Circle of Bones (55 page)

Cole pulled the regulator out of his mouth. “Just like Lloyd Bridges. I get to star in my own episode of
Sea Hunt
.” He removed his face mask, spit in it and washed the saliva around to prevent the glass from fogging. “Listen, Theo, if Priest shows up while I’m below, blink
Enigma
’s lights twice. I’ll know he’s there and waiting for me. If you think you or Riley are in immediate danger, flash three times, and I’ll know to get to the surface as fast as I can.”

“What about decompressing?”

“Let me worry about that.” Cole situated his mask back on his face. “And let me know what’s going on topsides. You watch my hands on the video screen. I’ll use sign language to communicate.” During their trials of the
Enigma
back in North Carolina, they had both learned to sign the alphabet along with a few basic words.

“According to my computer, it’s 9:47,” Theo said. “Remember, you’ve got the steel mesh cargo net and the air bag if you want to send anything topsides.”

Cole checked his gauges, readjusted his backpack for comfort and took hold of his regulator.

“And Cap, remember, you’ve got no back-up. You be careful down there.”

Cole attempted a grin for his friend. “Roger that. See ya in a few.” He gave Theo a thumbs up, and popped the regulator into his mouth. 

As he descended, Cole kept checking back over his shoulder to make sure the
Enigma
was right behind him. The little ROV was pretty fast once Theo got the ballast tanks flooded right, so she descended at the correct angle. Then her forward thrust drove her downward much faster than a slow sink. Cole shivered as he swam into a new thermal patch where the water was a good ten degrees cooler than the surface. He listened to his breathing — inhale hiss, exhale bubble. In the background, he both heard and felt his own heart pounding. He concentrated on calming his breathing in order to preserve his air. He’d made hundreds of dives in his life, but he hadn’t felt nervous like this since he was a kid.

After the night of strong winds and rain, the visibility was not great. At forty-five feet down now, he could begin to make out the dark blue shadow on the sea floor. The sunlight was starting to dim and the
Enigma
’s head lamps made him feel as though he was swimming in a bright bubble of color while the sea around him turned a dusky shade of blue. The occasional fish darted off in surprise as he swam into its territory, but the most abundant life was evident in the thousands of tiny brine shrimp and microscopic creatures that made the sea water look like a thick biological soup.

Cole reached for his own light that hung by a tether from his backpack. He switched it on as he continued to pump his fins and pop his ears. At first, the concentrated beam reflected back off the matter floating in the water, but then he saw far off in the column of light, a distinct dark shape. It was the rudder, sticking up into the water in such a way that he had a hard time believing what he was looking at. Then he saw the hull stretching out and down ahead of the rudder. He squinted. S
urcouf
was resting on her starboard side, the whole wreck pointing downward into the trench.

A long and thin line, not quite horizontal, caught his attention forward. As he swam deeper, it began to look like a crooked, arthritic finger pointing toward the surface. When he made out the larger shape attached to it, Cole recognized it as one of the pair of thirty-seven millimeter canons
Surcouf
carried aft of the conning tower and atop the seaplane hangar — the long barrel now covered with marine growth.

My God, she’s enormous
. He could not see where the dark hull ended in the gloom in either direction.  As he swam closer, he saw the film of coral and barnacle growth on the lifelines surrounding the hangar deck, but there was less growth than he had imagined. It had to be the depth. Even in these clear Caribbean waters, one didn’t find the lush coral down here where so little sunlight penetrated. It was amazing how intact she was. He reached out and grabbed the lifeline and a small cloud of matter mushroomed around his gloved hand.

Cole looked over his shoulder at the bright headlamps of the ROV. He couldn’t see the video camera, but he knew it was there and Theo was watching him. He gave another thumbs up. He’d made it. He was touching
Surcouf
— the first human to do so in sixty-seven years. Just ahead of him was the round shape of the opening for the seaplane hanger. On top of it was the deck with the pair of deck canons and above that, the conning tower. All of it was tilted at such an extreme angle nose downward, it looked as though she were ready to slide down into the trench at any moment.

He kicked his fins and swam alongside the hull heading forward and descending deeper. The wreck rested on a sandy slope that fell away into blue black water. There was no grass or coral on the sea floor, but from under the wreck small schools of fish flashed past him in their panic at having a visitor after all these years.

The forward gun turret had been ripped open. The gun barrels that once protruded there were now long gone, and the upper deck revealed a huge gaping hole. Cole wondered if it had been the sub’s own ammunition that had caused the damage. Forward of the hole the deck ran intact for several more feet before the entire forward section of the submarine had been ripped open. The bow section now hung by what looked like a combination of steel cables and thin pieces of twisted metal. The incline increased so rapidly there, the bottom fell away and the forward piece hung unsupported over the crevasse. 

Much as he wanted to swim around the bow opening and look into the interior where that section had been cut away, Cole had little time to explore. Riley and Priest could be arriving at any minute. If he didn’t have something to bargain with, Priest would kill them all. In fact, he probably planned to do that anyway. But if Cole had proof of Operation Magic in his hands, they might have a chance.

Cole saw that there were two options for entering the sub. Either down the hole in the deck where the rest of the gun turret had once stood, or through the gaping opening of the fractured hull forward. Both options could be deadly traps. The greatest danger in wreck diving like this was the possibility of getting hung up inside the wreck, with a piece of equipment or a foot or hand snared on some debris or pinched in a too-narrow opening. And he had no buddy diver to free him from a snag.

Cole thought back to the plans of the sub he had studied for months. The captain’s cabin was located two decks below the conning tower. He would need to get down here, through this black hole in the deck. He shone his dive light down, but the jagged metal sections were all uneven and they cast shadows making it difficult to make out what was below. He turned to
Enigma
and signed to the video camera that he was going to enter the wreck there.

He knew that beneath the gun turret there had once been a walk-in refrigeration locker for food and beneath that, a storage area for artillery shells. When he swam down into the hole, he saw a large compartment open up and judging from the debris scattered about, plastic pails and boxes, he guessed it was the walk-in fridge. The deck beneath that was intact and at the forward end of the compartment, he could make out a dark hole that went deeper into the hull. That would have been the elevator for transferring the shells from the ammo compartment below up to the big guns on deck. It appeared the ammo below decks had not exploded. Maybe the explosion had come only from the shells that were already in the gun turret. Thinking back to Michaut’s story of the French captain watching the planes approach, Cole thought it likely he had told his men to arm all the deck guns.

Cole needed to get to the next deck down, but he wasn’t going to try to pass through that elevator shaft.

He shone his light around the gloomy compartment and he noticed that with each stroke of his fins, he was disturbing the organic matter that formed a thick layer over the top of the debris. Thick clouds floated up obscuring his visibility. Soon, he would be able to see nothing. He stopped pumping his legs and floated turning himself with small hand movements. 

Behind him,
Enigma
sank down into the hole. When she was low enough, her lights lit the compartment much better than his hand light and on the far side he saw an opening. He slowly paddled in that direction and as he neared, he saw that the explosion must have blown the door off the opposite side of the refrigeration compartment.

He reached the door frame, but he was blocking the ROV’s lights. Cole moved aside, reached back and grabbed the PVC frame, pulling
Enigma
closer so the lights could shine into the opening. The compartment lit up like a museum diorama. A giant grouper floated above the heavy refrigerator door that rested on the floor of the compartment at skewed angle. The big fish stared at him unafraid. The steel door half covered the black opening in the deck. Cole could see the ladder that descended to the officers’ quarters below. Next to the opening, lying on the deck half under the thick steel door, were bones: the arm and skull of a human skeleton.

At that moment, the compartment went black. The lights blinked on again, then off, and then back on.

They’re here.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

From Fast Eddie to Shadow Chaser

March 31, 2008

9:32 a.m.

Riley slowed the racing powerboat and brought her alongside
Shadow Chaser.
Dig grabbed the rope ladder that hung on the side of the trawler. The gas engines were so loud, there was no way Cole and Theo hadn’t heard them coming, but no one appeared on deck. When she shut the engines down,
Shadow Chaser
seemed eerily quiet, aside from creaking as she rolled in the swell. 

“You go up first,” Dig said. “And don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you’re faster or smarter than I am.”

She said nothing to that. She would show him when the time came. On the foredeck, she pulled out the bow line that she had tucked into the forward locker earlier and threw a couple of hitches around the foredeck cleat. Her head was pounding and her leg ached when she swung it over the bulwark and stepped onto the steel deck. Time was what she needed. Time to recoup some of her strength. To let him think she believed him when he said he was smarter and faster. She tied off the powerboat so it would drift back off the stern of the trawler. Dig wasn’t going anywhere until he had what he’d come for.

“Cole? Theo!” she called out. 

“In here.” The mate’s voice came from the wheelhouse.

Behind her Dig climbed over the bulwark, his gun pointed at her back. “Go on,” he said.

Before they arrived at the wheelhouse, Dig grabbed her elbow with his injured arm and pulled her close. He pressed the gun barrel into her ribs. They rounded the corner together, and Dig stopped her outside the doorway. 

Theo was standing in front of his array of screens, a small box with a joystick in his hands. He didn’t turn to look at them when he spoke. “Cole’s inside the sub.”

At Dig’s prodding, Riley stepped over the door sill and entered the wheelhouse with Dig attached to her side like an unwanted appendage. She looked at all the screens and could not make out which one was broadcasting video. “Where?”

Theo pointed. “That one.”

The screen showed a murky gray scene that she had mistaken for what on a television, people call ‘snow.’ 

“Can’t see much, can you?”

“We could a few minutes ago, but Cole just went down the ladder from the mess deck.”

“Geez,” she said. “He’s
deep
inside then.”

Theo nodded. “
Enigma
hasn’t caught up with him yet. There’s so much silt and biological matter down there, that every time Cole moves, he stirs up what looks like a dust cloud.” 

“How did he get in?”

“One of the bombs from the American planes had blasted a hole in her. Took out the forward gun turret.”

Dig shifted back and forth from foot to foot, his grip on her arm growing tighter. “What are you talking about? Explain.”

Theo turned and looked at him as though realizing for the first time that he was there. Then he turned his gaze to Riley. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

She rubbed her free hand across her mouth and wiped it on her shorts. “I’m okay.”

Theo glanced down at the gun Dig held pressed against her side. “Is that necessary?”

“Answer my question. What’s going on down there?” Dig lifted his head to indicate the monitor.

Theo turned back to face the monitor and Riley looked, too. They could now see what looked like rungs of a ladder scrolling up the screen. 

“Cole is already inside the
Surcouf
. Our information indicates that the documents, if they still exist, are inside the captain’s cabin. That’s where he’s headed —”

The camera swung away from the ladder and panned around. It looked like a narrow hall or companionway. Several rounded doorways in the bulkhead looked as though they were built crooked — they were tilted at an angle. The camera jostled and revealed the overhead where pipes and wires ran fore and aft, and silvery bubbles from Cole’s scuba tank rolled around collecting into bigger bubbles like bits of mercury. The camera panned down and a small school of pale, colorless fish hovered in the second open door. Moments after the light hit them, they darted off in panic. A new saying, Riley thought: caught like fish in the headlights. 

“Cole must be hand carrying
Enigma
,” Theo said, “using it as his light source.”

The camera glided though another doorway and this time a gloved hand appeared on the monitor, and it pointed toward a pile of debris coated with pale brown fur. Then they saw his backpack with the pair of air cylinders very close to the camera. His body glided across the compartment and hovered over the top of the debris, his fins not moving.

She knew the man on the screen was Cole, but she could not see his face. Silently, she pleaded with him.
Turn around. I need to see you. To know you’re okay.