Riley looked reproachfully at the mercenary, less for his defeatist comment than for his liberal concept of personal hygiene. “Maybe, but we won’t know for sure till we can get closer.”
“And if it is like that?” Julie asked. “If the superstructure’s a mass of iron crushed against the floor, how are we going to get to the bridge or the radio cabin?”
“Simple. We can’t,” Jack said.
“Fine,” Riley said, leaning on the table and pushing himself to standing. “Then let’s raise anchor. Julie, get to the bridge deck. César, turn the engines on. We’ll sail in ten minutes.”
“Uh, hold on,” Jack said. “I didn’t say we should leave. Just that—”
“What, Jack?” Riley crossed his arms. “It’s gonna be hard? There’s no guarantee of success? We could get hurt? Tell me something I don’t know.” He looked his crew over. “This is going to be a complicated and dangerous operation. The possibilities of failure are high, and the most likely outcome is that we leave empty-handed.” He let it sink in for a second. “But if we decide to keep going, whoever gets negative or gives unconstructive criticism will be swimming to Morocco. So what do you want to do?”
They all nodded, with differing levels of emphasis.
“All right,” Riley said. “I think it’d be best to descend on the keel, at about the middle, then go down the side to look for a way into the superstructure—or what’s left of it.”
“Wouldn’t it be more logical to go to the bottom and just walk into the ship?” Elsa said.
Riley was about to answer when Jack jumped in. “We could, but from above there’s a better view of the condition of the wreck, and walking on the floor kicks up a lot of sand, which makes it hard to see.”
“And how would you know? I’ve never seen you in a diving suit,” Marco said.
“Exactly—you haven’t seen it,” Jack said.
“Could it be that your big belly doesn’t fit?”
“Are you looking to get your face kicked in?” Jack growled, standing up. “Because if you are, I’d be happy to oblige.”
“Oh yeah? Whenever and wherever you want.”
A fist slammed the table, and there was a shout for quiet, making the two men freeze.
Julie looked at them shyly. “Pardon,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I always wanted to do that.”
Riley cleared his throat. “Okay. We’ll eat something, and within the next two hours we’ll start the first dive. Jack, test and prepare the equipment. César, the crane and compressors. Julie, stay on top of the radio and keep the curious at bay. Marco, you’re going down with me.”
“Why me?” Marco said, pointing to Jack. “Why not the guy who knows everything?”
Riley sighed wearily, like a parent who has to ask a child to do his homework every afternoon. “Don’t screw around, Marco. Jack’s in charge of the ship when I’m not here, César’s the mechanic, and Julie’s the pilot. That leaves only you.”
“The only expendable one, huh?”
“Exactly,” he said, collecting the papers on the table. “More importantly, I wouldn’t leave you on this ship while Jack and I were both underwater even if I was drunk.”
The mercenary, on hearing that, made a strange grimace halfway between spite and twisted pride that they considered him a dangerous guy.
“And us? Can we help somehow? If it hadn’t been for me, we wouldn’t have even found the ship,” Elsa said.
Riley winked at her on his way out of the room. “In your case, beautiful, I’ll settle for not jumping overboard after any critters.”
They drove the Pingarrón right on top of the marker buoy and dropped anchor. Riley and Marco, crammed in their diving suits, finished going over the dive plan while Jack inspected each part of the equipment one last time.
The diving suit in itself wasn’t more than a loose canvas jumpsuit rubberized to make it waterproof, since down below a diver had to dress like he was going to the North Pole if he wanted to avoid hypothermia. The crucial part of the equipment, however, was the cumbersome copper helmet, which weighed forty-five pounds and had three thick glass windows that allowed for a 180-degree field of vision and had the bad habit of fogging up after several minutes underwater. The helmet connected to the suit through a gooseneck fitting, watertight thanks to a fragile rubber washer on which the life of the diver depended. Pressurized air came from a compressor on the surface, in this case the ship, constantly nourishing the diver with fresh air that entered through a channel on the top of the helmet and left through a valve on the bottom right. If the compressor failed or the air-supply hose broke, the diver could still count on a small tank on his back providing additional autonomy for ten minutes at the most, depending on the depth. If by then he hadn’t reached the surface he’d simply be left without air and die.
Basically, the diver was a man in a suit filled with air, who was lowered by crane to the seabed. The means to make him sink instead of floating like a balloon were as simple as they were uncomfortable: load the diver with as much lead as possible on his chest, head, waist, and feet. Until he went under and buoyancy lightened the load, the diver had to carry around roughly two hundred pounds. Meanwhile, he was dressed under the waterproof suit like a mountaineer, often under a blazing sun roasting him like a turkey on Christmas Day. Someone had compared it to being in a sauna disguised as an Eskimo, carrying your mother-in-law on your shoulders.
As Jack inspected the joints of the compressor hose, Riley was already sweating, his unruly black hair stuck to his forehead.
“Damn it, Jack,” Marco groaned. “Hurry up, I’m boiling.”
“I’m going as fast as I can. If you want I can skip yours.”
Marco looked at the sky as if asking for patience from above.
Then César lowered the crane to the deck, its hook firmly attached to a small iron basket, designed specifically for holding divers. “The lift is ready,” he said, releasing the crane’s controls and heading to the air compressor, which he then turned on.
Jack finished his check and put Marco’s helmet on hard. He waited to make sure the air circulated correctly and knocked on the helmet to signal to Marco he was ready to go and could get on the basket.
He was about to do the same with Riley’s when Elsa came over with a towel, wiped the sweat off the captain’s forehead, and kissed him loudly on the cheek, wishing him luck and asking him to be careful.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Riley was afraid he would hit him with the helmet, but he was as surprised as Jack. “Jack . . . I don’t . . .”
But he didn’t have time to finish his sentence, since Jack plopped the helmet on rudely, drowning out the excuses behind the thick glass. The second-in-command hit the copper helmet with his knuckles so hard it almost dented, and gave the okay for the dive with his thumb and index finger while still staring sullenly at his boss.
Carrying the hundredweight of lead on them, Marco and Riley dragged their feet, enclosed in lead shoes, to the lattice platform so slowly and painfully that they looked like they were exaggerating. Each got on a side of the platform and gripped the handles that were there for that purpose. Jack made sure that the air hoses were well placed, and after giving the order to César, he manipulated a lever to lift them above the deck and another to lift them over the bulwark and place them on the water. Moving the first lever again, he made them gradually descend.
The water reached their feet and slowly came up over their legs. Riley felt the subtle difference in pressure as he submerged. The sea covered his stomach and chest. When it reached his neck, he leaned back and looked up at his crew members, who were leaning on the bulwark, watching anxiously.
As always when he dove, he said a mental good-bye to everyone, in case the gods of the ocean or of hydraulics decided he wouldn’t make it back that day.
15
Riley saw the sun fading as he descended at thirty feet per minute. There was no trace of the pilot whales. Only a small school of tuna shot by like a volley o
f arrows, without showing the least interest.
The sea progressively lost all range of color, and everything took on a grayish-blue tone. Its ghostly quality reminded Riley of the thick fog on the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic. Marco looked around, somewhat nervous and well aware that he wouldn’t be safe until he got back to daylight; his life too was in the hands of chance and the good work of the surface equipment.
What made Riley most uneasy, however, was not the fact that he was under thousands of tons of water, or the possibility of drowning, but the absolute silence that reigned underneath. An ominous and overpowering silence that was incomparable to any on land, broken only by the bubbling sound of exhaled air spurting through the valve of the helmet. A sound that, incidentally, he never wanted not to hear, since it signaled everything was going as it should, and the oxygen was still flowing.
Feeling much lighter than on the surface, he looked down without fear of breaking his neck and contemplated how the black keel of the Phobos seemed to ascend toward him from the depths. He let a few seconds pass, and when he calculated that they were less than ten meters from the steel plates, he pulled sharply on the cable attached to the basket, which was also connected to the Pingarrón. The descent stopped almost immediately, before they made contact with the hull of the sunken ship. Since there was no other means of communication between the divers and the team on the surface, they used a preestablished code of jerks and tugs on a simple cord. It was no good for reciting a poem, but until someone could put a telephone in a diving suit, it was the best there was.
The keel of the freighter looked intact, so it must not have run into a rock or reef. Riley studied it for another minute, then gave a long pull and two quick tugs on the cable. The iron basket moved to the right. After two more tugs, the basket lowered again, this time parallel to the ship’s port gunwale. He kept looking for a clue as to why it sank, but found nothing.
Finally, he was lowered past the gunwale and stopped just in front of the great white four-story superstructure dotted with black portholes. It looked like the ship was a giant turtle that someone had put belly up, and no one was decent enough to return it to its natural posture.
A hand on Riley’s shoulder made him jump. Marco. He turned and saw him making a strange gesture with his hands, putting them together and pulling them apart vertically, like squashing a mosquito in reverse. Riley couldn’t figure out what he meant as he watched him repeat the gesture over and over. He mentally ran through the glossary of diving signals and couldn’t remember anything remotely similar.
Marco pointed to the sunken ship and repeated the gesture enthusiastically. Riley suddenly understood. Of course. Thanks to the underwater landscape of the Strait of Gibraltar, the bow and stern of the Phobos were stuck on giant rocks. The middle section, where the superstructure was, remained partially suspended, so only the uppermost part was crushed on the bottom. This meant all the cabins, and probably the bridge, would be intact enough for them to search.
Marco gestured for them to descend even farther and go in. Riley was about to agree when he realized the seriousness of altering the diving plan. If the brief recon mission were extended, their decompression calculations would be off. It wasn’t worth the risk, especially since there was less than an hour of light left. Riley waved his finger no and gave a long pull and a quick tug to send the basket toward the bow of the Phobos, where they would finish their inspection. Though it’d be less exciting than entering the ship, they might as well take advantage of their time under.
Riley was surprised not to have found any signs of damage on the ship. There were no cracks, holes, or signs of explosion. Even the hatches of the hold were closed, which meant the cargo was either fantastically stowed or the ship had none, so the compartments hadn’t given way under its weight.
The basket moved laterally toward the bow. Once there, Riley confirmed there was no sign of damage and pulled on the cable, signaling for César to bring them up.
Puzzled by the absence of leaks in the hull, he was already planning the next day’s dive when something unusual caught his eye. He pulled the signal cord again, and the basket stopped abruptly. Marco turned toward Riley, a questioning look on his face warped by the glass of the helmet.
Riley had César maneuver the basket a few inches from the bow under what had once been the waterline of the Phobos. He was barely able to see in the darkness, so he reached out and touched it.
No.
He ran his index finger along the uniformly elliptical three-foot-long slit. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. Marco ran his hand along the same groove, and immediately realized what it was too.
It was an airlock just under the waterline. He’d seen that type of compartment once before, but not on a ship. The compartment had a unique and specific purpose.
But that was impossible—at least he’d thought so. Riley’s mind buzzed with countless wild ideas, and almost a minute passed with him immobile, right hand on the hull of the Phobos as if he were taking the defunct ship’s pulse.
Marco looked alternately between Riley and the slit, then he tapped Riley’s shoulder, pointed to his wrist, and raised a thumb. It was time to go up.
Riley hesitated before mimicking the gesture. He gave three tugs on the cord, and the basket started to ascend toward the bright surface and dark outline of the Pingarrón floating above them.
Riley was still lost in thought, reeling from the unexpected discovery and its terrible implications.
16
“A torpedo tube?” Jack’s tone implied Riley might not be fully sober or had hit his head coming aboard.
“One, that we’ve seen. There’s probably another on the other side.”
The crew and passengers of the Pingarrón were gathered once again around the solid walnut table, where the happy news that the superstructure was practically intact was overshadowed by Riley’s discovery.
“On a freighter?” Jack said. “Are you sure?”
“It had the exact size, shape, and layout. I have no doubt at all,” Riley said.
“And you, Marco? You saw it too?”
Marco scratched his head. “If it wasn’t a torpedo tube . . . it certainly looked like it.”
“But that means that the freighter is actually . . .”
“So it seems,” Riley said.
Jack leaned on the table with his hands clasped, a worried look on his face. “Then March gave us false information.”
“Probably.” Riley nodded tiredly. “You can expect anything from that man, mostly bad things.”
“But why would he do that? It makes no sense to hire us to do a job and then hide something like this,” Marco said.
Riley shrugged. “Maybe he thought if we knew it we wouldn’t accept the job. And he would’ve been right. But whether we like it or not, we can’t back out now.”
Jack looked down, clicking his tongue. “Shit.”
Everyone was silent for a minute, then Dr. Kirchner coughed. “Excuse my ignorance, but what is the problem?” He looked around. “I know I’m only a passenger and it’s really not my business, but I’m intrigued by why you worry so much that the Phobos has torpedo tubes. After all, we are in the middle of a war, right?”
“Cargo ships don’t carry torpedoes, Monsieur Kirchner,” Julie said.
“Of course, but maybe in this case—”
“Without exception. An armed ship is by definition a warship.”
“And if the torpedo tubes are hidden,” César said, “or hidden on a harmless-looking freighter . . .”
“It’s because without a doubt it’s a corsair ship,” Julie said.
Elsa raised her eyebrows. “Corsair? Like with wooden legs and eye patches? Maybe they’ll board a galleon full of treasure.”
“I said corsair ship,” Julie repeated gravely. “Not pirate.”
“And what’s the difference? Corsairs, pirates, buccaneers . . .”
Jack lifted his hand, asking for a turn to speak. “Ms. Weller,” he said c
oldly. “I understand a veterinarian and a physicist wouldn’t know much history, so let me clarify a couple of things. Pirates were exactly what you had in mind—delinquents who, once on board a ship, assaulted, kidnapped, or killed everyone in front of them. Buccaneers were essentially the same, but specialized in attacking Spanish ships and territories with the blessing of other European powers.”
“And corsairs?” Kirchner asked.
“Corsairs are pirates on the payroll of a government, which in wartime gives them a so-called letter of marque, granting an almost military status.”
“But you’re talking about something that happened three hundred years ago,” Kirchner said.
Jack shook his head. “Believe me, corsairs are as common today as they were in the seventeenth century.”
“But why? There haven’t been ships carrying gold from America to Spain for centuries,” Elsa said.
“I don’t think you understood,” Jack scoffed. “Corsairs work for a country at war, sinking enemy transport or passenger ships. Now it’s not about gold or Spaniards but inflicting as much damage as possible on your opponent.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“I mean the ship under there certainly had a mission to approach its target under any pretext, waving a friendly flag so they’d be trusted. Then when they were close enough, without warning, they’d fire one, or several, torpedoes to sink the other ship. Then they’d kill the survivors, so there’d be no witnesses to the crime.”
“Lord,” Kirchner mumbled.
“Better save the Lord for later, Doctor, because that’s not the real problem,” Jack said.
“I don’t understand.”
Riley coughed. “International treaties prohibit any nation from arming or using corsair ships. So a nation breaching those treaties will make every effort to hide them.”
“But in the end it’s a Dutch ship, right?” Elsa said.
“I don’t think the Dutch navy, if there even is such a thing, poses any threat. Not even to us.”
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 11