Omega Deep (Sam Reilly Book 12)

by Christopher Cartwright

  “All right. That’s fair. So, we lost the container.”

  “Yeah, now we just need to see Gene and find out what he wants us to do about it.”

  Right on cue, Gene Cuttings approached. “I see you two made it back okay without any trouble?”

  Sam suppressed a grin. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  Gene sighed heavily. “Well? What’s the damage? How bad is it?”

  Sam ran a towel over his face, running the palm of his hands and fingers through his thick, wavy, brown hair. “I’m sorry, Gene. You’ve got big problems.”

  “That bad?” Gene’s eyebrows narrowed. “How long will it take to retrieve?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. You misunderstand me. It’s not just difficult to retrieve. I found the storage room.”

  “And?”

  “It’s missing. There’s a 20-foot gash in the hull, where someone has attacked it with surgical precision to remove your specialized shipping container.”

  “How long ago do you think it was stolen?” Gene asked.

  Sam shrugged. “About twenty minutes ago.”

  “Jesus! Why don’t you get back down there? Didn’t you try and stop them?”

  Sam crossed his arms. “We did.”

  Gene noticed the small scratch marks on Sam’s face. Lines of tension creased his hardened face. “What happened?”

  “We were attacked. They, whoever they were, fitted the shipping container onto a large cradle and were in the process of towing it out to sea with a large submarine, when a group of divers attacked us.”

  “So the whole accident was set up as an elaborate plan to steal it?”

  “It would appear so,” Sam replied.

  “How?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m still keen to find out. I’d like to have a look around the island, to see if I can spot anything that might reveal what went wrong. At first, I would just assume that your crew was involved, but those digital recordings were pretty convincing – someone set the Buckholtz up to crash into Neuwerk Island.”

  “What about my ship?”

  “It won’t take much to seal the gap in the hull and then pump out the water. Once we do that, she’ll mostly float off on the next high tide. Tom’s already contacted the Maria Helena. She will be here by tomorrow morning, along with two tugboats, and will be able to coordinate the operation to bring her back into the water. Once we do that, they will be able to tow her into dry dock in Hamburg for more extensive repairs.”

  Gene visibly relaxed. “That’s something at least. Thank you.”

  One of the engineers shouted something to Gene, which Sam couldn’t quite hear. He turned to Gene and asked, “What did he say?”

  Gene frowned. “There appears to be a dead scuba diver floating in the water.”

  Sam said, “Sorry. That’s my fault. You’d better send your guys out to retrieve the body. The German police are going to want to examine it. If we get lucky, we might find out who stole your cargo, too.”

  Gene sighed. “All right, I’ll organize it. Anything else you want to let me know about?”

  “Yeah. You have another dead guy in your duct keel. This one has a note.”

  Gene’s eyes narrowed. “What did the note say?”

  “I’m Sorry Svetlana, they made me do it.” Sam squinted his eyes. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  After some discussion about who was responsible for the retrieval of the body, Sam and Tom ended up climbing onto the rubber Zodiac and making the retrieval themselves. Sam opened the throttle, and the little 2-stroke engine whined, sending the Zodiac skipping off the wavelets. It took less than five minutes to round the stern of the Buckholtz and then spot the body.

  Twenty feet out from the body, Sam released the throttle, and the bow of the Zodiac dropped into the water again. He idled to a stop on the starboard side of the body. Tom reached over and pulled the scuba diver on board.

  The man’s throat had been slashed, and there was no doubt he would not have survived.

  Even so, Tom checked for a pulse, before confirming, “He’s dead.”

  “It was him or me,” Sam said.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  Sam pulled off the diver’s facemask. He looked about 45-50 years old, with a gray beard, steely blue eyes, and no distinguishing marks.

  Tom folded back the diver’s hood and read the brand name. “It’s a British brand.”

  Sam glanced at it and suppressed a grin. “It looks decidedly British, doesn’t it?”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. This was made for the Russian SVR – Foreign Intelligence Service – formerly known as the KGB.”

  “Really?” Tom was skeptical. “What did they want with the container?”

  “I have no idea, but I suppose that would all depend on what exactly was stored inside.”

  Sam opened the throttle, and the Zodiac skipped toward the muddy beach once more. They rounded the stern of the Buckholtz, and the propeller snagged on something, sending the 2-stroke engine into a high-pitched whine.

  Sam closed the throttle and then took it out of gear.

  Tom asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. The propeller got caught on something.”

  Sam killed the engine and tilted the outboard so they could get a good look at the propeller. It was fouled by something metallic. He pulled at it, and a large chunk of reflective metal came free.

  Sam examined the material. “Aluminum?”

  “Looks like it,” Tom replied. “I wonder if the Buckholtz was carrying a container full of the stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “Just look at the water, the place is riddled with the stuff.”

  “Really?” Sam squinted his eyes and swept the water. Broken and partially submerged were dozens, if not hundreds of separate pieces of aluminum – giant sheets of foil – scattered throughout the water. “Beats me.”

  Sam finished freeing the propeller, dropped it back into the water, and then carefully idled toward the shore. They pulled the Zodiac up on the beach. The beach was lined with a type of black cloth. At first, Sam guessed the material was used to protect the island from erosion, but the more he studied it, the more out of place the material appeared.

  Tom said, “What is it?”

  “This stuff,” Sam said, picking up the material. “It doesn’t look like it belongs here.”

  “It’s not here to stop the runoff from the island?”

  “That’s what I thought, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Sam pointed toward the larger rocks and small buildings on the island. They were all covered in the same material. “There’s no reason to cover those things.”

  Tom grinned. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “It looks like someone has gone to the trouble of hiding the island while building an artificial island out of aluminum out at sea!”

  Sam nodded. “Of course. Aluminum would have reflected the Buckholtz’s radar, making the pilot think he was on the wrong side of the shipping lane. A glance at the Neuwerk Island would have revealed nothing but darkness, and only confirmed the pilot’s terrifying suspicion that his ship was in the wrong place. As a consequence, he turned ninety degrees, trying to avoid a direct collision with what he now thought was the island, and in doing so, ran aground.”

  A few minutes later, Sam climbed back onto the Zodiac and motored it across to the bottom level of the bridge. There, he explained the near impossible theory to Gene, who struggled to accept it.

  It no longer mattered. The ruse had achieved its objective, and the highly valuable cargo was gone. The Maria Helena would arrive in two days, and then they would pull the Buckholtz back into the water.

  Sam’s satellite phone rang. He answered it. “Sam Reilly speaking.”

  “Mr. Reilly,” came the voice of the lead British investigator for the crash
ed Boeing 747 Dreamlifter. “We’ve retrieved the data from the FDR. We are lucky this plane’s FDR had a video feed.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not going to believe what happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “I wouldn’t even bother trying to tell you about it. I’ve emailed a copy of the FDR cockpit recording. Just watch it and let me know what you think.”

  Sam asked, impatiently, “Do you know how the 747 crashed?”

  “Yeah, I just don’t believe it.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Just watch the tape. It gets really interesting at 15:32!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sam opened his laptop, downloaded the document, and pressed play.

  Next to him, Tom sat down and stared at the video feed. The flight deck recording depicted the view from a camera mounted directly behind the two pilots. Its wide lens allowed for a clear view of the cockpit, including both pilots, instruments, and the view of their windshield.

  Sam’s eyes instantly met the thick cloud cover that obstructed the pilots’ vision ahead. He glanced at the instruments. The pilot in command had more than ten thousand hours of flying time under his belt and had flown the route from Germany to New York hundreds of times before. He had intentionally diverted nearly a hundred miles north of his original route in an attempt to catch a ninety mile an hour tailwind. It wasn’t an unusual detour for the company to take, despite being far from the direct route.

  The pilot in command, with clear knowledge of the likely weather patterns in the region, had set up instrument-rated flight – meaning that he would rely entirely on “instruments only” for his navigation and no visual reference.

  The first fifteen minutes appeared routine. The aircraft had already climbed and reached its cruising altitude of 42,000 feet. The copilot quietly completed a series of flight reports. Although Sam had never personally flown a 747 Dreamlifter, he’d been in the one that his dad owned many times. To his ear, the aircraft’s four Pratt & Whitney PW4062 engines purred nicely. There was nothing to suggest the aircraft was about to suffer a fatal fault, leading to the aircraft’s demise.

  At 15:32 everything changed.

  It was subtle at first, and like most disasters, a series of unfortunate events led to the aircraft’s demise.

  Sam noted that the pitch of the four engines hadn’t changed.

  The pilot on the left – the one in command – looked at the airspeed gauge. It showed their speed had suddenly dropped from 560 to 470 knots. Next to it, the altimeter showed their altitude falling at 100 feet per second.

  The captain turned to face his copilot with the calm authority of a man who’d spent his life in command of an aircraft. “What do you make of that?”

  The co-pilot shook his head, bewildered. “Maybe we’ve hit a patch of icy air and a downdraft?”

  Both men glanced at the artificial horizon – the instrument that showed the aircraft’s attitude, which is its angle of attack relative to the horizon. The image showed them flying straight and level.

  “I don’t think so,” the pilot replied. “You’d better check the cargo bay. Make sure we haven’t had a load shift.”

  Sam found himself nodding in agreement. It would have been one of his first thoughts in the same circumstance. If a heavy load shifts midflight, it instantly changes the weight distribution of the aircraft, either sending it nose up causing it to stall dramatically, or nose down, causing it to run straight into the ground. Either way, it was a logical explanation.

  On an iPad, the copilot flicked through a series of live video feeds showing the cargo bay. After the fourth one, the copilot put the iPad down and said, “No. The cargo’s still intact.”

  Sam rewound a few seconds and paused the image of the cargo bay. He felt the spiny prickle of fear pluck at the hairs in the back of his neck. There, in the middle of the massive Dreamlifter’s cargo bay, taking up the entire space, was a large sphere. It sat on a purpose-built container, bolted down and secured by large cargo chains.

  He stared at that image. His breathing became uneven, and he felt a knot twist in his stomach. Sam recalled the recent dive he’d made in the Norwegian Sea on board that same aircraft.

  The cargo bay had been empty.

  No one ever informed him that the aircraft was carrying a load. Someone was intentionally lying to him.

  He closed his eyes and sighed.

  Why?

  Why go through the process of hiring him at all, if they weren’t going to tell him what this was all about?

  Sam made a digital copy of the sphere with his smartphone. He attached it to a message for Elise, with a single question – Please identify.

  He then pressed play, and the video continued.

  The pilot said, “I’m going to disconnect the autopilot and take over manual control for a minute.”

  “Copy that,” replied the copilot.

  The pilot disengaged the autopilot and took over manual control of the large aircraft. Sam watched as the man gently eased the wheel forward, dipping the nose and then pulling it toward his chest. The artificial horizon showed their nose pitch downward and then upward, before the pilot gently leveled the aircraft to straight and level once more.

  The pilot shrugged. “She seems to be responding fine.”

  The copilot pointed to the altimeter. “We’re still descending.”

  “All right, let’s increase power and see what happens.”

  “Agreed.”

  The pilot increased power to all four Pratt & Whitney engines.

  Sam glanced at the altimeter. It was still slowly rotating counter-clockwise, meaning they were still on a steady descent.

  The pilot saw it, too. “I don’t get it. We’re not making any difference to it. One thing is for certain, all three of these instruments can’t be wrong.”

  “I’m running through the checklist now!” the co-pilot said, opening the emergency checklist for primary flight display faults.

  He scanned the boldface information. These were the actions that were absolutely critical to survival – so called because in their flight training manuals they were written in boldfaced capital letters. The term, boldface, was said to be written in blood because these critical steps, usually created from an accident investigation, were ones that should have been taken to avoid a fatal crash but weren’t. These steps could, in a crisis, save your life.

  “Right. I’m going through the list now.” The copilot opened up his flight manual and ran through a checklist for potential faults leading to instrument disparities. In this case, specifically, the altimeter and airspeed weren’t matching up.

  Sam found himself impressed by the professionalism and competence displayed by the pilots. They were clearly experienced. This sort of situation was the thing of nightmares in terms of airmanship. In thick cloud cover and without accurate instrumentation, a pilot could quickly become disoriented and panic. It was a recipe for disaster. Unable to trust the effectiveness of the artificial horizon, speedometer, or altimeter, a pilot had little means of maintaining the aircraft in straight and level flight.

  Yet, still. At this stage, the two pilots were working the problem in a calm and efficient manner. Such an event was a true proving ground where pilots demonstrated how well-rounded their capabilities were, but more often a crucible where pilots identify gaps in their knowledge, leading to a domino effect, quickly cascading into an irreversible disaster.

  Few people survived such events.

  Sam closed his eyes for a moment as he recalled that these two men, despite their competence, failed to survive the event.

  The copilot said, “I’m manually checking the air driven gyroscope, GPS, and inertial navigation to get an accurate reading of our attitude.”

  The captain said, “Read me the numbers when you’re ready.”

  “Okay, got it. We’re flying straight and level. Our altitude is 42,000 feet, and our speed is 470 knots.”

  The captain sho
ok his head. “I don’t believe it. That’s exactly what I have.”

  “Any ideas what caused it?”

  “There might have been a slight glitch in the primary flight display.”

  Sam recalled how most information was digitally run through the primary flight display on a Boeing 747. The PFD is a modernization of older, fully mechanical displays that present the critical flight information on a fully-integrated display. This includes airspeed, altitude, attitude, and “bugs” – important, dynamically updated information calculated by the system’s computer. The biggest difference with the PFD is that the underlying mechanical measurement systems – the gyroscope, the pitot barometric pressure instruments, and differential pressure gauges – are totally separate to the display.

  A third pilot stepped into the cockpit.

  Hello. Sam paused the image and took a copy of the man’s face. Who are you?

  “What’s going on?” the new pilot asked.

  He was most likely the third pilot, currently on his rotational rest time.

  The captain said, “We had a problem with our primary flight display. Some of the data was being incorrectly displayed, but it seems to have worked itself out now.”

  “Do you want a hand?”

  “Yeah, you want to plug the maintenance laptop into the BUS and run a diagnostic test?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you find anything, let me know, and we’ll switch over to the secondary flight display.”

  “All right, I’m on it.”

  The third pilot turned, and a moment later, everything changed.

  A series of loud warning alarms screamed and flashed.

  The captain said, “I’ve got fires in engines 1 and 2.”

  All three of their heads raced to the port window. The wing was entirely obscured by the thick cloud cover.

  “Anyone have a visual?” the captain asked.

  “No,” came the reply.

  “All right. I’m shutting down engines 1 and 2.”

  “Confirm,” the copilot said. “Shutting down engines 1 and 2.”

  The pilot in command increased power to engines 3 and 4 and applied pressure to the right rudder to counteract the yaw to the port side.