by Nick Cook
I glanced at my smartwatch to see twenty minutes had already passed. ‘We really should get this search underway before that weather window closes in on us.’
Carlos let out a long sigh and his shoulders dropped. ‘Okay, let’s discover what happened to Raúl and Maricela.’
Part of me wished that Carlos had stayed on the surface and that it was Jack down here with me right now. In future, maybe I was going to have to listen my head rather than my heart.
Leon pressed a button on his display and an underwater chart of the seabed appeared, complete with contours.
‘Tom sent me the last known location of Hercules. I have loaded it into the VMS.’ He pointed towards a marker on the screen that, according to the scale I could see printed next to it, was about a hundred metres out from our current position.
‘VMS?’ I asked.
‘That stands for Voyage Management System. It uses digital charts in combination with Neptune’s other sensors to work out where we are. Obviously GPS signals don’t work down here.’
‘Of course, but if Raúl and Maricela’s boat did sink, surely it would have drifted some distance?’ I said.
Leon nodded and pressed a button on his screen. A blue circle appeared around the marker.
‘Allowing for typical oceanic currents around this region, this is our search area for the wreck. It’s about a thousand metres wide.’
‘I understand, but I do wish you would stop switching between feet and metres; I find it confusing,’ I said.
‘Just the vagaries of history. Traditionally altitude for aircraft is measured in feet and the same goes for underwater, although strictly speaking that’s measured in fathoms, which is the equivalent of six feet.’
‘That’s even more confusing; you’d think they’d try to standardise everything to metric by now.’
In the far blister window, Carlos shook his head. ‘That’s never going to happen, Lauren, because you’ll never be able to get everyone to agree.’
I sighed. ‘Yes, the same old.’
Leon nodded. ‘Anyway politics aside, let’s get this search underway.’
He pushed the accelerator lever forward and the motors hummed louder. Neptune surged towards the marker on the VMS, gaining a bit of altitude, so we had more of an aerial view of the coral landscape mountains and valleys below.
Once again, everyone fell silent, all of us painfully aware of what we might encounter at any moment. A bigger issue for me, that was growing realer by the moment, was how Carlos would react and how we could deal with it. Talk about my decision making life difficult for us.
As we closed on the marker, the old man’s expression became one of utter concentration as his gaze flicked over the seabed, looking for any clue as to the fate of his children’s boat.
The distance counter on Leon’s VMS map ticked down past ten metres and a moment later a soft chime came from the console.
‘These are the exact last known coordinates for the Hercules,’ Leon said in an almost reverential tone.
I looked down at the coral landscape. Apart from dozens of sea anemones, their fronds waving gently in the underwater current, there certainly wasn’t any sign of a wreck down here.
‘Now the hard part starts,’ Leon said. ‘I’m going to take us through a spiralling out search pattern from these coordinates. If Hercules did go down at this location, a thousand-metre radius should hopefully be enough to locate it.’
‘I pray to God that it is,’ Carlos said quietly as he crossed himself.
We all settled in for the long haul as Leon began to take Neptune out in growing circuits. I was uncomfortably aware that I hadn’t had a loo break before starting this voyage, and I was pretty sure that the sub didn’t come with a loo. I wasn’t about to ask what the alternative arrangement might be.
Silence settled over the cabin, with Carlos the epicentre of that mood. Leon and I both picked up on it. I could hazard a guess at what was going through the old man’s mind right now – dread, numbness, possibly even relief that this might soon all be resolved one way or the other.
My body was growing increasingly cramped inside the claustrophobic cockpit of the submersible and that was starting to take its toll on my body and mind. I couldn’t wait to get back to the surface, feel the wind on my face and have a damned good stretch.
Ten minutes dissolved into twenty and then became forty. The area that we had already covered was now shaded red, and we were nearing the edge of the search zone without seeing a thing. Then Carlos suddenly tensed and pointed through his window.
Just ahead of us, in a canyon running between two tall outcrops of rock, was a trawler-sized vessel lying on its side.
‘That’s Hercules…’ Carlos whispered. Then he let out a stifled sob, tears filling his eyes.
In the cramped conditions there was no way that I could reach the old man to comfort him. Instead I was forced to watch as he silently wept, his eyes locked onto the wreck partly buried in silt, with lichen already beginning to grow over it.
But what exactly would we find when we examined the sunken boat? I couldn’t suppress the shudder that passed through me as I imagined the states of Raúl and Maricela’s bodies.
‘Okay, I’m taking us in for a closer look,’ Leon said, his face grim.
He pushed the control yoke forward and we began to head towards the broken hull of Hercules.
Chapter Ten
Carlos, his eyes bright red, had been unable to bring himself to watch as Leon steered us to within ten metres of the sunken ship that had belonged to his children.
My heart clenched as I took in the holes peppering the boat’s hull, many below the waterline.
‘Tell me that’s not bullet fire,’ I said.
Carlo’s head snapped up and he stared at the damage. ‘Oh God…’
Frown lines radiated around Leon’s eyes. ‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what it looks like, Lauren. But who would do something so barbaric?’
‘Other treasure hunters, it has to be,’ Carlos said, his voice bitter.
’Treasure hunters?’ Leon asked, staring at the old man.
‘It’s a long story for later,’ I said, heading off any more conversation on the topic. It was the last thing Carlos needed right now. As it was, I was having a huge surge of guilt about bringing him down here at all. Yes, I definitely wasn’t going to let my heart overrule my head in future.
I looked across at Carlos, completely understanding his anger at this awful discovery. But of course, there could be a far more ominous explanation than ruthless rival treasure hunters. Unfortunately, any information about the Overseers’ likely involvement was one nugget of information that I couldn’t share with the other two, at least not if I didn’t want to put their lives in danger after this was all over.
’So much for it being a whale strike,’ Leon said. ‘Anyway, we’d better see what else we can discover.’ He gave me pointed look which I knew was code for search for Raúl and Maricela’s bodies.
I took in the tight crevasse that the boat was wedged into. ‘That looks like a difficult space to manoeuvre Neptune into, Leon?’
‘It is and that’s why we’re going to send in Bad Dog,’ he replied.
‘Bad Dog?’
‘Sorry, that’s our nickname for the underwater drone that Neptune carries with her. It’s so named because of the number of times that drone has managed to get itself wedged into a space that we end up having to haul it out of using the tether. I always think of it as a lead.’
‘Got you. So where is he - presumably it’s a he?’
He gave me a wolfish smile. ‘Of course Bad Dog is a he. The drone is stowed in a hatch, under the nose. Give me a few seconds and I’ll launch him.’
Leon reached up and pivoted down a secondary display with another joystick control attached to it. He flicked a number of buttons, and with a gurgle a swarm of small bubbles erupted from the Neptune’s nose. At the same moment the screens above mine and Carlos’s dive couches also flicked into life to sho
w a wide angle camera view of the seabed ahead. Leon spun a thumbwheel on the back of the joystick and with a distant whir, a small, fluorescent red craft emerged, trailing a tether behind it. It had a bulbous camera eye behind a dome and was equipped with two pincer claws, just like Neptune, but on a far smaller scale.
The screens in front of us relayed Bad Dog’s view, as Leon dipped its nose and began to dive it towards the sunken boat. A needle of light shot out from a lamp mounted in the drone’s belly, playing over the side of the hull and settling on the name, Hercules.
‘Well that settles that, not that there was any real doubt,’ Leon said.
Carlos nodded, wiping a tear from his eye. ‘I would recognise that boat anywhere.’
‘Look there’s no need for you to watch this. It could be extremely difficult for you,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘No, I have to know, Lauren.’
I nodded. Of course he did, just like I would have wanted to know if I’d been in his position. I returned my attention to watch Bad Dog’s progress.
The diminutive craft was already being investigated by a couple of curious fish who quickly gave up on it before returning to their pursuit of food among the coral.
Leon deftly steered the underwater drone around until it was facing the back of Hercules’ stern and then slowly manoeuvred it towards the boat’s cabin.
A brief image of bloated corpses filled my imagination and I wished I could reach across to hold Carlos’s hand in preparation for whatever we were about to discover.
I held my breath as Leon edged Bad Dog forward towards the open door of the cabin.
The tension ratcheted up across my shoulders as the craft’s spotlight stabbed into the gloom. I almost jumped out of my skin when a shape flashed out of the darkness. I just had a chance to register the large eel as it shot past Bad Dog and snaked away through the water.
‘Just a whiptail conger,’ Leon said. ‘They love to take up residence in wrecks.’
‘Right,’ I replied, hoping my heartbeat might drop back to a normal level anytime soon. So much for me being a battle-hardened soldier.
Leon propelled the drone forward again with little blasts of its thrusters, fine-tuning its manoeuvre through the doorway. Then he brought it to a dead stop.
‘Okay, let’s see what we have in here,’ he said.
He slowly revolved Bad Dog, its spotlight swinging round the cabin to reveal nothing other than the chaotic detritus of a boat thrown around after tipping onto its side. But the important thing was, there was no sign of any bodies in there.
I exhaled a long, deep breath. ‘Oh thank God for that,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
Carlos’s face had tensed and I immediately felt a huge surge of guilt. Finding nothing in here was in many ways the worst possible outcome for him.
Leon breathed through his nose. ‘Okay, so let’s look around the wreck site now.’
I knew immediately that it was a hail Mary, because if Raúl and Maricela hadn’t been in the boat when it hit the seabed, surely the current could have carried them a considerable distance? Or worse, they could have been eaten by a whole host of marine life over the three months since the boat had been lost.
If Leon knew that too, he didn’t let on because he spent a good twenty minutes meticulously looking over the surrounding area, but not spotting a single thing.
Throughout, Carlos stared out like a statue from his blister window, closed in on himself and lost in his thoughts.
Leon spun Bad Dog around for yet another sweep of the area. The wreck was now in the foreground with Neptune hanging like a spacecraft in the water behind it.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think their bodies are here, Carlos,’ Leon finally said.
The old man’s face crumpled. ‘Thank you for trying so hard, but at least I know now that I’ll never find them. The sea has obviously claimed them for its own.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Leon said. His lips thinned as he started to rise the drone over Hercules to bring it back home to us.
And it was then that I saw it on my video monitor - a hose, dropped over the side of Hercules’ hull, disappearing into the silt. It was just visible, snaking away from the sunken ship along the crevasse.
‘Stop Bad Dog!’ I shouted, my brain briefly appreciating the irony of that particular statement.
Leon immediately killed the thrusters. ‘What is it, Lauren?’
I pointed at the screen to show them what I had just seen. ‘That’s an air hose isn’t it?’
Carlos was staring at it too. ‘My God, you’re right.’
Then Leon’s eyes widened. ‘You think that Raúl or Maricela may have been diving when the boat went down?’
‘There is only one way to find that out,’ Carlos replied. ‘And if we do find Raúl or Maricela, at least then I’ll be able to lay one of my family to rest.’
‘Then let’s see where this air hose leads us,’ Leon said.
He spun Bad Dog back round and sent it off along the ravine, the tether extending out behind it. With his other hand he started up Neptune again and we started to edge forward, trailing the drone that to all intents was the perfect metaphor of someone walking an actual dog.
The hose was barely visible in places, as so much silt had been piled up over it by the ocean currents. But there was still enough of a ridge running along the floor to indicate where it lay hidden underneath the mud. Following that telltale clue, Carlos and I watched as Leon manoeuvred the drone between the coral canyon walls that had begun closing in on either side of it. Then, dead ahead on my screen, I saw the hose disappearing into a dark cave entrance about twenty metres across, hidden beneath a large, overhanging rock.
‘Oh, now this looks very promising,’ Leon said, edging Bad Dog towards the entrance.
Inside, protected from the currents, the hose sat on the surface of the seabed, trailing away into the gloom.
Carlos had become absolutely still, his gaze locked onto whatever we were about to find at the end of it.
Leon brought Neptune to a stop as Bad Dog disappeared deeper into the tunnel, trailing its tether behind it, its spotlight delivering a cone of illumination that picked out stone walls on either side.
My heart rate was already accelerating in anticipation of what we were about to find. The air had grown so tense inside the cockpit that I could almost feel the static of our combined expectation washing over my skin.
Then we saw a glint of light reflecting back at Bad Dog’s camera.
‘What do we have here?’ Leon said.
I clenched my jaw as Bad Dog rotated towards the object.
Carlos let out a gasp as we all took in what the drone could see.
Raúl’s diving helmet, the hose still attached, lay on the cavern floor. More significantly, there wasn’t a body next to it.
‘What the hell?’ Leon said. He spun Bad Dog around but there was no sign of a corpse anywhere.
I didn’t want to voice my thought in front of Carlos because it was so upsetting, but Leon did it for me.
‘Maybe the sharks have already been here,’ he said quietly. ‘But if so, it should be easy to confirm. We’ll look through the faceplate; their teeth would have got through that helmet.’
‘Jesus, you’re saying they decapitated him?’ I said, before I could stop myself.
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Leon replied.
As all my Jaws nightmares came home to roost and I cast a guilty look towards Carlos who was now ashen-faced.
‘You may want to look away for this,’ I said gently.
The old man shook his head. ‘No, I must see what happened to my son with my own eyes.’
‘I understand…’ But if I’d had the power to teleport Carlos back to the surface at that moment, I would have so hit the button. Instead I nodded to Leon, who began to manoeuvre the drone into position.
As the helmet’s faceplate came into view I braced myself for a grisly sight. But then I let out a long breath of relief, because
there was absolutely nothing inside. Nothing, that was, apart from Raúl’s camera still on its mounting plate, pointing out through the faceplate.
‘But I don’t understand,’ Carlos said, staring at it.
‘Maybe his helmet got ripped off his suit when Hercules was sunk?’ I said.
‘No, not possible. Just look at the clips, they’ve been unfastened manually. If Raúl’s helmet had been pulled off, it would have sheered the bolts connecting it to the collar.’
Leon peered at him. ‘Are you saying that you think he deliberately took it off?’
‘That’s what those helmet catches say,’ Carlos said. ‘Maybe he decided that rather than suffocate when the pump failed as the boat sank, he wanted to end things quickly…’ His voice trailed away as he closed his eyes.
I shimmied back on my couch and reached over Leon to squeeze Carlos’s arm. ‘I’m just so bloody sorry that you had to see this.’
He patted my hand. ‘Don’t be, because this is exactly what I needed to know. There’s a good chance that Raúl’s body could be somewhere in this cavern. Please look for him, my friends.’
‘Don’t worry, I intend to,’ Leon replied.
I slid back into position on my couch, as with a quick blast of the thrusters, Leon rotated Bad Dog until it was pointing towards the rear of the cavern again and started it forward.
The darkness felt like it was closing in on the drone, no longer visible through my window as it travelled deeper and deeper into the cavern.
Then Leon gasped. ‘Holy shit!’
We all gawped at Bad Dog’s video feed. On it was the unmistakable shine of a gold bar.
‘Please head further into the cavern, Leon,’ Carlos whispered.
The Frenchman nodded, and then pushed the accelerator forward.
Bad Dog’s spotlight played across the ground…then my heart leapt as we saw another gold bar, then another. But Leon was ignoring all of them, accelerating the craft forward, and then I saw why.
They say that there are some moments that are going to be carved into your memory for as long as you live, and this was definitely one of those.
Jammed into the far end of the cavern was a large wooden galleon, its three masts ripped off and part of its hull smashed to pieces. Lichen-covered crates lay everywhere, some broken, gold bars spilling out of them across the cave floor.