They continued along the walkway through another door and found themselves outside the changing room, where they found dry suits that fit the navy men. Austin and Trout carefully folded their borrowed coveralls and replaced them on the shelves. Then they all moved on to the decompression chamber. The dive gear was undisturbed. They descended a short stairway that led to a room with the smaller moon pool. Set into the deck was a depressed twelve-by-twelve-foot-square section outlining the pool that was used for launching ROVs. Trout studied the controls on the wall, then hit a button and the floor of the shallow wall slid back.

Water lapped over the top of the well and a damp, briny chill filled the room.

The pilot looked into the dark square of ocean and gulped. “You're kidding.”

“Sorry it isn't a hot tub,” Austin said. “But unless you can figure a way to open the main floodgates so we can use the NR-1, this is the only way off the ship.”

“Hell, this should be no different from the escape training tank at Groton,” the captain said with bravado, although his face was pale.

“We don't have any spare air tanks, so we'll buddy-breathe. It's about a hundred-yard swim to our pickup. The open hatch probably sets off an alarm up in the wheelhouse, so we don't have much time.”

Despite his bluster, the captain didn't look enthusiastic about the prospect ahead, but he gritted his teeth, pulled the hood down and the face mask over his eyes. “Let's go before I change my mind,” he growled.

Austin handed the pilot the auxiliary air hose, called the octopus. Trout did the same with the captain. When all were ready, Austin linked arms with the pilot, stepped to the edge of the pool and jumped in.

They sank in a cloud of bubbles until their buoyancy overcame their downward momentum. The bubbles quickly cleared, and Austin saw Trout's light waving in the gloom from several feet away. Austin started swimming. The submariners' kicking technique was uneven and the Siamese-twin arrangement was awkward, but they managed to claw their way out from under the ship's massive bulk.

Austin felt himself rising and falling. Sea conditions must be deteriorating. Austin's compass was useless so close to the huge metal mass of the Ataman ship. He relied on dead reckoning to move them in the general direction of the rendezvous.

When Austin gauged they were a hundred yards from the ship, he stopped and signaled for the others to do the same. While they hovered thirty feet below the surface, he undid a small self-inflating buoy from his belt and looped a nylon line tied to the buoy over his wrist. He released the buoy and let it rise to the surface, where the miniature transponder it carried would start broadcasting their location.