by Chris Howard
With a sideways glance at the first officer. “Work with Inda. We’re going to lose Dess. I need a mishap that cuts the lines. Our ROV is going autonomous and will meet up with the Serina about eleven miles from here. Use a locator beacon to get Dess to the ship. On her own, how much power does she have?”
“Fully charged. Enough for a couple of days, and maybe thirty miles of thruster power depending on currents and temp. Give me the details.”
“We’re leaving Dess behind with Serina with a program to push Serina back toward international water after a force-disconnect of the umbilicals. That’s where Inda is key.”
Angelo was already shaking his head. “That’s crazy. You know that. Dess is a strong one, but she can’t push something the size of the Serina.”
“Sure she can. It’s just going to be slow going until she reaches the Caribbean currents running north.”
Andres was nodding with the plans, but it was clear from his expression he wasn’t quite piecing together why they were using DuFour’s experimental explosive safety bolts, and why they were cutting loose a million-dollar underwater vehicle with a vague strategy for getting the ROV and the Serina together.
Wilraven shot him a serious look. “Have Damien or Telly do a pressure round on the sling bags. I want the Serina neutral in the water; a bit of fluctuation is fine, given salinity, current flow. Just get me a happy medium, a level ride, maybe a tad light on buoyancy, leaning toward surface rather than sinking.”
Wilraven straightened, and Andres grabbed the crutch off the deck, handing it to him.
Angelo gestured to the captain’s injured leg. “I’m on this, Cap.” The first officer went off to get the ROVand-shackle part of the operation going.
The captain and Andres watched as the slack in the crane cables swung side to side with the surge, grinding against the deck facing. A couple of the ABs and the rest of the dive team were manhandling the bell into position along the far side of the Irabarren. That’s when Andres gave Wilraven’s shoulder a backhanded smack, along with a nod. “Cap. That is my cue. We’ll have this changeover done quick as we can.”
Andres strode away toward the dive shed, and Wilraven returned the nod late, holding in the grimace of pain until Andres had his back to him. He had smacked the shoulder where the bullet had grazed.
When Levesgue came back around, Wilraven shifted to keep his focus on the dive team, while Levesgue walked around him in a wide circle, gaze roaming and shifting over the Irabarren as if he was trying to keep track of everyone at once.
Great. Guys with guns . . . without control of their mental faculties.
The captain let out a long breath. “Corkran wants this thing to go off without a hitch? Think of the next couple of hours as a practice run.”
The soldier didn’t respond. He looked up at the dark clouds moving in and took up position beside Wilraven, arms folded. “What exactly is your dive team doing?”
Wilraven gave him a glance. He was about to tell him to fuck off, and then remembered the last time he’d done that, with Seiffert’s “suicide” following, and decided to answer the simple question. He pointed to Andres. “The dive master’s sending down Damien and Telly to hook the Serina’s bow to Crane One and unhook her from the winch rollers.” He glanced over at Levesgue again and saw interest there. “Pretty much the same as the first dive, only quicker and with only one cable changeover. Everything goes well, divers will be back up as the storm is starting to break over us, and they’ll spend the night in the deco.”
Levesgue shot him a suspicious look. “Deco?”
“Decompression chamber. Just for safety. We’re pushing right up against the tables with the ascent on this one. We want to get the divers in and out as quick as possible.”
Levesgue’s answering smile bordered on cruel. “Sure, safety’s number one.”
The lid came off, and suddenly he couldn’t shut up. “Fuck off.” Something was welling up inside him, anger or nervousness. Whatever it was, he had tried to keep a lid on it. He knew there was no sense in pissing off these people.
He opened his mouth anyway. “You or your gun-toting fuckheads killed Clark Seiffert. He didn’t hang himself. I have bullet holes in the Marcene’s windows and I was hit by one, two of my crew in medical, Adam DuFour is missing . . . ” His voice dried up as suddenly as it had started. He hadn’t meant to bring up the two mystery guests from the Serina’s rebreather pod.
That sparked something in Levesgue, though, and he turned to look straight at the captain. “Yeah, the two in with Dr. Kozcera. Who are they?”
Face going warm, Wilraven scrambled for the names from their passports. “Ty and—”
“Where were they?” Levesgue cut him off. “I ordered the entire crew of both vessels together the day before and they weren’t there.”
Fuck. Bright morning sun flashed through his mind, the sullen crew members of the Irabarren and Marcene standing around the mess on the deck under the swinging corpse of Clark Seiffert. He blinked at the sudden realization that Marcene’s Chief Engineer Salzen wasn’t there. Who else was missing? Jodi Orlowsky on the ROV team. There had to be others.
It was also clear that if he allowed Levesgue to dig any deeper, it would come out that Ty and . . . Adista—that was her name—weren’t actually members of his crew. It might even come out that they had been part of the crew of the Serina. And Levesgue was definitely going to want to know what the hell that was about.
Defuse this. Say what he wants to hear.
Wilraven made a hesitant shrug. He was such a shitty liar. “Well, not everyone takes orders as well as I do.” He tried for something like a smile, and hoped it didn’t come out as something disturbing or snarling. “The chief of Marcene wasn’t there either. I’m sure there were others missing. No one said anything because, well, you scared the hell out of them.”
“Chief engineer?”
“Salzen.” Wilraven shrugged again and turned away as if the conversation was over.
He really wanted it to be over. More words were piling up in his throat, but he crammed them down. Dena from the dive team hadn’t been there. She had read Clark’s final letter, verified the handwriting, and hid in the ROV shed, crying. But the chief was the guy you needed onboard as much as the captain. The engines weren’t going to run or be maintained without him, and then the logic ran its course in Wilraven’s head. So you can’t kill him.
He hoped that was the message Levesgue heard. Another part of him didn’t want to hang around to find out. He took the few seconds of silence between them to walk away, heading across the deck toward Crane One.
“Captain?” Dewayne caught up to Wilraven, trying to keep his voice low. “Why the programmable shackles? We’ve barely tested them.”
Wilraven saw Goatee Boy watching him from the lee of Crane One, and gave DeWayne a shrug as if it wasn’t that important. “Even so. Do it. If things go sideways, I may want to unhook from the casualty with almost no warning.” Casualty was the common industry term for the vessel in distress, but he normally just went with the ship’s name.
Dewayne made a curt nod and headed back to the cranes.
Paulina, the Marcene’s radio op, was standing on the ship’s deck, just up from the blue portside shipping container, which was full of the Marcene’s own smaller ROVs and dive management facilities. The doors were locked because Irabarren had everything they needed for this one.
Leaning heavily on the crutch, Wilraven came up to lean on the railing beside her. “How’s your boy?”
“William? He had his admissions interview at UNH, going into materials science. Last I heard; that was two days ago.”
The captain frowned, focus pinned to something on the Irabarren’s far side. “Growing up. When I saw him, he was in eighth grade? How does he like it up there?”
“Ninth, just starting high school. He loves the winter.”
He knew Paulina was a hacker at heart,and thought about ways to do things with communications gear or anyth
ing that ran on electricity—things he would never even believe, much less think of-- so he just nodded and went quiet, waiting to see if she would bring anything up.
He wasn’t surprised.
“With the VHF and other comms dead the last twenty-four hours, I have a lot of time on my hands.” She nodded with him, looking over Irabarren’s deck. “Made a couple of things. I can jam their communications. Been monitoring what they’re up to, and they have regular transmissions with others, including another ship north of here. Also, I may have a way to get around their jam gear, a satellite relay and some friends of mine in the Caymans bouncing calls to the mainland.”
Wilraven had no idea what the details meant, but shutting up Levesgue could come in handy, especially if he had regular communications with other sociopathic fuckheads. And just knowing he might have another chance at an unmonitored outside call made Wilraven jump with new ideas.
“You know you’re my favorite.”
“You’re always mine. I’ll find you later and I’ll show you.” Paulina laughed lightly, mischievously. “How to turn them on.”
Royce Cordell came down the portside rail from the Marcene’s bow, and Paulina’s smile drifted off. The crane support engineer had a slow, arrogant shift to his walk. He didn’t say anything. Just spared the captain and Paulina a glance as he passed them, heading down the gangway to the Irabarren.
Paulina gusted out the word, “Fucker.”
Part of a smile found its way to Wilraven’s lips. Paulina wasn’t known for swearing. “Something you want to tell me?”
She waved a hand after the crane engineer. “Royce. He’s up there with those soldiers, nearly every afternoon. Friendly.”
Wilraven exchanged an affirming glance with Paulina before heading back down to Irabarren.
He was expecting some trouble with Dess, the remotely operated vehicle, any moment.
The deck shifting under his feet, he had just come off the Marcene’s gangway when his phone chirped. The wind was really coming up, and he barely heard the tones. For a moment he didn’t recognize the sound.
Our communications are back. He unclipped the phone, checked the ID, which told him UNKNOWN, and jammed it against his ear. “Yeah, this is Jay?”
“Captain Wilraven?”
“Speaking.” He had already identified the voice on the other end. Corkran.
“Tell me why you haven’t followed my directions?”
“You mean moving the Serina?” He played it slow. No reason to make this easy.
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, Corkran. You aren’t out here. We have a storm coming through. One of my dive team was in the deco. And . . . ” he was reaching and he knew it, but it might work on the superstitious old bastard. “I’m waiting for tomorrow night.”
“Why?” The word was a gunshot cracked through the phone.
Wilraven looked out over the sea, thinking of Levesgue’s Little Hitler routine, of Clark Seiffert’s involuntary suicide, Adam DuFour stabbed and bleeding, sewing his own wounds up on top of a crane, the two from Serina’s crew they had pulled from the pod, the third occupant who didn’t make it—so decomposed Wilraven couldn’t fit him with any of the passport photos. It could have been Val Nersesian. He swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to throw the phone, or at least tell Corkran to fuck the right hell off.
His voice came back rough. “No moon tomorrow night. Low visibility: it’s the best chance to make this happen without anyone seeing anything.”
Corkran was quiet on the other end, and Wilraven couldn’t tell if he was stewing in his own anger or was just thinking it over. “Fine.”
It didn’t sound fine. Sounded like an unacceptable position had been looked at from all angles until it had to be taken in order to stay in the game, because the only alternative was to forfeit. Corkran cut the call.
Angelo met Wilraven halfway across Irabarren’s deck, and Wilraven kept walking, vigorously stabbing the end of the crutch into the deck, making the first spin and follow him out of Goatee Boy’s line of sight. He slowed but kept facing the sea, hoping they were not being observed or spied on by Levesgue or the other soldier—the one they rarely saw.
The first officer folded his arms, lifting one finger to indicate the ROV control shed. “Dess is going. Quick-release bolts are on their way down to the hoist beams.”
“What’s taking so long? I expected to hear Aro, Jodi, and Inda shouting by now.”
“Yeah. That’s my holdup. Had to get some other things going first.” The first officer shot him a hard look, his voice just above the roaring storm wind. “Did I hear you say Cuban territorial water?”
Wilraven nodded. “There’s something hiding with the ship—the cause of her sinking. No hull breach, no damage that we could see on the scans and on the last dive. Something took her to the bottom.” He almost laughed at the look on Angelo’s face. “There has to be more inside the heads of the two strangers we brought aboard.”
Angelo whispered, “You know I’m with you, Cap.”
“I know. We’re not leaving the Serina behind in much deeper waters that can’t be crossed without an armed escort or an international incident.” Wilraven headed to the starboard bow corner of the Irabarren—someone he needed to talk to standing at the rail. He moved around the motion of the cranes in operation to lean on the rail, propping his elbows on the gray-painted metal, making a sour face and looking down when his elbow knocked off a bit of seagull shit.
The Marcene’s chief engineer, Ed Salzen, gave him a sidelong glance. “Captain.”
“Chief.”
“Get a talking to from Levesgue?”
“Yup.”
“Sorry, man. I was putting him off a plan I didn’t want him . . . sniffing around.”
The chief gripped the railing harder with another quick look. “Hear you. No problem. He’s a wired-up old fuck, sure thing. Way too tight. You planning something? Count me in.”
Wilraven leaned a little more over the rail, looking down into the angry sea sloshing against Irabarren’s hull. “Yeah. Too bad about the plumbing on the M.”
The chief looked over at him, with a clear what are you talking about look.
“Backing up in the head, plumbing clogged way down, nasty stink. And now we’re all forced to use Irabarren’s facilities to take a shit.”
The chief looked thoughtful, then said with a shrug. “That can happen. Maintenance is everyone’s job.”
Wilraven pushed off the rail, gave Salzen an easy nod, and wandered off.
A sharp cry of rage cut through the weather, and Inda came raging out of ROV control with a look that could have cooked and liquified hardened steel, her pulled-back blond hair almost ghostly white in the storm light. She spotted Wilraven just up from Crane Two and charged him, gesturing back at the ROV knuckle crane extended out over the water of Irabarren’s rocking deck, cables slack: Royce Cordell, the ROV crane operator, staring down at the controls as if blaming them for losing the sub.
“We have lost Dess. She’s gone off signal. Lines snapped—lines I fucking checked this morning!”
Wilraven shouted a few selected words into the wind, shook his head sympathetically, and followed her back to the ROV shed to look at the data with Aro and Jodi. Twenty minutes later the divers were surfacing with the bell, cable cut-over mission complete. Angelo came running up, soaked through with rain, helping the crew lock everything down before the wind took it away.
An hour later the storm swept in like a wall, the waves going black with bleeding lines of foam tracing the faces of the swells, ridging the caps like teeth. The sea dumped water over Irabarren’s flat deck, heavy rolls of it slapping against the steel walls of the ROV shed, spraying the high windows of the cranes.
The Marcene rolled side to side, slamming up against the fenders along the Irabarren with every wave, and anything not stowed and lighter than steel chain was whipping in the gale-force winds.
Chapter Thirty-five
R
oll Call
There were seagulls shitting everywhere, swooping and chattering and screaming for attention through the crane rigging. The sky was clear, a vivid blue with big white clouds squatting along the western horizon. The storm had passed through, whitecaps slapping the hulls and rocking the platform and ship together for most of the night.
Captain Wilraven made a quick post-storm inspection tour of both vessels—as quick as he could with the crutch—and was finishing up with the Irabarren and heading to the Marcene when trouble showed up.
Levesgue, with his team of two—Blockhead was still AWOL—openly carrying short, blocky assault weapons and other lethal hardware, stormed from their cabins at Marcene’s bow, making their way down to the Irabarren. The soldier who was neither Levesgue nor Goatee Boy was out with the remains of the team. He had mostly remained hidden so far, up in one of the cabins assigned to the soldiers, and Wilraven suspected he was the team’s communications guy, running the jamming and eavesdropping gear.
Levesgue stopped beside one of the big cranes and dropped a black duffel bag.
Using the public address system, Levesgue’s voice cut through the warm breezy morning. “Listen up, crews of the Marcene and Irabarren. Report to the Irabarren’s deck in five minutes. That’s an order. Five minutes, and the clock is running. My team will search the ships at that time. Anyone not out in the open on the deck of the Irabarren will be punished.” He let that sink in for a few seconds, and then, with a hint of a smile deepening the angles and hollows of his lean face, he added, “By punished, I mean I will put a bullet through your head. After that, we toss you in the sea. Now move!”
He gestured casually to Goatee Boy, who raised his gun and rapidly fired six rounds into the air.
And now every seagull was aloft, wheeling over the ships.
Wilraven watched them for a minute, and then made his way up to his cabin for supplies. He shoved papers around on his desk, looking for a bright red pencil, a particular one that Ranav—who spent his off-hours sketching and painting watercolors—had given him. A slim blue shape rolled across a cleared area of his workspace— a watercolor pencil, Staedtler blue with a red cap and a sharpened red tip. He shoved it into the pages of his notebook, and slid both into his shirt pocket.