The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Oh yeah,” Sam replied. A confident and wry smile curling at his lips. “What are you betting?”

  Tom paused. “I’ll bet you a week’s vacation leave.”

  Sam calculated the weight required to maintain neutral buoyancy and then attached the belt firmly at his hips. “My father owns the company. I can have leave whenever I like!”

  “Sure you can.” His voice was sarcastic. “When was the last time you actually took a vacation?”

  Sam shrugged. “I enjoy my job.”

  “I do too, but I’ll take that week of leave off you at any rate. And just to settle the measure, I’ll throw in a beer at the end of this dive.”

  “It’s a deal.” Sam climbed the three steps and sat on the edge of the moon pool. “Are you ready to do this?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Sam placed his full-faced dive mask on and took a couple breaths to ensure that his regulator was working correctly. He then let himself fall forward and into the pool. Settling at the first marker, ten feet below the surface, he studied his dive computer.

  It read 300 bar in each of his tanks. This confirmed that they were full. He depressed his emergency octopus – the yellow regulator designed as a backup for a dive partner or if the primary becomes damaged. A large series of bubbles came out and made their way to the surface.

  “Everything’s working at my end. How you looking Tom?”

  “I’m good.”

  Sam kicked his fins a couple times and grabbed hold of the guide wire. Next to him were the twin tanks that Veyron had left them.

  “All right, let’s start our descent.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  At a hundred and twenty feet Sam stopped their descent and stared at the mass grave of shipwrecks. He’d seen on the survey that there were at least a dozen ships within the area, but somehow it all appeared much more remarkable when you looked at it with your own eyes.

  “That’s quite a sight,” Tom said.

  Sam felt the hairs on his skin prickle in awe. It was a monument to just how weak mankind was in the ocean. “It sure is.”

  He scanned a number of them before deciding which one to swim towards. Some of them looked perfectly intact. The unique thing with saltwater is that it preserves wood. Despite lying there for more than four hundred years, some of the shipwrecks appeared as though they had only recently sunk.

  Some were on their side. A couple had their hulls broken in two – presumably when they were struck by a rogue wave. Others were half buried in sand. And then he spotted what he wanted.

  A British Man-O-War.

  She had sunk keel down and come to rest forever on top of a sandbar at a depth of 140 feet. The hull looked perfectly intact. All three masts remained upright, although her rigging had worn away long ago.

  “That one!” Sam pointed at her. “The British Man o’War. I have to see it. She looks impeccably intact.”

  They were staring at her starboard side.

  “I thought you might say that.”

  Sam had studied them extensively out of interest when he was at college. The Man o’War design developed by Sir John Hawkins, had three masts, each with three to four sails. The ship could be up to 180 feet long and could have up to 124 guns: four at the bow, eight at the stern, and 56 in each broadside. All these cannons required three gun decks to hold them, one more than any earlier ship. It had a maximum sailing speed of eight or nine knots.

  They swam toward it and descended another twenty feet. The ship was enormous. It was hard to believe that anything made of wood all those years ago could be so large and capable at sea. Sam slowly made a circle around the bow.

  A glance at the portside showed why she had sunk. A gaping hole of approximately twelve feet opened in her port bow. Sam pointed his powerful flashlight inside. A lone giant eel grinned back at him with razor sharp teeth, and then slithered away. “Shall we?”

  Tom placed his hand on the edge of the broken hull and pulled. The wood didn’t move an inch. Despite centuries laying at the bottom of the sea, her wood had maintained its strength. He then checked his own dive computer and replied, “Sure. We’ve got another twenty-five minutes at this depth. Let’s not go too far.”

  “Agreed.”

  Sam tied the end of his florescent guidewire spool to the entrance. And then entered the giant crack in the side of the hull – disappearing inside.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Sam followed the opening until it reached the second cannon bay. It was a shallow level, no more than four foot in height from floor to ceiling. The cannons were still there, as though they were still waiting to fire.

  He quickly passed the second cannon bay and dropped to the third. He swam quickly. He’d already chosen his destination.

  “Where are you headed so fast?” Tom asked.

  “The aft hold.”

  “What did they store in the aft hold?”

  “The ship’s gold.” Sam said it like a kid exploring buried treasure.

  “I thought you wanted to date the ship, not loot it?”

  “We can do both, can’t we?”

  He descended to the sixth floor. And followed it as far back as he could. A solid hatch barred their way. Sam looked around for something heavy. A single cannonball had rolled down into the room behind him. He turned around and reached for it. The increased weight wreaked havoc on his buoyancy, and he carefully adjusted his BCD to compensate.

  Sam returned to the hatch. He slowly swung the old cannonball at it. The hatch obliterated on impact.

  The silt had stirred and visibility was less than a couple feet. Sam entered the room feeling with his hands for any obstructions. They found something solid and he stopped to see what it was.

  “Tom, I found the treasure chest.”

  Tom swam in from behind him. “Thanks for kicking up all the silt.”

  There was no way he would be able to remove it. Sam had to open it. He shoved his dive knife into the side of the lock. It broke immediately. He then pried it open with his bare hands.

  Behind him, Tom shined his flashlight directly on the old treasure chest.

  It was empty.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Sam checked his dive computer. He had used a little more of the Heliox than he should have by now. He often used the oxygen and helium mix in deep water dives which otherwise would be prone to complications caused by nitrogen saturation. He shook his head at the reading. He shouldn’t have entered the wreck at all without prior planning, but had always wanted to dive a British Man-O-War.

  “How’s your gas levels?” Sam asked.

  “Fine, but let’s not dawdle.”

  “Okay, I’ll follow you.” Sam watched Tom swim past the damaged hatch. Waited until he cleared it, and then followed.

  He followed Tom’s dive light up the two vertical chambers they had come in through. And then something fell. From what he could see it was part of the wooden structure supporting the cannon bay doors. Not that it mattered what it was – what mattered was it was now falling towards him and sending millions of tiny silt particles into the immediate area around him.

  The entire wreck became a whiteout.

  “You okay Tom?” Sam asked.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “I’m all right, but the place is now a complete whiteout.” Sam ran his hand along the florescent guidewire until it stopped.

  He carefully inspected the severed end. Something had cut it in two. Sam shined his flashlight around. Panic and claustrophobia was rising quickly. He set his emergency spool – tying it to the wooden shard directly below him. If he was going to get lost, he was going to make certain that he can make it back to where he started at least.

  “You okay Sam?” It was Tom’s reassuring voice. Asked like a casual question about what’s taking him so long. Tom was a better wreck diver than Sam would ever be, but even so, the man knew exactly how dangerous the situation was.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. It’s a complete silt out
here. And my guidewire’s been severed.”

  “I’m coming back for you. I’ve switched my strobe light on. Let me know when you can see it.”

  Sam let himself ascend. Carefully feeling his way through the ship. “Copy that.”

  A few moments later his hand reached through an opening. Tom caught it and gripped it and pulled him through.

  The water above was much clearer. “Thanks,” Sam said.

  Once out of the Man-O-War the two quickly made their way towards the surface. Stopping at the ten-foot mark to swap to the spare dive tanks and perform a decompression safety stop.

  Sam swore. “I forgot to get a sample of the wood so we can carbon date the ship.”

  Tom grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I found this.”

  Tom opened his hand. Sam looked at it. Something glowed inside – a gold coin dated 1721.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Sam removed his dive tanks and stripped his wetsuit.

  Elise came through the door. “You’re going to want to see this. I’ve finished making calculations based on the movement of water over the Bimini Road.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I know how it is used to create rogue waves,” Elise replied. “Follow me to the mission room. My laptop’s set up and I’ll show you the hydrology and wave prediction reports.”

  Sam stood up to follow her. “How?”

  “Through constructive interference,” she replied.

  Tom slipped on a V-neck. “What the hell’s that?”

  Sam began explaining as they walked up the stairs. “The basic underlying physics that makes phenomena such as rogue waves possible is that different waves can travel at different speeds, and so they can ‘pile up’ to build larger waves. Constructive interference allows two waves to join and form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude.”

  Elise entered the mission room and sat down. “In basic terms, each wave travels at slightly different speeds. If they share a similar frequency, they can stack up on top of each other. In nature, it’s not a particularly unusual event for two waves to combine, but in rare circumstances, three or more waves combine with each other. The result is that the final wave height is exponentially larger.”

  “Okay, but how does the Bimini Road change any of this?”

  Elise took a deep breath. Swallowed. “Because I just ran wave prediction software over the top of the recreated seafloor including the Bimini Road, based on the underwater survey that Tom kindly obtained for me.”

  “And the results?” Sam asked.

  “The strange rectangular blocks that make up the Bimini Road serve to adjust the speed of the waves. It slows the faster ones and speeds up the slow ones until all of the waves align.”

  Sam grinned. “That proves it. The Bimini Road is artificially creating rogue waves!”

  Elise looked pleased with herself. “Want to see it?”

  “Absolutely,” Sam replied.

  Elise pressed play, and the computer-generated wave prediction showed the waves flowing from the north east, along north Bimini Island and striking into the Bimini Road. With limited swell, the thing made very little changes to the subsequent wave height. But as the swell increases, the force striking the Bimini Road increased the height of the wave exponentially.

  “Show me a projection with six feet of swell,” Sam said.

  Elise clicked on the computer and then typed the initial wave height and pressed play. The swell increased to ten feet once it struck the Bimini Road.

  “Okay, what about ten feet?”

  The two of them watched the projection. It now produced a twenty-five-foot wave.

  Sam wasn’t convinced it would make a deadly rogue wave. “Okay, go twenty feet. Let’s see what that does.” He watched the computer aided program run its course. Sam held his breath. Swallowed. And then said, “That’s a hundred-foot rogue wave right there.”

  “You were right,” Elise replied.

  “Only I wish to hell I wasn’t.”

  Tom looked concerned. “I hate to burst your bubble and all, but if this is correct – why have rogue waves only recently become a problem in the area?”

  “I can answer that,” Elise replied. “It’s missing a keystone.”

  “What keystone?” Sam asked.

  She handed him a picture of a very large rectangular stone. “This is what it would have looked like.” Elise then handed him the ultrasound image of the entire area, with a marking in front of the first rectangular stones to form the Bimini Road. “It would have gone there. Without it, the waves never match up. But once you include the keystone, the waves then all run together.”

  “But there’s no sign of a keystone anywhere near North Bimini Island?” Sam complained.

  “The Antiqui Nautae!” Tom said. “They must have had the keystone. When they needed to increase the size of the swell, they simply placed it in the water. And that’s why, when they disappeared hundreds of years ago, so did the rogue waves.”

  Sam swore. “Only now they’ve started up again.”

  “And my guess, someone’s recently found the keystone.”

  Chapter Thirty Six

  His satellite phone rang. He answered it immediately. “Sam Reilly speaking.”

  “Mr. Reilly it’s Captain Miller of the Global Star. I have something that I think you’re going to be interested in. Can you talk?”

  Sam sat down on the side of the table. “Sure. What have you got?”

  “It’s the Global Star. They’ve just started to remove some of the steel chine. Let’s just say the damage is a lot more extensive than you’d expect from a single rogue wave. I think you’re going to want to take a look at it.”

  “Okay. Where did you say the ship was being salvaged for scrap metal?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.”

  “All right, I’ll fly in this afternoon. I’ll bring Veyron, my chief engineer. Maybe he’ll see something your guys don’t.”

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Sam flew above the Global Star, which stood forlorn on the hard stand of the scrap metal shipping yard. The pride of his father’s fleet of cargo ships destroyed by a seemingly random event. Even from a hundred feet above it Sam could see the extent of the damage. They had already removed the outer chine – the hardened metal designed to keep the hull intact in the event of striking an iceberg or other catastrophic collision.

  In this case, it had been peeled back to reveal the extent of the damage within the hull. Inside, not only had the main bulkheads been damaged, but the inner metal appeared to have been eaten away by some form of strong acid.

  “What the heck causes something like that?” Sam asked and then banked the helicopter to provide Veyron with a better view of the damage.

  “It sure looks like someone’s used an ocean of hard acid to dissolve its strength. Come on, take us down. Let’s go have a look at this poor lady.”

  Sam nodded his head and then turned to land. He carefully placed the Sea King helicopter down on an open field overlooking the scrapyard. After waiting for the rotors to settle, he carefully shut down the system.

  A man from the scrapyard met them as they walked towards the Global Star. Sam looked at him and took it all in with a moment’s glance. The guy looked like every stereotype of a friendly Texan, right down to the ten-gallon hat and revolver worn on the right side of his belt. He had a big smile to match his rotund stomach. “Mr. Reilly?”

  “That’s me,” Sam said, extending his right hand. “This is Veyron, my chief engineer.”

  The man shook it. “Donald Richardson’s my name. I’m the naval engineer in charge of taking this wretched ship to pieces for scrap metal.” The man spoke with a slow southern drawl. “Although I should let you know I take no pleasure in doing so. I’m sure she was a beautiful ship before the accident.”

  “How’s it going?” Sam asked. “Captain Miller told me that you had some interesting findings as you stripped the chine from the hull. He said
there were some things that I just had to observe for myself.”

  “Follow me. I can fill you in as we walk.” Don examined them both, as though he were judging what sort of people had come to investigate his work. “Listen. How much did Captain Miller tell you about what we’ve found here?”

  “Just that we need to observe it ourselves.”

  “Right you are,” Donald replied.

  The perimeter was enclosed by a wire fence with a roll of razor wire on top. They stopped at the front gate. Don typed the code into an electronic keypad and let them both through. “We’ve had a few unexplainable accidents ourselves since we received this ship. It’s become quite a problem. Our labor force is predominantly migrant workers – mostly Mexican. You know what that means when superstitions are involved?”

  Sam shook his head. He had no idea what the man was talking about. “I’m sorry, what are you getting at?”

  “Migrant workers. Mexicans. They’re awfully superstitious people.” Don looked at them both and winked, as though they knew exactly what he meant. “So you can see this run of bad luck is causing a real stir. All in all, we’d love to just get rid of the damn ship.”

  Veyron caught Sam’s eyes with one of those faces that said, leave the guy a lone, he’s clearly not going to say anything useful, so just keep your mouth shut.

  Don continued. “We’re all trying to work out what really happened to this ship to cause such irrevocable damage.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought the damage to the hull was consistent with a significant frontal collision, most likely a hundred or so foot high wall of water. Are you now saying that’s not what caused the damage?”

  “No, that’s about right – at face value anyway. But now that we’ve begun stripping the chine, we’re seeing some strange internal damage to the bulkheads.”

  “Such as?” Veyron asked.

  “Much of the metal has been damaged by some sort of strong acid. I still have to send some of the steal to a metallurgist for definitive answers, but I think it’s clear to say that something has eaten away at a significant amount of the ship’s insides.”