On the other side, he turned around. “It’s fine. Keep to the center.”
Once inside the hull, the ship looked surprisingly undamaged. Despite being mostly intact, the ship was still listing at an awkward angle, which meant maneuvering aboard her was like being part of a Picasso painting. They negotiated the stairs and ladders like a jungle-gym, climbing over and around the supports as if they were playground toys, eventually coming out onto the foredeck.
From there the deck canted away from them at a steep downward angle. There was no way to walk upright toward the deckhouse. Instead Sam alternately half slid or climbed his way to the base of the bridge tower.
Tom gripped the steel door handle, but nothing turned. “The door’s locked.”
Sam tried the door, coming to the same conclusion. “They must have tried to batten down their external doors in an attempt to keep her afloat.”
He glanced up at the bridge high above. The walls were vertical with no external ladders or means of reaching it. Tom disappeared as he walked right around the base of the large bridge tower. A minute later he returned to the first locked door.
“Any luck?” Sam asked.
“No. There’s a second door on the other side, but it’s locked too.”
“Any chance we can break it in?”
“This ship was designed to travel across the arctic circle. If they’ve secured the doors from the inside, there’s nothing we’re going to do about it without going topside for a blowtorch.”
“All right,” Sam said. His eyes followed the waterline that extended up within a few feet of the aft deck, and presumably flooding everything below. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Tom sighed. “Yeah, we’re going swimming again.”
Chapter Thirty
Sam opened the amidships hatch and climbed down the series of grated steps that were now at such an angle that he was required to use the railing as a ladder as opposed to the steps. This section of the hull appeared intact, although the shipping containers had shifted inside. Water extended to within a few feet of the deck.
He shined his flashlight along the gap between the water and the deck. He could only just make out the tips of a number of shipping containers, like giant icebergs breaking the surface. The light struck a steel wall some fifty-feet away.
“That looks like the internal stairwell to the bridge,” Tom said. “There must be a door somewhere down there.”
“Yeah, about forty feet by my guess. Are you ready for that swim?”
Sam slid into the water and then surface swam to the far end, where the steel internal partition blocked any further movement aft. Tom followed, a few feet behind and shined his flashlight under the water below. The water was surprisingly clear, but they still couldn’t identify any door or entrance into the main stairwell.
“I’ll go first,” Sam said. “If I make it through easily enough, I’ll leave the door open for you. If not, I’ll see you back up here in a minute.”
“Okay, keep safe.”
Sam took a couple of deep breaths, and then dipped below. The saltwater stung his eyes and blurred his vision, but he was able to follow the obtuse glare of his flashlight. He kicked his legs until he reached the bottom of the hull, nearly forty feet below. He swallowed gently to equalize the pressure pounding in his ears, and ran his hand along the steel bulkhead for guidance.
He spotted a door toward the middle of the main steel partition that formed the stairwell lining. Sam moved farther along until he could reach the door. The handle turned, but the door could only just open a few inches, and nowhere near enough to slip through.
Sam flashed his light above the door. The edge of a large shipping container that had toppled diagonally on its side was resting against the upper tip of the door.
He placed his hand on the container. There was no thought of it moving anywhere. The thing must have weighed several tons. Sam was about to return to the surface when he noticed his light penetrated part of the bulkhead on the other side.
Pulling himself under and through the gap between the shipping container and the bulkhead, he found a gash in the wall – presumably where the shipping container had smashed against it before settling to its current resting position. He shined his light toward the opening. It was narrow, and sharp, but large enough to fit through.
Sam took a piece of the green chalk and drew an arrow on the steel wall to show Tom where he went. He then swam through the opening, and kicked his legs to the surface of the stairwell on the other side.
He gulped deep breaths of air on the surface.
Two minutes later, Tom’s head broke the surface. He took a normal breath in and appeared settled. More like someone having a casual swim at the beach than challenging the upper ends of the human limits for free diving.
Sam said, “What took you so long?”
Tom grinned. “Just checking the ship out!”
It took only another few minutes for them to climb the steel grates that formed the stairs, open the door and step inside the bridge.
Sam swept his flashlight across the room in one slow, deliberate motion. Once the command center and orderly hub of the Gordoye Dostizheniye, it now appeared more like the debauched remnants of a buck’s party gone horribly wrong. The intelligent navigation systems and the series of computer monitors for the ship’s state of the art control systems had all been shattered.
The pungent smell of death was ripe in the air. There was something else too, something sweet, and almost out of place in the ghastly confines of the bridge. Sam tentatively breathed in through his nose. Was it tobacco? Tom covered his nose and mouth with part of his shirt, trying to avoid the smell, and Sam followed suit a moment later.
He then carefully dragged himself toward the communication post at the upper end of the room using a number of fixtures that were permanently attached to the floor as a sort of ladder. Everything else in the control center, including the hapless radio operator’s body, had tumbled to what was now the lowest part of the bridge and previously the port side of the ship.
The communications post was a small alcove built into the starboard side of the bridge. Sam gripped hold of the door and pulled himself up. Once inside, he rested his back against the bulkhead next to the door and examined the room.
He imagined the scene in that very room from only a few days ago, and the thought sent a ripple of fear and horror through his spine. As a man who’d spent his life on the sea, he could imagine only too well the words and emotions that consumed the radio operator in his final moments. The confusion, the disbelief, that inability to accept what was inevitable, and finally acceptance and death.
Tom climbed up to the edge of the doorway, holding himself against the frame of the door. “It must have been a horrible way to go.”
“Unbelievably so.” Sam focused his flashlight on the locked cupboard next to the radio operator’s desk, and returned to the task at hand. “Let’s find the ship’s manifest.”
Traditionally, the ship’s registry, logbooks, and manifest were stored near the communications room, so that information could be quickly accessed and communicated in an emergency.
Sam turned the key.
Could it be that easy?
The cupboard opened. The ship’s log was tucked safely in its secured alcove. The registry, outlining the ship’s owners was next to it. But the third alcove, labeled, Inventory Manifest, was empty.
Sam asked, “Why would the captain remove the manifest?”
Tom shined his flashlight on the sideways leaning desk. A pile of ash formed on the edge of the table and bulkhead. “If I had to guess, I’d say he didn’t just remove it, he burnt it, too.”
Sam examined the black remains of a thick bundle of paper. A small piece of paper to the right of it had turned a crisp brown, but hadn’t quite burnt through. Sam picked it up. The name on the paper was the Gordoye Dostizheniye, and on the top of it, he could just make out the words, Ship’s Manifest.
He car
efully ran his fingers through the pile of ash. Nothing remained that could be recognized as its original paper, let alone read. Someone had gone to the specific trouble of ensuring the entire document was burnt through. Everything had been destroyed.
“The damned thing’s been burnt through!” Sam shook his and asked, “Why would the captain do that? What was he hiding?”
Tom said, “Not the captain.”
“No?”
“Look. These ashes are dry, despite the entire bridge being soaked through. And there’s a strong smell of tobacco in the air and there’s the stump of a burnt cigarette into the side of the bulkhead.”
Sam glanced at the burn mark on the bulkhead. “So? Maybe the old captain was a heavy smoker. Not unusual for the older generation of Russians given their cold climate.” His eyes then turned to meet Tom’s. “What are you suggesting happened?”
Tom expelled a deep breath of air. “I think someone’s been in here since the ship sunk, and that person intentionally burnt the ship’s manifest.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Sam let those words sink in for a moment.
He then grinned. “Well that’s going to make it a hell of a lot harder to find the Secretary of Defense’s shipping container. She’s going to be pissed, but we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and search every damned part of the ship.”
“It could take days.”
“Or weeks,” Sam pointed out. “Come on, let’s go back topside and start again tomorrow. We can bring Veyron and Genevieve with us, while I’m sure Gallagher will be keen to inspect the boring machine.”
Tom said, “That still doesn’t answer the other question.”
Sam expelled a breath of air. “Who the hell’s been on board the ship since she sank, and why did they go to the trouble of finding the manifest and burning it?”
“Exactly.”
“I have no idea, but when we get top-side I’m going to contact the Secretary of Defense and get some answers. By the looks of things, she’s not the only person who wants to find whatever’s inside shipping container 404.”
At the back of the bridge was a small open deck. Sam stepped toward it, expecting to have to unlock the door, to get out. Instead, as his hand gripped the handle, it turned easily.
Sam grinned. “The door’s unlocked, and the hatches haven’t been battened.”
Tom nodded, realization dawning on him. “The crew never had time to lock all the hatches. They hadn’t even considered that as an option. That means the door downstairs was locked by our unexpected guest, as a means of slowing down our search for the ship’s manifest.”
Sam stepped out onto the deck. Using his flashlight, he searched the subterranean lake for any sign of the intruder. The water was still. If he or she was down there, they weren’t in the water. Not that that mattered. The ship was massive. Plenty of places to hide if anyone wanted to remain hidden.
He turned to Tom. “Come on, let’s go get some help.”
Twenty minutes later Sam and Tom had worked their way out of the Gordoye Dostizheniye. Sam started to swim toward the shore. His feet soon found perch on the solid obsidian ground knee-deep below the water.
He flashed his light across the lake, trying to orient himself with the original tunnel through which they’d entered the cathedral grotto. His bearings were slightly off and it appeared as though he was approaching the wrong side
“Hey Sam!” Tom swept his flashlight in a wide arc and then stopped, with it fixed on a shipping container toward the beach. “You’re going to want to see this!”
Sam turned around. His eyes fixed where Tom’s light had shined. On the edge of the shipping container were the numbers 404.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sam’s eyes rolled across the numbers, in disbelief.
“That’s the one. That’s our container.” He spoke the words softly, frightened whoever was looking for the same container was still out there, listening.
Tom asked, “Any idea how we’re going to remove it?”
“No. It would be impossible to shift something that size to the surface without anyone detecting it. Better we open the container up, and remove whatever’s inside.”
“Didn’t the Secretary of Defense say something about the shipping container having some sort of state of the art security system?”
Sam said, “There’s always a way in.”
“She’s going to be pissed.”
Sam nodded. They would deal with that when they got to it. He walked around to the end of the container. It was a solid steel wall. He then kept walking and reached the opposite end. Again, there was a solid wall of steel, with no apparent gaps.
Tom smiled. “You were saying, about there always being a way in?”
“Okay, so someone made the effort to secure this one,” Sam acknowledged.
He ran his hand along the edge of the container and stopped. His eyes turned to a small, covered metallic casing that protected what appeared to be a security keypad.
Sam tentatively opened the metallic outer cover. It swung upward and revealed a standard seventeen key digital keypad. Ten digits with seven modifier keys. He didn’t need to try and work out the math. There were potentially millions of alternative combinations. Any way he looked at it, he and Tom were never going to guess the code.
Tom smiled, sympathetically. “There’s always a way in to these things, are there?”
“All right, I might have been wrong about that. Come on, let’s return to the surface. I’m sure our friend Gallagher the foreman will have some sort of tool he might loan us to cut a hole in the shipping container.”
“Okay, mind if I have a go?”
“At what?”
“I’m a pretty lucky kind of guy. I thought…”
Sam grinned. “What? You thought you might just guess the code?”
Tom shrugged. “Sure, why not? We’re going to have to cut our way in anyway, so why not try?”
“Suit yourself.” Sam stepped away. “But you’re more likely to win the lotto than break this code.”
“You’re probably right.” Tom studied the keypad and typed a total of six numbers, followed by six alternative numbers, such as plus and minus and asterisks at random.
Nothing happened.
Sam said. “It looks like you guessed wrong.”
“Or maybe I just need to press enter?”
“Come on. Let’s get back to the surface, I’m wrecked. I could use some sleep.”
Tom pressed enter.
A moment later the sound of heavy hydraulic locks started to move from inside the shipping container. He smiled broadly. “Well, what do you know… it says I’m a winner!”
Sam turned to face the shipping container. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak. The last of the hydraulic locks completed their movements and the massive vaulted door slowly automatically opened in front of him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Tom smiled, gloating like a bad winner at cards. “Beginner’s luck?”
“How did you know?” Sam persisted.
“I told you I was born lucky.”
“How, Tom!”
“It says so.” Tom pointed to the now fully opened door. “Right over there in black permanent marker.”
Sam’s eyes darted to the outward facing section of the shipping container’s door. The writing was dark and barely visible inside the darkness of the cathedral grotto without the direct aim of his flashlight. He smiled. “I don’t know what the Secretary of Defense wanted, but it appears someone on board the Gordoye Dostizheniye intended for the salvage crew to find whatever’s inside.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sam stepped up and inside the shipping container.
His first impression was that he was walking into an ultra-secure bank vault, or perhaps a futuristic room for tourists on the International Space Station. He frowned at the description. It would be a poor waste of money to fly all that way only to have a room without a view. Midway acr
oss the length of the container, a single mahogany desk was fixed to the wall. The contents of the desk appeared all jumbled up on the floor on the opposite side, where the shipping container was tilted at a near forty-five-degree angle. Sam’s eyes followed the debris of stationery to where it lay piled in a neat mess of crumpled pieces. Leaning up against the same edge of the wall was a man.
In life, Sam suspected the man had been considered fair skinned or pale, but now his blood-drained face had a uniquely waxy appearance. The full skin that may have once made his face animated was now gaunt and drawn tight across his jaw bone. His lips were curled upward giving him the surreal appearance of peace – as though his life had been one of torment, and Death had finally released him. The muscles around his eye sockets had contracted one last time leaving his dark brown, nearly black eyes wide open. They stared vacantly at the far end of the shipping container – where a large stone artifact stood fixed in a purpose-built cradle.
Sam tensed and held his breath. “Holy shit! Is that the Death Stone that was stolen from Gȍbekli Tepe?”
Tom removed part of its protective cloth.
It revealed the image of a comet approaching earth. Four weeks ago, inside the Temple of Illumination and built into a lava tube in the bowels of Mount Ararat, they had first learned about the existence of the stone. It was the last megalithic stone to be discovered in the ancient temple of Gȍbekli Tepe. The stone was said to depict the return of the same comet that caused the mini ice-age known as the Younger Dryas around 13,000 years ago. Only this time, the cataclysmic event would be much larger, leading to the extinction of the human race. According to the brother of an archeologist who discovered the stone, it was taken to the U.S. for further analysis, but the ship sunk on the way, and the stone was never recovered.
“Now we know why the Secretary of Defense didn’t want us to open the shipping container. She knew about it all this time, but never said anything.”
Sam returned his gaze on the dead passenger. He imagined the type of death the poor man had suffered and wondered what his part was in this entire thing. How much had the stranger known? Maybe that was why Death seemed so welcomed by him?
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 38
