The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series

by Chris Poindexter

  “It’s a nice plane,” I reminded him. “Besides, we still have connections in Egypt. All we need is the Egyptian Air Force to give us pass and we’ll be fine.”

  “I think I liked the prospecting for gold idea better,” he said after a minute.

  You can have the red candy or the blue candy. Amazing how it still works on kids, even when they grow up.

  We decided to grab some rack time and made our way below for a nap.

  Chapter 8

  I could have slept another four hours but I had to get up to answer the phone in the stateroom.

  “Salvage Star in sight,” Mackey informed me.

  “Stand off and signal them to send a boat over,” I instructed. The pitching of the Swan told me all I needed to know about the conditions outside and the possibility of making it over on an inflatable with a 15 hp outboard. The Star’s runabouts were made to handle the ocean and were the same type used by Special Forces.

  “He says you’re a crazy fuck but to blink our nav lights when we’re ready.”

  “Gimme a minute. On my way up.”

  I stopped by the galley and Ashley already had my coffee ready in a tall disposable cup with a plastic lid. I was starting to like her more all the time. When I got to the Swan’s low bridge the light was already fading and we could see the Star off our beam about 150 meters inland. The deck was lit up and a hive of activity, as it always was during salvage operations. I could see the ROV cable spooler positioned to the starboard side and fair amount of cable already played out. Ziggy was down in the deep doing his thing.

  There was a crisp wind out of the northeast and the waves were indeed 1-3, but it was decidedly on the 3 side of the scale. It was choppy water, with waves that alternated between manageable to actual decent size that could dump a small boat. It was no problem for the Swan or the Star but a runabout was going to be a wet ride. I was glad to be dressed in waterproof boots for the ride over. If we got too wet, we had clothes on the Star. Q joined us on the bridge.

  “Give them the signal, Mackey,” I ordered.

  Mackey flipped the lights twice and the runabout came off the stern of the Star and gave the starboard side of the ship a wide passage. Even the Star’s big runabout bounced a bit on the way over. We both managed to board the runabout without getting wet but there was plenty of spray on the way over to the Star. It was a bumpy ride but once we got there boarding the Star was easy from the dive deck on the back. The driver ran the runabout right up on the dive deck and hydraulics lifted us clear. Nice.

  Amber was on the back deck to meet us. “Are you crazy?” she asked when we got up on deck.

  “You, of all people, should know that answer already,” Q chided with a straight face.

  We made our way below, knowing Fred would be in the dive operations room when Ziggy was in the water. On the way through the salon, the ironic place where Amber and I had met, we passed a giant ball of fur curled up on a chair.

  “Is that Zeek?” I asked in surprise. “He looks like he swallowed another cat.”

  Amber frowned. “I keep telling the guys not to feed him,” she complained, “but they just keep stuffing him.”

  We left Zeek to his nap and made our way down to operations; Amber left us and went back to the infirmary.

  “Just couldn’t wait, huh?” Fred asked by way of greeting.

  “You said you had something,” I challenged.

  “Oh, we got something,” he assured me.

  The operations room was about half the size of the main salon and arranged in two rows. The ROV crew sat together in the back row, almost like air traffic controllers; two operators were at the controls and a supervisor sitting behind and between them. One controller drove the ROV while the other worked the manipulator arms. They sat behind a bank of six big multifunction displays which could show sonar, radar, or the view from the cameras, which was on the screen now, not that there was a lot to see. Ziggy’s water jet was blasting some sand away from a pile of debris on the bottom and most of the cameras were blocked by the silty discharge. Only the close up camera under the water jet had a clear view of what they were cleaning. Superimposed on the screens were the compass heading, orientation and depth. Down the side of the screen was a steady display of numbers from Ziggy’s various systems letting everyone know all was well in the ROV’s world.

  In the front row the monitors were bigger and that’s where Fred, the salvage master and a marine historian had seats. The salvage master could control both the Star’s position with the thruster array and the line spool on the deck. He wore a headset linked to the spool crew on deck, though all they did was make sure the line was clear and rolled on and off the spool properly. Fred and the marine historian used real-time recordings almost like a DVR. They could back up, pause, zoom and slow Ziggy’s camera displays and electronic data. On one screen was a GPS display with a crude zigzag pattern.

  “That’s what we got from the Raymarine,” Fred explained. “We stitched together two weeks’ worth of data, which was as far back as the log went. With the coordinates we knew right where to look. We did a quick survey with The Fish of the area in between the original torpedo hit and where the wreck sank.”

  Fred punched up a display that was a composite of the side-scan radar passes of the Fish. It was smooth in the middle but jagged along the edges where the software stitched the segments together. He zoomed up the smooth part of the display which showed a large pile of debris at one end and a thinner trail of debris that tapered down to the main wreck of the ship. Black lines traced the change in depth.

  “We looked at older surveys of this area,” Fred informed us, “and only the wreck was there.”

  “What happened?” Q asked.

  Fred shrugged. “The ocean’s a strange place. Things can stay covered for years; then a storm comes along or a change in current and uncovers it. Judging by the pieces we brought up it’s been uncovered since the 80s or early 90s. This pile here,” he used an electronic pen to draw a circle around it, “has formed a natural reef.”

  “Grouper,” I put together.

  “Without a doubt,” Fred agreed. “It’s not unusual to have fishermen find reefs first. Due to the fact it’s basically a tangle of scrap metal, we found a lot of fishing tackle hung up on it.”

  Fred called up the video file list, picked out one near the beginning and fast-forwarded through it until the first pieces of twisted metal appeared on Ziggy’s cameras.

  “You can see what the current is like through here,” he said, pointing to the right of the display where the current could be seen whipping the edges of the reef. “It’s right at the limit of Ziggy’s operational window.”

  Ziggy could fight stronger currents for a short time but it caused the thruster motors to heat up, even in cold water. Run them hard enough and they could freeze up and send Ziggy tumbling along with the current. The video did show a lot of fishing gear and lines trailing away from some of the vertical beams. You could open a bait shop on the gear hanging from any one of them. Leaders and fishing line waved in the current like kite string in a summer breeze.

  “You’ll like this a lot better,” he said, pausing the reef video and picking a point farther along the video stream.

  The next clip was Ziggy making its ponderous way along part of the bottom that looked like a snow plow had gone through the sand, though the edges had been smoothed over from the current.

  “Drag marks?” I asked.

  “This section right over here,” Fred said, switching to the GPS data overlay. “It’s sheltered a little from the current by the reef. Most of the other drag marks were smoothed over by the current already.”

  “You should see this,” the ROV driver interrupted.

  The view from Ziggy’s forward cameras was clearing up as the current carried away the silt and sand. Plainly visible were piles of Tatham lead bricks. Some were clumped into a solid mass, others laid out on the bottom like tiles. As the operator moved Ziggy along the bottom the pi
les went on and on until they were once again lost under the sand.

  “We’re going to start bringing it up,” Fred informed me. “Looks like a couple tons at least. He missed a lot of what was down here and some of the bigger clumps are mixed in with other types of scrap. Those wouldn’t have fit in his little dredge. We can cut them loose and salvage a lot of what’s down here.”

  “So you’re just going to start bringing it up?”

  “It’s not claimed and we’re not pulling it out of the wreck,” Fred explained. “We might as well stay on it. Unless you need us for something else?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.

  I shook my head. “Go for it,” I agreed. “That’ll pay for the trip down here.”

  “And then some,” he grinned.

  “The only thing...we’re going to need Amber,” I informed him. “Just until we hear from V.”

  “I figured,” he said heavily.

  I could tell Fred didn’t like it but we were all shorthanded. All the crew had gotten basic first aid training, two were former Navy corpsmen and one was a paramedic. None of them were current on their medical ratings but they could keep someone alive in an emergency. I wasn’t leaving him completely without any coverage.

  Fred picked up the phone on the desk and punched in a code. “Get your stuff and meet us upstairs,” he said, and then hung up.

  “Start loading the basket,” Fred ordered the ROV crew, which would be busy using Ziggy’s manipulator arms to fill his onboard sample basket with low alpha lead bricks. On subsequent trips he’d be ferrying bricks to a separate basket lowered from the Star’s crane. Ziggy could stay on the job as long as his human counterparts could stay awake at the controls and some dives had gone on nearly 36 hours at a stretch.

  “It’s only a day, Fred,” I reminded him.

  “I understand,” he said, but it was also clear he didn’t like it.

  Amber met us in street clothes in the salon. She didn’t need a bag because we had clothes for her at the villa. It was a dark, bumpy ride back to the Swan and getting back on to the rocks from the Swan’s runabout in the dark was quite a bit harder than boarding the boat when it was still light. By the time we got back to the villa we were wet, dirty and I was bleeding from a cut on my hand.

  “Holy shit, look at this place,” Amber breathed as we finally made our way into the welcoming light of the villa.

  “In case the valet shows up you’re supposed to be my niece,” I informed her.

  “Ooh, incest,” she grinned. “Kinky.”

  Right then a voice boomed from the TV. “I seeee you little girl,” it hissed.

  “Shut up, pervert!” Amber teased in return with a smile. “And get someone to bring my bike up here.”

  “Already on it,” Deek confirmed in a more normal voice.

  “I need to pee,” Amber announced, “and get some clean clothes.”

  We directed her to the pink room and we all decided the hot tub sounded like a great way to unwind and talk about the plan for tomorrow. Q and I hit the fridge for beers on the way upstairs and were the first out to the Jacuzzi.

  “Weird to think we were out on a boat a few minutes ago,” Q contemplated, sinking down into the hot, frothing water.

  Amber joined us a few minutes later in a swimsuit at least a half-size too small and a sheer wrap vaguely reminiscent of a harem girl costume.

  “Let me guess,” I said, admiring the view. “Deek picked out your clothes.”

  “I didn’t have time to do it,” she confessed. “But that’s the last time I leave it to him. I’m afraid of opening my suitcase and finding a roll of dental floss.”

  She had three beers with her and distributed the bounty after dropping the wrap and joining us in the tub. We spent a few minutes going over the plan for the next day.

  “We should go see the fish guy,” Q suggested after we brought Amber up to speed on what we learned so far.

  “Do we really need to do that?” I wondered out loud. “We know Pig Fucker didn’t have anything to do with Rafe disappearing.”

  “He bothered me,” Q admitted, “and we don’t know who he went to see first.”

  “It’s a pretty safe bet Pierson Brothers didn’t have anything to do with Rafe disappearing,” I argued, “and Sergei doesn’t know dick about how to sell low alpha lead. Either way I don’t see Fat Fuck as a player.”

  “I thought it was Pig Fucker?” Amber questioned. “Or is that a different guy?”

  “Same one,” I assured her.

  “I still think he’s worth talking to,” Q maintained.

  “I suppose,” I mulled. “Just want to make sure we’re not acting just because he’s annoying.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Q reminded me.

  “We’re working thin here,” I countered. “Besides, all we have to do is hang back a few months and he’ll keel over from a heart attack.”

  That got a laugh. “Okay,” I continued. “We start with Pig Fucker. That means getting up at zero-dark-thirty to stake out the fish market.”

  “All right,” Q concurred. “If we’re doing that then I’m going to bed.” He levered his long frame out of the hot tub and wrapped himself in a towel.

  We said our goodnights and Amber slid over to sit next to me in the Jacuzzi. “Alone at last,” she said, taking a pull on her beer.

  A few minutes later she reached up and untied her bikini top. “Oops,” she teased, dropping it next to the tub, “it slipped.”

  “Don’t make ‘em like they used to,” I feigned, as she rolled over into my lap. We were just getting really comfortable when David wandered out of the kitchen.

  “Hiiiii...oh, my!” he blushed after getting a good look. Amber rolled off me and tried to hide her boobs with her arm, which was somewhat futile.

  “I am soooo sorry,” David said, regaining his composure. “The other gentleman let me in, we have someone’s motorcycle outside,” he said, brandishing the keys. “They called us when no one answered the phone here.”

  “We were...uh...busy,” I deflected.

  Amber retrieved her top and climbed out of the tub, wrapping herself in a towel.

  “Thanks, girlfriend,” she joked, taking the keys from David. “I’ll handle it from here.”

  Amber headed off to throw on some clothes and move her bike to the garage.

  “She’s not really my niece,” I confessed, reluctantly levering myself out of the tub.

  “None of my beeswax,” he assured me. “I feel just terrible barging in on you like that but your friend didn’t warn me you had company.”

  “Thanks for handling that for us.”

  “Oh, no problem at all. That’s why we’re here. You all enjoy the rest of your evening,” he said. “I’ll just see myself out.”

  A moment later Amber bounded past in a long t-shirt that had perfect wet spots around her boobs and butt. I heard the garage door open followed by her and David laughing at something, then the whoop, whoop and low growl of her motorcycle as she moved it into the garage and closed the door.

  She came back in still smelling faintly of chlorine. “I like him,” she said, closing the door to the garage behind her. “We should hire him.”

  “David? Yeah, I had the same thought.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” she proposed.

  “Okay, when this is all over you can go find him and see if he wants to come aboard. Start him in one of the property management companies; let Deek keep an eye on him for a while. If he works out, see if he survives training and read him in.”

  “Why me?”

  “It’s your idea,” I pointed out. “You catch ‘em, you clean ‘em. He’s your bitch and your responsibility.”

  “Huh,” Amber had to mull on that one a minute. Since she was a teenager the only person she ever had to look out for was herself. On my side, I had to start facing up to my own limitations. It was time to start building an organization that could function without me and that meant bringing up the next genera
tion of leadership.

  “Okay,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “I’ll make David my bitch,” she said with a wink.

  “Don’t enjoy that too much,” I joked.

  “Ha!” she said, hooking her arm in mine. “I’m going upstairs to take a shower. Want to come up and soap my back for me?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Some days I really did love my job.

  Chapter 9

  4 in the morning came way too fast and way too early. If it was hard for me, it was even worse for Amber.

  “Fuuuuuck! Why did you keep me up so late?” she grumbled.