The Shadow Beneath The Waves

by Matt Betts

  THE SHADOW BENEATH THE WAVES

  Matt Betts

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2018 by Matt Betts

  Dedication

  I figure this is probably the right book to dedicate to my good friend Brian, who discovered MST3K, Robot Jox and a slew of bad movies with me.

  Thanks for watching out for me.

  1

  Martin Taylor watched as his divers surfaced and waved at him.

  “This is it,” Takis shouted. “The hull is intact, just like we thought.”

  Cass raised her mask onto the top of her head. “It’s gorgeous. Exactly what the video showed.” She grabbed the ladder and climbed. Martin extended her a hand and helped her onto the deck, then did the same with Takis. The two divers sat on the edge with their feet dangling in the water as they removed their tanks.

  “Excellent. I’ll let everyone know we’re in business.” Martin climbed up the ladder to the main deck and walked toward the wardroom in the bright Caribbean sunlight. It felt good to relax and enjoy the afternoon weather. They’d been hunting the wreck of the HMS Swansea for nearly two years, and a lucky break finally brought them here. Some of the crew had left along the way, looking for greener pastures, but the dozen or so that were left were hardcore believers in the hunt, and would be overjoyed at the find.

  When Martin opened the hatch to the wardroom, he was greeted by the shouts and cheers of the remaining crew. The large overhead monitor, recently most used as a screen for movie nights, showed the blown up image of the word “SWANSEA” barely visible on the wreck below.

  When the noise died down, Martin spoke. “Cass and Takis say it’s the real thing. And fairly intact.”

  “The Eyeball told us that days ago,” Rina said. She referred to her mini sub camera that they always used to explore potential sites. “But I guess waiting around for two people to swim down and see it isn’t a complete waste of time.”

  “He’s old-school. Leave him alone.” Jakob handed Martin a plastic Champagne flute full of his favorite cheap American beer. “To the Swansea.” He raised his own glass in salute. The rest of the crew did as well, shouting their excitement again.

  “To all of you. The crew of the Adamant has done me proud again,” Martin said.

  “To the Adamant,” the crew shouted.

  Ozzie Suvari, Takis’s brother, came up and patted Martin on the shoulder. “My hands were starting to get prune-y from all the diving looking for this thing. If it’d taken much longer, they might have stayed that way.”

  “Think of all the exercise you’ve been getting. I’ve been saving you a fortune in gym memberships.” The two touched their cheap glasses of alcohol together in salute and took a drink before Ozzie went over to join Rina and Jakob.

  The beer was slightly warm and a little flat, but it still tasted good to Martin. They’d succeeded when everyone else had failed; where everyone else had given up and moved on. He was close to doing so himself, and would have, if he hadn’t been so loud about his resolve to never quit on this search. Every interview brought up the subject, and instead of leaving some wiggle room for leaving, he doubled down on his insistence that this day would come. For some, today would be a vindication, proof he was right. But he’d depleted a good portion of his once-fat bank account. If they’d gone after some of the smaller treasures along the way, and left their options open on the Swansea, things might have gone more smoothly.

  As Martin eyed the crew, he realized that three were unaccounted for; Cass, Takis, and Goldman. Cass and Takis were probably stowing their gear and changing still. Martin figured that Joe Goldman was in the wheelhouse, keeping an eye on the weather or some such worrisome detail.

  After a careful extrication from the party, Martin went looking. He found Goldman, as he’d expected, in the cramped con room. Goldman sat in the captain’s chair, surrounded by instrumentation. The original controls of the modified ship on his left, the banks of computers and new technology on his right. He was alternating between staring at a weather radar monitor and another screen downloading emails.

  “Everything good? You’re missing Kronenbrau in plastic.”

  “Does it taste better than Cronenbrau from Styrofoam cups?” Goldman didn’t look up. “Cause that shit is nasty.”

  “Hey. Cronenbrau is an American classic,” Martin said. “You seen Palmer?”

  Goldman pointed to the bow, where a lone figure stood leaning on the railing. “She’s been out there since they came up for air.”

  “Thanks.” Martin turned to join her but Goldman stopped him.

  “I’m having a little trouble with the wireless connection, but I have a message from S.B. that’s trying to download. Seems like a big file.”

  “Really?” The crew knew who S.B. was; she’d provided a lot of the intel on wrecks and treasures that Martin’s crew had managed to find. She’d hacked and evaluated the race data from a Caribbean sailing regatta, and extracted a point of data no one else cared about in order to lead Martin and the Adamant crew to the Swansea. The woman seemed to never sleep, scanning maps, satellite feeds, forums and military channels for tidbits and scraps that she could build into a whole theory on the location of any given mystery. Occasionally, she creatively “borrowed” information from other treasure hunters, which never went over well. “What are the odds that she can hit a homerun twice in a row? Let me know when you get that message, though.”

  Martin turned and walked toward the bow.

  Cassidy Palmer turned and nodded when she saw him. “You leave the party already? I thought the captain went down with the ship.”

  “Had to make sure the whole crew was celebrating,” Martin said. “What’re you doing out here?”

  Cass waved a dismissive hand. “Eh, you guys have run the ball pretty far on this; I’ve only come on in the last six months. You all are due for a major party.”

  “You’ve worked on this too. Don’t let yourself miss this. I hear they busted out the goat cheese we picked up in Bonaire.” They’d been eating the goat cheese since the day they left port. “Nothing else says party like goat cheese.”

  “So when do we start raising the treasure and getting rich?” Cass asked.

  “I forget how new you are to this. We’ll probably get to bring a couple of things up for proof that we found her, and we’ll go down and take a ton of cool pictures, but there’s a lengthy process before we get to do much. Legal stuff, mostly,” Martin said. “I didn’t think you were in it for the money.”

  “I’m not. I’m just getting bored already and want to get moving on the next search, really.”

  “Well, strap yourself in; it could be a long wait.” Martin patted the railing and started back. “You should really join the party.” He didn’t linger, and realized she’d probably stay where she was, but at least he tried. He walked up the stairs and as he passed the wheelhouse, Joe waved him in.

  Martin assumed it was something party-related, but changed his mind when he walked through the door and saw the gunman standing, half-hidden by the equipment.

  2

  Martin kept his hands raised as he addressed the men pointing guns at him. The single armed man in the wheelhouse had forced Martin and Joe out and into the common room, where other attackers had rounded up the crew. “Look… We found this site and intend to file a claim on it. We won’t be intimidated into leaving.” Martin looked around the cabin to make sure his own people were calm and safe. He didn’t need anyone getting antsy and getting killed.

  One of the thugs stepped closer and pointed his gun at Martin’s head. “Intimidated? Who said anything about intimidating you?” He racked the slide on his machine gun for emphasis. Martin noticed the man had a vaguel
y French accent.

  “Woah. There’s no need for this. You tell your boss we’ll…”

  “What makes you think I am not in charge here?” The man acted indignant.

  “You’re all wearing headsets. I saw some of them reacting to orders as they rounded us up, but you hadn’t said anything.” Martin nodded out the port window. “I just assumed there was someone over on your ship giving the orders.” Martin had noticed the ship as he’d come into the room.

  The head gunman was silent for a moment and then pointed to the door with his gun. “All of you out on the deck. Now.” He pushed Ozzie with the butt of his rifle. “Go.”

  Martin tried to assure his crew things would be okay. “Come on guys. Let’s go. Just do what they say.” He led the way, his five crew members followed closely out of the room. “Take it easy.” In his head, Martin was anything but calm. Two of his crew weren’t accounted for yet and he hoped they were safely hidden.

  They walked out into the sunshine and stumbled across the deck of the modified cargo ship, Adamant. Everything was in disarray from the confusion of the attack and the preparation he and the crew were making for the exploration below. Martin scanned the equipment, looking for something to use as a weapon or to signal for help, but there was nothing but rope, chord and electronics. There were wetsuits and air tanks, but no harpoon guns or dive knives, whatever good those would have done.

  “Stop,” the lead gunman said. He was hard to hear out on the deck with the wind picking up. They’d come to a halt near a rope ladder that must have been strung up by the attackers. Peering over the side, Martin saw a large, empty outboard boat that the men used to get over from their own vessel.

  Two more pirates, Martin just decided they must have been pirates, approached from the other end of the ship. They were alone, which meant they hadn’t located the last of Martin’s crew. It gave him a glimmer of hope.

  “Marco, Anthony—head down and start the boat,” the leader said.

  “Your boss want us dead now, or are we all going over to talk to him?” Martin asked.

  The gunman stepped as close as he could to Martin. “If we wanted you dead, I would have killed you. For now, we’re just going over to our ship, where things are a little more conducive to a discussion.” He motioned to the ladder and Martin began to climb down, hand over hand on the thick ropes, followed by the others, and then the remaining attackers.

  Soon, they were all standing on the deck of the smaller boat, and Martin stared out at their destination boat in the distance. He figured once they got there, they would die. These men would kill him and his crew and toss them overboard. They’d take the Adamant, and the treasure on board, and use the Suvari brothers’ notes to find the rest of it on the bottom of the sea floor, not too far off from their current position. Martin assumed the only reason they weren’t dead yet was because these attackers hadn’t found those notes.

  One of the gunmen leaned hard on the throttle and smacked the boat’s console. Another walked over and they began a heated conversation in WAKE, a dialect that was a melding of several Pacific languages and regionalisms— some Chinese, a little Japanese, Hawaiian and some Indian. It had been the predominant language of the Circle of Liberated Territories during the war more than a decade back. Martin wasn’t skilled in the interpretation of it, but some of his crew were. Rina leaned forward to tell him what was being said, but it was easy to understand without knowing the actual words. The boat wouldn’t start.

  The two men at the helm continued to bicker as they burned through all of the curse words that Martin knew in their language. He looked around and found that there were only five men, not counting the bickerers. Sure, they were heavily armed, but given the opportunity, the crew could overpower them. They just needed an opportunity; he just didn’t know what that opportunity would be.

  Seconds later, the pirates’ ship exploded. A large fireball erupted from the aft of the craft, sending smoke and flames high into the bright blue sky. The blast threw the shapes of two men into the air, dropping them in the water.

  Martin figured that was a sign if ever he’d seen one. He looked to his crew, who were already waiting on him to say something. Martin nodded and the crew attacked the stunned pirates, who were staring at their flaming ship. Martin and Ozzie jumped on the pilot and his companion who had stopped working to start the boat just to look at their ship. Jakob Rask, the largest of the Adamant crew, punched the nearest gunman and shoved him overboard before quickly grabbing another and kneeing him in the groin. Rina jumped on a man’s back and punched him in the ear.

  Ozzie emerged from his efforts with one of the men’s rifles, and he shot it in the air. Everyone stopped and turned to see who had used the weapon. The attackers struggled to gain control of their own guns, mostly with Jakob.

  “Drop your guns,” Ozzie said. “Drop them now.”

  He meant it, Martin knew. Most of the crew had seen some sort of military service, but Ozzie had seen actual combat years ago. There was a question of whether anyone else would be willing to shoot someone. The pirates raised their hands. None were in a position to shoot Ozzie, and the majority of them were incapacitated anyway.

  “The second I heard the explosion, I knew where my brother had gone,” Ozzie said. “Takis tends to make a loud mess.”

  That was Martin’s suspicion as well. He just hoped Cass was with Takis and they were both safe.

  “Jakob? Head back up the ladder and you can keep guard as we send these guys back up. Then we’ll sort out what to do with them.” The crew brought the pirates aboard safely and watched the other boat as it seemed to slowly take on water, sitting lower in the water, especially at the stern. Gunfire erupted again as a small, motorized lifeboat sputtered off in the opposite direction, firing to cover their escape. Martin counted maybe three figures.

  “Well, there goes your ticket out of here. You could try your bigger ship, but you lot may be swimming home if that one sinks any lower,” Jakob said. The pirates saw nothing funny and mumbled in WAKE under their breaths.

  “They said something about your mother and an oversized zebra,” Rina pointed out. “No. Not a zebra…” She snapped her fingers as she searched for the words. “It looks like one.” She held out her hand to stop anyone from saying it before she could remember. “I’ll think of it.”

  “You don’t need to translate it exactly. I get it,” Martin said.

  Loud splashing in the pirate’s small boat below them brought everyone’s attention. Cass and Takis threw their diving gear into the craft and pulled themselves in. They dropped their vests and tanks, and then leaned over to pull up a small sea sled. Martin assumed it was what got them over there and back so fast.

  “Ahoy!” Jakob said.

  The duo looked up and waved.

  “Takis, what did you do?” Ozzie yelled down.

  With a thud, Takis’s weight belt dropped to the deck. “Did you see that?” He pointed to the burning ship. “I mean, did you see that? It was awesome.”

  “Yes we saw it. How could we miss it?”

  While the brothers continued to yell back and forth, Martin focused on Cass. “You okay?”

  She looked up, nodded and put her foot on the rope ladder before pausing. “Everything okay up there? Is it safe to come up?”

  “Yeah, we have everything in hand up here.” He watched her climb up the rungs and could see she’d taken off all of her equipment, except the thick dive knife strapped to her ankle. It wasn’t that unusual, he’d guessed she wore it to bed as often as he’d seen her with it. He always chalked it up to her being a female on a new boat with mostly men, and he didn’t blame her for being cautious. She’d made friends with everyone in the three months since she signed on, but she was still the newest crew member by far, it was hard to get dropped into that situation and trust everyone so quickly. When she got to the top, Martin gave her a hand.

  “I knew Takis was crazy, but… wow,” Cass told Martin.

  Everyone nearby
laughed.

  “Did you call for help?” Cass said.

  Martin shook his head. “I’d hoped to locate the two of you first. But now that we have you…” He turned and helped Takis up onto the ship. “I better go do that. We could be seeing some of the men from that ship make their way over here any time now, if they survived, and their lifeboat left without them.”

  “I’ll do it.” Cass grabbed a towel from the clothes line they’d strung down the middle of the deck and patted her face dry. “I can give them a good idea of what I saw over there.”

  Martin looked at her for a moment. “You sure? I mean, that could be a little nerve-wracking.”

  “Of course I am. Communications is one of my jobs on this bucket,” Cass told him. “Besides, I wasn’t the one with a gun pointed at them. I’m fine.” She slipped on some deck shoes and made for the wheelhouse.

  The smoke darkened over at the pirates’ boat, and Martin stared at it as it rose. They’d had problems with claim jumpers and thieves before, but this was as close of a call as he’d ever want to see. He turned and watched Cass. She would be fine he supposed, but he wondered about her.

  Rina came running up to him, a big grin on her face. “An okapi.”

  “What?” Martin was dumbfounded.

  “The pirate? Remember?” She looked amazed that he couldn’t remember. “I translated what he said about you. He said your mother has sex with fat okapis.” She was pleased with herself and Martin had no idea whether she was messing with him or if she was really trying to help.

  “Thanks,” Martin said. “Thanks a lot.”

  3

  Cass went inside the ship and turned toward her cabin just before she got to the Adamant’s wheelhouse. Once there, she locked her door and pulled aside her mattress, then opened a slat, in the floor under the bed. From there she pulled out a pair of thick warm socks, unrolled them and pulled out her satellite phone and earpiece. She turned it on and while it found a signal, she pulled on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and sweatshirt. As she pulled her scraggly brown hair back into a ponytail, she noticed the green light was blinking on the phone. She put the bud in her ear and, as the proper tones sounded, she keyed the mic. “Chaperone Delta-One calling Blind Date Citadel. Come in Blind Date Citadel.” She paused and repeated until a click indicated she’d been transferred to an actual person who’d know what the fuck she was talking about.