“Glad to help make your day,” Austin said. “Got to go. Just keep steaming after you drop us off.”

“How will you get back?”

“We're working on that,” Austin said with a grin.

Austin left the pilothouse and descended to the spacious salon on the lowest deck. On a normal day the salon would be crowded with tourists eating and drinking as they took in the magnificent scenery. Only two people were in the salon, Joe and Paul. Zavala was already in his black-hooded Viking Pro military dry suit, and Trout was going over a checklist. Austin lost no time suiting up. Then he and Zavala went through an opening in the side of the boat that was used to let passengers on and off.

They would have stepped directly into the lake if not for a wooden platform slung alongside the stern wheeler. The raft floated on ocean salvage tubes, elongated pontoons made of tough nylon fabric and capable of lifting several tons of weight. The assembly had been cobbled together in the late hours of the morning. Contos was on the raft making sure they hadn't made any major mistakes in hastily putting the thing together.

“How's she look?” Austin said.

“Not quite as good as the one Huckleberry Finn used on the Mississippi,” Contos said with a shake of his head. “But she'll do in a pinch, I think.”

“Thanks for your unqualified endorsement of our building skills,” Zavala said.

As he stepped off the raft, Contos rolled his eyes. “Look guys, please try not to lose the SeaBus. It's tough as hell to run a test program without something to test.”

Without its protective covering, the SeaBus looked like a fat plastic sausage. It was a small workhorse version of a tourist sub working in Florida, designed to take crews to and from underwater jobs of moderate depth. It carried up to six passengers and their gear in a transparent pressure hull of acrylic plastic. The hull rested on fat, round skids that carried the hard ballast, trim, drop weights, and thrusters. Higher on the sides were additional ballast tanks and compressed air containers. The external structures were attached to the pressure hull by a tough ring frame. The two-seat cockpit was at the front. In the aft section was the electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical heart of the sub and an air lock that allowed divers to go in and out while the SeaBus was submerged.

Trout stuck his head out of the stern wheeler. “We're coming up on target,” he said, checking his watch. “Three minutes to launch.”

“We're as ready as we'll ever be,” Austin said. “How about you, Paul?”

“Finest kind, cap,” he said with a lopsided grin.

Trout was far from fine. Despite his stolid Yankee facade, he was worried about Gamay and desperately wanted to go on the mission. He knew that with his bad arm he would just get in the way. Austin convinced Trout that they needed someone with a level head above water to call in the troops in case the situation got dicey.