Guns have a terrible tendency not to work underwater. They will fire but they will not do much after that. Bullets tend to lose velocity after only a few meters, fragment and the weapon will concuss the user from the pressure displacement of being fired. Divers are trained to stay deep and move silently, this avoids almost any kind of harm from bullets fired into the water. They are taught how to kill the old fashioned way: sharp stuff.
Most subsurface combat involves disabling your opponents air tanks, if possible, and to do so in a way that will also enable them to salvage their opponents’ gear. The rest of the techniques involve various ways of interrupting life with a sharp object, primarily the survival knife. The Coast Guard search and rescue ship did not have harpoons or spears, Perry and Wells were going to have to MacGuiver weapons. They were also going to have to figure out how to take on diving suits not seen since the 1950’s.
Ke had proven herself resourceful again when she brought out mop handles and metal duct tape, but Wells had his reservations about them. Perry trusted most things with enough duct tape and was certainly willing to try. An older Army veteran who’d transferred to the coast guard had a substantial combat knife that he loaned. A weighted and balanced handle, blackened tempered blade that had been sharpened time and time again from boredom into a razor edge. Ke had taken the combat knife and duct-tape-welded it to a mop handle to make a sort of spear.
The remaining coasties were busy scavenging anything possible that the diving team would need on their return dive. Aside from being grossly under equipped for the task of ensuring the Brunhilde was “leak proof”, they also had to try and mount a rescue against an unknown number of armored assailants. There was the one advantage they had over the armor: mobility. The old dive suits were designed to walk along to ocean floor, heavy and protected. The salvage team would be able to swim above them and try to stab away, assuming they could find them first.
Them.
Perry and Wells were trying their best not to try and think about who could be in those old dive suits. They muttered to each other over the welding equipment to bring and what sort of flippers to use for speed, but they did not want to think about what was waiting for them below. They could barely talk about Tom or Paul. Ke had joined the two navy divers, already in her wetsuit and hair drawn tight in a bun, she impressed them both by how quickly she donned most of her gear before asking for a hand. If she had been acting tough to prove something, it worked, but Ke never acted, they simply hadn’t learned that about her yet. She locked her belt cutter hook-blade into a sheath strapped to her calve and looked expectantly at Wells who sat beside the respirator masks. He let a flash of a smile come and go like barely noticed lightning and stood to help her get finished, but then Akin decided to speak.
His voice had an edge to it, as though he were on the verge of a screaming fit and barely in control. Akin had said 20 minutes to prep forty minutes ago, the speed of these Navy Divers was deplorable, his own diver had been prepped in ten minutes. Firing the two wasn’t an option, but he could put Ke in charge…
“No,” Akin thought to himself, “she’s too meek, the moment they slip into the darkness they’ll take back over and bumblefuck their way through the night.”
Commodore Cole had continued to receive his desired updates, in fact his last update was that the salvage was going smoothly and that the team had resurfaced for a snack and to swap out tanks.
“Are we finally ready to begin this operation?” Akin was letting his emotions get the better of him.
Perry never looked at the commander, instead he grasped the spear and felt the weight tweeter over two fingers as he replied, “that’s awfully liberal use of the term we, sir.”
Akin stiffened visibly and subconsciously ran his hand down his center to ensure all of his buttons were fastened. A common mistake during inform inspections easily avoided by a subtle swipe of the belly to feel for any missed buttons. Wells recognized it for what it was at once; doubt.
“Very well, lieutenant. You’re behind schedule. You’re leading the dive op. *You’re going to write to the next of kin if the rednecks are dea-“, Akin’s venom was stopped cold by Wells who spoke loudly but without much tone.
“He’s written those before, sir. He’s written several. How many letters home to wives and mothers have you scribbled, sir?”
The deck was silent, the water slapping against the hull in the dark night air. Even the gulls were absent in that moment. Ke shifted uncomfortably in her weighted vest and Wells continued to weave some paracord to the handle of his welding tool. Perry had shifted to square up and face Akin. For a long while neither man moved. Challenging commanding officers on a ship was mutiny, a custom typically avoided or abhorrently punished when it presented.
Finally Perry broke the silence and peered out past Akin into the blackness of the ocean under a starless night, “We aren’t coming back up without them, Commander. Which means I hope you’re ready to type five letters should we fail. That’d be one more than I ever had to, sir.”
Ke felt that statement resonate deeply in her mind. In the furthest reaches of her memories in deep-water oil rig work she recalled pulling a tangle of softened and torn flesh from under mangled steel that had crushed a fellow diver. Of how light and pathetically empty the bodybags sent home could be. How infinitesimally small she felt as she would scoop together tattered remnants of humans from the crushing darkness. Without realizing the sound it would cause, she turned and clicked her helmet respirator into place, a loud hiss breaking Akin’s glare on Perry.
“Very well, Salvage Team, get to work.” Akin offered little else in the way of a ‘good luck’ goodbye.
On the bridge a coastie aimed the spot light at the stern of the ship, illuminating the divers’ drop in point. Perry and Wells clacked their helmets in place and double checked their radios, lining up beside Ke to drop in. Wells carried the oblong deep sea welding kit, Perry the spear, and Ke a tool kit full of tricks.
“Let’s go get our boys back,” said Wells, and the three splashed in.