The hulking figure with the silver buckle revealed the hands that had been stoically tucked at the small of his back, a small piece of fabric rested in an outstretched hand. Tom and Paul looked to each other and then to the offering, their eyes a mixture of confusion and terror still. A hand pressed into both their backs to push them to the cloth and their attention focused to it at once. Carefully stitched into the material with many tiny imperfections were the flags of England, Canada, France, Spain, America, Nazi-Germany, and, almost as an afterthought from how shabby it appeared, The Rising Sun flag of Japan. The hand jolted out towards them again and again a hand pressed between their shoulder blades towards the rag covered in flags.
Tom’s mind raced, he wondered a lot of things in that moment. He wondered if pointing at the wrong flag would get them killed, he wondered what nazi’s were doing at the bottom of the ocean. He wondered why the submarine still looked as though it worked. Why a submarine on its side looked so upright and orderly inside. But most of all, in that exact moment, he wondered if they would be rescued.
The second of the pair of old diving suits before them gestured beyond the brothers and at once the hand on their backs fell away. Then the second of the pair motioned toward the flag chart and turned his palm upward, the ball helmet canting almost imperceptibly to the side. A request. The brothers looked at each other again and suddenly felt their bound hands loosen and go free. Tom rubbed his wrists a moment and looked to Paul who seemed to be seeking guidance with imploring eyes to his older brother. Tom nodded, whatever fate awaited them was barely in their hands at this point. Paul slowly reached out and pointed to the American flag.
Descending upon the submarine, Ke began to mentally list all the tools in the kit strapped round her chest. Things to fight with. Things to drag with. Salvage and recovery stuff was a marvelous sort of multiuse, and though she had never been to battle school for diving, she had dealt with her share of panicking tourists as a guide in the Caribbean decades ago. Perry rehearsed combat techniques in his mind, where to aim the spears jabs, how to twist for maximum damage, he had been practicing the motion on the way down. Wells was listing the advantages and disadvantages he, Perry, and Ke would have waiting at the bottom.
They could fly around their heavily armored opponents. They had flooding lights. They could talk to each other. But then again, so could the other divers, but how? Most of that old stuff had to be hard wired to one another, wireless radio didn’t become a thing for diving teams until the late forties, early 50’s. What the salvage team couldnt do was move like lightning, they had to use the lights and give away their position, the didnt have much armor, and they didn’t have hostages to exchange. It was a terrible sort of balance between the two sides, but on the plus side, if sorta looked like he got to fight deep sea Nazi zombies, which makes for a great story for his nephews. Wells grinned to himself as the Brunhilde began to show in the receding darkness.