Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Fassbaden entered the con, his expression as unreadable as ever.

  “Well?” said Erich, looking at him. He could sense the attention of the rest of the crew on the control deck. They would all be riveted to their duties, but their ears would be attuned to any words now spoken.

  “Escape hatch chamber is flooded. We will need to surface to pump it clear and inspect the damage. In addition, the Number Three valve on the starboard ballast tank is stopped down. Kress can fix it, but it will take at least several hours. In the meantime, our ascent control is impaired although not certain how drastically.”

  Erich considered what their status meant in the simplest terms. Their boat was in trouble. It could go deeper, but it could not reach the surface with much certainty. It could maneuver, but like a clumsy drunkard…in slow-motion. The ability to always go deeper was, unfortunately, an ability submarines never lost.

  “What about the men in the aft torpedo room?” he said in a low voice.

  “No injuries or problems so far. They have enough oxygen for at least several hours and Kress says he could force fresh air into them through the speaking tubes if necessary.”

  Erich nodded. “How much charge did we incur on the batteries?”

  “Enough remaining for about ten hours.”

  Erich weighed all the information against possible variables. He was certainly within ten hours of Station One Eleven. Could he coax a level bubble out of the big boat? His crew was expecting him to have the clearest view of their situation, and that meant no self-doubts, no feeling sorry for himself.

  “Get Kress all the help he needs on the valve problem,” he told Manfred. “Then let’s see just how much vertical we can manage. If we can get anything at all…”

  “I’ll go see him now.” Before turning to exit the con, his Exec nodded and grinned. “I am not sure I approve of your use of the word ‘if,’ Captain.”

  Erich smiled, turned to his helmsman. “Take her up, seaman.”

  For the next several minutes, the crew learned the limitations imposed by the attack-damage. The U-5001 blew what ballast it could, and the helmsman corrected for the faulty control plane as much as possible. The result was an ascent angle of 6 degrees above the bubble. Slight, but more than Erich had anticipated. At least they were going up.

  He and Ostermann were charting their current position as opposed to their objective coordinates, when Bischoff’s head turreted around to glare at them. He was pressing his bulky headphones close to his head, and his eyes were so round, they appeared too big for his face, like a cartoon character. “Asdic!” he said. “Screws! They’ve got us!”

  Feeling the bottom of his stomach abruptly drop, Erich forced himself to stand as upright as possible. “Dive! Avoidance depth.”

  The atmosphere in the con altered instantly, the air suddenly thick with tension, tinged with the earliest scents of true fear. Erich could feel it. His men knew what this could mean if the enemy scored a hit.

  As the ballast tanks blew, the angle beneath their feet changed as the prow of the boat seemed to leap downward like a diver jumping from dock. The propellers strained as the helmsman pushed the handle to full power, and everyone could hear the whine of the electric motors trying to deliver.

  “Splashes…!” said Bischoff. “A big spread!”

  The destroyer had deployed a wide blanket of charges, which, in one sense, was a good sign—it meant their sonar operator had not pinpointed Erich’s position. The Americans knew their target was in the area and were hoping for a lucky strike until they could get a firm echo.

  “One hundred twenty… One fifty… One seventy…”

  “Level her off,” said Erich.

  A series of explosions laced the waters in rapid succession. Far enough to inflict no damage but still close enough to savagely rattle the hull. Six concussions like the staccato beat of a drum. Bischoff was thrown from his chair and Ostermann’s instruments slid from the table as if on a sheet of ice.

  Noticing the angle of the deck, Erich called to the helmsman. “Level her off…now!”

  “One ninety…She is slow to respond, Captain. I am having trouble!”

  Two other crewmen assisted in wrestling with the wheel. Erich watched, feeling a very slight change in the angle. Slight was not enough. A shuddering groan twisted through the hull as the boat slipped deeper into the pressure grip of the arctic waters. There was a limit to how far they could go and the U-5001 was approaching it.

  “Bring her level,” said Erich, as he watched his men battling the controls. His order sounded hollow and ineffectual. Of course his men were doing their damnedest to neutralize the dive. But the damage to his boat, while not crippling, had caused her to respond with a terrible slowness. If they didn’t stop the gradual descent soon, it would not matter what the destroyer did above their heads.

  Gripping a ceiling pipe to remain steady, Erich was suddenly aware of his teeth pressing together, and consciously unlocked the muscles in his jaws. Damn it…this is no way to die. Not like this…without a fight…sinking into the darkness like an anchor.

  Even though the water outside the vessel was almost black, Erich stared out of the viewing port at the convex of the conning tower. Two powerful searchlights had been mounted on each side of the port, and he felt tempted to click them on, to see what was out there as his boat skirted the icy shelf of Greenland.

  The next series of depth charges detonated above them. Another second or two and he would know if any had been close enough…

  Chapter Nine

  Dexter McCauley

  Chesapeake Bay, Now

  “Wait, wait!” Tommy said. He was trying to yell around the mouthpiece and the Divelink mic was distorting like crazy. “There’s gold in here! Silver! Or somethin’!”

  “We’re out of time, Tommy…let’s go,” said Dex. His view of Chipiarelli was mainly of his legs and flippers filling the hatch tube.

  “You hear me?” the kid said, but weaker this time. Then: “Hey, wait a minute—I’m not gettin’ any more air outta this thing!”

  Hearing that, Dex hesitated for only an instant, then braced himself against the outer collar of the hatch so he could pull Tommy out of there. The cloudy water swirled around them and seemed to somehow be getting denser, closer. It was getting harder to see details.

  “I got nothin’,” said Doc, gesturing first to his mouthpiece, then toward the surface as he flippered himself into upward motion.

  “Get outta here. We’ll get this guy,” said Mike Bielski, reaching for Tommy’s nearest leg.

  “Tommy! Let’s go…” said Dex. “C’mon.”

  The kid didn’t kick or try to hold on. He didn’t say anything either, and that made Dex try to move even faster. When they had him free of the hatch, Dex could see Tommy’s eyes behind his faceplate bulging out of his head. The dumb ass was trying to hold his last gulp of air when he felt the regulator shut down.

  “Hey, relax, man. Here…” Mike released his mouthpiece and passed it to Tommy, who grabbed for it just a little too frantically, then sucked in the sweet air mixture.

  He’d been unbelievably stupid, and Dex was pissed.

  But this was not the time to let his emotions screw things up.

  “I’ve got him, Boss,” said Mike.

  Dex nodded. “Can you stay with him all the way up?”

  “Just like you taught us…” said Bielski.

  Dex watched as Mike slowly headed to the surface with Tommy in tow. Sharing a single tank, they worked their way topside, but paused every ten feet or so to make sure Tommy was okay and not panicking after-the-fact. They hadn’t been deep enough for the bends to be much of an issue but a freak-out could occur at any depth and be just as deadly.

  Just as Dex was ready to follow them, he noticed a glow coming from the hatch’s interior. Tommy’s dive light, where he must have droppe
d it. Floating over to the circular opening, Dex lowered himself toward the beam of the Princeton Tec. It lay on a flange above the inner hatch, and as Dex retrieved it, he saw the beam swipe across the concavity of the open hatch.

  Four numbers had been stenciled across it: 5001.

  Staring at it for a second, he wondered what the designation meant, then spun around to orient himself toward the surface.

  He caught up with Mike and Tommy five feet from the top. Breaking the water, he saw Don and Kevin Cheever waiting on the step-deck to haul Tommy’s sorry ass aboard. His fire-engine red dry-suit looked even brighter in the afternoon light, but nowhere near as brilliant as his expression. He certainly didn’t look like a guy who’d been a minute or so away from a pretty bad way to check off the planet.

  Ripping off his mask, in between gulps of air, he started talking. “You guys’re not gonna believe—!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Dex. “You goddamned dummy! You pull another play like that and you’re never diving with us again, you hear me?”

  It got so quiet on the deck, even the slap of the waves against the hull and the screechy seabirds seemed to stop for a second. Feeling the collective stares of everybody burning him, Dex stepped forward and stood over Tommy, who sat cross-legged on the deck like a little kid.

  Nobody wanted to be the first guy to say anything. It was like they were all waiting for Tommy to offer up an answer, or an explanation that might get them past this ugly point. In all the time they’d been diving as a team, nothing like this had ever happened. Dex knew they’d never seen him lash out like that (because they hadn’t known him during his days as a Navy Chief).

  Time seemed to be stretching out, sagging in the middle, slowing them all down. Even Tommy sensed it, as his dark eyes flashed from one guy to another, looking for an ally who simply wasn’t there.

  “Hey, guys, sorry…I just got caught up in the moment,” said Tommy. “I won’t let it happen again.”

  No way he’s getting off that easy, thought Dex. “You might get away with that daredevil shit in the Fire Department, but not out here. No way I spend the rest of my life feeling guilty because I lost somebody on my watch—because I let them act like an asshole. You got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Dex, I mean it. I’m sorry—I just saw that thing, shining down there. It looked like gold and I kinda lost it.”

  “I thought that’s what you said on the link,” said Don. “You said you saw gold…and silver.” He pushed back his baseball cap, trying to look casual as he scratched his head, but there was no suppressing his obvious interest.

  “What gold?” said Andy Mellow.

  “You heard me. As soon as I got through the second hatch, I could see it—Like in the movies, you know, those things that look like bricks…”

  “Bullion,” said Doc. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Like the soup?” said Tommy. “Is that what they call it?”

  “You sure what you saw?” said Don.

  “No shit. I’m pretty sure…”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” said Mike, sounding the least interested of all of them.

  “You think I’d bullshit you guys at a time like this? I saw this slab…the bullion thing. Not a bunch all piled up…like the way they always show you the gold…you know, like in that Fort Knox place.”

  “That’s only in the movies,” said Mike. He had that grin on his face that usually meant he thought you were sounding like an idiot.

  “So what’re you sayin’?” said Don. “Now it sounds like it looked like gold…which to me means you’re not so sure now.”

  Tommy moved to his knees, grabbed a rail to steady himself, and sat down on a storage bin. “I’m sure. I’m pretty sure.”

  “And you only saw one brick,” said Doc.

  “If there’s one, hey, there could be more…” Tommy grinned.

  “Visibility isn’t all that great,” said Dex. “We’ll need to check it out.”

  “No time like the present,” said Andy.

  “Uh-uh. It’s getting too late,” said Dex. There was no way he wanted them even thinking about going back down there at this hour.

  “Yeah,” said Don. “The wind’s coming up too. Smart to just start heading in.”

  “Storm?” said Mike.

  Don shrugged. “Hard to tell.”

  “That’s okay,” said Dex. “That’s why they invented tomorrow. Everybody still on?”

  A chorus of grunted assents rose up around him, but he could feel their collective resentment. Gold. The word sank through his thoughts like an anchor. Something about gold that got guys spinning out of their usual orbits.

  Buried treasure. Getting rich. All that sort of thing. He was reminded of the old Bogart movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The ultimate statement on “gold fever.”

  Funny thing was—it didn’t take much to get a real good case of it spreading through a group. Fast. Like a virulent plague. These guys were all so close to letting it take them over, it was scary.

  “You sure it’s safe to leave everything?” said Don.

  Dex grinned. “That tub’s been down there for sixty years and nobody’s been the wiser. Now all of a sudden, what? You think everybody’s going to be lining up to get our gold?”

  Mike and Doc chuckled softly, but nobody else seemed to see much humor in it.

  “You’re probably right,” said Andy. “But it doesn’t hurt to be careful, does it?”

  It was time to get these guys refocused. “The best thing we can do is keep things quiet until we can get a better look at what Tommy thinks he saw down there. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “What do you mean?” said Tommy. His longish hair was still wet and he looked like a front man who’d just come offstage from a performance.

  “We’re beyond the territorial limits of any states,” said Dex. “I was telling Don—we need to put in a salvage claim under maritime law.”

  “And then we’re okay?” said Andy, who seemed to be as intrigued by the possibility of gold as even Don or Tommy.

  “Okay as we’ll ever be.” said Dex.

  “And then we can split it up?” said Tommy.

  Dex paused, looked at all of them slowly. He paused to look each guy in the eye. He could feel them all worrying about what Tommy might have seen, and some of them were already dreaming of the ways they were going to spend the money.

  “Okay, listen,” Dex said finally. “We all have to cool it a little bit here, okay?”

  “What do you mean?” said Don.

  “A couple things you should realize. One, nobody much cares about sunken U-boats anymore, so when we notify the Coast Guard, we can pretty much rely on regular admiralty law to protect us. Two, there’s a good chance Tommy saw something through that hatch, but there’s no way to tell if it’s gold or anything similar until we can get a closer look at it. And three, if it is gold, we might be in for an interesting couple of years.”

  “Yeah? Like how?” said Tommy.

  “Any of you guys ever hear of the S. S. Central America?”

  “Is that the one in the book?” said Mike. “Bestseller a good ways back? I didn’t read it, but I remember seeing a bunch of reviews about it.”

  “Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea,” said Dex. “That’s the one.”

  “I remember that one,” said Kevin. “They did it on The History Channel, I think too. About the guy who invented all this stuff to get to the wreck, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s part of the story,” said Dex. “The Central America was full of gold from the California gold rush. It went down in a hurricane off the Carolina coast. When the salvage team brought up all the gold, they had to face claims by insurance companies that had paid out money on the losses almost a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “What?” said Andy, his
usually loud voice booming even louder with incredulity.

  “That’s bullshit!” said Tommy.

  “Some of the companies were still in business, and had a right to recover their losses,” said Dex. “Or so they claimed.”

  “Let me guess,” said Doc. “Tied up in court. A lot of lawyers making money. Nobody else.”

  Dex smiled. “Now you’ve got it.”

  “Welcome to the modern world,” said Kevin.

  “So what do we do?” said Don.

  “We all go home, spend a nice night with our families, and plan to get some answers tomorrow.”

  Nobody said anything. They knew he was right…so Dex figured he’d put a little finer point on what had happened.

  “One more thing,” he said. “We keep our cakeholes shut about this, okay?”

  Everybody grunted in the positive.

  “At least until we get things sorted out. We don’t need any salvage vultures stirring things up yet.”

  Dex started gathering up his gear and stowing it in the storage bins. He was done talking about this, and he hoped they all got the message.

  Everybody apparently did—they all started putting up their own stuff, and Don headed back up to the bridge to get the Sea Dog headed back to Annapolis. Mike went up to join their skipper. Andy and Doc walked aft to hang on the rail and watch the boat’s progress back to the harbor. They would probably be rehashing the conversation and what they’d seen today. Kevin leaned back on the bench, closed his eyes as if meditating. It was part of a ritual he always did to relax after a dive. He’d been distracted this time, but habits and superstitions died hard.

  Tommy slowly peeled out of his drysuit, taking his sweet-assed time.

  “Man,” he said. “Why’s everything have to be so complicated?”

  “Because the world would get very boring if it wasn’t,” said Dex. “But listen, if you wanna know the truth, I don’t feel much like talking to you right now.”