Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3)

by Christine Kling

  “That’d be my guess, too. At least until daylight. Then we’ll head on up to Lampedusa.”

  “I heard you’ll be leaving us there.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Charlie returned with something tucked under his arm, wrapped in a towel. “Cake looks great, Cook. Thanks.”

  “I’ll be heading off to be first in line for a smoke, topsides.” The man headed aft.

  “So,” Tug said. “What is it that was worth risking your skin over?”

  Charlie set the bundle on the table and unwrapped the disk. It was about the size of one of Cook’s large pot lids and looked mostly black, but here and there he could see designs etched on it. “Take a look.”

  Tug pointed to one place where shiny yellow metal shone through. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Charlie nodded. “Now that I’ve washed it up a bit, I’m pretty sure it’s steel with gold and silver inlay.”

  “What is it?”

  “A shield.”

  It was late and Tug was tired. He just wanted to finish his coffee and get some sleep. “And that’s what you ran back for?”

  “I’m no expert, but my guess is fifteenth or sixteenth century. I’d have to polish it up for you to really see the design, but you can still make out the cross.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” Charlie traced his finger around the design. “It’s a Maltese cross. This is what they called a buckler shield. Must have belonged to one of the Knights of Malta who came to North Africa for trade or something.”

  “More likely he came to kill Muslims.”

  “I wonder if the whole suit of armor is back there.”

  “Believe me, we’re not going back to look.”

  “Of course.”

  They heard footsteps outside the wardroom, and Charlie threw the towel over the shield.

  “Change of watch,” Tug said.

  “Let’s keep this quiet, okay? It must be quite valuable. Hard to keep anything a secret when you’re sharing a bunk with three other guys. I don’t want it disappearing before we get back to the Lazaretto.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Well, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, mum’s the word. But good luck with hiding anything on a submarine.”

  “I have an idea.”

  The next evening, one hour before the 3:00 a.m. rendezvous, a sailor found Tug resting on his bunk.

  “Number One wants to see you in the control room.”

  Tug checked his baggage over to make sure everything was ready, then made his way aft. They had been traveling at a slow three knots all day, whiling away the daylight hours so they could rendezvous with the HMS Unbeaten off Lampedusa Island as ordered. Tug had spent the time preparing his gear for the transfer. After all those months in Malta, he had little besides a spare uniform and his souvenir saber to take home in his duffel.

  As he passed the wardroom, a couple of off-duty officers were playing a game of cards. Tug nodded at them as he passed. During his stay in Malta, he had grown comfortable with these men aboard the subs of the Tenth Flotilla. He felt a twinge of guilt at leaving them. The crew of the Upholder had also been scheduled to return to Britain, but their trip had been cancelled due to the shortage of submarines in the Med. The men he passed looked weary but determined to do their best for their captain.

  When Tug arrived in the control room, the first lieutenant pointed upward. “Captain wants you.”

  Tug climbed into the conning tower. The first thing that struck him was the force of the wind. Conditions were much worse than they had been the night before. The seas were being whipped into a froth.

  “Doesn’t look good, Tug,” Wanklyn said.

  “Bit of wind, I guess. You made contact?”

  “We made asdic contact over an hour ago. Can’t see them, but they’re closer than you think. Been trading signals.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Unbeaten asked for you to take over one of our spare batteries and a few other parts.”

  “Be glad to.”

  “Look, Tug, this weather is blowing a hooligan. If you don’t feel like getting wet tonight, why don’t you just stay and finish this patrol with us. I’m sure Shrimp will find you room on a flight out of Malta.”

  “Much as I love your company, Wanks, I’ve paid my debt for tearing up your shirt, I think.”

  Wanklyn nodded. “They said they’ll surely appreciate it if you decide to make the crossing.”

  “Looks like a fine night for a boat ride to me.”

  “Your call. We’re on target for the transfer at 0300.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Tug said.

  He climbed back down the ladder and set off to find Charlie. He wanted to say good-bye. He found him in the wardroom with a cup of tea.

  “Trouble sleeping, Parker?” Tug slid onto the bench opposite him.

  “No, I just felt like getting a brew on. Not that I wanted to see you off.”

  “Right, mate.”

  “Feels like it’s gone dirty out there.”

  Tug looked at Charlie. “Would it stop you from getting your ride home?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “We’ve had a good run together.”

  “That we have.”

  “Did you get that trinket of yours hidden away?”

  The cook appeared in the doorway. “Last chance to get some decent food before you go, Tug. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Cook here’s helped me out,” Charlie said. “We’ve eaten through enough stores in the icebox there, he found room for my trinket. We wrapped it up in oilskin to protect it from any more deterioration until I can get back and clean it proper.”

  “Got to admit, Parker. Bloody brilliant. But I’d expect nothing less.”

  Tug stood and stuck out his hand. “See you around.”

  “Safe travels, Tug.”

  Tug sat in his boat on the foredeck of the sub. The Unbeaten flashed her signal lamp to give him a target. He checked his compass. His canoe would be riding low with the weight of his own gear, the heavy battery, and the box of spare parts. He’d better be ready to paddle fast.

  He raised his thumb in the air and heard the familiar whoosh as the ballast tanks blew out some air. The water level rose up the side of the sub’s hull. Then a wave pushed him into the sea, and he was paddling as fast as he could.

  In minutes he could make out the dark outline of the Unbeaten. When he got within hailing distance, he heard a voice call out from the darkness.

  “Piss off, Tug. We’ve got two feet of water in the fore-ends and the batteries are gassing. You’ll never make it to Gib.”

  Tug recognized the voice of the first lieutenant on the Unbeaten. He smiled. “I’d belay that last message if I were you. I’ll make you a real good price on a battery here, as long as you don’t send me back to Bells, Smells, and Yells.”

  Tug heard laughter from the men on deck, who recognized the Royal Navy’s nickname for Malta. A line sailed across his boat, and he grabbed hold of it.

  He was going to make it home.

  Aboard the EV Shadow Chaser II

  Mediterranean Sea off Djerba Island

  April 20, 2014

  Cole was very pleased with the new boat. They had made excellent time covering the nine hundred open sea miles to Djerba. They’d been lucky with the weather. The winds had remained under fifteen knots, the seas no more than three to four feet high. There were still certain things about the boat that would take some getting used to. For example, from the height of the wheelhouse, the glare from the sea surface was so bright, Cole had to wear his polarized sunglasses all the time. It made reading some of the instruments a challenge, but Cole liked the view from up there. There was so much more glass.

  Moving up to a boat that size changed the rules and regulations that governed them. Some of the electronic gear—like the radar and the AIS, a system that broadcast their position to other boats with
in a twelve-to-fifteen-mile radius—were now required to be running at all times. Which made it more difficult to operate “under the radar,” so to speak. But their night departure from Turkey appeared to have worked. There had been no indication of any boats taking an interest in them during their five days at sea.

  Theo was amazing with the engines, frequently checking on them, telling Cole and Riley what to notice while on watch. But really it was the computer that kept them informed of any systems that needed attention. Theo had set it up so that all the data flowed into the ship’s main computer, and he was able to set thresholds, so Yoda spoke up and told them when they needed to service something. It was a truly stunning system.

  Djerba Island had been a bit of a surprise when they arrived. Cole hadn’t known what to expect, but the beautiful whitewashed luxury hotels along the coast north of Aghir looked more like they belonged in Greece. Farther south, where they were working, the coast was low and brown with what looked like date palms and a few houses set well back from the shallows. He didn’t like the fact that there were so many eyes on them from shore. It was difficult to hide his new eighty-three-foot yacht, but so far, after a couple of days of running their search quadrants, no one had come out to question them.

  “Teatime,” Theo said as he came up the steps from the galley, Leia at his heels. He was carrying a basket with sandwiches and some chips. Riley followed them with three bottles of water in her hands. “Best I could do for an Easter basket for you.”

  “I’m touched, Theo,” Cole said.

  Riley came up behind him and handed him a water bottle. “How’s it going, Skipper?”

  “Not bad,” Cole said. “We’ve been running our grid for a day and a half and we’ve covered lots of territory. Haven’t found our sub yet, but the systems are all performing well, and we’re collecting an unbelievable amount of data.”

  Theo set the basket down on the table in the corner of the wheelhouse. “Come and get it,” he said. “They’re all ham and Swiss.”

  “Looks good,” Cole said. He got up, grabbed a handful of chips, and pushed them all in his mouth at once.

  “You’re going to make yourself sick,” Riley said as she slipped a chip to the dog.

  “I’m starving. No lunch, and it’s such hard work running this boat.”

  Theo flopped into one of the two leather chairs and held his sandwich in front of his face. “Yes, this is the way I like to battle the elements.” He took a bite. “It’s just brutal. You even make us work on Easter Sunday.”

  Cole strolled over to the table and picked up a sandwich. “Work? The computer does all the work for us.”

  “I still don’t understand all this data collection you guys keep talking about,” Riley said. “We’re looking for a submarine. Why would we want to collect data about the places where it isn’t?”

  Theo held one finger in the air. “Because we can.”

  “I’m serious,” Riley said. “I don’t get it.”

  “There are lots of reasons,” Cole said, “but mostly it’s a pet project of mine. Theo was brilliant enough to make it happen.”

  “I don’t know about brilliant.”

  “Okay, then, persistent.”

  “No, I’ll take brilliant.”

  Cole came up behind Theo and gave him a thwack on the back of his head with his open hand. “Damn right you’re brilliant.” He turned to face Riley. She was sitting in the other of the two watch chairs with her bare feet up on the desk, drinking from a chilled glass water bottle. “How’s the water taste?” They made their water on board with a reverse-osmosis system and then filled their own bottles.

  “Doesn’t have much taste. We might have to work on that. So, tell me more about why Theo is brilliant. I know he is, but explain to me why he is this time.”

  “Okay,” Cole said. “We are now towing the magnetometer, which is measuring the iron content of whatever’s on the sea floor. We’ve also got a permanent installation of our bathymetric side-scan sonar now. We no longer need to tow that fish. The side-scan sonar is taking an impression of the shape of things down there beneath us and, depending on the depth, a hundred feet or so off to either side of the boat. There’s also a multibeam sonar system that works like a fish finder, but this one reads the nature of the material on the sea floor. It determines whether it’s sand, coral, rock, or grass. Then all of this information is tagged with the GPS location, so we are collecting all this geologic, magnetic, and bathymetric data for every precise section of the grid we are surveying. Later, if and when we launch the ROV and send our new little robot down to take video, that too will be added to the GIS survey data.”

  “GIS?”

  “Geographical Information System,” Theo said. “See, Cole told me that he wanted to collect all this data whenever we were working a grid. I mean, we’ve got all the gear. Why not store the data? So part of this boat’s systems is a massive storage array that can store up to one petabyte of data.”

  “Again, though. What’s the purpose of storing all this data?”

  “As Cole says, we are going to be searching for ‘archeological residues of the past.’” Theo turned to Cole. “You’re better at this than I am. Explain it to Riley.”

  “So far, we have mostly been looking for World War II ships, but there’s much more to maritime archeology than that. These residues of the past aren’t always going to be big hunks of metal like a submarine. It might be pottery or wood. If we save the data, then we can give it to the preservation authorities of the country whose waters we’re working in. From that data, they may learn much more about the sea’s secrets.”

  Riley said, “Wait a minute. So here we are off the coast of Tunisia searching for a wreck—without permission from the Tunisian government, by the way—just so we can give them some data? Heck, we haven’t even cleared through Customs and Immigration.”

  “That’s just a technicality,” Cole said.

  Theo choked on a piece of his sandwich and started coughing.

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “A rather important technicality. And I have a feeling the longer we stay out here driving up and down their coastline, the more likely it is someone is going notice.”

  “Not a problem unless we get caught—entering a wreck, that is. We haven’t gone ashore in Tunisia. We’ve just come in here for shelter. If and when we find this wreck, we’ll take a quick look and see if we can figure out what it is we’re supposed to be looking for. We will disturb the wreck as little as possible, and then we will turn over all our data to whatever government or university group is in charge of historical preservation. If we can find the Upholder, that will be a pretty significant find.”

  “Did you just hear yourself? Cole,” Riley said, “you don’t even know what it is you’re looking for.”

  A high-pitched tone sounded from the speakers on either side of the wheelhouse dash.

  Theo jumped out of his chair. “That’s a hit,” he said. He pulled back on the throttle. “Do you see anything on the side-scan sonar?”

  “Negative,” Cole said.

  “The magnetometer’s on too long a tether.”

  “So the boat’s already past it,” Cole said. “Probably not a very big piece of metal. Some junk, maybe.”

  “Yoda, take us back to the position of the hit.”

  “Yes, Theo.”

  “Reel in the magnetometer fifty feet.”

  The big boat made a wide, slow circle. Cole and Riley stared at the center display that showed the sonar image of the sea floor. It was mostly a flat, sandy bottom.

  “What’s our depth?” Theo said.

  Yoda and Cole answered in unison. “A hundred and forty feet.”

  “Approaching our target in thirty seconds,” Yoda said.

  Theo said, “This is when it sucks to be blind.”

  Cole rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he didn’t take his eyes off the screen. The screen image looked like an old sepia-tone photo of the surface of the moon. Mini crate
rs dotted the sea floor—homes to crabs, probably—but there was little else to distinguish the scene.

  “There.” Riley pointed to a dark image in the corner of the screen. “What’s that?”

  “It looks long and dark. Not very big.”

  “Maybe a log? It looks like it’s got branches.”

  “That’s no log, Riley,” Cole said. “I think that’s a deck gun.”

  “Seriously?” Theo put the engines into neutral, but the boat was still moving at about two knots.

  “Oh yeah,” Cole said. “There we go.”

  Theo grabbed the hand resting on his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Hey, mon,” Cole said, imitating Theo’s accent. “We found ourselves a submarine.”

  “What time is it?” Theo said. “Yoda, record the time of the sighting.”

  “It is four thirty-seven, Theo.”

  They could only see what looked like the bow of a ship in the upper-right corner of the screen. Cole jogged the autopilot to take them closer to the area where the submarine lay.

  “Oh crap,” Riley said.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Theo, we found ourselves part of a submarine. The center section of the wreck looks like it was made of glass and a giant hit it with a hammer. It’s been blown into hundreds of pieces scattered across the seabed.”

  “Damn,” Theo said.

  Cole sighed. “I’ll second that.”

  Villa del Priorato di Malta

  The Aventine Hill, Rome

  April 20, 2014

  Virgil was glad to have the extra man, even if he was an asshole. And like the old saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, Virgil intended to keep very close tabs on Diggory Priest. Never good to be threatened by a man with little to lose.

  The main house was shaped like an L around the formal gardens. Signor Oscura had told him the villa had once been the priory of the Knights, but now it was the site of their embassy, home of the grand master, and a great house for entertaining.

  On this Sunday, the villa was full of resident guests and many others who were not staying on-site but had driven up for the evening’s Easter dinner. The number of international military and political dignitaries at the villa that night would make it a very desirable target for some dumb-ass suicide bomber making a bid for his promised seventy-two virgins.