Barracuda (6 page)

Captain Jonas started the engines, and soon the
Lily I
was crossing the atoll headed toward the final
resting place of the heroic USS
Saratoga
. Carol helped tie
the dive boat to the mooring ball, and Steve told the divers to
gear up.

Billy and Bob, two Australian brothers, were the
first to put on their gear. As they did so, Billy muttered to his
brother, “Shit! I thought we might get to see some old World War
Two planes.”

“Well, maybe we will,” Bob replied quietly.

“How? You heard what Steve said.”

“They can’t keep an eye on ten divers all the
time. If there’s a hole big enough to fit through, I’m going in.
This Canadian girlie man isn’t going to stop me.”

“I don’t know, Bobby. You heard what he said
about stuff falling and shifting all the time.”

“C’mon, Billy, we didn’t come all this way and
pay all this money to look at the outside of an old rusty boat, did
we?”

“I guess not,” Billy murmured.

“Are you guys ready?” Steve asked the
brothers.

“Yup,” they answered in unison.

Steve checked that their air tanks were turned
on, their gauges were working, and their computers were on. “In you
go, but wait at the surface for the rest of us.”

Billy and Bobby duck-walked to the rear of the
boat, and Billy took a giant stride into the water. He submerged
several feet and then bobbed to the surface, patting his hand on
top of his head, the universal diver signal indicating that he was
okay. Billy kicked his fins to get out of the way so Bob could take
a giant stride.

With all twelve divers on the surface, Steve
said, “When I give the divers down signal, I want everyone to vent
air out of your buoyancy compensator—that’s BC—vests and follow me
down the mooring line.”

He gave the thumbs-down sign, expelled air from
his vest, and slowly sank into the clear blue South Pacific water.
When he was down ten feet, he watched the others as they slowly
sank. All looked good, so he inverted his body and descended
headfirst to swim to the mooring line that led down to the flight
deck of the
Saratoga
.

Once he arrived at the huge flight deck, Steve
glanced up at the new divers looking down at the silent warrior
vessel. He knew that this was a great checkout dive for divers who
had just arrived at the Majestic hours ago. It was barely past
three o’clock, and the weary travelers were descending into a
watery time warp. Less than one hundred divers had yet to have the
pleasure of standing on this deck in the past fifty years, and
these descending divers would soon join that illustrious group.

It was like watching a movie in slow motion as
the divers glided down past the aircraft carrier’s bridge
superstructure, silhouetted against the afternoon sky above. The
visibility was in the one-hundred-foot range, and the fish life was
active. Steve saw the silhouettes of several sharks and schools of
diverse fish, from small baitfish to the larger pelagic fish that
were so abundant in this tropical water.

Once the divers were all kneeling on the flight
deck at a depth of one hundred and fifteen feet, Steve went up to
each diver to give the okay signal. Each diver, in turn, returned
the signal.

Then Steve slowly swam to the bow of the massive
carrier and bobbed headfirst down into the abyss. When he reached
the front torpedo tubes, he stopped and looked at his dive gauges;
he was at one hundred and forty feet, and his bottom time was near
three minutes already. He waited for the rest of the divers to
catch up to him and then pointed to the once deadly torpedo shafts
of death. After each diver got a good look, Steve continued
swimming back toward the stern pointing out various parts of the
ship’s hull and compartments that were crushed shut. He pointed to
several large green moray eels that had made the crevices their
home. He even gently pulled out a small octopus that occupied a
hole in a piece of metal tubing. The octopus immediately began
changing colors to adapt to his surroundings as Steve let the
creature float within the group of inquisitive divers.

Bill quickly reached out to touch the octopus,
and as if sensing aggression, it darted away in a spray of black
ink that left a dark cloud in its place. Steve shook his head
disapprovingly at Bill and continued the underwater tour.

The divers were able to get up close and
personal with the USS
Saratoga
. They could see and touch her
corroded hull, and see the reddish colors produced by years of
oxidation. The many levels of the hull looked like someone had
stepped on a child’s dollhouse and crushed it. Groupers, angelfish,
snappers, and many other kinds of fish swam in and out of the small
openings of this now dormant centurion. The once sleek lines of the
hull were buckled, and sharp edges were precariously protruding.
Thin sheets of fishing nets ominously shrouded the wreck. Steve
pointed out each hazard to the divers as they were encountered.

At one point, he shone his dive light through
one of the larger openings. A large hatch cover was bent in an
outward concave position allowing a three-foot opening. It was
large enough for the divers to stick their heads into for a look
but too small to enter with scuba tanks. The light beam could only
penetrate for about four feet into the darkness, but each diver
could see the numerous dangling beams and cables that made the
interior of this cargo room resemble a huge spider’s web of death.
Colorful fish darted about anxiously when the light beam hit them.
Bob and Bill showed a special interest in this cargo hatch as they
pushed and pulled at the hinges that held the ancient hatch in
place. Steve had to tap them on the shoulder and motion them to
follow him.

The dive master remained on alert and frequently
checked his dive computer. He knew that this diver operation was in
its infancy and that an underwater tragedy could cripple its
future, so he followed a conservative dive profile. Soon he was
once again ascending from the lower depths up to the flight deck.
He arranged his divers in a circle, pointed to the bridge, and
motioned that it was the next point of interest. Then he shot a
blast of air into his BC vest and slowly ascended toward the
bridge. As he rose, he watched as the other divers did the same and
Carol followed up the rear.

The bridge was not as crushed as the lower
levels, and there were several large openings where the ambient
light allowed great visibility. Several sheets of worn fish netting
covered the upper antennae in a veiled shroud. Steve pointed out
the danger before slowly leading the way on a tour of the
accessible areas of the once imposing war room of the carrier. All
the machinery and controls were covered in a bed of soft coral that
lit up in an infinite array of colors when splashed with sunlight.
It was a perfect day for diving as the sun reached down to the
depths from a cloudless sky.

After the short tour of the bridge, Steve used
hand signals to each diver to indicate how much air they had
remaining. Each finger represented one hundred psi from a three
thousand psi tank. All ten divers were quite experienced, and none
were low on air as they began their decompression stops. While
doing their various deco stops off gassing, the divers were treated
to a sensational show of nature as a large group of gray reef
sharks aggressively fed on a school of mackerel far below. The
carnage was quick and deadly. When the sharks swam out of view, a
school of horse-eyed jacks cleaned up the remains.

The gray reef sharks were the top predators in
these waters, and it was their job to help maintain the delicate
balance of nature. If there were too many mackerels, they ate more
than their share of the smaller fish and threw off the balance of
other fish that fed on the same baitfish. Scientists have
discovered just how important this balance was as it slid down the
food chain from top predator to the smallest of fish. A drastic
change in one species in this sequence adversely affected the
entire food chain.

When the decompression time was over, Steve
climbed on board the
Lily I
first and helped the other
divers as they climbed aboard. A rolling boat could be pretty
dangerous when divers were fatigued and tried walking with a
hundred pounds of gear strapped to their backs. Steve walked each
diver safely back to their seats and unbuckled their gear, while
Carol stayed in the water until the last diver was seated. It
looked like the dive had been a success as the enthusiastic
tourists cackled about the sights they had just witnessed.

Steve was quite happy with himself that this
checkout dive had gone so smoothly. He did, however, stop Bill and
Bob and ask, “What were you trying to do down there?”

“What do you mean?” Bill growled.

“You know exactly what I mean. I saw you two
trying to pull that hatch cover off. Didn’t you see the cobweb of
hanging wires and cables? I don’t care if you guys want to be
foolish and kill yourselves, but the whole dive operation in Bikini
will suffer if something like that happens. In addition, with that
hatch cover missing, who knows how many other divers will venture
in out of curiosity and never swim out?”

“We’re all big boys here, Steve-o, and if we
want to do extreme diving then we will. We paid a lot of money so
that we could,” Bill returned with a sneer.

Steve didn’t budge. “That might fly at other
resorts, but while I’m the dive master here, you will obey my dive
profile or you can ride over to the Bikini dive resort and dive
with them.”

“Will they let us penetrate the carrier?” Bob
asked bluntly.

“No, they will not,” Steve countered as he
walked away toward the scuba tank filling station.

“That guy is a jerk,” Bill said to his
brother.

“C’mon, Billy, I just think he’s being careful.
Remember, nobody has dived here in over half a century, and he’s
probably a bit nervous about some wahoos doing something stupid.
Besides, we’ll be diving with the Renegades from the Bikini Resort
Dive Center in a couple of days.”

Bill shrugged. “Let’s get some grub, Bob. I’m
hungry.”

But later, back in their room, Bill brought up
the subject again. “Did you see how loose that hatch was?” he asked
his brother.

“Yeah, what about it?” Bob returned.

“I think we can pry it off with a large crowbar.
Then we can be the first to gain access.” Bill was excited as he
paced around their hotel room. He sat down at the writing desk and
made some scribbles on hotel paper.

Bob looked at his brother like he was nuts. “We
can’t just gut the ship and explore it without anyone knowing.”

“Sure we can. Look, this has been the plan all
along! Since that Canadian diver won’t help us, we can hire any one
of a number of small fishing boats to take us there while the dive
resorts are scheduled to dive on other wrecks. That Canadian can’t
tell us what we can or cannot do. We can pay the fishermen to keep
quiet, and then we’ll be the first to recover artifacts.”

“I don’t know. They might have salvage laws that
we’d be breaking,” Bob cautioned.

“Shit, Bob! You are such a pussy! I had to put
our business together and run it while you did nothing but worry
and second guess me.”

Bob knew that his brother was right. Bill was
the contentious one of the two. When their parents were killed in a
car accident in Sydney, the brothers used the insurance money to
open the Brothers Grimm Saloon in the Rocks section of Sydney
overlooking the harbor. Ironically, it was a drunk driver that had
taken their parents lives. Bob didn’t want to call the bar Grimm,
but Bill aggressively persisted and won; and the dark humor
surrounding the circumstances of the Grimm name made the bar an
instant hit.

The saloon was a popular watering hole for
dockworkers and tourists alike. A local scuba club, the Renegades,
held their monthly meetings there. This club was more like a biker
gang, a squalid sort who had ventured into the world of extreme
diving. They would attack a virgin shipwreck like a school of
piranha and remove all the artifacts before other divers could view
them. This was very disturbing to other dive clubs because there
was a great dissension amongst divers in regard to stripping a
shipwreck solely for personal souvenirs. The Renegades were
considered to be a rebellious coterie, and they gave a bad name to
serious wreck divers who took joy in just taking pictures and
experiencing the thrill of exploration.

Bob remembered that Bill had bullied him into
taking this dive trip to Shark Alley Island a week prior to the
Renegades’ arrival. Bill wanted to reconnoiter Bikini Atoll first
and then come back with the Renegades later. The Renegades already
had a scavenger hunt planned inside the
Saratoga
. The divers
who retrieved the most hidden objects won a variety of prizes from
a cash pool that Bill had already collected. Bill was to hide the
objects while Bob made a list of what was hidden where. The objects
were Renegade bandanas tied in various locations within the
coffin-like confines of the ship. Bill was miffed because he had
fifty bandanas and couldn’t gain access to the ship’s interior. He
also had fifty-five hundred dollars worth of prizes back at the
saloon for the scavenger hunt winners.

“Bob, I have to gain access through that bent
hatch and hide the bandanas, otherwise the Renegades will go nuts.
I’ll begin searching for a big enough crowbar tonight, and a local
fisherman to take us to the
Saratoga
after the Majestic dive
boat leaves the site. They have a nine o’clock dive scheduled, so
they should be off the wreck and back at the dock by eleven. We’ll
go out there at noon on Tuesday, pry open the hatchway, and hide
the bandanas. We’ll leave the Majestic on Wednesday and meet up
with the Renegades at the Bikini dive resort. While they do their
scavenger hunt, we can rape the wreck of its artifacts.”