Skeleton Coast tof-4

by Clive Cussler

  “I’ll do you one better. I’m going to raise the river by ten feet.”

  4

  SOUTH OF WALVIS BAY

  NAMIBIA

  THEsand floating across the road was as fine as dust and swirled in eddies that formed whenever the cooling desert air met the still-warm asphalt. It looked like wisps of smoke or drifting snow. The sun had long since set, so the inland dunes showed pale white in the glow of the moon.

  The solitary vehicle on the road was the only thing moving save the wind and the gentle surf lapping at the beach. The four-by-four pickup was only about twenty miles south of Swakopmund and its adjoining harbor town of Walvis Bay, but it was as if this was the last car on earth.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, Sloane Macintyre shivered.

  “Could you grab the wheel?” she asked her companion. He did, and she shrugged into a hooded sweatshirt, needing both hands to pull her long hair from under the collar and settle it over her shoulders.

  It was as coppery red as the dunes at dusk and set off her luminous gray eyes.

  “I still say we should have waited until morning and gotten a permit to enter Sandwich Bay,” complained Tony Reardon for the third time since leaving their hotel. “You know how touchy the local authorities are about tourists entering secured areas.”

  “We’re headed to a bird sanctuary, Tony, not one of the mining concessions leased by the diamond companies,” Sloane retorted.

  “It’s still against the law.”

  “Besides, I don’t like the way Luka tried to warn us off from looking for Papa Heinrick. It was almost as if he has something to hide.”

  “Who, Papa Heinrick?”

  “No, our illustrious guide, Tuamanguluka.”

  “Why would you say that? Luka’s been nothing but helpful since we got here.”

  Sloane shot him a sideways glance. In the glow of the dash lights, the Englishman looked like a petulant boy acting stubborn for stubbornness’ sake. “You don’t have the feeling that he’s been a bit too helpful?

  What are the odds of a guide finding us at our hotel who happens to know every local fisherman in Walvis Bayand can get us a deal from one of the helicopter tour companies?”

  “We just got lucky.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.” Sloane turned her attention back to the road. “When we told Luka about the old fisherman mentioning Papa Heinrick he did everything in his power to dissuade us from looking for him. Luka first said Heinrick was just a beach fisherman and didn’t know anything about the waters more than a mile from shore. Then he told us he wasn’t right in the head. When that didn’t work he says that Heinrick is dangerous, and was rumored to have killed a man.

  “Was that the impression of Papa Heinrick we got from the fisherman who first told us about him?”

  Sloane went on. “No. He said that Papa Heinrick had forgotten more about the waters off the Skeleton Coast than any man had ever learned. His exact words more or less. That sounds like the perfect person to interview for this project and our oh-so-helpful guide doesn’t want us talking to him. Tony, that stinks and you know it.”

  “We could have waited until morning.”

  Sloane ignored his comment for a moment before saying, “You know every minute counts. Someone is going to figure out what we’re looking for eventually. When that happens this coastline is going to be crawling with people. The government would probably declare the shore off limits, close down the fisheries, and impose martial law. You’ve never been on an expedition like this. I have.”

  “And did you find anything?” Tony asked testily, knowing the answer.

  “No,” Sloane admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Unlike most of Africa, the roads in Namibia are well maintained and free of potholes. The four-wheel-drive Toyota glided through the night until they reached a turnoff that was layered in sand drifts as high as the vehicle’s tires. Sloane set the transmission in low range and started down the road, plowing through hillocks of sand that would have bogged any two-wheeled drive car. After twenty minutes they reached a parking area with a large cyclone fence. Signs hanging from the fence announced that vehicles were restricted beyond this point.

  They’d arrived at Sandwich Bay, an extensive wetland lagoon fed freshwater by subterranean aquifers that hosted up to fifty thousand migratory birds a year. Sloane put the truck in park but left the engine idling. Without waiting for Tony, she hopped from her seat, her boots sinking into the soft sand, and made her way to the back of the Toyota. In the open bed was an inflatable raft and an electric pump that could run off the vehicle’s twelve-volt system.

  She quickly had the raft inflated and her gear ready, making certain of the strength of the batteries in their flashlights. They piled their backpacks and oars into the raft and carried it down to the water. Sheltered from the open sea, the lagoon was as still as a mill pond.

  “The fisherman said Papa Heinrick lives at the most southern reach of the lagoon,” Sloane said when they had settled in the raft and poled it off the beach with their oars. She took a compass bearing off the night sky and dug her paddle into the smooth water.

  Despite what she’d said to Tony, she knew this could either be the jackpot or a complete waste of time, with the latter being the most likely. Chasing rumors, half-truths, and innuendo led to more dead ends than anything else but that was the nature of her job. It was about steady monotony leading to that one eureka moment, a moment she had yet to enjoy, but that acted like a lure to keep her plodding on, enduring loneliness, fatigue, stress, and pessimistic jerks like Tony Reardon.

  A few fish splashed in the dark lagoon as they paddled southward and an occasional bird ruffled its feathers amid the reeds. It took an hour and a half to reach the extreme southern end of the bay and it looked as unremarkable as all the rest, a wall of reeds capable of surviving in the brackish water. Sloane played the beam of her light along the shoreline as they searched the area. After twenty minutes in which her anxiety mounted she spied a small cut in the tall grasses where a stream trickled into the lagoon.

  She pointed silently and she and Tony maneuvered their little inflatable into the gap.

  The reeds grew over their heads and joined above them, forming a living tunnel that blocked out the silvery moon. The current from the small stream was negligible and they made good progress, cutting a hundred yards into the wetlands before coming to a little pond inside the reed forest with a small island at its center that would just barely stay free of water when the tide was at its highest. The light from the moon revealed a crude hut that had been fashioned from driftwood and bits of packing crates. The door was a blanket nailed to the lintel and just outside it sat a fire pit, embers still smoldering beneath a layer of ash. Off to the right was a fish-drying rack, rusty barrels for storing fresh water, and a wooden-hulled skiff tied to a stump with a single line. Its sail was furled tightly to the mast and the rudder and centerboards were lashed inside. The flat-bottomed boat wasn’t exactly ideal for fishing the open waters, leading Sloane to consider that Luka had been right about Papa Heinrick sticking close to shore.

  The camp was rough but a seasoned outdoorsman could live here indefinitely.

  “What do we do?” Tony whispered when they beached the inflatable.

  Sloane approached the door, confirmed the sound she heard was snoring of a single person and not the wind or surf and backed off again. She settled her backside onto the sandy beach, pulled her laptop from her bag, and started typing softly, her lower lip lightly clenched between her teeth.

  “Sloane?” Tony whispered a bit more stridently.

  “We wait until he wakes up,” she replied.

  “But what if this isn’t Papa Heinrick’s? What if someone else lives here? Pirates or bandits or something?”

  “I told you I don’t believe in luck. I also don’t believe in coincidences. Us finding a cabin exactly where we were told Papa Heinrick lives means that we’ve found Papa Heinrick.
I’d rather talk to him in the morning than scare the old codger in the middle of the night.”

  The gentle snoring from inside the cabin didn’t change in timbre or volume but suddenly a wizened African wearing nothing but an athletic supporter pushed aside the blanket. He stood on bandy legs and was so thin that every rib showed across his chest and there were hollows above and below his collarbones. He had a broad flat nose and large jug ears pierced through with some sort of horn earrings.

  His hair was pure white and his eyes shone yellow.

  He continued to snore and for a moment Sloane thought he might be sleepwalking, but then he scratched at himself rudely and spat into the fire pit.

  Sloane got to her feet. She was easily a foot taller than the Namibian and she realized he must have some Bushmen blood to possess such a tiny stature. “Papa Heinrick, we have come a great distance to meet with you. The other fishermen at Walvis Bay say you are the wisest among them.”

  Sloane had been ensured that Papa Heinrick spoke English, but the gnomelike man gave no recognition that he understood. She had to take the fact that he’d stopped pretending to snore as an encouraging sign and plowed on. “We want to ask you some questions about where you fish, places that are difficult, where you lose lines and nets. Would you answer such questions?”

  Heinrick turned back into his cabin, letting the blanket flow back to drape over the entranceway. He emerged a moment later with a padded blanket over his shoulders. It was made of loosely sewn sheets and feathers escaped the seams with each movement. He went a short distance off and urinated loudly into the water, scratching his belly languidly.

  He squatted down next to his fire pit, his back to Tony and Sloane. The bones of his spine looked like a string of black pearls. He blew the coals into life, feeding scraps of driftwood into the embers until he had produced a small flame. “There are many difficult places to fish these waters,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice for such a small frame. He hadn’t turned. “I have fished them all and dare any man to follow where Papa Heinrick goes. I have lost enough fishing line to stretch from here to Cape Cross Bay.” That was more than eighty miles north. “And back,” he added as if challenging them to deny his boast. “I have lost enough net to cover all the Namib Desert. I have battled seas that make other men wail and turn their bowels to water. And I have caught fish bigger than the biggest ship and I have seen things that would drive other men mad.”

  He turned finally. In the wavering light of his fire his eyes had taken on a demonic cast. He smiled, revealing three teeth that meshed together like gears. His smile turned into a chuckle, then a barking laugh that was cut short by a coughing fit. When he’d recovered he spat into the fire again. “Papa Heinrick does not reveal his secrets. I know things you wish to know, but you will never know them because I wish you not to know them.”

  “Why would you wish that?” Sloane said after she analyzed his grammar in her head to make sure she’d heard right. She squatted next to him.

  “Papa Heinrick is the greatest fisherman that has ever lived. Why would I tell you and make you my rival?”

  “I do not want to fish these waters. I am looking for a ship that sank a long time ago. My friend and I”—she waved at Tony, who’d stepped back after getting a whiff of Papa Heinrick’s body—“want to find this ship because…” Sloane paused and made up a story. “Because we were hired to recover something from it belonging to a rich man who lost it when it sank. We think that you can help us.”

  “Does this rich man pay?” Heinrick asked slyly.

  “A little, yes.”

  The fisherman waved a hand like a bat fluttering through the night. “Papa Heinrick has no use for money.”

  “What would it take for you to help us?” Tony asked suddenly. Sloane had a bad feeling about what the old man might want and shot him a scathing look.

  “I will not help you,” Heinrick said to Tony and looked at Sloane. “You I will help. You are a woman and do not fish so you will never be my rival.”

  Sloane wasn’t about to tell him that she’d grown up in Fort Lauderdale and had spent her summers crewing her father’s charter fishing boat and then took it out herself when he was struck by Alzheimer’s at age fifty. “Thank you, Papa Heinrick.” Sloane pulled a large map from her pack and spread it next to the fire. Tony edged in and added illumination with his flashlight. The map was of Namibia’s coastline.

  There were dozens of stars penciled in just off shore. Most were clustered around Walvis Bay but others were scattered up and down the coast.

  “We have spoken to many other fishermen, asking them where they lose lines and nets. We think one of these places might be a sunken ship. Can you look at this and tell me if there are any they missed?”

  Heinrick studied the chart intently, his eyes darting from one spot to the next, his fingers tracing the outline of the coast. He finally looked up at Sloane. She could see there was a kernel of madness behind them, as if his reality wasn’t quite her own. “I do not know this place.”

  Confused Sloane placed her finger on Walvis Bay and said its name. Then she drew it southward and said, “Here we are at Sandwich Bay. She tapped her finger toward the top of the map. “And here’s Cape Cross.”

  “I do not understand. Cape Cross is there.” Heinrick pointed emphatically northward. “It can not be here.” He touched the spot on the map.

  Sloane realized that despite a lifetime at sea, Papa Heinrick had never seen a nautical chart. She groaned inwardly.

  For the next two hours Sloane laboriously talked the old fisherman through the places where he had lost nets or had lines tangled. Because the desert continued under the ocean for hundreds of miles from the coast, anything that tore lines or ripped nets was either a rock outcropping or a shipwreck. Papa Heinrick would tell her that two days sailing southwest from Sandwich Bay was such a place, or five days northwest was another. Each one he described corresponded with the map she’d made over the past days talking to the commercial fishermen and day excursion captains at Walvis.

  But there was one spot that only Papa Heinrick mentioned. It was nearly seventy miles out by Sloane’s estimation, well away from any other. In fact, none of the other captains had even mentioned fishing in the area. Papa Heinrick said that there was little out there to attract marine life and he’d only been there himself because a freak wind had pushed him off course.

  Sloane circled the spot on her chart, noting the water depth was over a hundred and fifty feet, at the limit of her scuba abilities but still doable. However, it was too deep for even the clearest water to reveal the outline of a ship against the sandy bottom—even from the helicopter they planned to rent to investigate the other sites.

  “You must not go there,” Papa Heinrick warned when he saw the far-off look in Sloane’s eyes.

  His comment refocused her attention. “Why not?”

  “The seas are alive with great metal snakes. It is bad magic, I think.”

  “Metal snakes?” Tony scoffed.

  The old man lunged to his feet, his expression fierce. “You doubt Papa Heinrick?” he thundered, spraying Reardon with clots of saliva. “There are dozens of them, a hundred feet long or more, twisting and thrashing on the water. One nearly sank my boat when it tried to eat me. Only I could have escaped its evil mouth, for I am the greatest sailor who has ever lived. You would have pissed yourself in fear and died crying like an infant.” He looked back at Sloane, the edge of madness in his eyes a bit more keen.

  “Papa Heinrick has warned you. Go there and you will surely be eaten alive. Now leave me.” He settled back at his little smoke fire, rocking on his heels and muttering in a language Sloane didn’t know.

  She thanked him for his help but he didn’t acknowledge her. She and Tony returned to their inflatable and slowly paddled out of Papa Heinrick’s isolated camp. When they emerged from the secret cleft in the reeds Tony exhaled a long breath. “That man’s utterly daft. Metal snakes?Pleeease .”

  “ �
��There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.’ ”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s a line fromHamlet that means that the world is stranger than we can possibly imagine.”

  “You don’t believe him, do you?”

  “About giant metal snakes? No, but he saw something out there that scared him.”

  “I bet it was a surfacing submarine. The South African Navy must have some that patrol these waters.”

  “That could be it,” Sloane conceded. “And we have more than enough sites to investigate without looking for sea serpents or submarines. We’ll meet up with Luka this afternoon and figure out how we want to proceed.”

  They were back in their rooms at the swanky Swakopmund Hotel just as the sun began to rise. Sloane took a long shower, washing sand and the clinging feel of salt from her skin. As much as she needed to shave her legs, she put off the chore and stood under the pounding spray, letting the hot water work at the knotted muscles of her shoulders and back.

  After toweling off she slipped nude between the sheets of her bed. Her dreams were filled with the images of monstrous snakes fighting each other on the open ocean.

  5

  ASJuan Cabrillo jogged to the boat garage located just aft of the superstructure he listened to damage reports on his comm unit. The bilges were dry, which wasn’t a surprise. The riverbed was silty mud, nothing that could breach the hull. What he was worried about were the keel doors. At the bottom of the Oregon were two large doors that opened outward, creating a moon pool. From here the pair of submersibles the ship carried could be launched directly into the sea. Used mostly for covert insertions and extractions, one of the minisubs had a diving capability of a thousand feet and a manipulator arm, while the smaller minisub, a Discovery 1000, was limited to shallower water.