Hell Ship

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Hell Ship Page 10

by David Wood


  “He left me to die down there. The doctors say this pain might never go away.”

  Ray shook his head. “I need you to be focused. The mission comes first.”

  Scalpel nodded. “Always.”

  “This is important to me.” Ray gripped his subordinate’s hand.

  “I know,” Scalpel assured him. And he did know. As part of Ray’s inner circle, he was intimately familiar with the man’s obsession with the Templars. “And making sure that Dane Maddock dies screaming is important to me. So let’s kill two birds with one stone, all right?”

  “‘Kill two birds.’ That’s what I like about you. Always looking for ways to maximize our efficiency.” A smile creased Ray’s handsome face, but then he was all business again. “Listen, I didn’t come halfway around the world just to wish you a speedy recovery. I’m personally overseeing this operation now. I can’t afford any more mistakes.”

  Scalpel bit back the reply that was already on his tongue. Ray didn’t abide excuses, and the simple truth of the matter was that Scalpel had made mistakes, not the least of which was underestimating Dane Maddock. He chose a different tack. “All I’m asking is for a chance to make this right.”

  “You’ll get it,” answered Ray in an easy voice. “But the situation has remained fluid during your convalescence; a lot has happened. Maddock split his team. His crew is back on the site, but he lit out for England to pay a visit to the current Lord Hancock.”

  “You said that was a dead end.”

  “And so it is, for us at least. Maddock may not have learned anything that we don’t already know, but he’s clearly up to speed now because he’s on his way back. And he’s got company; that loose end you failed to tie off in DC.”

  Scalpel did his best to ignore the rebuke. “She’s with Maddock?”

  “She is. I’ll admit, when this began I did not anticipate she would be anything more than an annoyance. Now, I’m less certain as to her role in this entire affair.”

  “Three birds, then.”

  “Quite. But I have changed our tactics. Subtlety instead of blunt force. I have been monitoring Maddock’s team. They haven’t found the Hancock medallion yet, and frankly I’m not certain that they will.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “It’s out there,” Ray said confidently. “I’ll just come back and scour every square inch of the site until I find it.”

  “So why not just do that now? Let’s take them out and do this our way.”

  Ray’s expression did not change, but his blue eyes seemed to harden to the color of concrete. “We are going to do this my way.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Nagata Maru wreck site

  “We finished clearing the ship yesterday, and started sweeping the surrounding seafloor.” Bones motioned to a pile of encrusted debris on the deck. “So far, all we’ve found is a whole lot of nothing.”

  “If you don’t include the remains of over four hundred Allied soldiers,” remarked Alex, gesturing to the array of dog tags laid out on a table. There were a half-dozen different styles representing the same number of nationalities. The metal tags were badly corroded and would have to be meticulously restored if an identification was to be made, but some, such as the distinctive red disk and green octagon pair issued by the Royal Army which were made of vulcanized asbestos fiber, were perfectly legible.

  Dane didn’t think that she had meant it to sound like an accusation, but he could tell from the way Bones stiffened that it had come out that way. They were all tired and irritable. Bones and his crew had been working long, tedious and ultimately unfruitful hours sifting through the wreck of the Nagata Maru, while Dane, Alex and Professor had been traveling non-stop for too many days to count, first hopping their way across Europe and Asia to reach the Philippines, followed by a long journey aboard the Sea Sprite, a cramped—and not altogether sea-worthy—cabin cruiser, to rendezvous with Jacinta shortly before sunrise. The travel expenses alone had put quite a dent in their reserve—which consisted of several thousand dollars in Dane’s money belt—and every day they spent at sea was just adding to the final tally.

  Dane quickly tried to smooth things over. “I appreciate all the work you’ve done. I wish there was a shortcut, but unfortunately this isn’t an exact science. More of a process of elimination, really.”

  Bones stared suspiciously at Alex a few seconds longer then turned his attention back to Dane. “Well, like the lady said, we did bring up a whole mess of dog tags. The grandkids of these missing soldiers will probably think that’s worth a hell of a lot more than some fairy tale treasure.”

  “Ordinarily, I would feel the same way, but unfortunately this is one fairy tale that people are willing to kill for.”

  “People kill for less than that all the time,” intoned Alex. “That doesn’t make any of it real.” She turned to Bones and stuck out her hand. “I’m sorry if I offended you. Truce?”

  Bones grimaced, but there was a playful twinkle in his eye. “My people have learned to be very suspicious when the white man asks for a truce.”

  “I know this will tax your powers of observation,” Alex countered in the same tone, “but I am not exactly lily-white, and I’m certainly not a man.”

  Bones looked her up and down with an exaggerated lascivious grin. “Well, there’s no arguing that.”

  Behind them, Gabby cleared her throat. “When you two are finished, maybe you’d like to tell me what to do next.”

  Bones transferred his smile to Gabby for a moment then became serious. “As I see it, we have two choices. We can keep searching the sea floor surrounding the wreck, or we can try to go back into the interior.”

  He walked over and laid a hand on the monitor screen which displayed the alien-looking sub-surface environment in dull hues of green and brown. “We found some remains in the area around the wreck. I’m no forensic expert, but judging by the way the bones were shattered, I’d guess they were shot, probably trying to escape. So, there’s a chance we’ll find our guy out there, but the further out we go, the less we’re finding. On the upside, it’s going quickly because we can sweep with the metal detector.”

  “Okay, what are the pros and cons of going back to the wreck?” Dane asked.

  Gabby fielded this question. “The metal detector is useless in there, so we have to do everything visually. We think that most of the prisoners were being kept in the ship’s ballroom—that’s the big enclosure you first explored. We were also able to access the bridge and a few other compartments on the main deck, but there are probably dozens of places below decks that we haven’t checked out yet. The engine room, galleys, crew quarters, staterooms. That will be slow going since a lot of those spaces will have collapsed or been silted in.”

  “I doubt we’ll find our missing POW there anyway,” Dane said.

  Bones inclined his head in agreement. “It’s your call. Gabby’s working by the hour, so she probably doesn’t care if we spend the next six months out here. The rest of us…” He shrugged.

  Dane thought he understood Bones’ subtext. There was no reason for them to still be out here. In finding the ship, they had accomplished the mission objective, or more precisely nullified that objective. Either way, the logical thing for them to do was to return to base, send their findings up the chain of command, and await further orders. SEALs were given a lot of latitude in how they accomplished their missions, but there were limits to their autonomy. Even if he didn’t trust the SECNAV, he knew he should, at the very least, turn the whole thing over to Maxie.

  He had been operating under the belief that, once he had all the facts, the way forward would become clearer, but every new discovery only took them deeper into a labyrinth of uncertainty. If they could find Trevor Hancock, find the medallion that was supposedly affixed to his skull, they would have a piece of concrete evidence, but Dane was beginning to wonder if even that discovery would shed light on the mystery, or further muddy the waters.

  Hancock and the Gatekeepers
were still out there, and there was no telling how deep the Templar influence extended, or to what lengths they would go to preserve their secret. There had already been one attempt to harm them; how long before the next one came? As much as Dane wanted to know the truth, he couldn’t justify putting the rest of the team in danger.

  He watched Gabby drive the ROV for several minutes, during which time the scene on the monitor remained mostly unchanged and the metal detector remained quiescent, and came to a conclusion.

  “All right, here’s what’s going to happen. Bones, Professor and Willis are going to head home and report what we’ve found.” Dane realized that he was dangerously close to blowing their cover. As far as Alex and Gabby were concerned, they were fortune hunters, beholden to no one, and he wasn’t ready to reveal the truth to them just yet, so he hastily added. “Go public with it. Tell the newspapers that we found a missing ship from World War II. And of course, you should tell our friend Maxie about it. He might have some ideas.”

  Bones nodded slowly. “And while we’re doing that, you’re going to do…what?”

  “I’ll stay here with Gabby and Alex and keep looking.”

  “Ah, you want to send us away, so you can party with the hot chicks, is that right? Is that your idea of taking one for the team?” Bones tone was humorous, but Dane didn’t miss the subtle familiar criticism.

  You don’t want to be part of the team.

  “I have to do this,” he insisted. “You guys don’t. I won’t drag you down with me.”

  Bones looked at Professor and then at Willis. “You guys feeling drug down?”

  Willis gave a succinct, “Hell, no!”

  Professor was more eloquent. “All for one and one for all, boss.”

  Dane shook his head. “I appreciate the offer guys, but our best chance of surviving this is by getting the word out. Sending you back is the right call.”

  Bones heaved an overly dramatic sigh. “Fine. Willis and the Prof will go back. I’m staying.”

  Dane would have preferred to keep Professor with him, but got the sense that Bones had no intention of budging on the issue. He wondered if Bones first comment about the women hadn’t been a joke after all. Was he involved with Gabby?

  Well, so what if he is? At least he’s sober. “Okay, if we’re done with that minor mutiny…Gabby, reel in the ROV.”

  Bones craggy eyebrows drew together questioningly.

  “We found this ship by throwing out what we thought we knew,” Dane explained. “Thinking outside the box; thinking like the people who were there, living it. So let’s put ourselves in Hancock’s shoes. We know he didn’t go down with the ship, and it’s looking like he didn’t get machine gunned by the guards. If either was the case, we’d have found him already.”

  “Not necessarily,” countered Professor. “It’s a big ocean. The odds of finding one person—”

  “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?” growled Bones. Professor promptly fell silent. “Okay, C-3PO here makes a good point, but go on.”

  “Like I said, put yourself in his shoes. Your ship was just sunk. You’re alone in the middle of the sea. What do you do?”

  Glances were exchanged but no one had an answer.

  “You swim.”

  “Sure,” joked Bones. “The nearest land is only…what, three hundred miles away?”

  “Hancock wouldn’t have known that. He’d been shut up in that ship for days. He would have been swimming just to stay alive. Hell, he was probably just trying to stay afloat. And you’re wrong about the nearest land, Bones. Gabby, you want to tell him?”

  The ROV operator looked surprised to have been singled out, and considered the question for a moment. “Oh, duh. The Spratlys. Technically, we’re on the northern edge of them right now.”

  “He wouldn’t have known about those either,” Dane continued, “but when you’re adrift in the ocean, you go where the current takes you. Gabby, I’m guessing you know a thing or two about the currents here?”

  “Umm, yeah. What time of year was the ship sunk?”

  “April,” said Alex. “April 21, 1944, if that makes a difference.”

  “Hmm. It might, but the month is the important thing. The currents change with the onset of the monsoon season. And of course they’re always changing from one year to the next. But I can put you in the ballpark.”

  Dane felt the same rush of excitement he’d experienced when they had first discovered the wreck. His instincts—his gut, as Bones would say—told him he was on the right track.

  With Gabby’s best-guess plot of the currents to guide them, the crew of the Jacinta, minus Professor and Sanders who were en route to Manila aboard Sea Sprite, headed southwest. The current was only about three knots, an estimate that had been more or less verified by throwing a life ring overboard and clocking the time it took to drift away.

  Dane knew this was a shot in the dark. Ocean currents, driven by differences in water temperature and salinity, were predictable only at a very large scale. Perhaps with accurate historical data, crunched by a dedicated supercomputer, they would be able to narrow their focus, but without knowing exactly where—or if—Hancock had gone into the water, success or failure would probably be more dependent on luck than anything else.

  Still, luck had gotten them this far.

  About two hours after leaving the wreck site, the sea floor rose to within five fathoms—less than thirty feet of water separated the keel of the Jacinta from the bottom.

  “It’s a seamount,” Gabby explained. “An undersea mountain that didn’t quite make it to the surface to become an island. There are a lot of them out here. Seamounts, shallow reefs, islands that are submerged except at low tide.”

  The landforms, she went on, would shunt the currents aside, creating stronger and faster movement of water, that would stay parallel to shallows. Dane cut the engines and allowed the boat to drift, while watching the horizon in every direction for any sign of land. Soon, he spied the froth of waves breaking on a reef, but a closer inspection revealed a patch of ground about the size of a baseball infield—and just as flat and featureless, too—poking above the waves.

  If Trevor Hancock had washed up on that beach fifty years earlier, he would just as surely have been washed away with the next tide. They kept looking.

  Twenty minutes later, Bones’ voice boomed like thunder across the decks. “Land, ho!”

  Dane trained his binoculars in the direction Bones was pointing and saw another reef, this one only slightly larger and more pronounced than the first one they had seen, but nevertheless worth investigating.

  When the Jacinta was safely anchored outside the surf zone, they all boarded the Zodiac that Scalpel’s team had left behind. Bones skillfully navigated through the crashing breakers and into a small lagoon on the islet where Dane hopped out to drag the craft up above the tide line.

  Alex clambered over the side to stand with him in the ankle deep surf. “Doesn’t look like much.”

  “Maybe not to us,” Dane agreed, “but try looking at it from the eyes of man who’s been floating in the sea for two days, menaced by sharks. Probably looked like paradise.”

  Bones cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “Yo, Ginger! Mary Ann! Pina Coladas, right here!”

  Paradise, Dane had to admit, was a bit of an overstatement. The island was little more than an hourglass shaped sandbar that had accumulated around a pair of craggy rocks, the tallest of which was shorter than Alex. There was hardly any shade, absolutely no vegetation and no evident sources of fresh water. Dane understood now why the Spratly Islands were mostly uninhabited. This was not the idyllic paradise of Gilligan’s Island or Swiss Family Robinson; this was the last rest area on the way to Hell.

  “Let’s spread out. Look for anything that looks…well, interesting.”

  “That won’t take long,” muttered Bones, but no sooner had he spoken the last word when his voice changed. “Wait a sec. I think that qualifies.”

  He was pointing
to one of the tall rocks, or more specifically to what looked at a distance like a nub of rock extending out on the sheltered side of the crag. As they got closer, Dane saw that it wasn’t rock at all, but a waist-high heap of driftwood pieces, ranging in size from tree boughs four feet long to chunks no bigger than Dane’s thumb, all of them worn smooth by persistent wave action.

  “How did those get there?” Gabby wondered aloud.

  The rock was too far from the beach and the pile too neat to be the work of nature. The answer was obvious.

  “Someone put them there.” Dane raced over for a closer look, confirming that inescapable conclusion. The driftwood was not merely heaped up, but placed carefully to minimize gaps and prevent shifting. It reminded him of something….

  “It’s a cairn,” said Alex. “Like a burial mound.”

  If Dane had any doubts about that, they were cleared away when he spied something carved into a large chunk of wood at the base of the mound; a word, made up of straight lines that had been scratched repeatedly in the dense surface.

  ARCHIE

  “It’s not him,” said Alex, dejectedly.

  “It’s someone.” Dane inspected the marker more carefully and saw that something had been wedged into a crack in the wood. It was a circular red identification tag, stamped with letters and numbers. “‘Bailey, A.’ This is a Royal Army dog tag. The kind they used throughout World War II. Archie Bailey may have been a survivor from the Nagata Maru.”

  “But not the one we were looking for.”

  Bones chuckled. “You don’t think he buried himself, do you?”

  “There was another survivor here.” Alex stepped away from the pile. “Look for another cairn.”

  “Alex, there wouldn’t be anyone left to bury the last man.” Dane stared at the driftwood marker. “This took a lot of time and effort. Days maybe.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Our castaway found a way to survive. At least long enough to bury one of his mates.” Dane took Alex’s hand and drew her along as he explored the second crag, situated at the far end of the hourglass. There was another arrangement of driftwood there, but this time instead of a large mound, the pieces were all about the same size, laid out one the ground, side by side, like a deck.

 

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