A crane had been brought in to lift the submersible from the truck onto the raft. The stern wheeler left early in the morning before the waterfront got busy. The boat hunkered offshore until it was time to make its usual crossing. Even with its heavy load the raft pitched and yawed as it was towed along. Austin and Zavala had to brace themselves as they knelt at the rear, each man above one of the lift bags. On signal they simultaneously stabbed the rubber pontoons with their dive knives. The air shot out in a loud hiss that rapidly turned to a flatulent bubbling. Squeezed between the water and the raft, the pontoons rapidly deflated. As the back of the raft settled into the water, they unhooked the tie lines securing the SeaBus. Then they scrambled through the aft hatch, made sure all was tight, and settled into the cockpit.

The front of the raft tilted upward at an angle. Then, as the lift bags deflated, it leveled out and began to sink. It was a primitive launching system for such a sophisticated craft, but it worked. The SeaBus maintained its buoyancy as the raft sank and was pulled out by the forward motion of the paddle wheeler. The submersible danced in the larger boat's wake and sank into the foam kicked up by the stern paddles. As they gained depth the water changed from blue-green to blue-black.

Austin adjusted the ballast, and the sub attained neutral buoyancy at fifty feet. The battery-driven motors whined as Zavala goosed the throttle and pointed the submersible toward shore. They were lucky to have no current pushing against the round, almost blunt bow of the submersible and could keep it at a steady ten knots. Within half an hour they had covered the five miles to land.

As Zavala steered, Austin consulted the sonar screen. The rocky shore continued its vertical drop into the water for more than a hundred feet before jutting out in a wide ledge. The sonar picked up an extremely large object resting on the ledge directly under the floating pier. Moments later they looked up and saw the long shape of the pier and its floats silhouetted against the shimmer of surface light. Austin hoped his earlier assessment was correct, that the guard was too numb from boredom to notice any disturbance the submersible might cause. Zavala took the SeaBus down in a shallow spiral while Austin alternated between radar and visual checks.

“Level out. Fast,” Austin said.

Zavala responded instantly, and the submersible circled like a hungry shark.

“Were we getting too close to the ledge?”

“Not exactly. Take her out and go down another fifty feet.”

The SeaBus moved away from the shore and spun around so they were facing a ledge.

“Madre de Dios,” Zavala said. “Last time I knew, the Astrodome was still in Texas.”

“I doubt you'll find any Dallas Cowgirls inside that thing,” Austin said.

“It's similar to the one that went ka-pop in the Baja. Hate to admit it, but you were right as usual.”