Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3)

by Christine Kling

  Cole really did not want to have to return on a second dive, but he couldn’t argue with his air supply. He needed enough air for a decompression safety stop before surfacing. It was time to go. He floated his legs up, intending to turn around. He wasn’t even aware of making the decision to try again, but he braced his legs against the bulkhead and put all his weight into one last effort.

  The chiller-box door popped free and sank to the deck, releasing a wave of silt and debris from inside what had been the boat’s refrigerated locker. Cole tried to shine his light inside, but the light simply reflected off all the suspended particles. He reached his gloved hand in and felt around. There had been some kind of wire shelving, now tangled and rusted into a mess. He tried to pull the shelving out of the box, but it was hanging up on something, and the water was now so cloudy he couldn’t see what. He felt around the bottom of the icebox door and his fingers touched something made of solid metal on the bottom of the box. It moved when he jostled it. With both hands in the gap, he was able to move the object until he could get his fingers around the edge. He pulled it free.

  What he drew out was a concave disk about two feet across. It appeared to have been wrapped in some kind of black fabric, which disintegrated and further muddied the water. Cole had to hold the object close to his mask to see anything with all the debris in the water. He rubbed his fingers on the convex side and saw a design in the metal. He rubbed a bit more, and he made out one branch of a familiar symbol. He reached for his guideline and began feeling his way out of the murky galley and back toward the control room and the sub’s exit. He held the silver disk tight to his chest with one hand. If his suspicion was right, the object he clutched against his chest was a Knight’s shield engraved with the image of a Maltese cross.

  Aboard the EV Shadow Chaser II

  Mediterranean Sea off Djerba Island

  April 22, 2014

  “What do you mean, no sign of Cole?”

  “I can’t see anything, Theo.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Enigma is alongside the conning tower where I left it when I went to answer the radio. I’ve turned it in a complete three-sixty looking up and down the deck, and there is no sign of Cole.”

  “He didn’t just disappear, Riley. He’s probably down examining the hull or back looking at the props.”

  “He’d better not have gone inside without Enigma,” Riley said.

  “This is Cole we’re talking about, you know.”

  She set her teeth at that and steered the ROV up and over the high side of the sub, shining the lights up and down the hull. “I can see what sank her. There’s an open crack in the hull down here, as well as a pretty good dent. It looks like a long rip in the metal.”

  “What about Cole?”

  “Still nothing.”

  Riley steered the ROV along the sea floor, panning the lights up and down along the hull. She intended to go all the way around the wreck. He had to be somewhere. The lack of fish in the water surprised her. She had grown accustomed to the fantastic diving in Indonesia and the Indian Ocean, where coral and fish were abundant. Aside from a few schools of silvery minnows and the occasional grunts, she didn’t see much life at all.

  “You’re not talking to me.”

  She jumped. Theo had left the drum with the cables, and he was standing right by her side. “Oh, geez,” she said. “You scared the bejesus out of me, Theo.” She looked up at the worry lines on his face. “I’m sorry. I’m not as good as Cole at telling you what I see. I’ve been driving Enigma all the way around the wreck and I—” She stopped. Something had caught her attention over his shoulder.

  “What? What were you about to say?”

  Riley set the tablet down on the table on the back deck. “I think I see a boat headed our way, coming very fast. Hang on a minute while I run up to the bridge and get the binoculars.”

  She took the steps two at a time and carried the binoculars out onto the side deck. With that much higher altitude now, she could make the boat out clearly. The color was gray, either paint or unpainted aluminum. It was pushing a big, frothing, white wake at the bow. It looked like a pilot boat or maybe police. Either way, it didn’t look good.

  When she reached the deck, she said, “Theo, it looks like we’ve got official company heading our way—maybe customs, maybe police.” She took one last look through the glasses, and now she could make out what looked like a machine gun on the foredeck of the boat.

  “I can see a deck gun on the foredeck, so I’d say either military or police.” She set the binoculars on the table and picked up the tablet. She drove the ROV back up to the submarine’s deck level for another look around.

  “Any sign of Cole yet?” Theo asked.

  “I still don’t see anything. Wait. It looks like there’s a stream of bubbles coming up out of the conning tower.”

  “Do you remember how to use the robot arms on Enigma?”

  “I think so.”

  “Take Enigma down to the hull and use one of the metal claws to tap out an SOS. If Cole’s inside the sub, he’ll hear it.”

  She maneuvered the little ROV over the edge and alongside the hull. The virtual controls on the screen were not easy to use, but she got the arm moving and rapped it once against the hull. Then again. After the third time she was getting the hang of it, so she was able to follow that with three short taps. Then three long. So she wasn’t starting with S. He’d get the message eventually if he could hear it at all.

  If he couldn’t hear the SOS, then may he’d hear the prop noise of the approaching boat. She and Theo could certainly hear the patrol boat’s engines now, and the noise grew ever louder.

  “How far away are they?”

  “Less than a quarter of a mile now. They must be doing twenty-five knots.” She set the tablet down on the table. “Theo, I’m worried about Cole’s air supply. He’s run out of bottom time.”

  An amplified voice began speaking in French. “Attention. Attention. C’est la police. Restez où l’on peut vous voir.”

  The dog at Theo’s heel began a low, rumbling growl.

  Theo reached down and touched Leia. “Shhhh,” he said, then he took hold of Riley’s arm. “What are they saying?”

  “They’re just telling us to stay on deck where they can see us.”

  “It sounded like they said ‘police.’”

  “Yeah. And it looks like they’re coming alongside. They’ve got a guy manning the gun on deck, and it looks like three guys with sidearms on the back deck. Then the boat driver. And he sucks at it, so get ready for impact.”

  There was the sickening sound of metal scraping against metal, and the three men jumped on board Shadow Chaser II. They were all dressed in desert camo fatigues and black berets.

  The three men spoke amongst themselves in French. Obviously, they didn’t think that the crew on an American-flagged vessel would speak their language. Riley wasn’t about to inform them otherwise. This was the time to keep quiet and play dumb.

  The tallest and oldest of the group stepped forward. “Where is the captain?” he asked in quite fluent-sounding English.

  “He’s not here,” Riley said.

  “Where is he?”

  She pointed downward but didn’t say a word.

  “This vessel has not cleared in with the local authorities. What are you doing here?”

  “We have mechanical difficulties.”

  The man walked up to Theo. “Look at me when I am speaking!” he yelled.

  Theo swung his head around in the direction of the voice.

  The man turned to Riley. “What is wrong with him?”

  “He’s blind,” she said.

  The man waved his hand in front of Theo’s eyes.

  It never ceased to amaze Riley when people did that. Granted, there was no damage to his eyes, so it wasn’t always easy to tell, but when you saw how his eyes didn’t track, it was pretty clear they weren’t working.

  The man pointed to the drum w
ith the cables that passed over the side.

  “What are you doing here with this equipment?”

  Riley looked at the drum of cables like she was surprised to find it there. “That? We’re using it to work on the boat. Like I said, we have mechanical trouble.”

  “We received a report that you were out here diving on a wreck in our territorial waters. That you are stealing antiquities.”

  Riley didn’t say anything—just glanced at her watch. What if Cole had entered the sub and got disoriented or snagged his gear on something? What if he was down there running out of air?

  The man stepped closer to her, invading her space. “If the captain does not return immediately, I will arrest you both and seize this vessel.”

  She could handle being arrested and forfeiting the boat. She couldn’t handle losing Cole. If she told them the truth, they’d allow her to dive down with spare tanks. She was about to confess to the officer when she heard splashing at the stern of the boat.

  A pair of black fins flew up onto the swim step. The three officials walked back to the bulwark in time to see a wetsuit-clad Cole stand up and shove his face mask to the top of his head.

  “Hey, looky here,” he said with an exaggerated twang in his voice. “We got guests.” He stepped forward and stretched out his hand. “Welcome aboard, fellas.”

  Aboard the Ruse

  Grand Harbour, Malta

  June 9, 1798

  Fortune was in his favor, Alonso thought, as the wind in the harbor was moderate and from the southwest. He had never sailed his vessel entirely alone, but he cast off from the wharf and sculled his ship out past Fort Saint Angelo and into the main channel. There, he unfurled the lateen sail on the foremast and tied it off. With the wind behind him, he would clear the harbor entrance in no time.

  As he rounded Ricasoli Point, Alonso got his first view of the sea beyond Grand Harbour. Even with only starlight and the lanterns aboard the ships, the view of the French fleet was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The masts and hulls overlapped in his view in such a way that it looked like a wall of ships, less than half a mile off the harbor entrance.

  Alonso spun the wheel and backed his sail. He tied off the helm and ran forward to reset the sail. Then he raised the larger sail on his main mast and set that by tying it off. The Ruse was slowly turning up into the wind and starting to head for shore. He ran back to the wheel and set his course to skirt as close to the shallows as he dared.

  And that was very close indeed. When he’d first bought the Ruse, two of the features he’d liked most about the xebec were her small size and shallow draft. Many times he had thwarted a pursuer by crossing over shoals where his enemy could not follow. Now he sailed so close to the island’s cliffs he knew only a very sharp eye could discern the outline of his sails. The French would not be interested in him, in any case. His smaller boat would make him appear to be a fisherman out trolling for fish along the coast.

  The night was unusually quiet. He heard nothing but the occasional call of a bird on shore and the gurgling of the water as his wake closed behind the Ruse. She certainly was a fast boat, and this night the conditions were perfect, with the wind blowing off the shore. Every other time he had sailed his little ship, he’d had his full complement of crew. Men were loud, even at night—snoring, talking, playing cards, telling tales. If he had known how peaceful it was sailing alone at night, he would have done it sooner. But the truth was, eventually he would need to sleep, so he could not continue alone for days. And he intended to travel far from his island home. He needed crew.

  Watching the coastline fly past, he calculated his speed and started to make his plan. The island of Gozo lay about four leagues to the northwest. Mgarr, a small fishing port, lay just across the channel that separated the two islands. Alonso had anchored there several times when he had needed to find shelter from a sudden weather change. He supposed he would arrive several hours before dawn, given the speed his boat was making. At that early hour of the morning, they certainly would not be expecting visitors at the convent.

  The half-moon was well above the horizon by the time Alonso anchored the Ruse and rowed the launch ashore. He found a horse tethered outside a tavern and took off for Victoria, the capital in the center of the island. If he made it back before sunrise, the horse’s owner need never know.

  It must have been years since a rider had asked the animal to run. It took all of Alonso’s strength, digging his boots into the sides of the beast, to get it to change from a walk to a canter once they had climbed up the steep road out of Mgarr.

  The Citadel was a fortified city that adjoined Victoria and guarded the capital. It stood on the highest elevation on the island. For centuries Ottoman raiders had stormed Gozo, taking away its citizens as slaves. The Citadel was Gozo’s attempt to build a safe harbor for its people. Just outside the gates to the Citadel stood one of the oldest churches on the island, the Saint Augustine Church. The monastery was quite large, but there was also a small convent, and it was there that the Knights sent their pregnant mistresses.

  Sometimes the women went to live with local farmers until their time was near. Alonso hoped he would find his Arzella inside the convent when he arrived.

  The horse was breathing heavily when they entered the outskirts of Victoria. Alonso let him slow to a walk while he considered his approach. Asking for her would not do. They sent these girls off with specific instructions to keep the Knights away from them. The nuns were familiar with love-struck Knights who came knocking at their door in the night, and they were instructed to send the Knights packing.

  When he arrived at the church, he tied the horse to a tree. A gate in the wall adjoining the church looked promising. He passed through it and found himself in a tree-shaded courtyard.

  First, he needed to find the nuns’ sleeping quarters, and then, hopefully, he could locate her room. He crossed to a building in the back and entered. It was very dark inside, especially after the bright moonlight outside. Alonso felt his way along a wall until he came to a doorway. The door was unlocked, so he entered.

  In the darkness, he heard light snoring, but it was impossible to tell if the sleeper was a man or a woman. Alonso approached the bed. Still it was too dark. He was standing above the sleeper, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, when a fist connected with his chin.

  The man in the bed came roaring up. Alonso had fallen from the first blow, and he crouched in the darkness, feeling for the walls. The monk stood now in the center of his cell, yelling in Maltese, one language that Alonso knew nothing of. He heard the man fumbling with something and realized it was the sound of a flint. The monk was about to light a candle.

  Alonso found the door and leapt to his feet. Once in the corridor, he could see a shaft of moonlight angling across the floor from the courtyard entrance. He turned and ran but had not yet made it out the door when the monk started yelling behind him. Once outside, Alonso paused behind one of the trees in the courtyard. Where was the building for the nuns? There had to be another door somewhere.

  A monk emerged from the dormitory wearing a white nightshirt and holding a lantern aloft. The man’s posture was bent and his hair white.

  “Who goes there?” the monk asked in Spanish.

  Alonso decided to take a chance and answered the man in his native tongue. “It is Caballero Alonso Montras from Aragon.”

  The monk did not reply immediately. Finally, he said, “What do you seek, my son?”

  Alonso stepped out from behind the tree. The monk approached him.

  “Father, my request is strange, I know, but these are strange times. You have seen the fleet off Valletta?”

  “Yes, my son. Here we do not concern ourselves with the affairs of such men.”

  Alonso chose his words carefully. “Perhaps you have heard that this war is just between the Knights and the French. But in France, Bonaparte’s men killed priests and burned churches.”

  “I am not afraid to die,” the old man sai
d.

  “I see that,” Alonso said. “But I swore allegiance as a guardian of a religious relic that the Order of Saint John brought back from Jerusalem at the end of the Crusades. The relic dates back almost to the time of Christ. We cannot let it fall into Bonaparte’s hands. I have been charged to go to sea, to spirit this treasure away from these islands, but my crew has deserted me. Here in the convent is a young woman who learned to sail as a child.”

  “You speak of the Brun girl, yes?”

  Alonso nodded.

  “She has been working in the kitchen with the sisters. I have heard her talk of going to sea.”

  “If you will permit her to help me, we will sail this relic to safety.”

  The old man ran a hand through his white hair. “Your story is far too strange to be an elaborate ruse. Go back out through the gate and wait.”

  Alonso started to turn away, but the monk put a hand on his arm. He made the sign of the cross and said, “May God go with you.”

  Alonso wondered what could be taking so long. Surely dawn was near. Then the gate in the wall opened, and she stepped out. The gate closed with a slam behind her.

  She didn’t see him standing under the tree where the horse was tied. She was dressed, but she had not had the time to put up her long hair. A satchel was slung over her shoulder. She looked around the square, then back at the gate. Her face wore a puzzled look.

  He said her name softly. “Arzella?”

  She spun around and faced in his direction, still unable to see him in the shadows. “Alonso?”

  He tried to say more as he stepped out into the moonlight, but the words could not escape his tight throat.

  She saw him and ran into his arms with a cry, burying her face in his chest. Lifting her head, she smiled. “You came for me,” she said.

  “Yes, my love. I came to take you sailing.”

  Aboard the EV Shadow Chaser II

  Mediterranean Sea off Djerba Island

  April 22, 2014

  “You are the captain of this vessel?”