by Jack Du Brul
“Just some scientific instruments,” Cali said. “Plus a pair of dry suits. The water’s freezing.”
By her evasive tone Mercer realized that Captain Crenna hadn’t been informed exactly what was in the crates they hoped to recover. He supposed it didn’t mater. As he’d told Ira, plutonium isn’t particularly dangerous unless ingested or inhaled. As long as the crates maintained their integrity, Crenna and his crew weren’t in any danger.
“Oh,” Cali said as if she’d just remembered, “and a bunch of gas masks.”
Crenna’s scowl deepened. “Gas masks? What the hell for?”
“Asbestos from the Wetherby. Given her age, she’s going to be loaded with it. When we bring up the trunks, you and your crew are going to have to wear them. Sorry, it’s an EPA regulation.”
Crenna shook his head. “Damned government regulations. All right, load up and let’s go.”
“Nicely done,” Mercer whispered to Cali as they started helping Jesse and Stan transfer the matte-black trunks onto the cruiser. He made sure no one touched the big leather hand grip that hadn’t left his side since Washington.
As the cruiser pulled from the dock, Mercer tossed a casual wave at the three fishermen who were still puttering around their boat. Two waved back and the third, a large black man wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap, gave him an ironic salute.
The barge wasn’t as new as the crane sitting at its stern. Rust showed in streaks through worn paint and scaled the railings. Equipment bins overflowed with coils of rope, lengths of chain, and various tools. There was a compressor for refilling the scuba tanks that looked like Crenna had either just bought it or had rented it for the job.
“The crane used to be mounted on a truck,” Crenna explained. “I put it on this barge a couple of years ago when I was hired to salvage a fishing boat that sank on the other side of Grand Island. It cost the owner twice what the boat was worth, but I wasn’t complaining. So who’s diving?”
“Mercer and I,” Cali replied.
Jesse Williams looked up from one of the trunks. “I thought I was going.”
“You will when we set the burn charges. Mercer wanted to check out the Wetherby for himself.”
The former college football star looked at Mercer. “You know what you’re doing?”
After years of procrastination Mercer had finally gotten his dive certification a few months earlier, although he’d dived countless times before. While he’d only ever gone down wearing a wet suit or just swim trunks, when he’d asked Cali for the chance to see the Wetherby she’d told him the dry suits were just more cumbersome. “I’ll be fine,” he’d said.
They were ready to go an hour later. Because she had more experience, Cali would carry the dive computer strapped to her wrist as well as a waterproofed gamma ray detector.
Mercer’s OS Systems Nautilus dry suit was a little snug around the crotch because he was taller than Jesse Williams, but otherwise it felt comfortable. Jesse helped him into his tanks, buoyancy compensator, and weight belt while Stan checked over Cali’s gear. Jesse went over procedures for filling and venting the suit during the dive and made sure Mercer’s knife and the steel pry bar were secure.
“You’re sure about this?” Williams asked before fitting the helmet.
“Piece of cake.”
Mercer popped his jaw to equalize the pressure when the helmet was sealed.
“How do you read me?” Cali asked over the integrated communications net.
“Loud and clear.”
Together they waddled over to the rear of the service boat where a gate had been opened. Cali jumped first. Mercer waited until her head bobbed up before following her into the water.
Even with the protection of the dry suit and thermal underwear, he could feel the close presence of the cold waters, but it was the current he noticed most. It ran about three knots, powerful enough to sweep him downriver if he wasn’t careful. Visibility was no more than twenty feet and would diminish when they reached the wreck.
Captain Crenna had lowered an anchor down to the Wetherby, its line vanishing into the murky gloom. Cali put one hand on the rope and dumped air from her suit, allowing herself to glide into the depths. Mercer followed, adjusting his suit as the water pressure caused a fold of the tightly woven nylon to dig under his arm. The morning fog had dissipated but there was a lot of sediment in the water, dramatically cutting visibility. Mercer snapped on his dive light when he saw that Cali had slowed her descent.
Just like Ruth Bishop had said, the Wetherby had settled into a trough in the river bottom where she was sheltered from the worst of the current. She lay on her port side with her classic champagne-glass stern pointing upstream. Her hull was continuously scoured clean by the river, although there were still thousands of cut fishing lines streaming from her rails and superstructure. The ship was doubtless home to a lot of salmon and walleye, and local anglers paid the price for fishing on her with snagged lines. Her superstructure had been battered over the years, first when she drifted and sank and later by flotsam flowing down toward Niagara Falls. At some point the tree Ruth mentioned had been ripped free, leaving a gaping hole.
Cali and Mercer attached safety lines to her stern bollards and finned the length of the vessel. Her funnel was long gone and silt had built up around her bow where powerful back eddies had formed. One of her forward hatches was still secured, while the other was open, a yawning square that revealed her darkened hold. Because she rested on her port side there was no evidence of the explosion that had sent her to the bottom.
“What do you think?” Cali asked as they held tight to their lines just outside the open hold, the current pushing at them like a stiff breeze.
Mercer flashed his light into the hold but its beam could barely cut the gloom. “Let’s belay the line and take a look inside.”
They tied off their ropes to give them some slack, making sure that the tough nylon wouldn’t scrape over any sharp surfaces. They were both well aware that a mistake here could mean certain death plummeting over the falls just downstream. The floor of the hold, which was actually the Wetherby’s port side, was littered with barrels and crates lying in a disorganized heap. Mercer again had to adjust his suit as the pressure squeezed it against his body. He checked his depth and saw they were at fifty-seven feet. The water was markedly colder even through the protective clothing.
Here they could see evidence of the deadly explosion. Hull plates had been blown out by the blast and hammered flat by the ship’s tumble down the river. Ruth’s uncle had been right. It did look as though the Wetherby had been torpedoed.
Cali examined a couple of the crates. “Do you think any of these are the ones we’re looking for?”
“No,” Mercer answered confidently. “Bowie’s crates were loaded months before the Wetherby reached Buffalo. The captain would have tucked them out of the way because he wouldn’t need to reach them until they got to Chicago. This hold looks like it was used for cargo they’d need to access quickly.”
He swam aft and found a hatchway that led to the next hold. The door had been warped by the explosion but when he tried to open it farther he found it frozen by time. He loosened the pry bar from its Velcro holster and rammed it into a seam. He placed his feet against the wall and heaved back on the hardened steel, slowly building pressure until his spine felt like it was going to tear through the muscles of his back. The door refused to budge. Mercer repositioned the bar closer to the most damaged hinge and again drew back the metal rod.
A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind his tightly closed eyes as he strained against the unyielding door. He was about to give up when he felt metal shear under the pressure. The hinge pin broke with a sudden pop and the pry bar slipped free. Mercer tumbled across the deck, caught immediately by the current that swept the hold. Cali screamed when she saw him rush by, and for a panicked second he was sure he’d be swept out of the ship.
He came up tight against the safety line just at the main hatch coaming.
“Are you okay?” Cali asked as Mercer swam back down into the hold.
“Bruised my ego a bit.”
The door hung from one hinge, and by pressing his back against the bulkhead and his feet against the door, he managed to swing it open, the shrieking protest of grating metal muted by the water. The hold beyond was even darker, a stygian void that seemed to swallow the beam of his dive light.
“Stay here and make sure my line doesn’t foul,” he told Cali and swam into the darkness.
This hold was the same size as the first and a huge amount of cargo had come loose from its pallets and lay against the port-side hull. He saw rotted sacks of what he thought was cotton, smashed crates that held the remains of dishes and glasses, and cases of wine bottles, although all the labels had been washed away. He also noted that there were hundreds of lengths of wood, and when he touched one his heart quickened. Despite seventy years of immersion, the board was still as hard as iron, with no trace of rot. He wasn’t sure of the species, but it had to be some kind of African hardwood. And if cargo in this hold had been loaded in Africa, it stood to reason that Bowie’s crates were in here as well.
“I think we caught a break.”
Cali waited by the hatch, her light like a muted beacon. “Did you find them?”
“Not yet but there’s a bunch of wood from Africa in here. I’m sure Bowie’s crates are here as well. Tie off our safety lines again and give me a hand.”
Before replying, Cali checked her dive computer and air gauges and asked Mercer the pressure in his twin Luxfer tanks. “We’ve got another twenty minutes, less if we exert ourselves,” she said when she joined him inside the hold.
“Okay.”
Working in the narrow confines of their dive lights, it was a daunting task, looking for four specific crates amid the jumbled mass of debris but as they began moving junk out of the way they realized that the timber made up the bulk of the load and there were only about forty crates they had to check. Cali took out the gamma ray detector and slowly pirouetted in the still water, her gaze never leaving the device. “I’m getting readings above ambient background but it’s hard to tell which crates are emitting the gamma rays. The water’s absorbing the particles.”
Cali began sweeping individual crates with the detector. As soon as she was certain a crate wasn’t one they wanted, Mercer would shove it aside to reveal other crates in the pile, making sure he didn’t dislodge anything from the precarious stack. It was like the child’s game of pick up sticks, only a mistake here could trap them under tons of debris.
Mercer heard the detector spike before Cali called out they’d found one. The crate was made of the same dense wood that the Wetherby had been transporting. Most likely Bowie had bought a few planks on the spot and had a carpenter in Brazzaville fashion the chests. The box was three feet square and nailed together, and the joints had been further protected with a layer of pitch that had hardened so the crate looked like it was striped in obsidian.
“How are the readings?” Mercer asked.
“We’re fine. I suspect Bowie shielded the inside with metal.”
Knowing what they were looking for made finding the other three a snap. Together they wrestled the heavy boxes closer to the hatch leading to the next hold.
“We’ve brought protective bags in case the crates had rotted,” Cali panted, “but we’re not going to need them until we get these to the surface. When I come back down with Jesse, we’ll hook the boxes directly to the crane and just drag them out. Let’s head back up.”
They swam into the exposed hold, untied their lines where they’d belayed them, and made their way out into the river. The current hit like a hurricane gale, having doubled in the twenty minutes they were inside the wreck. They had to climb their way against its force, first scaling the length of the Wetherby to where the ropes were secured to the bollard, and then hand over hand ascending to the dive boat. It took them longer than they’d expected and Mercer’s tanks were deep into the reserve by the time his head broke water.
Jesse and Stan were there to help him onto the dive platform and remove the eighty pounds of gear. “Well?” Stan Slaughbaugh asked when Mercer got his helmet off.
“Found them on the first try.” He held his hand out to Cali and plucked her from the river.
“Hot damn. I can’t wait to get the samples to a lab. I’m going to have a career just analyzing it.”
“Well done, boss,” Jesse Williams said to Cali.
“How’d it go?” Brian Crenna called from the deck of the crane barge.
“We found all four crates,” Cali said, raising her voice over the wind. “After I’ve warmed up and we’ve refilled the tanks, Jesse and I can go down with a cable from your crane. We’ll need to drag them out of the hold first, so I’ll need to set up a block-and-tackle system so you can have a clean lift.”
“Which hold are they in?”
“The second one. We have access from the first, though.”
“I can extend the crane’s boom almost a hundred and fifty feet. That should put it on the far side of the hold and I can drag them back without using tackle.”
“That sounds like it’ll work.”
“Call me when you’re ready.” Crenna turned away to continue some maintenance work with his men.
Cali ate an MRE and rested in the cabin while Jesse and Mercer filled the tanks with the compressor on the barge. Mercer noticed that the fishing boat he’d seen earlier was still tied to the dock. Two men stood at the transom holding fishing rods, while the black man in the cap lolled in the cockpit a few steps up from the rear deck.
It was eleven thirty by Mercer’s watch when they were ready for the second dive. They’d cleared a spot on the barge’s deck where they’d laid out large rubberized bags to contain the crates. Stan had told Mercer the bags’ carbon fiber underlayment had been designed by NASA and was nearly indestructible. It could absorb the shock of a bullet at point-blank range and would deflect a knife thrust.
Cali gave Crenna a walkie-talkie dialed in to the dry suit’s radio frequency so they could coordinate the lift. The wind had calmed again and the sun was trying to break through the overcast once more. A bass boat with a huge outboard roared past the barge, the four men aboard studying the craft as they raced to the next fishing hole.
“Dinner’s on me tonight,” Mercer said as he helped Cali back into her gear. He spoke low enough so only she heard.
She grinned up at him. “I take it that offer doesn’t include Stan and Jesse.”
“I’ll buy them some buffalo wings before we go.”
“It’s a date.”
Mercer had actually asked her out for a date. He was thankful she’d put on her helmet just then, so she couldn’t hear him exhale a nervous breath. “Once more into the breach,” he muttered, not sure if he knew what he was doing, but glad he’d done it.
Jesse and Cali dropped into the water as Crenna powered up the crane. He extended the telescopic boom until it reached far down the length of the sunken ship. The barge listed heavily, so that the chop lapped against the base of the forward rail. He shouted to his deckhands to reset the hydraulic anchors to compensate for the shift in the vessel’s center of gravity.
Mercer saw Cali and Jesse’s bubbles for only a few moments before they were borne away by the current. With Crenna refusing to let him on the barge until the crates had been swung aboard, and only the one radio to eavesdrop on the dive, there was nothing for him and Slaughbaugh to do but wait. Stan held a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, so the two of them talked about Mercer’s theory concerning plutonium’s origin.
After ten minutes Crenna began to lower the hook into the water. Cali and Jesse must have reached the hold. A minute later the crane rotated a few degrees and another twenty or so feet of steel cable disappeared into the river.
“They must be hooking onto the crates,” Mercer said.
“Won’t be long now.” As if to punctuate the statement one of the deckhands cam
e over to the barge’s rail and looked down onto the cabin cruiser. “They’re about ready to lift. Your boss said we should put on the gas masks now.”
“Oh right.” Stan rummaged through one of his trunks and came away with an armful of NBC (Nuclear/ Biological/Chemical) hooded gas masks. He tossed them up to the deckhand and took out two more for himself and Mercer.
“What happens when we get them to the surface?” Mercer asked.
“We’ll bag them, and get them back to the dock. We have a hazmat truck standing by.”
“Not planning on warning the people of this fair city that you’re hauling a thousand pounds of plutonium through their streets?” Mercer teased.
“Please. On any given day there are a couple of tons of radioactive material on the roads. Only reason why there hasn’t been an accident is because we don’t advertise it and invite out all the wackos.”
The crane’s big diesel bellowed and Mercer saw the drum at its rear begin to turn ever so slowly. “They’ve got them.”
He could imagine Cali and Jesse in the dark hold making sure the crates didn’t snag or smash against anything as the crane dragged them out. For another five minutes the crane spooled back cable in a delicate balance of horsepower, wind, and current. Then everything came to a standstill. Mercer couldn’t understand it. He looked across and could see Crenna in the crane’s cab. He leaned far back in his chair and had his arms crossed.
“They must have the crates out of the hold,” Mercer said, finally understanding. “He wants Cali and Jesse topside before he brings them up, in case there’s a problem.”
Moments later Cali and Jesse Williams bobbed to the surface at the rear of the cabin cruiser. Stan and Mercer quickly helped them aboard. When Crenna saw that the divers were safely out of the water, he started drawing back cable and retracting the telescopic boom to reduce tension on the crane’s hydraulic systems. In moments the crates emerged dripping from the river and hung suspended over the barge’s deck.
