The Templar Thief: Peter Sparke book 4

by Scott Chapman

If the craft was not crushed by the tons of water piled on top of it.

  Sparke had done practice drops in these boats several times, but never without safety staff on hand and never, ever without being strapped in. The impact threw him out of the seat like a rag doll and bounced him off the forward bulkhead. As the wave began to roll over the boat, it flipped through three hundred and sixty degrees, tumbling him back along the top of the row of seats and cracking his ribs. He crashed face first against the hatch at the rear of the craft and, as he collapsed on the deck, the movement seemed to slow.

  He lay still, listening as the whole structure of the boat groaned like a wounded animal under the mountain of water bearing down on it. To Sparke, the moving noise of the pressure on the hull was like some living thing trying to pry its way inside.

  A single sharp crack came from the entry hatch and Sparke twisted his head, waiting for the wall of water that lay inches away. If the hatch went, thought Sparke, at least the pressure would kill him before he had a chance to drown.

  The hatchway cracked again and he saw water flood into the gap between the layers of Perspex in the porthole as the seal started to give.

  Sparke's whole world became fixed on the tiny crinkled line that now appeared on the final layer of reinforced glass. He watched it spread, like a strand of a spider's web, from the bottom across the eight-inch circle toward the other side.

  As he stared at the porthole, the boat hung motionless inside a world of black water as the main pressure line under the crest swept over it and the weight bearing down on the craft began to lessen. The sudden change in pressure now began to work with the buoyancy of the boat, both pushing the vessel up and back, away from the line under the crest.

  The porthole shattered like a pistol shot just as the boat began its new trajectory and Sparke caught the jet of water that exploded into the hull and was hurled back as the boat gathered speed on its race to the surface.

  The force of the pressure acting on it threw the lifeboat out of the water, breaking clear of the surface and landing with a spine-jarring jolt.

  Sparke, coughing and spluttering in two feet of water, blood streaming from his face, tried to pull himself upright but the searing pain from his ribs made him scream and collapse back into the water.

  His greatest fear now was losing consciousness and drowning onboard. There was no point in worrying if there was a second wave behind the first one, as there was nothing the lifeboat could do to fight another monster like the last. It took him four attempts to reach the control seat of the boat. He knew there was nothing for him to do there. The automatic navigation systems would already be transmitting his position. Gasping with pain, he managed to snap the buckles of the seat belts closed, then he passed out.

  A Blessed Thing

  "You should stay," said the Provost. "The Commune has great need of a man with your skills."

  "I have other business to attend to," said Salvatore.

  "Here in Tripoli? My colleagues might not be so happy if you were to offer your services to anyone else in the City."

  “I have a ship waiting for me. I leave almost immediately.”

  "You have your own ship?"

  "I bought it with the help of the boat builder. Prices are low at the moment, I understand."

  "People are nervous, so prices fall. Where are you going?"

  Salvatore inspected a part of his machine. "There are some small changes I wish to make, adjustments that will make it more accurate. After the blessing, I will take it back to the boatyard for a day. You can send your men for it, with the money."

  "What is a day here or there?" The Provost looked casually at Salvatore. "Do you know the Bishop? Have you met him before? I thought I saw some trace of recognition in his face when he met you."

  "This is my first time in Tripoli," said Salvatore, "and I never met him before I arrived."

  The Provost had no good reason to press the issue. He knew a clever answer to a direct question when he heard one, but in his long list of things he had to worry about there was little space for the business of the Bishop or this man.

  "The Bishop seems keen to have this blessing done as quickly as possible."

  "Tomorrow," said Salvatore, "at first prayers. We will take it into the cathedral tonight and remove it immediately after."

  The Provost nodded. "I will be there. A war machine in the heart of the cathedral is something not to be missed."

  Oxen were not allowed into the cathedral, so the trebuchet was pulled into the building by a dozen harbor laborers. In fact, it was light enough to be pulled by less than half that number, something which drew appreciative comments from the watching members of the Commune who were always pleased at finding ways to reduce the ruinous cost of labor.

  To preserve the stone floor, the wheels were wrapped with strips of hide. The dangerous fire bombs were not allowed into the building, but a large wooden crate of stone missiles was allowed and it was carried in on the base of the device.

  As the centerpiece of the next day's ceremony the machine was positioned in the transept, the heart of the building where its four wings met.

  "Looks like a spider in a web," said one of the laborers.

  "Looks more like the Devil himself," said another.

  From last sunlight to full dark, the machine sat alone and untended in the heart of the empty cathedral.

  No one saw the figure of Salvatore as he walked to the small rear door of the cathedral shortly before midnight. No one saw the Bishop open the door to him without a greeting, then leave silently.

  Salvatore, now thoroughly familiar with the layout of the building, moved quickly to his machine. To anyone who saw it, it was a weapon of war. Only Salvatore knew the real reason for its creation. He stripped the machine of all of the tools and gear that it carried and loosened the tether that secured the main beam. The long rotating spar of the machine sat, finely balanced between its throwing arm and the short, counterweighted balance end. Salvatore rocked it gently on its well-greased pivot. The noise it made was so slight that it sounded like a whisper.

  Every move that he had to make had been rehearsed in his head a hundred times. In the few short days that he had with the machine, he had practiced each move and eliminated any hint of noise from its motion, but there was no way to know if what he wanted to do would actually work.

  He tied a triple rope to the long end of the beam and secured the other end to the crate of stone projectiles that was carried on the base. One man could never move this weight alone, but with little effort, the leverage of the swinging beam and the ratchet mechanism lifted it from the base of the machine, allowing it to hoist the object. The crate, the weight of more than two men, swung free in the air of the silent cathedral like some part of a strange church ritual. As it moved through the stale air, it sounded to Salvatore like the machine itself was breathing.

  Once the swinging slowed, Salvatore caught a loose rope from it and brought the crate to a standstill, then spread a pile of sacking on the floor beneath it. Next, using his own weight as a counterbalance, he released the ratchet and lowered the crate to the ground. Apart from the creaking of some ropes, thought Salvatore, the machine had made less noise than his own breathing. But now it was time to move it.

  He took the long iron spar, inserted it into the cogwheel around the front axle and began to pull downwards on it. In his desire to stop any noise he tried to exert pressure slowly, but nothing happened. The wooden beast could not be coaxed. Salvatore inspected the wheels and considered removing their rawhide wrappings, but he had no reason to think that bare timer would be much better and they would almost certainly score the flooring. He wrapped his hands around the end of the pole and lifted his feet from the ground, pulling down with all his weight.

  The machine squealed like a pig and lurched forward by a yard. The echo bounced around inside the church for what seemed like an hour. No one came running. There were no voices raised in alarm. Salvatore took the iron spar out of the dr
ive wheel and moved it to a higher slot and pulled down again. This time the machine made little more than a grunt when it moved. He repeated the move. Every time he did so, he gained a yard of progress. In the dim light he peered at the floor where the machine had moved, looking for any sign of marks or damage, but there was nothing as far as he could see.

  It took him two hours. Three times he had to stop and lever the movable front wheels around so that he had the machine facing the right direction, but eventually he had it in position and pushed the locks into the wheels.

  The rear of the machine was pointing back to the main hall of the church, its free end hovering over the tomb of the long dead knight.

  Waking Up

  "He's messed up, but he is still in the game."

  "Let the doc see him first before we touch him. Might be a bunch of broken bones under all that blood."

  Sparke listened to the voices as though they were in another room. They had the calm, relaxed matter-of -fact tone that he was used to hearing from people familiar with dealing with exceptional situations. It was the voice airline pilots use when they say things like, "we have a little bit of bumpy air ahead, so you might want to fasten those seat belts for a while," when they were preparing for stomach-churning turbulence.

  The practiced calm was belied by a near-constant racket of screams and mechanical pounding from somewhere very, very near. Sparke felt his whole body vibrate as another chorus of screams drowned out the voices again.

  He decided to try and open his eyes. Everything was bathed in a bright orange light and nothing looked familiar. His feet were in water.

  "Damn, I never thought this job involved me doing house calls," said a new voice. It was a woman’s voice had never heard before and he struggled to make sense of the words. "Hey, lookie here, we have open eyes," she said.

  Sparke blinked as a bright light filled his vision.

  "Double points for open eyes and ones that work too. Can you hear me? Buddy, blink if you understand."

  Sparke's eyes slowly came into focus and he found himself looking at a smiling face.

  "Sparke, my name, Sparke."

  "Yup, we already got your name. Just sit where you are a little while so we can see if you have any serious damage."

  The voice was drowned out again by a deafening roar.

  "Where?' said Sparke.

  "Where are you? You are on board the USS Lexington, Mr. Sparke. Welcome to the Seventh Fleet."

  Sparke had a clear recollection of standing on the deck of the Husker One rig, then he remembered a radio conversation with a helicopter pilot, then, in a sudden rush the experience of being in a free-fall lifeboat and being pulled under the tsunami came flooding back. He lifted his head and stared around him in a flash of panic. The movement caused pain to flood through his body from his chest, causing him to scream.

  “Whoa there, cowboy,” said the voice. “Baby breaths now, nice steady breathing is how we win the points in this game.”

  Sparke felt a cool hand on his brow and his eyes focused on the person in front of him. She was wearing a navy uniform. Peering over her shoulder were two sailors, both looking at him as though he was some kind of car wreck.

  “The ship?” said Sparke.

  “Ship? You mean that Korean ship? The one with the wave? Don’t worry about that, not your problem right now.”

  He lifted his head and blinked, trying to clear his eyes of dirty water and blood.

  “What happened to the ship?” he said as clearly as he could.

  “You are one tough bird, Mr. Spark. OK, by the time the chopper reached them their decks were awash. The pilot picked up eight survivors, three unaccounted for. Now, just take five while we get you up to the sick bay.”

  Sparke allowed his head to slump back to his chest and let his eyes close as the lifeboat filled with the noise of new voices and splashing feet. He felt himself lifted from the seat and placed on a stretcher, then passed through the orange world of the lifeboat into the blinding sun and shattering noise of a US Navy aircraft carrier deck in operation. He glanced back at the lifeboat and saw it perched incongruously on the dark-grey metal deck. Then he passed out again.

  “You have two broken ribs, a broken nose and multiple contusions, but nothing that won’t heal.” The doctor was standing with a group of other officers in an overly bright sick bay.

  Sparke’s mouth felt like the inside of an old boot and he tried to speak. One of the sick bay team gave him a plastic cup of water.

  “How long was I in the lifeboat?”

  “Almost ten hours in total,” said one of the officers. “One of our HH-60 choppers found you, dropped a rescue swimmer and then lifted you in.”

  “Ten hours?” said Sparke.

  “You started the lifeboat engines so you ended up sailing away from the Husker One position. We followed your automatic transmissions and launched as soon as we were in range,” the officer paused, “we, ah, we were listening in to your communications with the pilot of the chopper that was supposed to pick you up from the mainland.”

  Sparke looked at the group of officers blankly.

  “We heard you decline to issue a mayday so that the chopper could respond to the Elkhorn. We would not have reached them in time. Mr. Sparke, you saved those eight men.”

  The eyes of all of the officers were fixed on his face and Sparke felt a wave of embarrassment flush over him. He looked at the floor for a moment.

  “Sorry, I am really thirsty. Do you have any tea at all?”

  “A cup of tea for our English guest, coming right up,” smiled one of the men.

  “Tea is good, but I’m not English,” said Sparke.

  For the next hour, Sparke had a succession of visitors to his sick bed. He had little knowledge of the ranks of the men and women who came by, but he could judge by the response of the sick bay staff that they were of increasing importance as time passed. Word had gotten around and almost everyone brought him a plastic cup of hot tea. The last visitor carried with him a wave of authority and the minute he stepped into the small sickbay everyone in the room snapped to attention.

  “We are very pleased to have you on board Mr. Sparke,” said the Admiral.

  “Not as pleased as I am to be here.”

  The Admiral smiled.

  “When the volcano blew, we had no idea about the wave for the first ninety minutes. As soon as we heard, we changed course and came on down here to see if we could help.”

  “What about the wave?”

  “The wave, well, the collapse of the Ashoka hillside was big, but it was a single event. It sent a lone wave, high, but narrow and unstable clear across the sea until it ran into the Elkhorn, then it hit you. By the time it reached the coastal shelf it was collapsing and it reached the beach at low tide. Apart from the Elkhorn there were no other fatalities that we know of.”

  “Lucky,” said Sparke.

  “Luck and a little bit of courage.”

  Sparke focused on his cup of tea.

  "If you feel up to it," said the Admiral, "our own emergency and rescue people would love to talk with you. To be frank, we have no idea how you survived. The Elkhorn had her bow ripped off, and the rig, Husker One, was crumpled up and sank like a stone."

  Sparke knew he owed the Admiral a straight answer. "There was no way to outrun the wave and I couldn't get over it," he said, "so I went under."

  "Under?"

  "I launched the lifeboat at the base of the wave and, well it just rolled right over me."

  The room was silent.

  "You mean," said the Admiral, “that you waited until the wave was on you, then launched into it?"

  "There didn't seem a better option."

  The Admiral looked closely at Sparke's bruised and bandaged face. "You've had a hell of a tough day at work, Mr. Sparke."

  The medical officer forbade any further visitors until Sparke had a chance to rest.

  "Our tech guys recovered your phone and charged it up for you," she said. "Y
ou’re hooked into our comms and can use it for messages and mails."

  Amongst a screenful of messages, were several from Tilly. It had been only five days since he left her in Radda, but it seemed like a lifetime to Sparke.

  Received from TILLY: "Hope you are enjoying Siena. Tilly. (smiley face)"

  Received from TILLY: "Turn your phone on!!! (funny angry face)"

  Received from TILLY: "Peter. Give me a call. Not happy with our last conversation. Want to talk. T. (frowning face)"

  Received from TILLY: "Peter. Are you ignoring me??? (unhappy face)"

  Received from TILLY: "Peter. Get stuffed."

  Lift

  Dry leather has no grip on marble, and neither has rope. Wet leather clings to smooth stone but only when it is pressed hard against it. Leather cannot be used to lift heavy weights, particularly when it is wet. Lifting the tomb of the knight was a mechanical problem, but the mechanics could only be brought into play if Salvatore could find a way to actually fix hold of it.

  There was nothing on the surface of the tomb that could afford any grip. It was smooth, polished marble. It had taken Salvatore a dozen attempts before he worked out a possible system. For days before leaving Acre, he had experimented with stone blocks in the abandoned castle. It took a dozen attempts and a mountain of smashed stones before he found it.

  One of the protective covers for his machine was a broad strip of ox-hide, more than four yards long and one yard broad. Along its strengthened edge were holes cut and reinforced with thick leather eyelets. Salvatore took this cover, soaking it carefully with water so that it stuck against the cold stone, and carefully wrapped the skin around the tomb, forming a horizontal band halfway up from the floor.

  Next, he looped a rope around the ox-hide, and then walked it around the stone several times, tightening it as he went until the stone was wrapped by a thick belt of rope resting on the band of wet leather. Through each eyelet, he now threaded a heavy rope, pulling the edges together.

  Lifting the counterweight on the main spar of the machine, he dropped its head until it was just above the middle of the tomb and began fixing the wet leather and rope harness to it with some of the chains he had brought in on the machine.