The Ironclad Covenant (Sam Reilly Book 10)

by Christopher Cartwright

  Chapter Three

  The Anabelle May was a custom-built pleasure cruiser that took the name of Senator Perry’s late wife. As he motored slowly toward the main channel into the lake’s deeper water, Sam noticed that he handled her with the surprisingly adept love of a seasoned sailor. She was a custom designed motor yacht by the German shipbuilding company, Blohn and Voss. She had a length of sixty-five feet and a beam of twenty-eight. Her hull was made of high tensile steel, while her three decks were made of aluminum alloy, with a teak outer deck and helipad. Above its bridge, were an array of high tech radar and satellite communications and plotting equipment. Powered by twin MTU diesel-electric marine engines – a marine division of Rolls Royce Propulsion – and with sleek, angular sides, it could achieve a top speed of forty knots.

  Once outside the channel and into deep waters, Senator Perry opened up the throttles and the Blohn and Voss shot forward, its bow quickly riding on the plane.

  “How long until we reach the dive site?” Sam asked.

  Senator Perry answered without hesitation. “It’s thirty minutes from here.”

  “Great. Do you need us or can Tom and I start preparing our dive plan and equipment?”

  “Go. I’m fine. I’ve been navigating these waters since my dad first took me out here as a kid. It’s like my second backyard.”

  Sam nodded. “All right. We’ll be on the back deck if you need anything.”

  On board the aft deck Tom had opened their large storage crate and laid out the two Dräger Closed-Circuit Oxygen Rebreathers on the teak deck. They were originally designed for military use, police diving, and search and rescue, but to Sam their rectangular, rigid aluminum backpack, gave them the awkward appearance of an astronaut’s personal life-support system. Mounted on either side of this backpack were two gas cylinders. One of these was filled with Oxygen and the other with a diluent called Trimix. Basically, even oxygen becomes lethal at varying depths beyond thirty feet and so the gas needs to be diluted with something. For extreme depths approaching two hundred feet, a combination of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium was the most practical gas diluent.

  On the port side of the aft deck, at a small entrance to the Anabelle May, was a fully equipped dive locker that housed top of the line recreational and tech diving equipment, including rows upon rows of dry suits, dive masks, gas cylinders and a commercial grade air compressor and a mixture of large, H-sized gas cylinders for filling tanks, including, Air, Oxygen, Nitrox, Heliox, Trimix.

  Sam ran his eyes along the cylinders.

  They would need Oxygen and Trimix for the dive.

  Sam and Tom agreed to do an initial bounce dive, take some photos, and if the answers to where the Senator’s son had gone still eluded them, they could set up for a more prolonged dive and come back tomorrow.

  The concept with a bounce dive was to descend rapidly, spend less than ten minutes bottom time and then ascend before the compressed nitrogen had a chance to significantly build up in their bloodstream. This would result in a shorter decompression time and less risk of hypothermia. Heated underlay or not, prolonged diving in near freezing water was far from a lot of fun and increased their risks.

  Sam and Tom methodically and efficiently worked their way through their dive equipment, slowly going through the laborious process of preparing each part for the dive.

  Sam opened the aluminum backpack. Inside was an axial type scrubber unit filled with the granular absorbent used to remove C02 from the closed-circuit during the dive. He removed the half-used cartridge and replaced it with a brand-new unit, filled with five pounds of sodalime and then reinserted it, locking the lid with a heavy-duty thread.

  He then began to test the unit for leaks. Two leak tests were conducted. These were generally known as the positive and negative pressure tests, and are designed to check that the breathing loop is airtight for internal pressure lower and higher than the outside. The positive pressure test ensures that the unit will not lose gas while in use, and the negative pressure test ensures that water will not leak into the breathing loop where it can degrade the scrubber medium or the oxygen sensors.

  The Anabelle May’s engines reduced to an idle and the pleasure cruiser drifted into a round arc, coming to a complete stop with the port bow just next to the historic mooring buoy, which displayed the details of the J.F. Johnson’s wreck.

  Sam looked at the buoy and then stepped inside the main pilothouse. “Do you want me to pick up the mooring line, Senator Perry?”

  The Senator stepped by, carrying a retractable hook, and shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

  Sam smiled as he watched the heavy senator move with surprising agility toward the bow, where he leaned over the gunwale and hooked the mooring line. It took him little more than a moment to kneel down, feed the line through the cleat and secure the Anabelle May.

  “All right, gentlemen,” Senator Perry said. “I’ll be here until you return. I’ll have some warm soup to heat you up again when you get here. Thanks again and good luck.”

  Sam nodded. “We won’t be too long. An hour at most. We’re going to do a bounce dive. Straight down, take some photos and back up again.”

  “Seems like a good plan,” the Senator replied.

  Sam stepped back to the aft deck. South-east of their position, he spotted the tall boreal forest of Balsam fir and White Spruce along Isle Royale's rugged shoreline. From what he guessed, the J.F. Johnson’s wreck lied somewhere smack bang in the middle of the imaginary line that ran along the surface of Lake Superior and delineated the U.S. and Canada’s border.

  Confident that his equipment was set up correctly and ready for the dive, Sam undressed and then donned his thermal vest and switched it on. The undergarment used state of the art fiber heating technology that generates Far Infrared Rays, which heats and warms up the blood in two locations along the divers back, enabling heat to penetrate deep into the body core. Over which, he wore a Thinsulate underlay. He then slipped into a thick dry suit, putting on a thick woolen beany before pulling the dive hood over.

  Tom was already kitted up and testing his rebreather. “You’re slowing down, Sam.”

  “Give me a break,” Sam said, “This is exactly why I don’t like diving in the cold. It takes too long to get everything ready. Give me a shallow tropical dive in a pair of board shorts and a BCD any day.”

  “All right, we’ll get in and get back out before the cold has the chance to hit you.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said and then donned his full-face dive mask.

  The full-face mask had several benefits in deep cold-water dives, such as the wreckage of the J.F. Johnson. It functions to provide a wide lens through which the diver can see clearly underwater, it provides the diver's face with some protection from cold water, while at the same time increasing breathing security because if any level of altered conscious state occurs, the diver doesn’t need to keep a regulator in his mouth. Within Sam’s mask, there was another benefit, it provided space to house his diving radio to communicate freely with Tom throughout the dive.

  He took a deep breath and started pre-breathing the unit – a process of breathing normally for about three minutes before entering the water to ensure the scrubber material gets a chance to warm up to operating temperature, and works correctly, and that the partial pressure of oxygen within the closed-circuit rebreather is controlled within the predefined parameters.

  Sam inhaled effortlessly.

  The gas he breathed was humid and warm, rather than the dry, cold air divers are used to with compressed air and a SCUBA cylinder and regulator set up. In most dives, this would make for a more comfortable experience, but in the cold, deep confines of Lake Superior, it would save his life – keeping him warmer and less dehydrated – both of which, would reduce his likelihood of decompression sickness.

  He checked his gauge for two things.

  One, that C02 levels weren’t rising, meaning the new sodalime scrubber was doing its job correctly and two, that the partial p
ressure of oxygen within the closed-circuit remained within the initial setpoint of 1.3 bar.

  Sam ran his eyes across the top reading, where a nondispersive infrared sensor showed that the C02 levels weren’t elevating.

  Below that, his glance stopped to examine the reading from the oxygen analyzer. It showed the partial pressure of oxygen as 1.3 bar.

  Three minutes later, he said to Tom, “I’m all good to go.”

  “All right. Let’s stick together. I don’t know what to make of the Senator, but he wasn’t lying when he said Lake Superior is a uniquely deadly place to dive.”

  And stepped off into the frigid waters of Lake Superior.

  Chapter Four

  Few things are more shocking to the human body than plunging into ice cold water. As the near freezing water enveloped Sam, his body reacted the way millennia of evolution had intended – his arteries tightened, blood pressure and heart rate increased, and his lungs gasped for the cold, dry, Trimix. The heated undergarment warmed the large blood vessels to his kidneys in his lower back, where it was soon shunted to his vital organs.

  Within minutes, his body had overcome the original shock of the initial dramatic temperature change and it started to regulate the warmth. He checked his gauges, confirming on his heads-up display that his CO2 levels weren’t climbing and that the partial pressure of oxygen within the fully closed-circuit remained within the predefined parameter of 1.3 bar.

  Sam glanced at his buddy. “How you doing Tom?”

  “Good,” came Tom’s cheerful reply. “I don’t know what the Senator was talking about. The lake’s a balmy 4 degrees above freezing.”

  “That’s good, Tom. You and I must be diving different lakes.” Sam grinned. “How are your numbers?”

  “They’re all good.”

  “All right, let’s start our descent.”

  Sam deflated his buoyancy wing until he was negatively buoyant and started his descent. They descended quickly, more like sky divers, watching the icy-clear waters flow past them as they raced to the lake’s bed. As he descended, Sam swallowed, equalizing the pressure in his ears and sinuses and occasionally inserted a small amount of gas into his dry suit to prevent its compressed air from squeezing him tight.

  At a hundred feet, he switched on his dive flashlight and watched Tom do the same.

  “You still good, Tom?”

  “Great. You know Sam, I remember when you used to take me diving in the Bahamas. Now all we seem to do is find more and more inhospitable places to explore.”

  Sam smiled, unsure whether Tom was making reference to the fact that he was normally the one to complain about the cold. “Sorry. We go where the work is.”

  “I know, I’m just regretting not using my opportunity to take a vacation with the rest of the crew, while the Maria Helena was having its engines overhauled.”

  “Vacation?” Sam asked. “I thought this was your vacation. When was the last time I let you come along on a treasure hunt?”

  “You mean, without people trying to kill us?” Tom replied. “I don’t know, it’s been a while.”

  “See, aren’t you glad you came?” Sam said. “Besides, what else were you going to do while Genevieve’s away?”

  “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”

  “Where is Genevieve anyway?”

  “She stayed in Russia to visit a friend of hers. She’ll be back in a week.”

  Sam slowed his descent. They were approaching 170 feet. “The wreckage of the J. F. Johnson should be visible somewhere around here.”

  Tom turned and shined his flashlight to their east, revealing a large wreckage. “You mean that one?”

  “Yeah, that’d be it.”

  Sam stared at the shipwreck.

  Beneath the powerful beam of his Day-maker flashlight the J. F. Johnson looked as though it had sunk a year ago, not almost ninety. The paint on the hull, the fittings, everything was perfectly preserved. There was some buildup on the steel rope structures aboard, but otherwise only silt disguised the intact ship. The bow pointed up the slope of the ravine and the water passed the ship from bow to stern in an ever-present current, keeping her relatively clean in her frozen tomb. The surroundings were freezing, brutally inhospitable. No seaweed clung to the barren underwater seascape, and the whole area seemed completely devoid of life-forms of any kind.

  Sam could already feel hypothermia teasing at his extremities, despite all their preparations. He motioned to Tom and tapped his watch, then made ten fingers to symbolize the agreed ten minutes on the wreck, and the okay signal. Tom checked his own watch and confirmed the timing.

  The current was taking him along at a walking pace toward the wreck, so he had to time his approach carefully, as he aimed for the main entrance to the raised pilothouse. According to Senator Perry, only one hatch remained accessible, while the rest of the ship was now sealed permanently with rust.

  Sam kicked his fins in the lead and Tom followed as they crested the starboard lifelines, which sat atop the listing ship. They headed for the back of the main dining room amidships. An eddy held them in place against the aft wall and then shoved them into the back of the base of a bridge that raised upward from the deck at a sharp angle. It was a strange feeling being hustled inside the dead ship by the invisible hand of the sea.

  He gripped the edge of the door to the wheelhouse. He pulled on the door, using his legs to push off the side of the structure, but nothing shifted. The hatch was locked from within or had been permanently fixed with rust and decomposition.

  “I thought the Senator said only the door to the bridge was still accessible?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe there’s a second hatch, portside?” Tom suggested.

  “That’s probably right.”

  The hatch was fixed in a semi-open position, leaving a gap of about three inches, leading downward into the main fishbowl-shaped wheelhouse.

  Sam cracked a weighted luminescent glowstick and waited until its chemicals mixed and glowed green. He then dropped it through the gap, leading to a broad windshield that formed the semi-circle of a large goldfish bowl. The wheelhouse glowed with the eerie green luminescence, revealing four ghostly sailors who’d kept watch on the stricken bridge for nearly nine decades. The four dead men wore thick woolen coats and typical sailing attire from the 1920s.

  Sam slowly exhaled as he ran his flashlight across their faces. They looked waxy, definitely recognizable as once young men, but at the same no longer quite human. More of a morphed shape that had bulged over time into a frozen vision that haunted the deep.

  Tom was first to break the tension. “It’s strange to think that if any of these men had survived the original sinking they’d be older than my grandfather and would have already died of natural causes.”

  Sam’s tension eased. “Yeah. It’s hard to imagine they’ve been down here all this time. They still look…”

  “Almost human?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s the unique combination of fresh water and extreme cold that would have preserved them. Lake Superior is meant to be quite remarkable for it.”

  Sam glanced at the gauges on his heads-up display. CO2 and P02 were where they belonged. His fingertips were already losing sensation due to the cold. The Senator was right, their bottom time wasn’t restrained by breathable gas volume, but by their ability to withstand the freezing conditions and stave off hypothermia.

  Tom shined his flashlight at his face. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just noticed my hands were getting pretty cold.”

  “Come on, let’s check that other hatchway, find what we’re looking for, and get back to the surface.”

  “Agreed.”

  Sam swam downward, across the heavily angled goldfish-bowl shaped windshield, to the portside of the heavily listing vessel.

  He found the second hatchway. It was permanently fixed at a right angle to the portside of the pilothouse hull. Sam glanced inside. The green haze of the glowstick still r
adiated from inside, but not immediately inside. Instead, it appeared as though the hatchway led to the bottom level of the wheelhouse and that they’d need to swim through it and then upward to reach the old bridge.

  Sam shined his flashlight inside. It revealed the remnants of an old set of steep metal stairs, that most likely led to the wheelhouse. He clipped the end of his red guideline to the steel hook on the hatchway with a carabiner. He had no intention of penetrating the wreck of the J.F. Johnson more than he had to, but even in the relatively small and well contained area of the wheelhouse, a sudden shift of silt could cause a complete visibility block out.

  He took a deep breath, slowly exhaled and then gently kicked his fins to enter the wreck. The red guideline unraveled from its spool as he swam farther inside. About ten feet inside, he shined his flashlight on the ascending metal steps that once led to the highest point of the wheelhouse. He flicked the beam in a wide clock-wise arc. He stopped, with the light fixed on a second hatchway – this one was open, and led downward, further into the ship.

  He put his hand on the heavy iron hatchway. The door moved. It seemed impossible after nine decades that the metal hinges hadn’t seized completely.

  “What do you think of that?” Sam asked.

  “I have no idea.” Tom’s voice was calm and collected. “One thing’s for sure, someone’s been down here recently.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m certain. For a steel door to still be moving after nine decades beneath the water isn’t just unlikely, it’s impossible.” Tom shined his Day-maker beam on the hinge. “Looks like these have been replaced sometime over the past few years.”

  Hidden beneath his full-faced dive mask, Sam grinned. “You want to see what’s so important down there that someone went to the trouble of repairing the hatchway?”

  “Yes, but not right now. We’re not set up or prepared to penetrate the deeper levels of the ship. Let’s see what’s inside the wheelhouse, return to the surface and then set up for a more prolonged dive tomorrow.”

  “All right. Good idea.”