Dan Perkins climbed up through Toledo’s engine room hatch into the belly of Mystic. Gary Nichols followed him up the ladder and shut the hatch behind him. The two men climbed up and forward into the command sphere and sat in the pilot and copilot seats. Mystic came to life as Perkins shifted from the umbilical connecting them to Toledo onto internal systems.

He put on a set of headphones and talked to Glass through the underwater telephone. “Toledo, this is Mystic. Mating latch released. Flooding and equalizing skirt for undocking.”

Nichols flipped a couple of switches that allowed seawater to fill the skirt connecting the DSRV to the mother sub. With the skirt filled and the pressure equalized with the outside sea, Mystic lifted off Toledo’s back. Next, Perkins pushed forward on the throttle so that the large screw began to turn. The rescue sub turned and headed for the bottom.

At three knots, the trip would take half an hour, but they dared not pull Toledo any closer. They needed the standoff room just in case it was a trap. This would give Glass the distance to defend Toledo if he needed to.

The stricken sub came into sight through the DSRV’s viewing window. Although Perkins had seen the damage on the video monitor, viewing it this close made it look much worse. No weapon could have caused this type of mayhem. The explosion had plainly come from inside the sub, but there shouldn’t be anything back here that could accidentally explode. Just the barest tendrils of suspicion began to creep around the edges of his consciousness.

Perkins steered the DSRV until they hovered over the hatch; then he allowed it to settle down until it rested over it. Nichols started the pump that began to remove water from inside the skirt. That caused sea pressure to push down with ever-increasing force until the skirt was dry and the weight of the sea married them to the Russian sub.

Once satisfied they had a good seal, the two men pulled masks out from under their seats and put them on. If the air inside the sub was poisoned, they couldn’t risk breathing it. Nichols stepped out of the copilot’s seat and eased back into the rescue chamber. He checked one more time that the air masks were ready for his passengers and then looked through the tiny viewing port into the skirt. He wanted to make doubly sure that it was dry and seated properly.