During one window, Mercer asked for Evan.
Hale looked at him. “Can you keep him talking without exhausting him?”
“Yes, sir.”
Evan took the microphone.
“Mercer, this is Cole.”
Static.
Then a weak laugh.
“Knew…you’d hear knocking.”
Evan’s throat tightened.
Of course.
During diving training, Mercer had taught emergency tapping patterns by making students sit in a dark steel mockup while he struck the outside with a wrench.
Three. Three. Three.
Then three, three, two—the class number Evan had belonged to.
“You used our class signal.”
“Had to…get your attention.”
“How did you know I was aboard?”
A pause.
“Roster…before launch. Your boat listed…support contact. Didn’t know location.”
That answered one mystery. Mercer had not known where the submarine was. He had known Evan was assigned to it before Marlin launched eleven days earlier. The drifting submersible had found them by accident—or by the kind of narrow chance that only looked impossible after it worked.
“What happened to you?”
Mercer’s reply broke apart. Evan caught only pieces.
Power failure.
Navigation lost.
Emergency ballast problem.
Current.
No surface communication.
Then one clear sentence.
“Debris wasn’t us.”
Evan looked at Hale.
The presumed-death report had been built on evidence that appeared convincing: broken exterior panels and equipment with Marlin’s serial markings recovered near the training area. But the vehicle itself had not been found.
