“Just lucky.”

“I don't know how lucky you are. We've got to get inside that thing.”

“There's no time like the present. I suggest we take a look at the underside.”

With a nod of his head, Zavala cranked up the throttle and put the SeaBus into a glide that took them directly under the massive structure. The surface was made of a translucent green material that emitted a dull glow. Zavala's hyperbole not with standing, the facility would have been an impressive engineering feat even on dry land. Like the Baja operation, this structure also rested on four cylindrical legs around the perimeter.

“There are openings in the outside legs,” Austin said. “Probably like the ones in Mexico, used for intake and exhaust.”

Zavala brought the submersible in close to a fifth support at the very center of the structure. He switched on the sub's twin spotlights. “No duct openings. Hello. What have we here?” He nudged the SeaBus closer to an oval depression in the otherwise smooth surface of the support. “Looks like a door. Still no welcome mat, though.”

“Maybe they forgot it,” Austin said. “What say we park the bus and pay a neighborly social call?”

Zavala dropped the SeaBus lightly onto the ledge next to the support leg. They pulled on their air tanks and the headsets for their Divelink communicators. Austin tucked his big Bowen and some spare ammunition into a waterproof fanny pack. The pack held a 9mm Glock to replace the machine pistol Zavala lost in Alaska.

Austin crawled into the snug airlock first, flooded the chamber, then opened the outer hatch. Minutes later, Zavala joined him outside the SeaBus. They swam to the support leg and rose up the thick cylinder, where they hung on to hand bars on either side of the door. To the right of the tight seam was a panel. Encased in clear plastic were two large buttons, one red and the other green. The green one was glowing.

They hesitated.

“She might be connected to an alarm,” Zavala said, echoing Austin's own thoughts.

“I was wondering the same thing. But why would they bother? The neighborhood around here isn't exactly swarming with burglars.”

“We don't have a lot of choice,” Zavala said. “Go for it.”

Austin pushed against the glowing button. If an alarm went off, they didn't hear it. A section in the support leg slid silently aside to reveal an opening shaped like a mouth wide open in a yawn. Zavala gave Austin the okay sign and swam in first. Austin was right on his fins. They were in a chamber shaped like the inside of a hat box. A metal ladder hung down from the ceiling. On the wall was a duplicate of the switch that opened the door. Austin pushed the glowing green button. He accidentally nudged the pack with their weapons, and it fell through the opening in the air lock.

“Forget it,” he said, anticipating Zavala's question. “We don't have time.”