Omega Deep (Sam Reilly Book 12)

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Right,” Sam acknowledged. “And the rows nearest the centerline are given low numbers, and the numbers increase for slots further from the centerline.”

  Gene scrutinized his face, trying to determine how he’d come up with the answer. “That’s right. I was about to ask how you knew, but then remembered, that your father owns Global Shipping. You must have spent plenty of time exploring container ships as a kid, am I right?”

  “Yeah, a fair bit of time.” Sam grinned as he recalled some of the trips. “During a crossing from Panama to Gibraltar my brother and I played some of the longest games of hide and seek in history, stretching through the entire length of the nearly 1400-foot cargo ship.”

  “What a playground for a couple of kids, hey?” Gene returned his focus to the task at hand. “As you probably know, container ships only take on 20-foot, 40-foot, and 45-foot containers. The 45-footers only fit above deck. The 40-foot containers are the primary container size, making up about 90% of all container shipping and since container shipping moves 90% of the world's freight, over 80% of the world's freight moves via 40-foot containers.”

  “And what type of container are we looking for?” Sam asked.

  Gene smiled, as though they’d achieved some monumental task. “It’s a custom built 60-foot container.”

  Sam pictured the container. “So, it’s a 40, and 20 joined together?”

  “Basically.”

  “And where did you store something that shape?”

  “At 10/14/08.”

  Sam mentally pictured this. “That’s bay 10, about sixty feet forward of the bridge, row 14, that’s right up against the portside, and tier eight, that’s about forty feet below the waterline right now, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sam made a couple of notes on the digital notepad, and said, “All right, let’s go have a look.”

  Chapter Twelve

  At the last dry landing space within the Buckholtz’s internal stairwell at the sixth deck, Sam laid out the twin dive packs. The kits were set up for rapid deployment on short notice for cave rescues or overturned and flooded ship rescues. The supplies were far from extensive but would allow at least two dives before the Maria Helena arrived.

  He unzipped the heavy lining and examined the tools of his trade.

  Inside were two closed-circuit rebreather dive systems, a series of underwater tools, and two sea scooters. The packs were stocked with a variety of breathable gasses, including oxygen, helium, and nitrox. Today’s dive would be considered shallow in terms of pressurized depths, and so they would dive with a combination of oxygen and air via the rebreather system to maximize their available dive times.

  Sam and Tom quickly went through the rigorous process of setting up and testing their equipment. Sam opened the aluminum backpack. Inside was an axial type scrubber unit filled with the granular absorbent used to remove C02 from the closed-circuit during the dive. He removed the half-used cartridge and replaced it with a brand-new unit, filled with five pounds of sodalime and then reinserted it, locking the lid with a heavy-duty thread.

  He worked his way through, testing two times for leaks. These are the positive and negative pressure tests, and are designed to check that the breathing loop was airtight for internal pressure lower and higher than the outside. The positive pressure test ensures that the unit will not lose gas while in use, and the negative pressure test ensures that water will not leak into the breathing loop where it can degrade the scrubber medium or the oxygen sensors.

  Sam and Tom methodically and efficiently worked their way through their dive equipment, going through the laborious process of preparing each part for the dive.

  Confident that their systems were in working order and that their multiple redundancy systems worked too, they finally donned their thick dry suits.

  Sam pulled the hood of his neoprene dry suit over his head. “Are you good to dive, Tom?”

  Tom had already slipped his arms through the aluminum backpack of his closed-circuit rebreathing system, that was designed to mold to his back. “I’m good whenever you’re ready.”

  “All right.”

  Gene stepped down to the platform with one of the engineers. “How long are you going to be?”

  “Shouldn’t be long,” Sam replied. “Under an hour.”

  “And what do I do if you take any longer than that?”

  Sam shrugged. “Any of your engineers capable of diving in confined spaces?”

  “No. We have two commercial divers on board who can do some steel welding if required, but they’re working with atmospheric dive suits, so there’s nothing they can do for you if you get stuck.”

  “All right. I guess you’re back to waiting.”

  “For what?” Gene persisted.

  “Until we get ourselves out of whatever trouble we found.”

  With that final thought, Sam donned his full-face dive mask.

  He took a deep breath and started pre-breathing the unit – a process of breathing normally for about three minutes before entering the water to ensure the scrubber material gets a chance to warm up to operating temperature, and works correctly, and that the partial pressure of oxygen within the closed-circuit rebreather is controlled within the predefined parameters.

  Sam inhaled effortlessly.

  The gas he breathed was humid and warm, rather than the dry, cold air divers are used to with compressed air and a scuba cylinder and regulator set up. In the frigid waters of the Northern Sea, that would be a welcome bonus.

  He checked his gauge for two things.

  One, that C02 levels weren’t rising, meaning the new sodalime scrubber was doing its job correctly and two, that the partial pressure of oxygen within the closed-circuit remained within the initial setpoint of 1.3 bar.

  Sam ran his eyes across the top reading, where a nondispersive infrared sensor showed that the C02 levels weren’t elevating.

  Below that, his glance stopped to examine the reading from the oxygen analyzer. It showed the partial pressure of oxygen as 1.3 bar.

  Three minutes later, he radioed Tom, “I’m all good to go.”

  “Sounds good,” Tom replied. “Let’s go see what went so disastrously wrong.”

  Sam slipped his dive fins on, switched on his flashlight and slid into the narrow space of the Buckholtz’s flooded internal stairwell. The water was cloudy with mud, but the visibility was good enough to clearly make out the shapes of the steps and walls which made up the flooded stairwell. The beam of his flashlight was able to reach the engine room three decks below.

  He deflated his buoyancy wing until he was negatively buoyant and started his descent in a counter-clockwise direction, following the stairs to a depth of thirty feet and stopped. There, he checked his gauges, confirming on his heads-up display that his CO2 levels weren’t climbing and that the partial pressure of oxygen within the fully closed-circuit remained within the predefined parameters.

  Sam glanced at his buddy. “How are you doing Tom?”

  “Good,” came Tom’s cheerful reply. “All gauges in order.”

  “All right, let’s continue down into the engine room.”

  Sam swallowed, equalizing the pressure in his ears and sinuses and occasionally inserted a small amount of gas into his dry suit to prevent its compressed air from squeezing him tight. At a depth of sixty feet, the stairwell opened onto a level steel gangway.

  The engine room sprawled across four full decks, making it the largest open space on board the entire ship. He flicked his flashlight around the engine room, its beam striking a series of large turbines and the massive prime mover engine, used for the Buckholtz’s primary propulsion, before finally settling on a closed hatch at the very bottom.

  Sam said, “That’s it.”

  Tom fixed his beam on it. “That hatch there?”

  He descended quickly, as the flooded compartment allowed him to skip what would have otherwise been a ladder spanning four decks.

  Sam played with t
he steel lever until the hatch came free, and he opened it fully. “That’s our opening to the duct keel.”

  Tom said, “Why’s it shut?”

  “What do you mean why’s it shut?” Sam asked. “It’s meant to be shut. It’s designed to be water-tight. Otherwise, what’s the point of having it.”

  Tom tilted his head to the side, as though Sam had already answered the question. “That’s exactly why I’m wondering why its closed.”

  Sam swallowed. “You’re right. If it was water-tight, and the damage was done inside the duct keel, none of the water should have reached the rest of the engine room. And if the flooding occurred elsewhere, there shouldn’t have been any water inside the duct keel.”

  “Exactly. Any ideas?”

  “None. Unless there are two damaged sections of the hull?”

  Tom shined his light into the dark tunnel. “Let’s hope there are some answers down there.”

  Sam pulled himself through the manhole.

  It was small enough that he had to consciously position himself so that his arms and larger closed-circuit rebreather system could squeeze through, the same way he might during a cave dive. The entrance led to two sets of vertical ladders, which descended another twenty feet.

  He made the descent, carefully diving head first because the ladders didn’t allow for anything else. At the bottom, there was a second manhole. Sam quickly maneuvered the hatch and swam through.

  The duct keel was an internal passage of watertight construction, comprised of two longitudinal girders spaced precisely eight feet apart to form a narrow tunnel running just shy of the entire 1400-feet length of the Buckholtz.

  Two sets of large piping took up most of the space. One pipe to shift the storage of the heavy fuel oil used to drive the large shipping vessel, and the second one, to maneuver the ballast water to maintain an even sail and to compensate for swell.

  Tom’s flashlight flickered past Sam’s shoulder, disappearing far into the distance.

  Tom said, “Any idea how we’re going to get across the length of this thing?”

  He fixed his flashlight on a pair of horizontal carts that looked awfully similar to old mine carts, with a single set of narrow railway tracks that disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. At the back of the cart was a simple mechanical arm – known as a walking beam – that pivots, seesaw-like at the base, which the passengers alternatively push down or pull up to move the cart.

  Beneath his full-faced dive mask, Sam grinned. “How about we use that?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tom could barely contain his laughter as he and Sam started to vigorously pump the mechanical arm, sending their submerged iron handcart racing through the flooded tunnel, and making him feel more like a torpedo.

  They quickly picked up momentum, and the heavy iron handcart rushed through the water. Ahead, Sam’s headlamp lit up the tunnel like the headlights on a train.

  The duct keel appeared sound and intact.

  Tom said, “Any chance the Buckholtz grounded her bow on the muddy island, only to slide backward into the water and slice the side of her hull, above the keel, with an uncharted reef?”

  “It’s possible,” Sam admitted. “Unlikely, but possible. Let’s get to the end of this and then we’ll have a better look.”

  Their trip across the flooded section of the duct keel ended approximately two-thirds of the way along the length of the Buckholtz.

  The hand-cart broke through the surface of the water, marking the end of the flooded section of the ship. Tom kept pumping the arm, and the cart continued its journey into the progressively shallower water until they were running along dry rails.

  The cart picked up speed, despite the slight incline.

  Tom said, “Think the air’s breathable?”

  “Not a chance,” Sam replied, shining his flashlight across a set of rusty pipes. “Oxygen is depleted by oxidization of steel. Without access to the outside air, my guess is the air here contains well under 21 percent oxygen required to sustain life.”

  “I suppose, on top of that, carbon monoxide, inert gasses, and methane from the breakdown of carbon within the ballast water are all potentially present to form a lethal cocktail.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll keep my dive-mask on.”

  Tom kept pumping the cart’s arm.

  The tunnel never seemed to change. There were three large pipes running parallel to the handcart – one for fuel and two for ballast water.

  Tom studied his surroundings as he moved, without finding anything that appeared out of place.

  “You see anything?”

  “No. Not a thing.”

  “Which means, we will have to go back to searching the external hull.”

  Sam lightly pulled the brake, and the cart came to a stop.

  Tom said, “Did we reach the end?”

  “No,” Sam replied.

  “What is it?”

  Sam stood up, stepping off the handcart. He swept the area with his flashlight before settling on something lying on the middle of the tracks. “That.”

  Tom looked at the body. It seemed fairly intact, with little sign of decomposition. A male approximately fifty to sixty years old, overweight, but not obese. The body was lying prone so that he couldn’t see the face. Tom leaned over and felt for a pulse, almost expecting to find one.

  The body was cold.

  Not like ice, but no warmer than the inanimate steel it was lying on.

  “The guy’s dead,” Tom confirmed.

  Sam rolled him onto his side. “There’s no sign of any injuries.”

  “What do you think killed him?”

  “My guess, he got trapped down here while doing his routine maintenance check of the duct keel, only to become trapped, and then suffocated.”

  “That makes sense.” Tom barely suppressed a grin. “Although, I’d like to know why Gene denied any injuries or fatalities when the Buckholtz ran aground?”

  “Yeah, me too. Maybe he genuinely didn’t know yet.”

  “Or, he was murdered,” Tom suggested.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Tom shined his headlamp on the man’s hand. It still gripped a notepad. He picked it up and handed it to Sam. “Read that.”

  Sam took the note and ran his eyes across it. “I’M SORRY, SVETLANA. THEY MADE ME DO IT.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam stepped back onto the handcart.

  He committed the name, Svetlana, to memory. It was a common enough Russian name, but maybe Elise would be able to put the name and the dead man’s face together somewhere. She could be quite the magician when it came to locating unknown people.

  “You don’t want to go to the end?” Tom asked.

  “No. We already know it doesn’t lead anywhere and any damage farther toward the bow can’t possibly have caused the flooding, because it was out of the water the entire time.” Sam glanced at the body one last time. “No. The duct keel hasn’t told us anything about where the water came in from – only that someone used it to murder someone.”

  “So instead of answers, we got more questions.”

  “Yeah, like what he knew got him murdered.”

  “Exactly.”

  Sam flicked the gear lever downward, changing the direction of the handcart to run toward the stern. He and Tom started pumping the arm until they built up speed and then alternated between one another every few minutes.

  Sam glanced at his gauges. Everything was as expected. They had been on the dive for 41 minutes, and their maximum depth was 51 feet. Using their closed circuit rebreather system, they still had more than three hours of dive time available.

  He glanced at Tom. “How are your gauges looking?”

  “Good,” Tom replied. “At current consumption, I still have three hours and fifteen minutes of gas before I’m going to need to hit the reserve. Why? Did you want to search the internal hull throughout each of the individual bays?”

  “No. But if you’re up for it,
I wouldn’t mind eyeballing Mr. Cutting’s precious secret shipping container. Maybe it might reveal a clue to the murder.”

  “Okay, I’m keen.”

  It took nearly twenty minutes to reach the engine bay.

  Sam was happy to leave the narrow confines of the duct keel, and happier still, to be on the outside of the watertight doors through which they had entered.

  On his heads-up-display, a compass was projected in front of him. He glanced at it, setting a heading for south-southwest at 220 degrees – the same direction in which the Buckholtz’s keel ran aground toward Neuwerk Island.

  Beneath the compass, was a digital image of the ship’s schematics superimposed on what Sam was looking at to provide a sort of augmented reality. His computer system updated instantly providing their predicted location and mapping, based on what Sam was able to see. It made diving within the massive cargo ship much more achievable.

  He kicked his fins, swimming directly over the top of the large diesel powerplant and through a closed set of blue doors.

  Sam pushed through the doors, which opened to Bay 9. Rows of shipping containers were stacked to the ceiling. A narrow steel gangway formed a platform to walk throughout the containers, with a series of ladders to take sailors up or down a deck.

  He followed the passageway all the way to port side and then followed it toward the bow in the next bay.

  Sam’s display popped up with his location, 10/14/08.

  Sam mentally retrieved the precise location of the secret shipping container.

  Bay 10/ Row 14/ Tier 08

  He gently kicked his fins, moving slowly forward.

  A small marker on the gangway below him was the only evidence he’d passed into the 10th bay. He stopped and shined his light through the series of intricate tunnels formed by the placement of multiple shipping containers, stacked upon themselves.

  “Do you see it?” he asked Tom.

  “Not yet. It should be directly below us.”

  He searched for a way to get down. The passageway they were on didn’t allow them to descend. Instead, they would need to get much lower. Swimming another twenty feet forward, he turned right to follow an internal passageway toward the Buckholtz’s centerline.