Once more, I entered the water, not of my own volition, but simply lowered down like a descending spider coming to gently land atop the relatively smooth surface of the ocean rather than the spindly intricacies of a web. The umbilical I attached to my back somehow resembled to me, in my suspended but concentrating state, the earliest appearance of the alien creature in the stunningly effective horror movie of the same name. I was as helpless as the first astronaut who faced it in the movie, but hopefully with the likelihood of a better outcome.

For the dive, I was wearing special glasses, looking more like German tank goggles than anything else, but with no air between the lenses and my eyes. Something had to be between them, but nobody had said anything, and I had plenty of other things to think about besides such a seemingly trivial detail. I had to be able to see on this dive, even though the ROVs had to be providing clear and direct video from their cameras straight back to the science team waiting aboard the tender. I could not look up, so I merely lay face down and waited. Breathing the liquid in and out, like I was rapidly becoming comfortable with, I thought about my family being on a flight to the continental U.S., Marcinko probably still hanging around Albuquerque, and the mission.

My wife hadn’t asked me even one question about the previous mission, nor the one I was on that followed. In some ways, she was remarkably perfect, and I knew I was extremely lucky to have ever found her. Her silence, however, came with a price. I knew it meant that she was worried beyond words and that my importance in her and the kid’s life was immense, and that the loss of my own would be like the end of the world for them.

My body, facing down and flat, began to sink like a stone.

“Terminal descent,” the bone transmitter glued to the spot they’d cut out of my hair just above my right ear said.

I wondered why the divers used such strange terms. I knew that terminal did not mean the end, of course. The word, as they used it, simply meant vertical, so why not say vertical? It wasn’t my call, though. I was so inexperienced it was beyond unbelievable, although everyone thrown together for the project, as they called it, treated me with mostly silent respect, as had been shown to me near the end of my third week in the A Shau Valley. Silent respect was nice. It was also lonely. Nguyen and Kingsley were my solid supports, but they were not very talkative, particularly when others were around. Kingsley had whispered into my ear, just before they filled me with the liquid, that they were taking me immediately to Tripler Hospital when the dive was over. I tried not to think about why he would say such a thing. I was fine and had been fine after the first dive, outside of some PVCs, which were roughly in normal parameters.

I wore a quarter-inch-thick wetsuit top and bottom, plus the booties that went with it. My hands were uncovered, although I would be expected to touch nothing this time around. My pancake of a body began to descend, slowly at first and then speeding up. The wetsuit was for temperature control as the first mission had been relatively quick, just as planned. This time, I would be overseeing the lifting and transit of the device from its embedded state on or just under the sea bottom and into a special compartment or cavern of the U.S.S. Kamehameha, a ballistic missile submarine that was undergoing a conversion to become what Hitachi called a bottom dweller. In mid-conversion, this submarine had the capability of assisting and then loading the device into a protected part of its hull, enclosing it, and then sailing away. I’d been shown a picture of the big black submarine, but it hadn’t registered in my mind as anything emotional. Until I saw it.

The first dive had taken me into blackness at about six hundred feet, but not this time. I stared down. I wasn’t being lowered into proximity to the bomb this time. I was on the Oahu side of the angled plane where the device was embedded. There was enough light to see the object, the three ROV undersea robots, and the massive monster of a black submarine still in the water, its port side facing me as I brought my legs down to plant my booties on, or into, the soft seaweed morass of the bottom.

I thought to breathe, or surge, or do whatever it was I could now naturally do to take oxygen and nitrogen out of the constantly moving liquid. I knew I could stop breathing or making that effort with my lungs and muscles and simply let the stuff charge up my lung tissues, but I preferred to have some feeling in my chest. I was in charge of nothing but everything as I was the only tactile, seeing, and living human being there. The men on the sub were distanced by their steel hull and might as well have been miles away. I finally understood why the scientists wanted me back down on the bottom. Until that moment, standing like a crab with attachments running back to the surface, and staring at the unbelievably massive tube of metal in front of me, I had thought my role ridiculous, although I’d said nothing. I possessed no transmission capability. I could receive messages in one ear.

“Touchdown,” had come when I made contact with the bottom, making me think of Paul Hornung or Jim Taylor of the Green Bay Packers running the ball into the end zone.

The signal device I had was strapped to my right wrist, like the detector had been last time. However, this device was different. There were no lights and only one button. The button, if pushed, meant stop. The mission was over, and everyone would retreat to regroup, surface, sail away, or whatever if I pushed that button. Until that moment, I didn’t realize just how huge the importance of this mission was and my tiny but potentially monstrous role I might play in it.

“What am I looking for?” I’d asked Hitachi.

“Nobody knows, that’s why you’re going down,” she replied, not looking up from her clipboard but making a note of something.

There was no point in moving anywhere, not that I had much of any freedom of movement. I was controlled by the umbilical, not the other way around, and I very much felt that. The hoses of continuous liquid coming in and the exhausted liquid going out were my whole life, and any interruption in that, at whatever I knew, would not be something I could recover from.

I waited, able to see but only in shades of gray and black, until the subs’ lights went on. Suddenly, it was like the sun had risen above a horizon that remained invisible. The light concentrated on the object. I could make out the marks in the mud where my hands had disturbed the mud or much to the point of leaving trails, like an artist might do with a thin trowel or a hard brush.

I felt the sub. I knew there was nothing else mechanical down at the bottom with us. The strange humpback of the sub continued to open. The hydrolic metal moving parts of the hump’s opening door transmitting nearly silent but deep sounds that seemed to flow down from it and along the bottom until reaching me. I knew sound in water didn’t work that way, but that’s what I was feeling, as the door stopped and what seemed like a tracked machine came through the door and moved halfway down the huge sub’s upper surface. All I could do was stare at the giant underwater ship and the contraption on top of it.

A derrick rose from the top of the car, cart, tank, or whatever it was that had come to a standstill. It extended itself out, section by section, looking almost exactly like it was made of parts like what I’d put together as a kid using an Erector Set. I continued to stare, totally drawn into the silent drama going on right in front of me.
The tip of the extended derrick reached a point just down and above the center of the armed nuclear weapon.

A cable began to wind a semi-circular piece of material toward the bomb, but stopped when it made contact.

There was a strange swishing sound, and a small cloud of debris burst out and upward before slowly clearing. The derrick retreated just a little and then performed the same operation. I blinked my eyes and thought as the derrick moved again. I got it. The device was encircling the outer covering of the device with a cable each time it stopped, the mud flared up, and it moved on.

I felt like backing up. I was within only a few feet of the operation, and only the ROVs, gently bobbing and weaving, were closer. Before I could pull my mind together and analyze what I was seeing, however, the machine abruptly stopped, and the boom it had extended retreated.

I waited. Liquid in, liquid out, in, out, and so on for what seemed like a long time. I wore no diver’s watch, so I had no idea what my ‘bottom time’ was, normally a vital statistic when diving, but of course I was a long way from normal diving. No communications were being directed to me or at me. I heard nothing except what was transmitted through the water from the submarine and its attachments. I looked at the button, and suddenly realized that I was looking at it for the first time since landing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might push it simply because I had no real idea about what was happening right before my eyes.

The derrick ran back out to where it had started and then stopped. Very slowly the end of the derrick angled upward. Very slowly. I was pumping liquid in and out of my lungs as regularly as I could, yet feeling like I should be doing it faster.

In what seemed like an instant, many cables surrounding the device, from one end to the other, all pulled taut, and my vision went away.

I blinked, brought my hands to my eye coverings, and then stopped.

I couldn’t see because I was inside a giant cloud of muddy water. And then there was movement, not initiated by my umbilical, but by the water around me. Fear shot through me for a few seconds. I fought it. Pump, pump, pump, my source of air was secure. I felt my fingers with my other fingers, and everything was as it should be. There was no pressure or tug from above recalling me, so I remained standing where I’d been planted. I didn’t push the button because I didn’t understand what pushing it would do anymore. I worked to calm my mind. If out of the water, I knew I would be taking long, deep breaths, not something possible using the system I was using. I could not use physical cues to calm myself down. I had to wait, but the waiting seemed like it would never end.

The night, after the day, when I’d been informed that my brother was dead, I’d been taken to a movie by one of my former lifeguard partners on the San Clemente Beach Patrol. The movie was called ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. I never understood the end of the movie, with Keir Dulay sitting there as an old man, just there, just being, and the earth turning, and then the whole thing had faded away. I could hear nothing. I could see nothing. I could feel only the contact of the water. I finally understood the end of the movie, written by a man who wrote the first science fiction book I’d ever read while sitting in detention in the library at Thornton Fractional North Township High School. The character written about in the movie had been waiting. My job was to wait, although I could not stop thoughts about the HAL 9000 computer on the ship being slowly disabled after it failed.

I could not speak or mouth the words, but the song the computer sang while its brains were being disassembled would never leave me. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do, I’m so crazy, all for the love of you…” playing ever more slowly reverberated in my mind. Were the liquid leeching portions of my brain out as it circulated through my body like in that so predictive movie?

I settled onto the soft bottom of the sea floor, glad it was soft and not coral or rock. My thin wetsuit protected me from the elements around me. My liquid gave me life. All I had was reverie. How had I gone through almost forty years of life to wind up on the bottom of an ocean sitting next to monumental powers that were the very building blocks of my species, my planet, my solar system, and so much more beyond?

Reality came into my back and grabbed me by my mental stacking swivel as I was jerked to my feet by a sharp tug on the umbilical cord that was my lifeline. I spread my arms out, as if to say ‘okay’ and get back at it, or maybe like the dealers do in Vegas or Reno, symbolically meaning they are done with the table, with the game, with the night. In seconds, I was being pulled from the near-total muddy darkness at the bottom, the weapon’s recovery by the Kamehameha being abrupt, violent, and mission-oriented. I was cast off as debris in a game of chess where I didn’t know where the pieces were, much less what they meant, and what moves might affect my own.

My only move was upward, as light and more light entered my visual area. The liquid that gave me life also kept me from death, and although I had made not one move of any kind during the mission, I knew it was one of the most definitive moments in my life.

Light was everywhere, and with it came warmth and life. I had been cold but hadn’t known I was cold at all until I was warm again. Surfacing wasn’t like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle at all. It was thrusting up slowly through salty, clear Jello until my ankles were secured, and I was suspended above the water. Hands once again were all over me, removing and withdrawing attached and inserted tools and equipment that had been insinuated on and into parts of my body.

Hoisted upward to be swept over to the main body of the tender, I saw Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head from upside down before the machine pivoted me aboard and lowered my body to the waiting arms of the recovery team. Unlike after the last mission, this time the medical people were all over me, and my transport was a regular gurney. For some reason, I had to be tested immediately instead of riding the longboat back to Ford Island and being treated and tested there. Unaccountably, neither Kingsley nor Nguyen was anywhere to be seen.

I was quickly stripped out of my wetsuit and booties before having a towel wrapped fully around me. The towel was pre-heated from somewhere, and a nice comforting touch.

There was no needle penetration for setting up an I.V. or any of that, just one deep plunge from a painful needle into the center of my right wrist.

“Arterial oxygen detection,” the sympathetic attendant said, before pulling away with her sample and disappearing from my view. The doctor, if he was a doctor, appeared at my side.

“You’re in good shape, no more PVCs down there or up here, and that’s a good thing. As you proceed, be aware that there are no studies available about how the liquids you were breathing might affect you over time. If you have respiratory issues, then check in with a physician as soon as possible.”

“What about the heart?” I asked, the three UDT failures are still very much at the front edge of my thinking.

The doctor looked away before rising to his feet.

“Not my specialty,” he said, but with a smile, as if he understood my underlying concern about how some had reacted to the liquid along the way but knew of no real negative side effects.

I slowly sat up and shakily got to my feet. Everyone was wrapping up and departing around me. There was no Hibachi for an after-action report, and Herbert wasn’t there either. I’d done nothing, truly nothing on the mission, and I felt a little bit like I’d failed in so doing, but there was nowhere to take those feelings. Despite not being active under the water, I was once again totally fatigued, not only physically but mentally. Relief flooded through me as I realized the affair was over and that I wouldn’t be going down again. If I never breathed a liquid in place of air in my life I I’d be just fine with that.

The coxswain of the boat was different, the original two UDT Frogmen having given way to others on the staff. The pilot was a large man of thick substance, obviously a weight lifter as well as no doubt equipped in other physical pursuits of prowess as well.

Neither man helped me get across the transom of the boats curved hull. I climbed in on my own as the other man slipped the lines and the coxswain engaged the burbling inboard motor.

I stood up and held on as I worked my way to the bow. The boat ride was short, but I wanted to feel the wind in my face and entering my lungs as we motored across the short distance.

“You’re the hotshot spy guy with no underwater experience running a mission in our own backyard, are you not?” the big man laughed out as I went by him.

I looked across the harbor toward where the submarine pen was, noting that the propellers of all the boats were covered over with huge canvas tent-like structures. Someone on the UDT team had commented about the fact that the number and shape of the fins were a closely held secret,t as their shape contributed to how silent U.S. submarines were to others out there in the world. I turned away from the coxswain and moved further toward the bow. I was deeply fatigued again. All I wanted was to get to the Royal Hawaiian, climb first into a hot shower and then into a cool, comfortable bed.

“Can’t handle the heat?” the coxswain said from behind my back. “Little pipsqueak like you, well, I think we all can understand that. Supposedly, you’re a lieutenant in the Marines, but you are a little long in the tooth for that rank, or is that all made up too?”

I reached the bow, but had to kneel to grab other curved surfaces of he hull that came to a point to make it a bow. I squinted my eyes against the low and wonderful passing air from the ocean water, the aroma better than any perfume. I breathed in and out several times and stared toward where the landing was. I saw two figures emerge from the shadows of a nearby quonsut hut. Relief swept over me. I didn’t turn around again until the boat nosed in and nudged itself into the side of one of the low-lying piers.

I turned back to get my bag but the coxswain moved from his place at the helm to stand between me and the bag.

The big man stared into my eyes, a great fake smile running from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Think you’re man enough?” he hissed out, bobbing his head slightly forward to make the comment more expressively threatening.

“No,” I replied, in my normal voice. As I did so I turned my head and looked up on the pier to see what I expected to see, Kingsley and Nguyen standing at the edge not more than six feet from myself and coxswain.

“This man could well prove to impede the mission. Might you go ahead and remove him from service for a while?” I said, stepping back slightly toward the bow to give both men room to come aboard between me and the macho UDT frogman.

“After you’re done with him, would you get my bag. My clothes are at the center, and I need to dress for the hotel.”

“The chopper is on the tarmac waiting,” Kingsley said softly, jumping aboard.

I wondered what we needed the chopper for, but then concentrated on climbing out of the boat, slowly and awkwardly, as the gantry hadn’t been adjusted to the side of the hull. I got onto the asphalt, but on my hands and knees, almost too weak to stand up. Finally, I was vertical, in time to hear two splashes, one after another. I looked back. Nguyen stood holding my bag next to the helm. Kingsley was behind the controls, and I heard the ignition start the inboard motor.

The coxswain and his assistant were both yelling something from in the water behind the boat.

“Shut it down,” I instructed Kingsley gently.

“Just moving them offshore a bit,” he said, turning the key to kill the engine.

I smiled as I walked toward the building in the distance. Either men would have done anything for me, I knew, but the ten thousand apiece probably made any boundaries to what that might be pretty unlimited.
I made it to the center, went to the locker room, and found my stuff. I changed and felt better in doing so. I’d shower at the hotel where they had expensive nozzles and plenty of hot pressure in the water. I smiled at the thought as I headed back to the entrance. Kingsley and Nguyen stood just outside the bank vault door into the place, like two lions on pedestals guarding the entrance to a museum. The two UDT guys were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t bother to ask about their condition as, if they’d been injured, Kingsley would have reported it already.

A Navy Jeep appeared out of nowhere, its brakes slightly squeaking as it came to a stop. The three of us climbed in. The trip to the tarmac lasted a whole five minutes, if that.

Tiredly, I climbed out just outside the wash of the whirling blades of the CH-53. Mack walked out from under them and motioned us forward, toward the lowered cargo ramp. I walked up the ramp and almost fell into one other what passed for seats along one side of the fuselage, the nylon webbing not comfortable but definitely doing the job of helping to allow me to begin to relax.

The blades of the chopper began to spin faster and faster. Mack leaned into me when I motioned for him to do so. It was too loud for normal conversation, so I cupped my right hand over his left ear.

“The Royal Hawaiian doesn’t have a landing pad for this thing,” I yelled.

Mack leaned forward toward my ear as the machine jerked us all up into the air, and hearing anything became almost impossible.

“We’re not going there,” he got out to me in a muffled form.