SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  As a novice scuba diver, still reeling mentally from smacking his head into the rock hard body of the large predator, Pace had no time to react. He would have died, then and there, if a pair of hands had not gripped his ankles with vice-like determination and yanked him back down through the shattered hatchway, just in time.

  A split second later, teeth snapped shut on empty water and the shark wheeled around, certain that its meal was nearby. Very used to the agile cavorting of desperate seals, the shark should have been able to find it again but the ocean was empty. Deciding that it had fled into the cover of the kelp, the grey tail flashed once more as it headed off in pursuit.

  Pace did not need to tell Hammond how grateful he was but they had a major problem now. Their bottom time was up and they had to start their ascent immediately, or they would run out of air before they could complete all their safety stops.

  Passing the box down to Hammond, Pace gripped the iron conning tower ladder and eased himself back upwards until his head poked out of the hatch just a fraction, peering over the sharp metal edges. His eyes looked directly into a black, soulless mirror and he had to quickly duck back down inside as the shark skimmed right over the hatch, closer than ever. It had caught their scent and was prepared to wait.

  They were both pretty sure the shark was too big to get inside the conning tower with them but another set of problems flashed overhead, one after another, temporarily blocking their view of the sunlit water above them. They counted another three sharks passing over the hatch in rapid succession, each one over ten feet in length and all of them on the hunt.

  ‘Bastards,’ frowned Hammond. He knew every minute they delayed increased their risk of getting the bends when they surfaced. They would have to rise fast, without stops, to stand any chance of getting away from the circling predators. That was fine normally but they might be stuck underwater for another half an hour, until their tanks ran dry, which would necessitate a decompression stop of two minutes at nine metres and another of eighteen minutes, at six metres.

  Twenty minutes hanging around in open water would give them no chance at all. Angrily, Hammond regretted not arming themselves for this dive when he knew the sharks were active around the wreck.

  ‘I don’t know if a single ROV will be enough to win the day against multiple sharks,’ said Pace. ‘I’m sure Bilson will try his best but with at least four big fish out there, waiting for us, my money’s on the sharks, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’ll make it,’ snapped Hammond. ‘The sharks are more likely interested in finding seals in the kelp. They may move off in a minute. Let’s just wait a bit longer before throwing in the towel.’

  ‘Ever the optimist,’ laughed Pace softly. ‘I hope you’re right but we need a back-up plan in case we stay on the menu.’ Their trail of combined bubbles, rising up towards the surface from inside the hatch, was letting every shark within half a mile know they were there.

  The first thing Hammond did was pluck his dive knife from a sheath strapped around his ankle and cut through the tether cord. They would need to move fast and be as mobile as possible. The knife would be useless as a weapon against a shark’s thick, coarse skin, so he sheathed it again.

  ‘My turn to peek,’ he said, allowing Pace to descend down the shaft before replacing him at the top of the ladder. ‘Maybe it’s just you he has taken a dislike to?’ One glance confirmed his worst fears. Although not swimming over the hatch anymore, Hammond counted ten sharks now circling above and around the conning tower. The situation was getting worse by the minute.

  Aboard the ship, its captain had been monitoring the situation on the ROV’s newly replaces cameras, keeping it close to the surface until it was needed. He now ordered Bilson to use the little machine to distract the circling sharks. Bilson nodded and gunned the electric engines, steering it valiantly down into the depths at full speed; barely eight knots. Charging like a demented knight at an overwhelmingly superior enemy force, the heavy vehicle plunged into the centre of the sharks, sending them darting away.

  Victory was short lived. As Bilson watched, thunderstruck, two sharks attacked the ROV together, one from each side. Crunching and chomping aggressively on this impertinent intruder, the ROV went offline within thirty seconds. Smashed and scarred, the battery lines were bitten through and it lost all power, sinking lifelessly into the kelp forest, leaving a distraught Bilson to stare at a screen full of static.

  Minutes ticked by and the sharks showed no sign of leaving. As their air reserves dwindled, Hammond finally contacted the ship with a decision. They didn’t have time to stay on the bottom any longer and, without the ROV for cover, they would not live long enough to safely decompress on the way to the surface. The ship had its own decompression chamber and Hammond had needed to check that it was operational. He got the green light. The chamber would be ready for them when they surfaced. He then relayed his idea to the bridge.

  Pace felt icy tendrils of dread tighten around his chest as he listened to their exchange. Every word Hammond said made perfect sense but they were in a dire predicament, and success was by no means guaranteed.

  But there was no choice and a few of the sharks were beginning to show an unhealthy interest in the hatch opening now. Given how corroded the metal was, a determined shark might even be able to force its way inside, they decided.

  They needed to leave and were heartened to feel, more than hear, a low vibration as the ship above started her engines, followed by the dull clanking as anchor chains were hauled up. Slowly the vessel moved from its anchorage and manoeuvred carefully into position directly above the sunken submarine, casting it in complete shadow. The sharks sensed the change in light level but ignored it, far too excited by the disturbance from the divers’ bubble stream.

  A few minutes later, with an unheard splash, the metal diver platform entered the water and made a quick descent to the wreck, striking two of the sharks a heavy blow as it passed, scattering them again.

  Hammond remained at the top of the ladder, guiding the platform to a halt a few feet above the conning tower, where it swayed gently in the grip of a gentle current. They would have preferred a shark cage but the open platform offered the fastest route to the surface. Exposed on all sides, they would have to hang on for grim death because they had agreed a rapid ascent. Hammond knew they would rise so fast that the rapidly expanding nitrogen bubbles in their tissues would send them into spasms of agony and only a swift transfer into the hyperbaric chamber would save their lives. After so long at depth, they were as likely to die from rapid surfacing as they were from a predator feeding frenzy.

  Pace floated at the bottom of the ladder, looking up, now gripping the larger crate and balancing the smaller box on top. He noticed his breathing becoming laboured and some aching behind his eyeballs. Hammond’s breathing sounded more irregular too, rasping roughly in his earpiece.

  Hammond steeled himself for what was to come. He was glad that Pace was a new diver and had not experienced the horror of the bends before. Once they got topside, and into the chamber, there would be time to talk through everything they’d discovered. He was especially interested in the contents of the secretive wooden crate.

  The shaft was too narrow for both divers to occupy at the same time, or for a diver and the crate for that matter. When it was time to make a dash for the platform, Hammond would have to swim out into the open and wait for Pace to swim upwards, pushing the crate ahead of him. For those few seconds, Hammond would be vulnerable to attack.

  Even though he figured it was a useless act, he unsheathed his dive knife again and gripped it in his right hand, ready to ram the blade into the eyeball of the first shark that swam too close.

  ‘Anytime you’re ready,’ wheezed Pace, from below. He had managed to tie the smaller box to his weight belt now, with his watch, looping the strap through the padlock. It hung at his side, allowing him to ease the crate up above his head, ready to kick upwards. It was not heavy but it would be a tight squeeze to move it u
p the shaft, especially trying to build up any kind of speed. The wood was fairly firm to the touch, and well bound with strapping, but Pace knew a couple of solid knocks might shatter it.

  Gritting his teeth against the increasingly chilly water, his thoughts turned to Sarah. Her smiling image floated into his mind’s eye and he found himself overcome with a wave of sadness. To have come so far, to find the wreck, the gold and the secretive Scorpion, perhaps only to die underwater.

  ‘On three.’ Hammond’s command snapped him back to the present. Instantly alert, muscles tensed for action, Pace nodded to himself, watching his bubble trail rise up past Hammond’s legs and escape into the blue yonder.

  ‘I’m just waiting for you,’ he quipped slyly. ‘I’ve been ready for hours!’

  ‘Three, two, one… go!’

  Hammond exploded up out of the conning tower as fast as he could, gripping an undamaged edge of the hatch rim with his left hand to stop himself shooting straight up into open water. A cloud of algae thrown up by his fins swirled around him but not thickly enough to stop him seeing the crate appearing through the hole, followed by a determined-looking Pace. They were both outside the protective shell of the submarine now and wasted no time swimming like maniacs for the platform.

  Some of the sharks had already moved off to find an easier meal but there were still half a dozen waiting for them, gliding down towards them with deadly intent. Pace needed both hands to hold the crate so he could only concentrate on kicking as hard as he could, reaching the platform at exactly the same moment as a large tiger shark.

  As the shark opened its jaws and snapped at him, Pace did the only thing he could to avoid being bitten in half – he used the crate as a shield, warding off a hammer blow that stunned him with its energy. Next to him, Hammond slashed at the head of another attacking shark, watching his blade bounce harmlessly off the thick skin just in front of its gills and catching a pectoral fin hard in his chest for his trouble, winding him and throwing him backwards onto the platform.

  Both sharks swept past the hanging platform, gracefully curling around before zeroing in for another attack. The remaining four circled thirty feet out, waiting their turn like well-mannered diners queuing up in a restaurant.

  With both divers on the platform, Hammond yelled into his comm-link and they began to rise immediately, so fast in fact that the two attacking sharks had to veer sharply away to avoid colliding with each other. All the humans could do was hang on to the chains and pray they did not fall out.

  Below, rising fast, hungry and determined to feast, the two ringleaders were joined by two more, leaving the remaining two predators still idly circling above the rapidly shrinking conning tower.

  Even though the winch was pulling them up fast enough to kill them with the bends, the sharks were in their element. Perfectly engineered for their environment, they easily caught up with the platform and attacked again.

  Hammond knelt down and Pace stood over him, fending off the vicious jaws with the crate. Once, twice, three times, it absorbed the blows but the fourth attack was too much for the badly decayed wood. The blunt snout and flashing teeth of the largest shark imploded the crate into a tornado of splinters and smashed glass, wrenching the remnants out of Pace’s grip. He caught the briefest glimpse of thirty or forty old-fashioned glass vials, broken and sinking to the kelp carpet below, before his attention returned to the attacking sharks. Scorpion, whatever it has been, was now lost forever to the ocean currents.

  They did not have the luxury of allowing their bitter disappointment to linger. Totally defenceless now, with three of the sharks whirling around them in a thrashing storm, it was all they could do to hang on. Additionally, agony now hit them both, numbing their minds and sending their bodies into uncontrollable spasms, as symptoms of the bends started to materialise.

  Another couple of seconds and they would have both lost their grip and fallen into the hungry mouths, just inches away now. But they didn’t. The fast ascent was over and the platform exploded out of the water and careened straight up the side of the ship, so fast that it was up and over the railings before the two divers lost their grip on the chains and flopped, like dying fish, onto the teak decking.

  The crew were prepared for them, stripping them down to their underwear and wrapping them in warm blankets as they lifted each man onto a stretcher. The trip to the decompression chamber took only twenty-eight seconds, where Bilson was ready to guide their stretchers inside, slam the door, and bring the pressure up as quickly as he could. Within a couple of minutes, the pain eased from Pace’s head and his blurred vision cleared, although his elbows and knees felt like fiery needles were being stuck into the joints. Hammond regained control of his own body as the pressure rose and the nitrogen was forced back into his tissues.

  Ten minutes later, breathing normally and managing a relieved handshake, the two men huddled under their blankets and smiled through the thick glass portal at the long-haired ROV pilot, who beamed back at them.

  Twenty-four hours later, after their bodies were allowed to slowly acclimatise to surface pressure in the chamber, Hammond and Pace once again sat on the sun deck, this time eating a late lunch of spaghetti and meatballs. On the table between them sat the box retrieved from Barrett’s wardrobe, still locked, its contents a mystery.

  Pace had already borrowed a file from the chief engineer and Hammond spooned mouthfuls of the delicious pasta into his mouth while the pilot went to work on the padlock. Five minutes later, with the sheared lock discarded to one side, Pace opened the lid and pulled out the two items inside. The box’s tight seal had remained intact, so the contents were bone dry and perfectly preserved.

  The first item was a pristine Webley .455 Mark VI service revolver, still loaded, glistening with gun oil. Barrett always liked to carry a spare gun when he sailed, just in case. The second item was a small notebook, bound in natural pigskin, handwritten, and nearly completely filled.

  Hammond picked up the pistol, feeling its weight and marvelling at its condition after a century at the bottom of the sea. Pace was more interested in the notebook.

  ‘Maybe we haven’t lost everything after all,’ he muttered, skimming some of the beautifully scribed words.

  ‘Barrett’s private notes?’ Hammond guessed. Pace nodded. ‘Will they help us?’

  Pace found his lips curling up into a wry smile as the detailed coordinates, dates, observations and thoughts of another long-dead submariner sank in. Unlike Pringle’s diary, here was a confidential record of all of the K-45’s covert missions. Although it quickly became clear that Barrett did not know what Scorpion actually was, he referred to the codename on numerous pages. More importantly, he gave the exact location of all three of the secret laboratories they had visited.

  ‘We need to get this back to London, pronto.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ agreed Hammond. ‘I’ve had quite enough cruising for now.’

  ‘We can familiarise ourselves with the contents,’ he waved the old notebook at Hammond, ‘while we travel. Just from the few pages I’ve looked at, this will fill in a lot of blanks and lead us to the other sites.’

  ‘In the other two locations?’ Hammond guessed correctly.

  Pace sipped at a cup of Twining’s English Breakfast tea and regarded his friend thoughtfully.

  The captain chose that moment to join them with an update on the mystery vessel. It had stopped closing on their position the day before, when it was within five miles. Clearly visible as a large salvage ship, its superstructure painted dark yellow and white, it had dropped anchor and refused to respond to radio hails. It was still maintaining an ominous silence, the captain added, before returning to his bridge.

  ‘What machiavellian scheme is now running around inside your head, James? And,’ he took a swallow of his own hot coffee, ‘what’s our first move?’

  ‘That part’s easy,’ he chuckled. ‘I made a call yesterday and explained our little problem,’ he nodded his head over towards the distant
vessel. ‘McEntire has it all in hand.’

  ‘I hope so. After all the effort we’ve been to, I’d hate to let those bastards nip in here and steal our loot.’

  ‘No worries there,’ Pace promised, with a crooked grin. ‘Now I just need to borrow the ship’s helicopter again.’

  Epilogue

  The release catches popped and the little lifeboat plunged from its secure cradle, splashing nose-first into the rolling, iron-grey swell of the frigid Ross Sea.

  Inside, two men waited for the tiny vessel to level off before staggering to the small control cockpit at the rear. Stepping up to take the small pilot’s seat, Pace pressed the engine starter button. The tiny diesel engine, pumping out a miserly 25 horsepower, turned over on the first try. Grimly, he pushed the small throttle lever to its stops, edging the bright orange craft away from the burning, shattered hulk of a dying Sea Otter at its maximum speed of six knots.

  Explosions rumbled from deep inside, as the concealed magazines and torpedo storage areas ignited, sending a pillar of flame high into the darkness. Heavy sleet, which had dogged their journey for days, added to the misery of the scene. Hull breached, the tortured hull split in two and sank beneath the filthy, oil-slicked surface. Some of the floating oil pools continued to burn, resembling a Hollywood vision of the aftermath of a WW2 U-boat attack on a helpless merchantman.

  A few hundred metres to the south, another burning ship; much larger, was going down by the stern, hissing and steaming as the bow rose up out of the sea until it was almost vertical. Within ten seconds, it slipped from sight and began a final voyage to the seabed, thousands of feet below.

  The sea was getting rougher by the minute and Pace used all his strength to keep the lifeboat aimed into the wind, smashing headlong into the four-metre high waves. Hammond, his ever-present companion, moved to the single rear door and double-checked it was secured. They could not afford to let any water inside. He squinted through a heavily swollen right eye and held his sleeve up to a nasty, weeping gash on his forehead, staunching the blood flow.