I also knew that I’d go back down if necessary. Many, many lives were at risk, although when I got to Kauai, I was going to make sure that my family flew back home at the earliest opportunity. If I were all the government had to throw at resolving the problem without a nuclear incident, then I would go, and the powers that existed up in the top leadership of the Agency somehow knew that.

The EMT team of six attendants was waiting when I came out of the shower area, finally wearing OP shorts, a Polo shirt, go-ahead slippers, and feeling like a human being again. Off came the shirt, and down I went onto the rolling gurney they’d brought with them. Neither the lieutenant nor the commander was anywhere to be seen. The tests took about twenty mintues while I laid there.

The one guy, wearing the customary white smock and stethoscope around his neck, motioned for me to sit up and then joined me on the gurney, his hands filled with different paper readouts.

“Are you going to tell me anything, or can I go?” I asked, “There’s a chopper waiting on the tarmac, burning number one diesel, which is mighty expensive.

“Noted, so that’s for you, our clinic is right near there,” he replied, looking over his glasses at me. “Yes, I’m going to tell you what we have. I have no idea what you’re doing or being asked to do, but this facility is known for putting people in harm’s way. I presume that is your situation, but don’t need to know.”

“Thank you,” I replied, not being able to think of anything else to say, other than what I didn’t say, which would have been ‘hurry up.’

The Geiger was within normal limits, which with this equipment is valid for exterior as well as interior analysis. However, your EKG is showing that you are throwing PVCs at a slow but still noticeable rate.”

“What’s a PVC?” I asked, mystified.

“Pre-ventricular-cardiac beat,” the man replied, looking at a page of lines running from side to side on a long sheet of paper.

“I assume that’s bad,” I said, trying not to sound hopeful that I might be disqualified from whatever was likely to be coming next.

“Not at all, the doctor, or whatever he was, said. “Happens quite frequently to many people in all walks of life and ages. As long as you don’t have a whole lot of them continuously, you’re fine. You are hitting at about ten a minute. Quite fine, but, and it’s not germane to what you are likely doing, or maybe it is, what the hell, the read I have that came up through the one contact in the measuring device they had attached to you when you were at work showed the same PVC activity, except not long after you began your work they disappeared. Under stress, there is generally an increase, not a decrease to zero. That’s disturbing.” The man finished, looking intently at the results he had spread out all around him on the gurney’s surface.

“Well?” I finally asked, “What does that mean?”

“It likely means, and I’m not a cardiac specialist, that you are built for the kind of work you were doing. Either you liked it very much to the point where your body relaxed totally, or your state of survival was interpreted by your body to be one where you needed every bit of heartbeat available, although your rate of beats did not increase at all.”

I thought about what he’d said for a few seconds before responding. “How’s that possible?” I asked.

“Well, it’s likely the rate remained the same, but the volume of blood flowing through your heart increased. Your heart became more efficient at that time. Like I said, I’m not by any means a cardiac specialist, and I’ve never seen this before.”

“So, am I cleared for the next part of the mission?” I said, a bit of disappointment in my tone.

“I test, analyze, and report, I don’t decide,” he said, coming to his feet while turning to gather up his mess of paperwork.

I was about to ask him if I could go when the lieutenant walked back into the large open space.

“The chopper’s waiting,” he said, pointing back behind him at the bunker door.

“When do I come back?” I asked, picking up my small athletic bag..

“Six a.m. tomorrow morning,” he said.

I watched the medical team get its stuff together and depart. There were no goodbyes or social chatter, which made me feel like a non-person instead of the most important person on the project that I’d almost certainly become.

I walked to the bank vault-style door and stepped through the opening and out into a beautiful Hawaii day. I pulled air into my lungs, breath after breath and the aroma of flowers revived me. There weren’t any flowers in sight but the aroma permeated throughout the island, as it always had when I was a kid or in revisiting Oahu. The first thing smelled by anyone getting off a plane at the airport was flowers.

The Jeep stood waiting. The lieutenant followed behind me, as silent as the medical team had been in departing. I wondered if the astronauts were treated in the same remote analytical way just before their departures into space.

“At least they get space suits,” I whispered to myself before climbing into the waiting Jeep.

The trip took less than five minutes. I could have comfortably walked the distance, but that would have meant I would have been on my own, which was not part of anyone’s plan.

The chopper’s whirling blades were not as loud as those of the Huey ones of my memory in Vietnam. The whup, whup, whup of those blades would be with me all my life I knew.

I went up the lowered ramp and ended up in front of Mack. How in hell he’d been assigned to work as the crew chief on a Navy chopper when he was supposedly Air Force was beyond me, but his presence made me smile for the first time since I’d gone to the bottom of the ocean.

The chopper pulled up and then tilted forward so fast and hard that I lost my balance. Mack caught me as we both fell rather than sat down into the web bench that served as seats in the cargo hold. Mack handed me a helmet that had a headset as part of it. I put it on, adjusted things. Mack hit some switch on the side of the overly large thing and said hello right into my eardrums.

“When?” I asked, staring into his welcoming eyes.

“This thing does two hundred so half an hour as you’re a priority item, once again,” Mack replied.

“Where are we landing, the Princeville Airport?”

“Nope, the parking lot at the hotel has been cleared so you’re going straight into the resort,” Mack said, which a big smile.

“They’re playing with this, aren’t they?” I said, with a sigh.

The men surrounding any special mission I’d come to understand wanted to be part of the mission, so they acted accordingly, which usually meant going way over the top in doing their generally menial part. I lay back with my head against the fuselage of the big vibrating Machine, glad that the outlandish helmet provided so much padding. The half hour passed in what seemed like only a few minutes. I breathed in and out deeply and turned to look at Mack, constantly watching me, probably having been told to observe me closely in case of problems because of the unusual dive, I realized.

The chopper steeply rotated and then dropped precipitously. We touched down, Mack got up, pulled some levers, and the ramp eased down. The blades of the chopper never stopped as I exited, handing the helmet back to Mack as I passed him. No words were possible with the oppressive sound of the blades.

I got to the bottom of the ramp and walked away until I was out from under the machine completely. I turned to watch it pull straight up, and then covered my eyes as every bit of parking lot detritus not already dispersed blew harshly at and around me. Finally, the CH-53 was gone. I turned toward the hotel proper located at the edge of the lot only to see one man standing there.

“Marcinko,” I said out loud, although he was too far away to hear me. Marcinko was there to greet me, not my wife, or Herbert, or anyone close to me. I walked toward him, intent on solving this new, uncomfortable mystery.