Dark Hunt: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  Meteorology’s the only job in the world where you can be wrong all the time and still get paid, he lamented to himself.

  The radio crackled behind him. “Peggy Lynn, we’re reading the acoustical locators, but we have something funny on the radar. Can you take a look and tell me what you see? Over.”

  “Roger, EPC,” Dennis replied and stepped to his radar. Their radar dome wasn’t as high as the EPC’s, which sat atop the barge’s five-story structure, and he doubted he would be able to see whatever they were looking at. He zoomed it out to the maximum setting and stared at the sweep arm. After several passes, he spoke into the mic, “All I can see is rain and storm clutter. Over.”

  “Roger that.”

  “What are you seeing?” Dennis asked.

  “It looks like a ship, but it’s not responding to AIS inquires or radio hails.”

  “Probably a local fishing or lobster boat.”

  “Roger that. EPC out.”

  Caught in the current and concealed by the burgeoning storm, the Galina Jovovich hid in the violent rain, limiting the radar’s ability to detect her. She swept toward the unsuspecting crews and slammed into the side of El Paso City with deadly force, T-boning the cable layer’s bow just ahead of Peggy Lynn’s position.

  EPC’s dynamic positioning system switched off with the sudden impact, and the boats began to drift. The Galina’s bow sheared away a substantial section of the barge’s outer skin, allowing seawater to flood her compartments. With her bow jammed against the EPC, the Galina’s stern drifted toward the EPC’s stern, threatening to pinch Peggy Lynn between them.

  The impact threw Anthony, the dive tender, backward. He landed hard against the air compressor and gashed the back of his head open. He staggered to his feet, paying out Ryan’s umbilical as fast as he could to relieve the strain and help his diver while ignoring the hammering pain in his skull and the blood pouring down his back, soaking his shirt.

  Emery Ducane, Peggy Lynn’s octogenarian cook and handyman, fell from his perch on a stool beside the recompression chamber where Travis Wisnewski waited out his scheduled stops after his long dive. Emery lay flat on his back, staring up at EPC’s crane arm, now listing over the smaller salvage vessel.

  The pounding coming from inside the chamber brought Emery out of his daze, and he slowly shook his head to clear it. He glanced up to see Travis’s face pressed against the tiny porthole. Travis stopped pounding on the chamber hatch and shouted something, although Emery couldn’t make out what he was saying through the ringing in his head.

  As El Paso City listed to the right as she sank, she pulled on the lines holding Peggy Lynn to her, dragging the smaller vessel down with her.

  Gary Bartwell, the backup diver on Peggy Lynn—a bear of a man with long brown hair and a beard—sprang from his place on the dressing bench and grabbed the ax mounted to the bridge’s bulkhead. With a mighty swing, he severed the stern rope and ran toward the bow. An explosion aboard the barge knocked him off his feet, and the ax skittered out of his hand.

  Stacey Wisnewski shook in her seat as she monitored Ryan’s dive through the camera feed displayed on a large flat-screen monitor. She glanced at the screen and saw nothing but gray mud, then twisted to see Capt. Dennis sprawled on the floor, his eyes closed and his mouth open. She jumped from her chair and checked his jugular vein for a pulse while putting her cheek close to his mouth. His pulse was strong, and his warm exhalations moistened her skin. Satisfied he didn’t need more urgent care, she stood, determined to find out what had caused the commotion.

  The exterior work lights on the salvage vessel illuminated a macabre scene. Not only was the barge on fire and sinking, but the high steel hull of the ghost ship and that of the barge would collide and trap them in a deadly pincer movement.

  Stacey couldn’t let that happen. She jumped to the wheel, flipped the switches to start the vessel’s two diesel drive engines, and threw full reverse power to them. Peggy Lynn’s stern had swung free, but the bow was still being pulled down by the barge.

  Gary appeared and attacked the bow line with his dive knife. The rope separated with a crack like a snapping whip.

  Suddenly, the RPM gauge for the starboard engine bounced into the red zone, accompanied by the screaming of the engine. She slapped the kill switch to keep it from destroying itself. With one good engine left, Stacey backed the boat out from between the other two vessels and watched as the ghost ship collided with the EPC, then slid metal on metal in a ghastly scream like nails on a chalkboard that set her teeth on edge and made her cringe.

  Clear of the two ships, Stacey put the drive into neutral. They would need to ensure their diver was safe, then give aid to the survivors. She turned to see Gary standing in the bridge’s door, panting.

  “You wrapped Ryan’s umbilical in the prop,” he said.

  Chapter Six

  Ryan finished securing the beacons to the subsea cable. Just as he rose to his feet, the trencher plunged down, smacking him in the back of the helmet and driving him into the ground. At the same time, he heard the teeth-gritting sound of metal against metal as something on the surface sheared and popped. He was struggling to wiggle out from under the trenching rig when the hydraulic shockwave from an explosion rippled through the water.

  Fortunately, the seabed’s soft sediment, distance from the detonation, and the water’s depth all combined to save him from most of the initial, and subsequent, rapid-gas expansions in a non-compressible environment. In short, he was lucky to be alive.

  Ryan tried to get onto all fours, but the trencher’s plow kept him from moving. Twisting to discover what the problem was, he felt the crushing weight of the plow settle even further until it covered the hole, trapping him. He couldn’t roll to his left without the eighty-cubic-foot aluminum dive cylinder strapped to his back hitting the plow’s frame, and rolling to his right, the bailout bottle collided with the side of hole. The plow’s sword jet, designed to help soften the mud and sand for the plow shear, allowed Ryan to lift his head just a couple of inches off the seafloor. When he tried to back out again, his butt hit the shear, confirming that it had fallen between his legs.

  “Guys?” he asked tentatively as the shrieking of metal died away.

  When no response came, he reached over his shoulder and grasped the umbilical. He pulled on it to ensure it was clear of the plow. The holographic Diver Augmented Visual Display, or DAVD, projected onto the faceplate of his dive helmet, allowing him to see blueprints and three-dimensional terrain mapping as well as life support status. It told Ryan that he was still breathing from the overhead compressor, but with all the topside commotion, he had no idea how long it would last.

  He jerked the umbilical toward him, trying to stretch it taut, and gave it five sharp tugs to tell Anthony he was in trouble. Ryan closed his eyes as he concentrated on dragging the umbilical in one-handed. He’d had Anthony keep it tight while he worked, but now all he was getting was a pile of umbilical beside him.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the tiny tank icon on the DAVD flashing, indicating he was now breathing from the bailout bottle.

  He now only had twenty minutes to extricate himself from the hole before he ran out of air.

  Chapter Seven

  Stacey wanted to vomit. Not only was the EPC sinking before her very eyes, but she had just severed Ryan’s umbilical and fouled Peggy Lynn’s starboard propeller.

  “Get us over him, now,” Dennis commanded. He’d sat up and was cradling his left arm in his lap.

  Stacey came out of her fog and shouted at Gary, “Get suited up. Prepare to dive on my command.”

  Gary raced to the aft deck to gather and don his equipment, and Stacey turned to the GPS screen, pushing the button to guide the ship over Ryan’s last known coordinates.

  “What’s going on with the EPC?” Dennis asked.

  “She’s going down.”

  “Send Gary down on the doubles and get the workboat in the water.”

  “Get up,” Stacey s
aid. “You need to take the helm.”

  “I can’t. I think I broke my arm.”

  Stacey picked up the microphone for the speaker mounted on the bridge bulkhead. “Gary, dive on doubles, and take a spare cylinder. Anthony, get in the SeaArk and rescue the survivors.”

  Once the Peggy Lynn’s position matched the coordinates for the hole Ryan had been digging, she set the ship’s dynamic positioning system. Linked to their GPS, the DPS would use the bow and stern thruster to make continual adjustments to stay over top of the diver.

  “Can you watch the wheel?” Stacey asked Dennis. “I need to make sure everyone is all right.”

  Dennis nodded. Stacey helped him to the captain’s chair and grabbed the first aid kit that hung on the wall. She wrapped his arm tightly with ACE bandages before fashioning a sling.

  “Do you want some pain medication?”

  “No.” Dennis pushed her away. “You’ve got work to do. I’ll be fine.”

  She jumped over the door coaming and raced down the steps to the main deck. She saw Emery rigging a round fender with a long rope and an anchor to act as a downline for Gary and to mark the location of both Ryan and the plow. He dropped the anchor over the side, and the rope ran overboard as he turned to help Gary shrug into his back-mounted double cylinders.

  Stacey stepped over to the recompression chamber, checked the time, and kissed the porthole where Travis had his sunburned face pressed against the glass. His sandy blond hair stuck out at odd angles, and he still reminded her of Zac Efron, just like the day they had met in the parking lot of a Key Largo dive shop. She laid two fingers of her right hand on her upper left arm, showing he had twenty minutes of decompression time remaining. She pressed the talk button and said, “A ship ran into EPC, and I accidentally cut Ryan’s umbilical when I threw the ship in reverse. We’re mounting a rescue.”

  “Let me out!”

  She shook her head. “No.” Letting him out now would subject him to the bends. He needed to remain in the chamber for the allotted time to eliminate the nitrogen from the tissues of his body.

  “Stacey, give me a hand,” Anthony called. Reluctantly, she turned away from her husband’s troubled face and helped to lower the twenty-four-foot SeaArk center console workboat from its davits into the water.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, seeing the blood on the back of his shirt and the towel wrapped around his head.

  “I’m good,” he replied without stopping.

  Once Anthony was in the SeaArk and racing toward the sinking cable layer, barely visible above the waterline, Stacey asked Emery, “What do we need, Grandpa?” Everyone on the crew called the old man Grandpa, not just because he was old enough to be their grandfather, but because they respected him and his experience.

  “I won’t know until Gary finds Ryan.”

  “Okay. I need to get back to the bridge. Dennis broke his arm.”

  “How is he?” Grandpa asked. He and Dennis had worked together for more years than either of them wanted to remember, and they were practically family.

  “He’ll be okay, but he needs medical attention. The bone didn’t break the skin, but I could feel it moving when I splinted it.”

  Emery grimaced. “Make sure he doesn’t over-self-medicate.”

  Stacey nodded, knowing that he meant she needed to keep Dennis away from the Jim Beam.

  Interrupted by the speaker connected to Gary’s communication unit on his OTS Aga full-face mask, both turned in astonishment when they heard him say, “I found both ends of the umbilical, but not Ryan.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ryan had tried to bull his way forward and push his way backward to no effect. He couldn’t struggle, or he’d quickly burn through the air in the bailout bottle. Diligently, he scooped out mud and sand from under his helmet and chest to force his way far enough under the sword jet arm to get clear of the plow. He wouldn’t have enough air to make a complete set of decompression stops, but he would suck the tank dry to try to stave off the dreaded bends. If Peggy Lynn were still afloat, they could throw him in the recompression chamber and keep him from getting bent.

  If she wasn’t still up there?

  Well, that was a thought for another time.

  He kept scooping, trying to keep his breathing slow and controlled. What he wanted to do was frantically scoop away the sand that kept backsliding into the hole he was excavating. After several large scoops, he was able to slide forward and bring his leg around the plow blade. With both legs together, he backed out from under the plow and found he had to dig at the edge of the crater to get out. Just as he started pawing at the soil, the plow slowly tilted to the left, then suddenly jerked free of the hole, and landed on its side.

  Ryan stood transfixed, watching the plow dig a wide furrow through the muck before stopping fifty feet away. The sound of crushing and twisting metal reached him, and he looked up to see the hull of the El Paso City crash onto the seabed one hundred feet away from him, some of its powerful lights still glowing brightly.

  “That’s not good,” he muttered to himself.

  The tank display flashed on his faceplate, and he focused on it. He was down to fifteen hundred pounds of air. He had two choices: stay on the seafloor and die of asphyxiation, or swim to the surface and suffer the bends, and he had no idea if there was still a ship there, awaiting his return.

  As he continued to steady his breathing, Ryan settled on a third choice. EPC had dive gear aboard, and he’d been in her dive locker on several occasions. He started swimming toward the barge and stopped when he heard the sound of engines laboring overhead. Ryan hoped it was Peggy Lynn, and that they would send a rescue diver. It should be their top priority and knowing Dennis like he did, he would be doing everything possible to help him and the survivors of the shipwreck.

  Swimming toward the EPC, he could see that she lay on her starboard side. Tools, wreckage, and parts lay strewn across the seafloor. Part of the subsea cable had fallen out of the massive basket that traversed the width of the barge and now lay in a tangle beside the wreck.

  “I know what we’ll be doing next,” Ryan said to himself.

  The wreck was both an environmental hazard and a danger to the shipping lanes. It would be Dark Water Research’s top priority to raise the El Paso City and recover the subsea cable, saving the network company and DWR millions of dollars.

  Now, as Ryan stared at the EPC, he knew he needed to find a supply of air, or the crew of the Peggy Lynn would be recovering his body.

  Not wanting to drag the umbilical, he sawed through it with his dive knife, leaving just a three-foot length attached to his helmet, and tucked it into his belt. He set off for the barge again, visualizing the steps he would take once he found a gas supply. First, he’d have to doff the helmet, put on the mask he carried in the thigh pocket of his wetsuit, and rig two cylinders to breath from. At least he could sit on the barge’s rail and, according to his computer, be at the forty-foot mark for his first decompression stop. It also told him that he’d been underwater for thirty minutes, ten of which he’d been on bailout.

  The bailout bottle was two-thirds depleted when Ryan reached the barge. He wasted no time examining the wreck, instead swimming quickly to the dive locker. Once inside the cramped room, he had to orient himself to the ship’s sideways tilt. He spotted a regulator beside a harness-style buoyancy compensating device, or BCD, both of which he mounted on a tank. Next came the hard part. He unlatched the helmet from the watertight ring around his neck. The air pressure in the helmet kept the water from flooding in, but once he’d pulled it off, a wave of water would swirl around his head and up his nose.

  He drew in a deep breath and pulled the helmet off. Moving quickly, he shoved his dive mask against his face and exhaled just enough to clear the water before seating the strap on the back of his head. Next, he took a breath from the regulator on the tank he’d rigged and removed his working harness and bailout cylinder, setting them and the helmet out of the way. He’d be back fo
r them soon.

  Ryan pulled on the BCD and tightened the waist and shoulder straps. He rigged two more bottles with pieces of rope and hung them on his harness. Finally, he made his way out of the locker and swam toward the superstructure. On the way, he spotted one of the barge’s mooring lines and knotted one end to a round fender which bobbed in the current, floating like a giant balloon from the ship’s railing. He cut the rope holding the fender to the ship and watched it rocket upward, trailing the rope he’d tied to it. When the fender reached the surface, the rope slackened, and Ryan tied the bitter end to the railing. Now, he had an ascent line.

  He sat down on the hull and watched the minutes of his safety stop tick down on his computer and his Citizen dive watch. Glancing around, he saw most of the automatic life rafts had inflated when the EPC sank. Above, he could hear an outboard motor, which he guessed belonged to Peggy Lynn’s aluminum workboat.

  Through the darkness, Ryan saw a light flashing as it swept in an arc. He recognized the beam of a dive light stabbing through the darkness. Figuring someone from Peggy Lynn had come looking for him, he pulled his dive knife from its sheath and banged its butt against the EPC’s steel hull. The light swung in a circle before focusing on the source of the pounding. A few minutes later, Gary swam up and sat down beside Ryan. He said something into his communications unit which sounded like mumbling to Ryan, and Ryan flashed his deco schedule with his fingers.

  Gary nodded and said something else unintelligible into his comms gear while they worked their way up the ascent line Ryan had rigged. They stopped halfway up, and Gary motioned for them to hold. The heavy sounds of prop wash carried through the water. Ryan saw Peggy Lynn’s bright underwater work lights as she coasted alongside the rubber fender that marked their location. The prop stopped, and the gentle sounds of the thrusters, laboring to keep the ship in position, took over.