SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  The last century of underwater action had buried the wartime behemoth in about fifteen feet of sand, effectively burying it about a third of the way up its outer hull but still leaving the majority exposed magnificently to the eye.

  Hammond and Pace both knew they didn’t have much time and put their pre-agreed plan into action without wasting another moment.

  From the top of the conning tower, they started checking each hatch forward. If they found none unlocked, they would return to the conning tower and then try the hatches towards the rear. They were convinced that one of them would be wide open to the sea.

  ‘Come on, James,’ urged Hammond. ‘We need to hurry up and find a way inside.’

  ‘After you,’ responded Pace, light-heartedly. ‘You are the expert under water. I’m just here for the gold!’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re not disappointed.’

  ‘Let’s go and see, shall we?’

  Hammond kicked down and came to rest, on his knees, on the floor of the conning tower. Some form of thick rubber matting has been eaten away to a thin ooze by years of bacterial action but it had served to protect the metal underneath. The floor was solid, as was the old hatch.

  Gripping the algae-coated metal wheel on top, Hammond heaved with all his strength but the wheel was frozen shut. Breathing heavily, he tried again, straining every sinew but there was no hint of give in the mechanism. Either it was completely rusted shut or it was still locked from inside. Hammond shook his head to Pace, who still floated a few feet above the conning tower.

  ‘This thing’s stuck fast. Let’s move on and try some others.’

  Pace kicked his fins and headed off over the conning tower and slowly descended until he was just a few inches above the foredeck, swimming slowly ahead. He noted the same rubber covering on the outer decking, most rotted away down to bare metal. There were two hatches according to the schematic and he found them both within three minutes. Both were sealed tightly, which was disappointing. Hammond tested his strength on the lock wheels too but they stubbornly refused to cooperate.

  That left them with no option but to try the hatches on the aftdeck, which they did. Again, each entry point inside the submarine was locked tightly.

  Time was their enemy now. Ten minutes had passed already; half their bottom time.

  ‘This isn’t what we’d hoped to find.’ Pace’s disembodied words echoed Hammond’s own thoughts. ‘It’s still secure after one hundred years.’

  ‘Which means those poor bastards didn’t even have time to try and escape,’ muttered Hammond. ‘Not even one hatch open to the sea. That wreck is going to be full of the dead.’

  Pace pushed the dark idea from his mind and resolved to carry on. ‘Maybe we should try the conning tower hatch again? If we both try together, we might budge it.’

  ‘We just tried that on all the others,’ said Hammond. ‘Why will the conning tower hatch be any different?’

  Pace was just thinking of a possible reason when he felt a sudden movement in the water behind him, spinning around just in time to see a flashing grey tail disappearing into the gloomy kelp fronds ten feet out from the submarine.

  ‘Shark,’ stated Hammond calmly. ‘A big one by the look of it.’ He had been looking at Pace when a large shadow zoomed behind his dive partner. He had just caught a glimpse of the ominous striping on its side. ‘Tiger shark.’

  Pace knew enough to know that was not great news. Known man-eaters, the sharks were attracted to the abundant fish and seal life in the kelp forests. He did not wish to be mistaken for a juicy seal.

  ‘I think we’ll be fine if we stick to the submarine’s hull,’ suggested Hammond.

  ‘We’d be a lot safer inside the damned thing,’ corrected Pace, sweating inside his wetsuit despite the chill of the deep ocean water he was immersed in. ‘Let’s try that hatch before our friend decides to come back.’

  Hammond has seen a dear colleague torn apart by one of these very same sharks on a previous expedition, some years before. He had seen how effectively those teeth removed human flesh and organs from its skeleton. Suddenly, getting inside the wreck was even more appealing.

  Pretending not to be too troubled, but keeping a wary eye on the swaying kelp all the same, they swam back up onto the conning tower, allowing themselves to drift down to a seated position by the hatch. The metal enclosure, about three feet high, lent them a sense of security and temporarily hid them from hungry eyes that now circled just a few feet inside the kelp.

  Gripping the old wheel together, they poured every ounce of combined strength they had into shifting it. The minutes passed until they had to admit defeat. Pace was surprisingly angry that they had found the wreck, only to be defeated by century-old locks.

  He checked his watch. It was time to ascend. When they got back aboard, they would have to rethink their plan.

  ‘Time to go,’ Hammond echoed his thoughts, his breathing laboured from sheer exertion. ‘I just hope our inquisitive friend has wandered off.’

  ‘The way our luck’s running,’ panted Pace, ‘I think hanging around in open water might be just like ringing the dinner bell.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ promised Hammond, switching his comm-link to external. A brief conversation with the ship and a quick plan was hatched. Up above them, the secret underwater hatch hummed open and a small, tethered ROV, made a hurried descent to the divers, still huddled in the shielding of the conning tower.

  Delighted to see the cheery, bright yellow ROV, they broke cover and headed up towards the surface. Their visitor didn’t take long to show itself, a swirling tornado within the kelp that slowly rose into clear water below them, hunting.

  On the ship, a young, long-haired ROV pilot named Bilson noted the shark on the machine’s cameras and powered it straight down in an aggressive attack, coming within a few feet of the shark before the fish veered sharply away, confused by the move.

  For the next two minutes, the ROV constantly harassed and aggravated the shark, allowing the divers to reach the surface unscathed. In the circumstances, their planned safety stop had been ditched. Hammond and Pace climbed onto the platform and were hoisted back up aboard, where they quickly shed their tanks and flippers.

  Later, over a lunch of tuna sandwiches and tea in Pace’s stateroom, they mulled over the issue and came up with the only realistic option. They had to blow a hole in the currently pristine hull. The idea of using an acetylene cutting torch to slice open the hatch was discarded as being too time consuming.

  ‘So we plant a sizeable amount of plastic explosives against the hull, blow a way inside, and finally get some answers.’

  Pace regarded Hammond coolly, nodding. ‘We only need one entry point. We have to see if the gold is still there but, more importantly, we have to find that mysterious crate they loaded in the front hatch. That is the key to everything.’

  ‘Here’s to Scorpion,’ toasted Hammond with a raised mug.

  ‘Exactly. Cheers,’ Pace promised, clinking mugs. ‘Let’s get it done.’

  21

  The explosion was only small, in reality a controlled blast designed to remove the conning tower hatch and the surrounding casing. The plastic explosive had been very carefully placed, this time using the little ROV and its surprisingly delicate manipulator arms. The shark had steered well clear and the only spectators had been shoals of brightly coloured fish, which vanished in time to the detonation.

  Once the water had cleared, the repaired cameras on the ROV showed that the hatch was gone, along with a few inches of the surrounding metal. The rent and torn steel had created jagged edges but the gap was wide enough for a single diver to enter, if they were careful. Nothing now stood in their way, except perhaps the unknown ship that was approaching at a steady fifteen knots. The ship’s radar had been monitoring it for several hours already and the captain reported it to Pace as soon as he came back aboard after the first dive. The vessel was heading directly at them and would be on top of them within two hours.


  Way out here, another vessel was likely to have something to do with ARC, and that wouldn’t bode well. There was nothing to do until they knew it was definitely going to be a problem so, wasting no more time, they dived again, at a little after three-thirty in the afternoon.

  They did not want to be burdened by spear guns or the more effective gas-cartridge firing bang sticks, to ward off shark attacks, so opted for Bilson to pilot the plucky ROV and act as their guardian angel again, while they focused on accessing the wreck’s interior.

  Hammond was the first to reach the shattered hatchway. He clicked on a powerful flashlight and dropped slowly through the gash in the hull, rapidly followed by Pace. They were tethered together by a thin cord now and Pace had his own flashlight stabbing into the darkness as he sank into the void.

  The confines of the conning tower were in stark contrast to the open ocean. Pace was glad to be inside and his torch beam easily illuminated the vertical tube, still sporting its metal ladder, as he dropped down into a main control room that had not seen the presence of a living human for one hundred years.

  Hammond was just ahead of him, gripping onto an overhead rail so his fins did not touch the floor, which was coated with a fine layer of silt and degraded bio-material. The array of dials, valves, levers and switches appeared surprisingly modern, more like something from a Second World War boat than from the Great War. Everything was heavily corroded and coated with a film of brownish sludge.

  Their light beams reflected off floating droplets of engine oil that had been trapped inside the flooded hull since the submarine sank, adding to the eerie surrealism. The torch beams also reflected off the brightest objects in the control room.

  The white skulls and leering teeth of a dozen twisted, long-dead submariners.

  Despite preparing himself to see the crew’s bodies, Pace still reviled at the sight and kicked backwards instinctively, knocking into a bulkhead and immediately creating a thick explosion of sediment that plunged visibility to zero, trapping the divers within a claustrophobic soup. Swallowing back his fear, Pace forced his breathing to calm. ‘Sorry, Max. Got a little spooked by our friends here. My fault.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ chuckled the friendly voice in his earpiece. ‘I nearly did the same thing when I saw them, I was just luckier than you.’

  ‘This will slow us down. I can’t see the watch on my wrists but we must have been down here for five minutes already.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ soothed Hammond. ‘We’re inside now and all we have to do is make our way forward. The diary entries from Pringle clearly stated that the secret cargo came into the submarine through one of the forward hatches. If, as we think, Barrett managed to sink it fairly quickly, it should still be somewhere in the forward hold.’

  ‘Along with the gold, hopefully,’ grinned Pace, pleased to see the swirling cloud beginning to thin and settle, allowing him to see Hammond’s outline and torch beam solidifying out of the gloom. ‘We need everything to go smoothly, so I’ll try not to let the crew scare the hell out of me again.’

  They didn’t wait for the water to completely clear, instead Hammond swam carefully towards the bow, passing a few inches above the floor at all times and being careful to avoid touching any of the internal surfaces. Inevitably he wasn’t always successful and Pace ended up swimming through an almost constant cloud as he followed a few feet behind. They were tethered so it didn’t matter but it was unnerving having to swim through the wreck, especially when fleshless arms and trailing fingers seemed to reach out of the fog every few feet in an evil effort to grasp at his wet suit.

  Pace pushed aside all thoughts of restless spirits, infuriated by their intrusion, and focused on the job. They passed through several open bulkhead hatches, which had never been closed to protect any of the compartments, until they finally swam into a much larger space, completely alien to the historical design plans they had pored over a dozen times. There should have been three separate compartments still up ahead, before they even got to the small forward hold but a major redesign, undertaken in utmost secrecy, had turned the four into one.

  Fifteen metres in length and two decks high, all the inner steelworks had been stripped out to create an impressive cargo hold that any small freighter would have been proud of.

  The hold wasn’t empty either, it was filled with hundreds of small wooden crates, stacked neatly, eight crates high on both sides of a central walkway, strapped down with rusty chains to the deck plating. Left undisturbed since the tragic dive to the sea floor, it was stunning to see everything so well preserved. The crates were about two feet long and a foot wide, designed to fit through the hatches and to be handled by a two man. They both knew what was inside but hardly dared to see if they were right.

  Swimming into the hold, Hammond aimed his torch beam at the nearest stack of crates and noted that the wood had rotted away, and was only held in place by the leather strapping. Each crate had a small padlock still securing the lid to the frame but he knew if he pressed hard enough, the boxes would crumble away.

  He probed a finger through the side planks and easily made a large enough hole for the dull gleam of gold to shine back at him after he withdrew the digit.

  Could it really be this easy? Pace had expected to find an empty hold, or a smashed structure that would prevent them from getting to the treasure. This felt strangely simple and that, in turn, made him uneasy.

  ‘Nine minutes left at this depth,’ Pace checked their exposure again. ‘We have to find the cargo they loaded aboard. It was also packed in a wooden crate, according to the diary,’ he reminded Hammond. Looking around, slowly investigating every inch of the hold with his flashlight, Pace’s eye was drawn to an untidy jumble of bones and rotting clothing at the far end of the hold, right below one of the forward hatches.

  Hammond followed his beam and gently kicked his fins, drifting through the clear water, passing between the stacked crates until he floated a few feet away. Pace, still tethered, had swum right behind him.

  The pile of bones and clothing was hard to make sense of but Pace guessed there were half a dozen bodies jumbled up together. How, or why, was impossible to say. They may have been the traitors, or brave sailors trying to overcome the hijackers? In amongst the bones they could see another wooden box, slightly larger than the gold crates. The wood seemed in better condition, perhaps a hardwood, and it had three separate hasps, complete with heavy duty padlocks.

  Leaning down, his heart thumping in his ears, Hammond gripped one of the padlocks and gave a slight pull. The box moved easily, freeing itself from amidst the unfortunate corpses and floating up towards his chest, where he gripped it with both hands, breathing out a stream of exhaust bubbles.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ said Pace, even more unsettled by their continuing success.

  Leaving the submarine was Pace’s job. Spinning around on the spot, he led the way back through the innards of K-45, being very careful not to kick up any clouds. They had avoided exploring the lower decks, the engine room or the workroom but Pace was very aware that the doorless entrance to Captain Barrett’s quarters was on their route out. He’d spotted the doorway on their way through, black and ominous, but had ignored it. In its day, a heavy curtain had hung in the door frame.

  He checked his watch again and noted that they still had three minutes left, with the conning tower only a few metres away. They had a few minutes to spare and he was loathe to leave the submarine without checking it out. He and Hammond had already agreed to take a look around if they had time, so Pace did not hesitate when the doorway appeared out of the gloom again. He turned into it, torch beam flicking its inquisitive tongue ahead of him, daring spooks, demons and monsters to show themselves.

  The cabin was small and cramped, with a fitted bunk long since devoid of a mattress. The same brown film covered the walls and floor, coating a small metal wardrobe and fixed writing table. The trip to the seabed must have been fairly smooth because there were shape
s still littering the desktop; one recognisable as a small typewriter, when he’d expected everything to have been dumped on the floor.

  Being extra cautious with the movement of his diving fins, Pace very slowly tested the handle on the wardrobe. With a firm twist, it opened and he was able to ease one door wide open without creating too much clouding. Inside, rusty coat hangers were still hooked over a top rail but a small box on a bottom shelf caught his eye. Without thinking, he leaned in and pulled it out into the room, watching the film wash off as the water moved across its surfaces. This cloud was thick and, once again, Pace was plunged into zero visibility.

  Hammond, waiting outside, noted the bio-cloud spilling out through the doorway and pulled hard on the nylon tether, sensing Pace’s weight on the other end. Pace could not see a thing but he kept a firm grip on the box and allowed himself to be pulled back outside, breaking into clear, torch-lit water within seconds.

  ‘Thanks,’ he huffed. ‘I’ve had enough nostalgia for one day. Come on.’

  He swam into the conning tower and kicked upwards, moving rapidly past the leering sailors, with Hammond hot on his tail. He checked the illuminated dial of his watch as he rose through the narrow shaft, being mindful not to snag any of his equipment on the ladder rungs.

  The bright disc of open water beckoned him, lit by a brilliant sun high above, filling him with a surprisingly powerful sense of relief. Keeping Barrett’s box firmly to his chest, he kicked a final time and swam straight up out of the conning tower hatch, where he collided straight into the rough, grey underbelly of a very large shark that chose the same moment to swim over the hatch.

  Both were so shocked that they bounced apart and the shark darted away into the kelp, leaving Pace at a momentary loss of what to do next. Two seconds later, the shark arrowed back out from the kelp fronds and went in for the kill, a sudden thrash of its tail creating a burst of phenomenal speed. Jaws open, teeth gleaming terrifyingly, the lifeless black eyes rolled back as it prepared to bite.