Rising Sea

by James Lawrence

  “Tomorrow we’ll start the salvage operation. How many of those gold bars are down there?” I asked.

  “Hundreds of both. It’s a major find. The boat was Chinese; the coins are from all over. The bars are all marked on the bottom in Chinese and they’re stamped with the words ‘ten tael’,” Cheryl said.

  “What’s a tael?” I asked.

  “It’s a Chinese measurement of weight. A tael is 1.3 ounces.”

  “That’s a lot of gold!” Migos said.

  “We have enough lift bags and heavy nets to bring them up. Tomorrow we’ll drop the tanks, bags, and cargo nets, and start bringing that stuff up,” I said.

  We worked hard the next two days, finishing the demolition sites and recovering the gold from the mystery shipwreck. The next day out, Migos and I went to work arming the demolition sites with our sleds. We were using Rheinmetall Privia limpet mines to detonate the explosive caches. The electronic timing function on the Privia allowed us to synchronize the detonation clock on all five mines so they all would explode simultaneously. We set the mines to explode at three in the afternoon, the next day.

  We arrived at the first cave and I removed the first mine from its backpack. The mine is shaped like the bottom six inches of a cone and is the diameter of a large dinner plate. The Privia mines are rated to BAR-5, which is 150 feet in depth, and we were going to employ them at more than twice the recommended limit. This was a CIA plan and I just assumed the agency received a guarantee from the company that the mines would still function at the depths we were working. I used the magnetic contact to connect the mine to the nearest cargo pod and then I turned the nob to arm it. A light flashed green two times, signaling it was properly armed.

  Migos and I raced from demolition point to demolition point. The sleds were operating on autopilot and to keep our masks from flying off at the high speed we had to keep our heads buried down and our bodies low inside the protected compartment, behind the nose of the sled. It took less than forty-five minutes to cover the ten miles, leapfrogging from demolition point to demolition point.

  We did all of our decompression without the benefit of the ship’s anchor line to guide us. We stayed on the sleds and moved from fixed depth to fixed depth while slowly making our way back to the Sam Houston. When we finished our marathon five-hour dive, the treasure hunters had already finished for the day. I guided my STIDD sled up onto the submerged hydraulic ramp and waited for Migos to do the same behind me. Finally, we broke the surface and four sets of hands helped to remove my mask, fins, and closed-circuit rig.

  On the floor of the stern deck were two long rows of gold bars.

  “Did you get everything up from the wreck?” I asked the group.

  “Not even close. We think this is less than half,” replied McDonald.

  “How much did you recover?” I asked.

  “Two hundred and sixty bars and we’re still counting the coins, but it’s over two thousand,” McDonald said.

  “That’s incredible. Can we finish tomorrow by noon?” I asked.

  “Yes, all we’ll need will be three shifts of two of us down working and four up here receiving and unloading. We can get it done,” McDonald said.

  “Tomorrow at one, even if we don’t have everything, we’re pulling up anchor and heading back to Cyprus,” I said.

  I hadn’t provided any updates to Mike since we departed Cyprus; we had been on a total communications blackout. I sent an encrypted message over the satphone that included the code word meaning the detonation would occur at three pm tomorrow. The message was, “Return voyage begins tomorrow.”

  The next morning, we were in the water as soon as the sun came up at six-twenty. The plan was to dive in three shifts of two with the duration of each dive set at two hours. Migos and I were the first ones in the water. It was our first time diving the wreck, but we had reviewed the set-up on the ROV data recordings.

  We brought down four fresh air cylinders, eight lifting bags, and eight cargo nets. Once we got to the wreck we went right to work. We set up a cargo net next to the area we were going to clean and then we began to search and stack our finds onto the net. The work was easy; first, we pulled off the coral and sea life and then the deck wood. Once we removed the deck wood, what we found underneath was all loose gold coins and bars.

  Each lifting bag could bring one hundred pounds of gold to the surface. The ROV would bring us a tether line that we would attach to the cargo net, then we would stick the hose from the air cylinder in and inflate the bag until it was three-quarters full. Then, we just released the bag and let it rise. The air in the bag expanded and vented as it ascended. We managed to send up two loads and were more than half done with the third when we hit our time limit.

  By the time Sorenson and Savage were done, we had almost completely cleaned the wreck of gold. Cheryl and McDonald went down to finish up, while the four of us finished moving all of the treasure downstairs into the engine room. I was coming up from below deck when I noticed a ship on the horizon. Migos was monitoring the ROV and Sorenson and Savage were pulling a tether line connected to the last haul in a lifting bag that had just surfaced. I went to the wheelhouse to get my binoculars. I turned on the radar and fixed the location of the ship at five miles to our due west. Through my binoculars, I could tell it was a warship and that it was heading towards us. It was too far away to identify the flag it was flying.

  “Migos, tell Cheryl and McDonald to come up right away!” I yelled. I knew Migos would then fly the ROV to them and issue the abort signal which was to move the arm left and right repeatedly until receiving a thumbs-up acknowledgment from the divers.

  When the warship got within two miles, I received a broadcast on the marine channel.

  “Unknown ship, this is Chinese Navy Frigate 811; prepare to be boarded.”

  “Chinese Navy Frigate 811 this is civilian yacht, Day Trader, with a Singapore registration. We are inside Philippine territorial waters and will not be subject to a Chinese inspection,” I said.

  “Day Trader, this Chinese Navy Frigate 811; you are located in Chinese waters. What is your purpose?”

  “We are a pleasure craft and we are on a diving trip.” The ship slowed as it came to within a mile of us.

  “We are going to board and inspect your boat. Do not resist.” The Chinese frigate came to a stop. I watched them slowly lower a tender from the deck down into the water. The grey warship was less than a thousand yards away. It seemed like an eternity, but Cheryl and McDonald finally broke the surface. Sorenson and Savage had already stowed the last haul of gold in the engine room. I had retrieved the anchor while I was waiting for the divers to return. I started both engines and hit full throttle. I aimed the Sam Houston directly toward Palawan Island thirteen miles to our east.

  It takes only twenty seconds for an Azimuth 64 to get to 34 knots and that gave us a big jump start.

  “Day Trader, heave to, or we will open fire.”

  “Chinese Frigate, attacking an unarmed civilian pleasure craft in Philippine waters is a war crime. We have been advised to move to the protection of the Philippines authorities. You are breaking the law.” The tiny Chinese tender boat was at full throttle in pursuit, but it was futile. We were outrunning the tender. The frigate joined the chase.

  I was at full speed racing toward Palawan. My navigation system showed we were well inside Philippine waters and only eight miles from land. Suddenly, an explosion and a geyser of water erupted two hundred yards in front of us. I banked the yacht to the right.

  “Day Trader, this is Chinese Frigate 811. Heave to or the next cannon round will be aimed at your vessel.”

  I cut the throttle.

  “Chinese Frigate 811, we have stopped. I have to warn you that we are in Philippine waters and you are in violation of international law.” It took another ten minutes, but the tender once again came into view, it was two thousand yards behind and slowly closing. The menacing frigate swiftly moved back onto station a thousand yards off our
stern.

  It was a desperate situation and I was considering my options. None of them were good. My best idea was to rig the Sam Houston for destruction and try to make an underwater run to the Palawan coast using the sleds before the Chinese tender arrived.

  “Chinese Frigate 811, this is Philippine Navy Frigate Andre Bonifacio; you are violating Philippine territorial waters. We are ordering you to leave,” a voice said in accented English over the radio. This began a discussion that lasted a full thirty minutes as the Chinese frigate captain explained to the Philippine Navy captain that he was only in Philippine waters because he was pursuing us. I couldn’t hear the conversation that followed, because the two military vessels moved the conversation to a different frequency. I was relieved when I watched the tender return to the Chinese frigate.

  The standoff lasted a long time. I kept checking the clock display on the top of the wheelhouse console. We were at the end of the standoff because the tender was being loaded when three o’clock hit. We were located just over five miles from the nearest detonation site. Everyone was searching for a sign of a detonation, but we had no way of telling at first if the limpet mines worked. At ten minutes after three, we felt a small tremor— little more than a vibration. At three-twenty, the Chinese Frigate recovered the tender and departed, heading west at full speed. The Philippine ship never got any closer than two miles to us. I watched on the radar as it turned around and headed due east toward Palawan.

  I set a course for Singapore. The entire team was in the salon watching the news on satellite. They were surfing the Philippine and Vietnamese TV stations. There was no tsunami warning broadcast, which caused us to believe the mission was a bust. More importantly, even after we had been underway for several hours, there were no tsunamis reported in the news—not in the Philippines and not in Vietnam or China.

  We were still in blackout communications as per Mike’s instructions, so I didn’t call him and make a report. Instead, we spent the next nine days working our way back to Paphos, Cyprus. When we docked in Cyprus, we shuttled back and forth in our SUVs and moved all of the treasure to our hangar at the airport. Because of some really bad security breaches in the recent past, our hangar security is first class. We stored the booty in Cheryl’s office in the Clearwater wing of the hangar. The Clearwater headquarters is a SCIF; its walls are made of reinforced steel and it’s protected by a state-of-the-art security system. I thought that would be a good place to keep the treasure until we had time to figure out what it was worth and what we were going to do with it.

  I found Cheryl in her office. She was in a running suit, sitting at her desk working on the computer.

  “What are you up to?” I asked.

  “I’m going to try to find out the name of the ship we got this gold from.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “First, I’m going to date the items we brought up, and once I know the period, I can begin to research historical records for lost ships in the area.”

  “How long is that going to take?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

  “McDonald is going to clean and catalog everything. That’s going to take weeks. It’s a good project; it’ll keep everyone busy for a good while.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m flying in two hours; I have a meeting with Mike.”

  “Where?”

  “London.”

  Chapter 7

  London, UK

  I checked in at the Dorchester Hotel at a little after seven. I had just finished unpacking when Mike knocked on the door. He was looking officious in a dark suit and he caught me in a bear hug as he stepped into the room. He threw his overcoat on top of a chair in the hallway.

  “Can I get you a drink?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” Mike said as he walked over to the bar in the suite’s living room. He pointed to a bottle of Macallan Scotch and I fixed it for him, neat. I opened a Heineken beer for myself, as we were about to do a mission debrief which meant I was going to do a lot of talking. Mike sat on the couch and removed his shoes. I took the chair on the opposite side of the coffee table.

  “Before I start, can you tell me what happened? Was the mission a success?” I asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know we positioned the charges correctly and I know they went off, but we couldn’t find any reports on what happened afterward.”

  “The charges went off as planned. A minor earthquake was detected along the Wa-nu fault line. A big block from the continental sea wall sheared off and slid down into the depths of the Palawan Trench and, just as predicted, a section of the fault punched up from the ocean floor. A tsunami warning was issued to all coastal areas in the southernmost region of the South China Sea. Everything went almost exactly as the simulation portrayed. Three waves pulsed west toward the Spratlys and the west coast of Vietnam. The first wave reached Mischief Reef Island in forty-seven minutes. We have satellite images of the event; the height of the wave was estimated at twenty-five feet. The first wave swept completely over the island and by the time the third wave arrived fifteen minutes later, there were no structures standing. In fact, not one part of the man-made island was above the surface. The same situation played out with every one of the island bases. The force of the tsunami scoured everything above the water line, which makes sense because it was only soft sand to begin with. The tsunami drill the Chinese had in place called for the personnel on the tiny islands to seek shelter on the ships at dock. They had enough warning to react. Most of the Chinese military personnel and all of the ships went unharmed. There were some casualties, but we don’t know how many.

  “The wave continued westward after it cleared the Spratlys. By the time it reached mainland China and Vietnam, it was too weak to do any serious damage. The mission was a major success. A US Naval Carrier Strike Group is now in the area and there’s nothing the Chinese Navy can do about it. The fighter aircraft that were forward positioned on those three reef island airbases are now at the bottom of the sea. The air defenses are wiped out and the sub and surface ship docks are gone. Wiping out those island bases was a game changer.”

  I spent the next ninety minutes telling my side of the story and answering questions. Mike was recording the debriefing and it was a pretty upbeat discussion. When I told him about the treasure, his demeanor changed, and the questions came rapid fire. When we got to the part about the stand-off with the Chinese and the Philippine Navy, I could tell from the pulse in his forehead and how he was leaning forward in his seat that he was very agitated.

  “Do the Chinese suspect the tsunami was a man-made event?” I asked.

  “We don’t think so. The Chinese being able to pinpoint your boat above ground zero a short time before the event is definitely going to be a red flag.”

  “The boat was false flagged.”

  “With luck and some research, they could still trace it to you. If the items you pulled from the wreck are traceable to the wreck and you put them on the market, that might also provide them a lead.”

  “What am I supposed to do with the gold?”

  “I’m not sure. For the time being, don’t do anything with the treasure, until we evaluate the risks.”

  “Ok.”

  “You need to get rid of your boat.”

  “Why?”

  “What happens if the Chinese get curious about the boat that was right above the earthquake that generated the tsunami? They’ll have photos from the encounter with the Chinese frigate. Your behavior must have appeared very suspicious. If they try to find the boat in Singapore and they don’t, that’ll create even more suspicion. If they do a full search for every Azimut 64 in the world, your name is eventually going to pop up. When you bought that boat, you weren’t even working for us; I’m sure you bought it out in the open. Getting rid of the boat won’t solve the problem completely, but it’ll make their work harder.”

  “That was really bad luck a Chinese
patrol came by on the last day. I kept the radar off because I didn’t want to telegraph our location, but it’s also why they were able to get so close undetected.”

  “If you’d departed the area the day before, they wouldn’t have found you anchored over the demolition site.”

  “Gold fever got the best of me.”

  “It did. Hopefully, they don’t trace the boat to you and the only thing they uncover about the boat is that the crew was treasure hunting. Finding a buried treasure in international waters is a perfectly understandable reason to behave as suspiciously as you did, so it’s a bad news, good news story.”

  “When the Chinese look into it, they’ll think I was running away to avoid inspection because of the gold and not because of anything else.”

  “Yeah, possibly. But if they connect the boat to you, it’s a certainty they’ll know it was a CIA operation. You’re working status with us is not a secret to them and I doubt they’re going to believe the CIA was over that spot treasure hunting.”

  “If the Chinese learn we were the ones who destroyed their island bases, what are they going to do about it?”

  “That’s a question we gave a lot of thought to before going ahead with the operation. The consensus is that publicly, they won’t do anything. There’s no benefit to be gained by acknowledging such a huge strategic defeat. They’ll retaliate, but it’ll be covert, and not a major military engagement they can’t win.”

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Is that your way of saying you’ve had enough debrief?”

  “No, I’m just really hungry. I had enough debrief two hours ago. Let’s get some food. What do you feel like?”

  “Seafood.”

  “How about beef? There’s a pretty good steakhouse in this hotel. Wolfgang Puck.”

  “You don’t want seafood?”

  “Not especially—too much sea lately. You should try a week of four-hour long daily decompressions sometime. Nobu is half a block down the street. What about Asian?”

  “Nobu it is.”