Omega Deep (Sam Reilly Book 12)

by Christopher Cartwright

  Sam inflated his buoyancy control device and quickly swam to the edge of the moon pool. His hands gripped the ladder, and in a couple of seconds, he’d climbed out. Genevieve was next, followed by Tom.

  The Maria Helena’s dive center housed their Triton 36,000 submarine, Sea Witch II, just forward of the moon pool. Secured to the starboard wall were two giant atmospheric diving suits, custom made to fit Sam and Tom. The exosuits looked like something out of a bad sci-fi movie but provided an anthropomorphic submersible capable of diving to 2,000 feet. Along the port side were a series of dive lockers, with dive tanks, sea scooters, and other diving equipment. Aft of the moon pool, and fixed to the deck by heavy steel welds, was something resembling a small submarine. It was made of reinforced steel and cylindrical, with a single porthole – its purpose was an emergency hyperbaric chamber.

  Elise was already at the controls. “Welcome back.” Her eyes met Tom and Genevieve. “How are you two feeling?”

  “Fine,” Genevieve replied.

  “Never better,” Tom was already opening the hyperbaric chamber’s doors. “But I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Elise nodded. “It’s good to go.”

  Sam removed his dry suit and wrapped a heated blanket over himself as Genevieve and Tom climbed into the decompression chamber.

  Elise turned the pressurized lock and brought the pressure inside up to the equivalent of 40 feet.

  The Maria Helena’s chamber, which had originally been plumbed for commercial diving, had an identical set of controls inside and outside the chamber, although the topside controls will usually override the diver’s controls. The rationale behind this plumbing philosophy is that in an emergency, divers can operate their own decompression. In the civilian world, not many chambers can be run from the inside.

  Sam removed his dive booties, hood, and gloves. He dried his wrinkled, shaking hands. His movements slightly subdued by exhaustion. Deep, red lines marked his face from the mask, emphasizing the pallor they all shared – a mixture of fatigue and cold.

  Elise glanced at him. “Nice dive?”

  “I’ve had better. It was a little cold down there, and it’s always sad to see the cruel fate of fellow pilots.”

  “Any guesses what happened?”

  Sam said, “I think they landed the plane on the water successfully, and then it sank. That damage is low speed. He must have been some pilot. It would be like landing the world’s biggest bus on the sea at two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Damned near impossible.”

  “And then someone killed him and the copilot?” Elise asked.

  “Yeah. Back of the head, single shot. Both of them.”

  Her response was mechanical. “How weird?”

  “Yeah.”

  Elise glanced at the pressure reading for the chamber, confirming it was fixed at the equivalent of 40 feet. “So, what happened to the murderer?”

  Sam shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Any luck with the flight data recorders?”

  “Tom and Genevieve retrieved both of them.” Sam pulled a woolen jumper over his head. “They’re still attached to the lift cable. I’m about to help Veyron pull them up.”

  “Anything you want me to look at?” she asked.

  “We’ve been told by the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch not to tamper with either of the black boxes.” He unzipped the pouch on his buoyancy control device and handed her the soaking wet USB stick he’d retrieved from the cockpit.

  Elise took it, her face distorting in a small grimace. “It’s a bit wet. That was careless of you.”

  Sam lifted his palms outward toward the ceiling. “Hey, I didn’t put it in the water.”

  “Is that the QAR?”

  “Got it in one,” Sam replied. “Any chance you can still access the data?”

  “The seawater will have wreaked havoc, but I’ll try my best.” She smiled. “Any luck with the data and voice recorders?”

  “Yeah. Tom and Genevieve found them. The team from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch were adamant we’re not to open its casings and disturb the data.”

  She nodded. “That seems fair. It’s their show. We’re just here to retrieve it for them. So what’s the plan for it?”

  “As soon as Genevieve’s decompressed, she’s going to fly it to Finland, where it will be taken by a commercial jet to Heathrow, where the UK AAIB will take it apart, see what it has to say and commence their investigation.”

  “All right. I’ll have a look at the QAR as soon as we’re done here.”

  Sam pulled up his wet weather pants, zipped up his work boots, and zipped the wet weather jacket up to his face.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Up on deck to help Veyron pull up the flight data recorders.”

  Chapter Six

  Sam watched as Veyron operated the heavy winch, as it pulled the lift bag containing the twin black box recorders onto the aft deck of the Maria Helena. As soon as it cleared the deck, Veyron adeptly maneuvered the crane across inward until he successfully lowered the load onto the deck.

  As soon as the bag was on the deck, Sam stepped forward, disconnected the winch hook, and secured the lift bag so that any broaching wave wouldn’t sweep it away again.

  He met Veyron’s eye and gave him the all okay signal.

  Veyron secured the hook to the deck and made his way across the deck to greet him. “Well done, Sam.”

  Sam shook his hand firmly. “Thanks. It was Tom and Genevieve who did most of the heavy lifting.”

  “All the same. You got it done.”

  Behind him, standing at a half-open door at the base of the pilothouse, a stranger said, “Good man, well done!”

  “Thank you.” Sam glanced at the stranger. He was moderately overweight, and his shortness accentuated that weight. The man wore a crisp, white beard, and a well-practiced, deceitful smile. At a guess, the man was one of three types of people – a politician, lawyer, or a banker. None of which he had any interest in speaking to today. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  The man held out his hand. “I’m Gene Cutting.”

  Sam accepted the hand and gave it a curt, but firm shake. “Right. I’m sorry, who?”

  “Gene Cutting.”

  “So you said. From where?”

  “I own Phoenix Shipping, and I need your help.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll need to get in line. I have a lot on my plate right now. Are you a friend of my father’s?”

  “No. I’m afraid I’ve been a competitor to your father over the years. Our dislike of one another has been entirely professional, I assure you. Your father’s an amazing man.”

  Sam glanced at the second helicopter, this one on the generally unused forward helipad. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I have a problem.”

  Sam nodded. “So, you said.”

  Gene continued. “One of our ships ran aground yesterday. We need your help.”

  “Sorry, buddy. You should have called ahead. I could have told you I’m not interested in taking on extra work currently.” He looked at the Dreamlifter’s black box. “As you can see, I have a lot of work to do, here.”

  Gene ignored him. “I did call.”

  Sam stared at the man through narrowed eyes. “You’re the guy who’s been trying to call me all day?”

  “Yeah.”

  An incredulous grin crept up on his lips. “That makes you an asshole or a fool. Which one are you?”

  “Hey, I need your help. We’re willing to compensate you well for your time,” Gene replied, nonplussed.

  “I already told you I wasn’t interested.”

  “I know. But this is important.”

  “What I’m currently doing is important!” Sam sighed and shook his head. “Can’t you get one of the other experts to have a look at it?”

  “I already have.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they have no fucking idea what to make
of it.”

  “Make of what?”

  “What went wrong with the Buckholtz?”

  “I thought you said it ran aground.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s just say, the events related to this accident are a little more mysterious than simple error.”

  Sam shook his head again. “Come into my office. We’re heading off in less than an hour, after a British Air Accidents Investigation Branch vessel arrives. You’ve got until then to convince me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sam opened the door to the briefing room.

  With his hand, he gestured for Gene to take a seat across from him. Gene nodded a cursory thank you and took a seat.

  Sam opened the forward door and yelled, “Elise, Matthew, Veyron… come into the briefing room… our new friend here wants to tell us a story.”

  Gene narrowed his eyes. His thick curly brow closed together. “I’m sorry. The images I’m about to show are of strictly proprietary knowledge…”

  Sam crossed his arms. “Hey, you came to me?”

  “And I want just your opinion. If this gets out, we might be in some real trouble…”

  Sam took a deep breath and nodded at the rest of his crew. “All right. I’ll hear you out, but if I accept the job, it means you take my entire team on, and no more secrets. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Sam said, “All right, Elise do you want to start preparing the black box for its flight?”

  “All right,” Elise said.

  Sam turned his attention to Gene, “When Tom is out of the hyperbaric chamber, I will need to discuss this with him.”

  Gene opened his mouth to protest. “But…”

  Sam interrupted him. “I don’t work without him. That’s not negotiable.”

  Gene opened his mouth to protest, took one look at Sam’s hardened face and closed it again. “The ship was the Buckholtz. She was leaving from Hamburg on her way to the U.S. port of Quonset Point, Rhode Island. The captain was a veteran for the company with more than thirty years’ experience and had made this particular voyage multiple times a year for the past three years.”

  Sam sat a glass on the table and poured a small amount of water in without asking whether his unwanted guest wanted one or not. He took a small sip of the drink and then looked at the stranger sitting down in front of him. “So, what happened?”

  “The ship ran hard aground on Neuwerk Island.”

  Sam studied the map and location of the accident. “What did the captain say went wrong? Anything short of a hurricane shouldn’t have affected the Buckholtz so much to send it on a direct collision course with the island.”

  “He says he was following the channel and simply ran aground – only it wasn’t just mud, it was rock – and it took a fifty-foot gash out of her backside. She sank stern down within minutes with the bow dry and above water.”

  “Any chance the captain was intoxicated?”

  “No. He was tested for alcohol and drugs an hour after the accident. Everything was done by the book. He had three witnesses who confirm what he saw on three different systems. Depth gauge, radar, and GPS-based navigational maps all confirmed he was traveling through the channel at the time.”

  “Do you think the sandbar moved?”

  “No. Everything was exactly where it was meant to be. I’m telling you, it looks like the captain, second in command and watchman all just made a massive mistake.”

  Sam leaned back in the big leather chair. “So, what would you like my help with? Are you having trouble getting the insurance company to pay or something?”

  “No.”

  “So, let the insurance company do their mandatory checks. They’ll perform a root cause analysis and come up with an answer. Sometimes these things really are just an accident.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we figured. But…”

  “What?”

  “There’s something else. A camera inside the bridge records everything that happens. Like an aircraft’s flight data recorder, this can be used in the event of an accident or collision with another vessel to determine the cause and who was ultimately at fault. The recording provides crucial clues, including the position of the controls, the functionality of the engine, and bow thrusters.”

  “And what did it say?”

  “It confirms exactly what the captain and his two witnesses said – they were traveling up the middle of the channel, nowhere near the rocky beach.”

  “Any chance the tapes could have been switched?”

  “Not a chance in the world. The system has heavy security to make it difficult to do just that. If the crew had hours between the event and one of the company’s boarding parties arriving ­– I would have assumed that was the case – but there was less than five minutes between the accident and one of our helicopters dropping a team on board.”

  “Five minutes?” Sam met him eye to eye. “That’s a pretty quick response for anyone.”

  Gene shook his head. “No. Our engineers were on their way out to the vessel to perform some routine safety checks while the Buckholtz was on her way out to sea when this happened. It’s a fairly common procedure. Every day the ship is in harbor costs the company more than a million dollars in lost revenue and demurrage, so it works out cheaper simply to fly out our engineering teams to perform the tasks, where possible, usually on the ship’s outward journey.”

  “Did they see anything strange from the air?”

  “Nothing. It was night time. Not much could be seen from the air.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Nine p.m. Just under twelve hours ago.”

  Sam asked, “Any chance one of the channel markers were out?”

  Gene shrugged. “Sure. But not all of them. And besides, the island stands out like a giant shrine on the horizon. No way the captain could have missed its silhouette against the shore.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  Gene’s satellite phone rang. He answered it and swore. “All right. This changes everything.” He nodded his head to himself, hung up, and turned to Sam. “We have another issue, this one a little more pressing.”

  Sam said, “Go on.”

  “The Buckholtz was carrying an experimental piece of equipment inside one of its shipping containers. It was stored in the section of the hull that is now nearly sixty feet below the sea. We’re going to need your help to retrieve it. What’s more, it’s vitally important that no one know that it was on board.”

  “Why?”

  “The item is the culmination of many millions of man hours and more than two billion dollars spent on research and development. If it’s believed that the engine was lost due to the negligence of the captain, the news would wreak havoc on the company’s share price.”

  Sam nodded his head. He understood how these situations worked. Such companies had stretched their financial reserves to the breaking point, only to have bad luck bring them down just as their big risk was about to pay off.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I’ve just been informed that one of our more important shipping containers, which until now we hoped was still dry, is now below the waterline.”

  Sam said, “I would think the replacement cost of any single shipping container is a lot less than the value of the likely salvage and repair cost of the Buckholtz?”

  “Not this one.” Gene’s tone was emphatic.

  “Why?” Sam asked, studying his response. “What’s inside that’s so special about it?”

  Gene shook his head. “I’m afraid that really is proprietary knowledge. I would be remiss in my duty to the owners who have paid well to maintain its secrecy. All I can say is that we are willing to pay well to have it retrieved.”

  Sam said, “All right. We’ll accept the case on one condition.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s this really all about?”

  Gene frowned. “All I can say is that if that container gets damaged, it won’t just
be money that we’ve lost.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sam met Tom at the hyperbaric chamber.

  There was a gentle hiss as the internal gas equalized with the pressure outside. The hatch at the end of the tube-shaped device opened, and Genevieve climbed out first, followed by Tom.

  Sam said, “How are you both feeling?”

  “Never better,” they replied in unison.

  Tom then looked up at him. “I hear we’re going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” Sam replied. “Both of you, but not the same places.” To Genevieve, he said, “The Sea King is fueled and loaded with the Dreamlifter’s data recorders, which I need you to deliver to an airfield in Norway, where they will be picked up by a private jet and flown to the Air Accidents Investigations Branch’s headquarters in London.”

  Tom smiled. “And where am I off to?”

  “Neuwerk Island, at the mouth of the Elbe River, Germany.”

  Tom nodded. “Obviously. Sounds lovely. What’s there?”

  “A whole heap of mud and a container ship that’s run aground.”

  “You’re heading up the salvage operation?”

  Sam shook his head. “They already have another company coming out to help pull the ship into deeper waters after repairs are made below her waterline.”

  “So, what are we doing there?”

  “I’ve been asked to locate and retrieve a specific container in the hold in the off chance we’re not able to get the ship afloat easily.”

  “They just want you to retrieve a shipping container?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in the container?”

  “No idea. He won’t say.”

  Tom grinned. “Why did you accept the case?”

  Sam shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Because we’ve got plenty of work, and you’re not interested in a simple recovery case. So what’s this about?”

  Sam smiled. “I want to know how the ship ran aground.”

  “Why? Accidents happen. It’s a busy shipping lane.”

  “Yeah, but this captain turned his ship ninety degrees and ran straight into the clearly visible island.”

  Tom cocked an eyebrow. “You think he did it intentionally?”