The Ironclad Covenant (Sam Reilly Book 10)

by Christopher Cartwright

  Chapter Eight

  It was a little after nine p.m. and a thick fog seemed to penetrate and obscure everything. Tom kept his eyes fixed on the radar, without which, he doubted anyone could have navigated the frigid waters of Lake Superior – a testament to the six thousand or more shipwrecks that rested on the lake’s seabed.

  After laying the trap, he knew it was only a matter of time before Mark – the dive operator – or someone else from the dive company would head out to the wreck site of the J.F. Johnson. If they were involved in illegal shipping of contraband and they thought Sam and Tom’s dive tomorrow might reveal irrefutable evidence to such effect, they would dive the wheelhouse tonight to remove it.

  At ten minutes past nine p.m. the outline of the Superior Deep, the luxurious motor yacht built by Beneteau and used as a diving charter boat, came into view. On the radar, Tom watched as the vessel, with its sleek lines, crept out along the channel and into the deep and open waters of Lake Superior.

  Sam glanced at Tom, who was at the wheel of the Annabelle May. “You see it?”

  Tom relaxed into the Napa leather seat, with his legs casually up against the instrument panel, he nodded. “I see it. I’m going to let them have some space before I follow.”

  “Don’t lose them.”

  Tom lowered his feet, eased the twin throttles gently forward. “Why the rush? We know where they’re headed.”

  It was nearly two hours before they rounded the southern end of Isle Royale, headed north and reached the wreck site of the J.F. Johnson.

  Tom eased off the throttles and let the Annabelle May settle in her wake, nearly half a mile behind the dive-boat.

  He faced Sam and smiled. “Nice night for a dive, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sam visibly shuddered at the thought. “Sure. I just wished they’d picked a warmer place to shift contraband.”

  They stared at the radar. The Senator hadn’t skimped on the hardware for his motor yacht and the radar was no different. It gave a detailed outline of the water ahead, leading to a detailed outline of the dive-boat. Tom watched as three men worked to maneuver something around the aft deck.

  His eyelids squinted, as he studied the image. “What is that?”

  “Not what,” Sam said. “But, who?”

  A moment later, the diver stepped off the aft deck of the Superior Deep and into the water. Tom could just make out the diver’s covered head as he surfaced after splashing into the icy waters. The dive boat loitered for a couple minutes and then turned in a large arc, motoring straight toward them.

  Tom watched as the Superior Deep motored past them. At the helm, he spotted Mark, the dive-operator they’d met earlier that day. The man waved at him, his face was fixed in a pretense of relaxed tranquility and not a care in the world, and then he opened up the throttles and raced south, toward Duluth.

  Tom increased the twin throttles, heading toward the marker buoy that represented the wreck site of the J.F. Johnson. “So much for coming back to pick up his diver.”

  “Do you think he’s going to return?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s a chance he’s already planning on how he’s going to get out of the country after leaving his fellow diver to freeze to death or drown.”

  Tom slowed the Annabelle May, bringing her to a complete stop with her bow just above the marker buoy. Outside, Sam hooked the buoy and pulled up the mooring rope, feeding it through the bow cleat. Tom switched the engines off and stepped down to the bow.

  He said, “Someone needs to go see what the diver’s doing down there.”

  Sam nodded. “And someone needs to stay on board, in case our friend from the dive shop returns.”

  Tom sighed. “Rock, scissors, paper to see who’s going to go down after him?”

  Chapter Nine

  Tom lost the game.

  With the other diver already having gained nearly ten minutes head start, he quickly donned his dive gear, which had already been set up earlier in the day in preparation for the potential need to make this dive. This time he wore an additional two electrical heating garments, aiming to keep his core body temperature toward the high end of the norm, rather than risking hypothermia during what he predicted might be a more prolonged dive. In addition to the rest of the diving paraphernalia, Tom wore a sharkstick on his right thigh – a high powered weapon with a long barrel and a waterproof shotgun cartridge capable of deterring a shark.

  He placed the full faced dive mask over his head and took a few deep breaths. His eyes studied the gauges displayed on the heads-up-display, confirming that his CO2 and PO2 remained within their desired parameters. He signaled to Sam that he was good to go and then stepped off the back of the Annabelle May, into the frigid waters.

  Tom sunk quickly, free-falling into absolute darkness for nearly six minutes. He kept his Day-maker flashlight switched off, and his eyes focused on the small red line at the top-right hand corner of his face mask that displayed depth. When it reached 160 feet, he inflated his buoyancy wing and leveled out to a state of neutral buoyancy.

  His eyes turned downward, where the fishbowl-shaped windshield of the J.F. Johnson’s wheelhouse glowed yellow, with the light of a diver. With his own flashlight turned off, Tom descended until he was level with the other diver. One of the reasons rebreather systems are popular in the Special Forces of the military is that because they’re a closed system there are no bubbles escaping to the surface, making them silent.

  In the darkness, Tom was able to get close enough to clearly make out the shape of the other diver. He watched, from about thirty feet away, as the diver used an underwater paint to cover the walls and insides of the wheelhouse with a new canvas of black.

  It was the final proof he needed to see that someone from the dive shop’s position was made vulnerable by the note they’d discovered that read: STANFORD STOLE THE MESKWAKI GOLD SPRING. I CAN, TOO.

  As Tom watched, while the diver toiled at a depth approaching 200 feet to remove history, he wondered how this could possibly implicate a current illegal contraband smuggling operation. So, the Senator’s grandfather was a crook – that doesn’t make the Senator guilty. Did Stanford steal a bootlegging operation when the ship sunk, killing his boss? More importantly, could it still be in operation. What about the Meskwaki Gold Spring? There’s nothing illegal about finding gold. How could Stanford have stolen it? Again, how did any of this implicate the local dive operator?

  The yellow glow of the diver’s light began to dwindle. Tom shifted his position another ten feet backward and descended until he was nearly flat along the seabed, reducing his profile in case the diver came out and directly shined his flashlight on him.

  He waited as the light inside the J.F. Johnson shifted lower into the hull. It was no longer an easily identifiable glow, but rather a blurry haze. Tom expected the diver to exit the ship through the open hatch on the portside of the listing shipwreck at any moment. Instead, he watched as the light continued to radiate from the portholes along the hull, constantly heading farther into the lower decks and heading toward the stern of the old Tramp Steamer.

  The diver didn’t notice Tom in the total darkness of Lake Superior’s seabed. Tom watched him for another minute and then saw that the guy was swimming into the main engine-house. Tom watched as the clear glow of the guy’s flashlight moved through the old steamer’s engine room.

  Where the hell’s he going?

  There was nothing logical about what the guy was doing. No reason anything of value could be stored deep inside the engine-house. Unless…

  Tom felt his heart race with excitement. The diver had entered the second hatchway and descended into the main hull.

  Suddenly it was clear to Tom what sort of operation they were running. Drugs, weapons, or whatever type of contraband was being shipped was stored inside the hull of the shipwreck and then retrieved at a later date by divers to move it between the US-Canadian border. For years, the operation had gone undetected because whoever was responsible f
or it, had gone to great lengths to build up a dangerous mystique about the wreck of the J.F. Johnson – even going so far as to weld the rest of the hatchways shut and keeping the four ghostly sailors to keep watch and protect their hoard.

  Tom felt for his sharkstick. It was still attached to his thigh, not that he expected to need it. Close quarters fighting was almost impossible at this depth and even harder inside the narrow confines of a shipwreck. Besides, he was a big guy – nearly 250 pounds of muscle – if it came to a fight, he had no doubt he could win it. Worst case scenario, he had his sharkstick. He weighed up his options and decided this might be his best chance to ever catch the criminal operation in the act. If he could get closer, his facemask mounted camera could capture a digital recording of the event.

  But it wasn’t his job. Catching criminals shipping contraband across the border was strictly Border Patrol, Homeland Security, and the FBI’s responsibility. He wasn’t being paid for it. No reason he should risk his life to stop it. Take down one operation and another one will just pop up in its place. Tom swallowed hard. Then again, this might be the only chance he and Sam might have to save the Senator’s son’s life.

  The light continued, deep into the stern of the ship’s 251-foot hull, all the way to the very end, where the engine room had once been. Once there, the light stopped. It remained perfectly still. It didn’t make sense. Every minute they spent at this depth was adding up to hours of decompression time. No one simply waits inside a shipwreck, even if they’re trying to shift contraband.

  Had the diver become trapped in the wreck?

  It was enough to convince Tom to follow the diver inside. He carefully swam toward the hatchway, keeping his own flashlight switched off. Inside the lower level of the pilothouse, he spotted the open hatchway to the right, and swam through.

  Mentally, he pictured the long passageway leading to the back of the ship, where the engine room had been. A faint glow of light radiated from a passage beneath a set of stairs. Tom descended two back to back metal stairs, until he reached the working deck of the old Steam Tramp – where men had once toiled to feed the boilers for hours.

  He kicked his fins gently, trying not to disturb the thick layer of dark silt. The water was currently crystal clear, but he had no doubt that would all change in an instant if the silt became disturbed. He glanced at the end of the tunnel. A bright light was fixed at the end of it. The light no longer flickered. Its beams were fixed, shining away from him. Behind the light, he just made out the shadow of the diver. The man seemed completely still. There was a chance he’d made a mistake with his gas mixture and was no longer conscious, or even dead.

  Tom swam faster, making a mental map of his surroundings as he moved. It was a single straight passageway, two sets of metal stairs, an open hatch, a small rectangular entrance compartment within the base of the wheelhouse, and then an open hatchway to the outside world. He could make it in the dark, if he had to. If things went bad, he could do it without laying any guideline down. Urged onward with the hope that he might still have a chance to save the diver, he raced toward the light. Drug smuggler or not, the stranger deserved a chance – if not for himself, but because he might provide the only link to the Senator’s son.

  Tom was within arm’s reach of the diver. He took in the diver’s open eyes, which stared vacantly directly at him, his limp body, and guessed in an instant the man was already beyond hope. There was no rise and fall of the diver’s chest, suggesting he’d already stopped breathing. Tom reached out to grab him.

  But his hand never reached the man.

  Instead, Tom watched as the stilled diver suddenly came alive. The diver’s lifeless hands became animate and squeezed the twin throttle triggers of his sea scooter. The headlight brightened and shot past Tom, through the hull, like a bullet. It raced along the passageway and up through the stairwell, heading toward the open hatchway. The electric motor of the sea scooter whirred as it went past him. In seconds, the crisp, clear water was churned by the sea scooter’s propeller, and ninety years of silt was spread through the water like an impenetrable mist. The now distant flashlight turned into an obtuse blur, before total darkness extinguished the light completely.

  Chapter Ten

  Tom switched his own flashlight on immediately.

  But it made no difference. The silt permeated everything. Its fine dust particles merely reflected his own light, confining him to the same visibility of darkness. He couldn’t see his own hand in front of him if he held it up in front of his dive mask.

  The mental map of the J.F. Johnson’s interior hull shattered.

  Fear rose in his throat like bile and he felt the unaccustomed symptoms of claustrophobia envelop his world. In seconds his clear vision had been completely tainted and all points of reference stolen. Neutrally buoyant, his world was spinning. He tried to grasp something ahead, feeling with his hands as a person suddenly blinded might, trying to form a new mental map.

  Unable to reach anything, he turned his attention to simple priorities needed to keep himself alive. He breathed in, working to consciously slow the process and avoid hyperventilation. Making a conscious decision, he savored the icy cold Trimix, as it entered his mouth and passed down through his windpipe into his lungs. He felt his chest rise gently, and his belly expand subtly. His diaphragm relaxed, and the gas slowly left his lungs.

  His eyes couldn’t see anything in front of his mask, but that didn’t mean he was completely blind, either. The heads-up-display still provided a series of gauges. His eyes scanned those numbers. At the current rate of consumption, his gas volume meant he was capable of spending another three hours and five minutes at this depth. It wasn’t gas volume that concerned him. At 36 degrees Fahrenheit, he would suffer from hypothermia and freeze to death well before he ran out of breathable gas.

  Tom eased his breathing. He could hear the sound of his heart thumping in the back of his head. At this rate, his metabolic rate would skyrocket and he would burn through his gas supply. He needed to stop himself from sliding down the slippery slope of panic.

  Locked in the interminable space and unsure if he was facing upward or downward, Tom quickly released all air from his buoyancy wing. Air bubbles ran downward past his eyes and a moment later he felt them run past his feet. He then started to fall toward the ceiling.

  He grinned.

  It was the first major development he’d made toward extracting himself from the deadly labyrinth in which he’d been confined. Tom adjusted his position until he felt level, and eased the last of the air out until he sunk to his knees. He extended his hands outward, until they reached the steel wall of the hull.

  He stopped and treasured the achievement for a moment, took a couple of slow, deep breaths in and then reached up to his facemask. His gloved hands ran across the sealed top until it reached a single pliable switch. He depressed the rubber. It acted like the mode button in a car and changed the instrument panel exhibited on the heads-up-display. It showed an array of dive-tables, depicting his maximum bottom time and decompression obligations. He pressed it again and the mode now displayed the outside water temperature and temperature inside the dry suit. Just looking at it made him feel chilled to the core. He depressed it again and his heads-up-display now showed a digital compass.

  The arrow pointed North.

  He cast his mind back to the bathymetric maps he’d studied earlier that day of the J.F. Johnson shipwreck. It was positioned almost precisely in a North-South direction, with the stern pointed North and the bow planted due South. He took the new information and added it to the mental image of the interior of the shipwreck he was drawing.

  He turned to orient himself, level with the ground in a southerly direction. Tom felt a new surge of hope. More than hope. He was enjoying the challenge, reveling in the discipline that cave diving and wreck diving demanded. The very reason he’d gotten into the sport years ago.

  Running his gloved hand along the side of the hull and his trailing fins just above th
e ground – occasionally allowing them to make contact and confirm that he was still moving parallel to it – Tom began swimming along the passageway.

  It took less than five minutes before his hand caught the edge of the steel railings that formed the base of the internal stairs. He added gas to his buoyancy wing until he started to ascend, using buoyancy to guide him and ensure that he was moving in the right direction. Keeping hold of the railing, he was able to follow it up two separate flights of stairs.

  At the top, the thick layer of silt was slightly thinner. He was starting to make out things. Part of the railing, a single step, his hand in front of his face. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He followed his mental picture of the hatchway and fixed his flashlight at the wall. Moving right up to it, he spotted that it was nothing more than hull. He turned to the right and stopped. There in front of him, his eyes caught the L-shaped lever used to lock and open the now closed hatch.

  His right hand gripped the handle, trying to pull it downward. Nothing happened. He fought with the door latch. Ninety years of rust had welded it shut and no amount of pulling on Tom’s part could possibly encourage it to turn.

  A new wave of fear churned in his stomach. Had his map of the ship, carefully reconstructed in his mind, been wrong? Had he made a major mistake in his assumptions. Could he have headed South when he was supposed to head North? Worse yet, what if he was exactly where he was meant to be? What if his attacker had locked the hatchway shut, permanently entombing him 205 feet below the surface of Lake Superior?

  The thought chilled him.

  How long would Sam Reilly wait for him to resurface? Even if he did come after him, there was no certainty that he’d be able to open the door. The latch, after all, was rusted shut.

  That thought made Tom stop.

  Then, beneath his facemask, he smiled – because if he couldn’t open the latch, his attacker couldn’t close it.

  Tom shook his head, and pressed on the door.