by Scott Cook
I nodded, “I’ve used them once or twice. I understand the principals.”
She handed me a compact unit complete with full face mask, “This is a REVO 3. We like them because they’re compact and sturdy. Made for cave divers, which as you can imagine, is useful for what we do. Also, as a re-breather, there is far less closed area disturbance from expelled air. The scrubber will last about three hours, although we usually observe standard dive tables. When we’re on a real work dive, we’ll pressurize the entire mini to depth. This allows for easy in and out and longer bottom times.”
“It also means a couple of decompression obligations for the entire crew,” I noted.
She shrugged, “Not so bad in a shirt sleeve environment. The face mask is equipped with built-in communication. Long wave radio that works well underwater within a hundred feet between divers and the mini.”
“Why aren’t you diving?” I asked.
“Well, someone has to stay who can handle the controls,” She said, “you’re large and physically strong, so that may be of some use depending on what we find down here.”
“You’re slim, though,” I suggested, “It’s easier for you to wriggle into small spaces.”
She smiled mischievously and kissed me, “You’ve had some notable success in that department. Now suit up. I want to watch you strip.”
“Got to love subtlety…” I muttered as I started removing my shoes, jeans and shirt.
“God damn!” Brody whooped just as I was zipping up my wetsuit jacket, “I think that’s her!”
Lambert grunted as he came forward and past me, “I’ve got to see this…”
I let the old man find his way into the cramped cockpit and I ducked my head in. Sure enough, just outside the big semi-spherical Lexan viewport was a distinct shape lying on the bottom.
Unlike the American boat, the German craft had come to rest on its keel. She stood upright, looking almost regal in the ghostly gloom that our distance created. We hovered maybe sixty feet away. The hull was encrusted with growth, but the short conning tower was clearly visible as was the reason she’d gone down.
“Christ…” Lambert breathed, “That’s where one of our spread hit. Vented the whole damned engine compartment to the sea.”
A momentary hush fell over us all as we studied the ghostly sailor’s tomb before us. Nazis or not, this was the last resting place of over fifty men. It gave me a shudder to think that I’d be violating their crypt very shortly.
“That’ll make access easy,” Brody said, “That hole’s big enough for three grown men to swim through side by side without fear of hitting anything.”
“So what’s your plan?” Lambert asked quietly.
Brody turned to him, “First, I’d like for Scott and I to do a quick swim-through. Ten or fifteen minutes. That way, we can get a lay of the land and then enter the lockout chamber at pressure. Shouldn’t need more than a couple of minutes to deco. Once done, we’ll make a game plan.”
“You can sit up here with me, Henry,” Ariel said, “Once Jack gets his bulk out of here.”
Brody laughed and Hank and I backed out to let him stand and come aft. Once he was in the lockout chamber with me, Hank went forward and sat next to Ariel. Brody closed both the forward and after hatch and activated the intercom.
“Bring pressure up to seven atmospheres,” Brody instructed.
“Roger,” Ariel’s confident accented voice replied, “Building to ninety-eight PSI. Estimating two minutes.”
Brody quickly stripped down to his skivvies and I helped him squeeze into an extra-large wet suit. He grinned at me as I did, “Never thought we’d be working together that other day, huh, Scott?”
“Nope,” I replied, “Especially after the dick measuring contest.”
He laughed, “And now look, we’re going on a dive.”
“And I get to see you half naked,” I pointed out, “Day’s looking up.”
He laughed more heartily this time, “Shit man… I don’t compare to Imani, that’s for sure.”
“True,” I said, handing him one of the closed circuit units, “I didn’t want to be hurtful.”
He got into his rig and helped me into mine. Even at ten feet long, the chamber was only as wide as Brody or I was tall, so it seemed to shrink once we were suited up and our face masks were on.
“Radio check,” his voice, made tinny by the speaker near my ear said.
“Roger,” I responded and gave him a thumbs up.
“Seven atmospheres,” Ariel reported.
“Okay,” Brody replied, checking the pressure gauge mounted to the bulkhead, “Opening lower hatch…”
Now that the internal pressure of the lockout chamber was slightly higher than that of the ocean outside, there was no danger of flooding. Normally, and any kid who ever submerged an inverted empty cup in a pool knows, the trapped air inside of a container will prevent water from filling it. However, with greater pressure, the water level will rise accordingly until an equilibrium is reached. At seven atmospheres or so, the water might come up a foot or two inside the compartment. This sudden influx of water would rapidly compress the air. And while water doesn’t compress to any appreciable degree, air does. Sudden rises in air pressure can also cause sudden rises in heat.
This wasn’t a huge problem at the depth at which we were hovering, yet pressure equalization was still a necessary precaution. Furthermore, it had the added benefit that Brody’s and my lungs were now breathing compressed air as if we’d physically dived down from the surface. When we came back, we could enter the dry lockout chamber without needing to worry about decompression. At least not at first.
“Ready?” he asked me after we’d double checked each other’s gear.
“Ready.”
Brody sat on the edge of the open hatch, slipped on his flippers and gently lowered himself down into the water. I followed suit and dropped below the belly of the submersible, which was hovering only ten feet off the bottom.
After seventy-five years, living men were going back to Hitler’s last U-boat.
Chapter 32
The water was chilly. That first plunge made me grit my teeth and damned near forced my dangly bits into a full on mutiny. After a few minutes, though, the wetsuit was doing its job and my body heat began to warm up the trapped water within.
“Damn!” Brody said over the comm link, “Thought I might have to turn in my man card for a minute there!”
I chuckled and followed him across the bottom. I had to admire his technique. The man, despite his gruffness and swagger seemed to know his business. He kept himself about five feet off the bottom and used easy slow strokes of his flippers to propel him. The effect was that he didn’t kick up any sand to cloud the water.
I followed his example, swimming just a bit higher in the water column. The bottom here was fairly uniform, with only a few bulges of rock or a spare fan or two sticking up out of the sand. The most prominent feature was the U-boat of course.
She lay perfectly upright, a massive object who’s size was somewhat concealed by the limit of the bottom visibility. We could clearly see for about sixty or seventy feet.
As we approached the submarine at about the midship point, her bow and stern seemed to fade away to either side, her two-hundred and fifty foot length almost melting into the blue haze around us. It gave the wreck a ghostly presence that made my skin crawl a little.
“Getting’ creeped out yet?” Brody asked.
I chuckled, “I ain’t fraid a’ no ghost.”
He laughed, “Don’t worry about it. It’s natural the first time. You ever wreck dive before?”
“Yeah, couple of times. But they were… not quite so… well preserved? I’ve dived the Vandenberg off of Key West, a sunken freighter off Stuart and a couple of other things. All deliberately sunk, though. Nothing quite like this.”
“Yeah… it’s different when you dive a ship that went down with men aboard… you can’t help but feel like… well… like there’s a
presence within. Like a tomb raider, I guess.”
Was he screwing with me? Trying to give me the heebie-jeebies? There was no condescension in his tone that I could detect, though.
“I remember my first grave dive,” Brody went on, “Was a tour dive to the Lusitania. Most of the passengers got off that ship, but still… I was freaked out the whole time. And on my first military dive, a destroyer off Tonga… we were in one of the super structure corridors, me and my partner… I went to pull open a loose hatch into what I thought was a stateroom… fuckin’ skeleton fell out of what was a storage closet! You believe that shit?”
I laughed, “We’ve all got skeletons in the closet, I guess.”
He scoffed, “yeah, you laugh now. I screamed like a little girl and performed an unscheduled wetsuit warmup!”
“Pissed yourself for reasons other than warmth, you mean!” I chuckled.
He joined in, ”Damn near shit myself, too!”
I laughed heartily, which helped. We had come to the vessel at last. Brody led us along the upper deck so as to keep off the sea floor and headed aft. He was right, the torpedo that had sent her to the bottom had blasted a hole in her flank at least ten feet across and six high. We clung to the ragged edge, now coated in all manner of growth and switched on our high-powered dive lights.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Brody said, “I’ll go in first, you come in behind me. Slow and easy is the way. Once we’re in, we’ll see how the structure looks. I’d like to deflate the BCV’s and get nice and heavy with all this extra weight. Since she’s the right way up, it’ll be easier to walk around rather than swim, for the most part.”
“Roger that.”
“Now, I would like to make our way all the way to the torpedo room… however, there’s something else I want along the way.”
“Oh?”
He turned and grinned at me, “I want the captain’s safe. It should have survived and it should be water tight. It’ll hold some very interesting documents. Maybe something we need.”
I gave him a questioning look.
His face suddenly became grim, “I’m not so sure about all this flesh eating bacteria stuff. That is, I believe it’s here… I’m just not so sure it’s as benign as it’s supposed to be. It’s our asses, yours and mine, on the line down here. And I’ll bet anything that the skipper’s log book, his private journal or his sealed orders from ole Adolph himself are a little more specific.”
“Jesus…” I breathed, “We’re really here… we might really read a letter or something from Hitler… it’s kind of overwhelming.”
Brody smiled and clapped me on the shoulder, “you’re starting to get it, Scott. Starting to maybe understand why I do what I do.”
I had to admit it, this was incredibly exciting. I took a deep breath to center myself, “I see your point, though. That’s a good idea about the safe.”
We were truly in an alien world. The torpedo had devastated the engine room. There was hardly anything left that could be identified. This was made more difficult by the sea growth and the sudden appearance of a huge Goliath Grouper easily as long as I was tall. He popped up from behind a pile of something and goggled at us, his huge Grouper’s mouth working.
“Shit…” Brody mused, “Look at that fat fucker. Looks like he’s trying to talk to us, doesn’t it?”
I chuckled as we scuttled toward the forward end of the compartment, “Yeah, probably telling us to get lost… or asking if we’d make a good snack!”
The hatchway into the next compartment was wide open. Evidently the destruction had come so quickly that nobody had been able to seal the engine room off. Water must’ve poured through that open hatch like a fire hose.
“I think this was the diesel engine room,” Brody said reverently, “It was forward of the electric room and when the explosive went off, there would’ve been enough fuel and stuff in here to ignite and cause all this damage… Jesus what a hell it must’ve been…”
The next area was a narrow corridor. It looked sound enough and Brody stopped and released the air from his buoyancy compensator. He slowly sank and stood upright on the deck, carefully touching the bulkheads to either side of him and apparently getting a feel for the solidity of the steel under his feet.
“Feels solid. Give it a try. I’m gonna remove my flippers.”
I followed his example and found myself standing in the narrow corridor, the thirty pounds of weight around my waist making me heavy enough to move about on foot. Although it felt like it must on the moon, it was possible if you went slowly enough.
It took me a long moment, but something finally struck me and gave me a slight shiver. The sea beneath the waves is not a quiet place. Once you submerge, you’re enveloped in a cacophony of sounds. It’s been described as being surrounded by Rice Crispies. The unceasing crackle you hear all around is in fact the near and distant sound of moving sea life. Fish flittering, shrimp snapping their tails and other sounds blend into a steady rhythm that you quickly grow used to.
Now that we were deep enough inside the wreck, though… those sounds were gone. We were truly in a silent world. A world as silent as the grave.
To one side were what Brody said were the petty officer’s quarters. Their galley and dining space on the other. These compartments, although open to the sea as well, were far more intact and less covered in growth. I even caught sight of a pair of coffee carafes in their places under a percolator.
Brody saw me looking at them, “Weird, right?”
“Yeah… the amount of water that must have poured through the ship so fast… I’d think everything would be destroyed or at least disturbed.”
“I’ve seen some strange things,” Brody commented, “Entire compartments vented to the sea but with dishes still on a table. Saw a bunk room where all the bunks were bent and twisted and half torn apart and yet there was a pin up girl still tacked to a rotted wooden door.”
“Christ…” I muttered in awe.
We moon walked forward and through another open hatch and were in the control room. It too was less coated in sea life and there was surprising detail. And… there were bodies.
“My God…” I whispered.
Although a myriad of sea creatures had taken their turn, there was enough left to identify at least three skeletons, or what would possibly comprise three skeletons. Shockingly white bones were scattered along with what little scraps of clothing remained. There were at least three skulls, one of which was sitting in the helmsman’s chair and staring straight at us with unseeing eyes. At least I hoped they were unseeing.
“This is where it all happened…” Brody commented softly, “Where Bausch murdered Reinhardt… where Verschmidt finally put a bullet in the bastard… and where it all ended. It never ceases to amaze me, Scott… no matter how many times I do this, the stories and the drama always seem so real.”
I was seeing a side of Brody I’d have never suspected the day he and Foster swaggered into my office. That man was an arrogant, type-A, alpha male douchbag. This man was a conscientious, thoughtful and quiet man who was deeply effected by the history and human drama that still clung to the ship like the sea growth to her hull.
And I understood exactly how he felt. Hank’s story, so detailed and passionate truly added a palpable reality to this wreck. All I had to do was close my eyes and I could hear the sounds of battle, both on this ship and on the American boat only a third of a mile distant.
“Holy… Scott…” Brody’s voice was barely audible. He pointed to our left.
Along the portside bulkhead of the control room were several scattered bones. Not many and in no discernable order, yet there was something identifiable. Leaning against the bulkhead, as if carelessly kicked there, was a human skull. Just above the right eye socket there was a small black opening.
“Is… is that…” I breathed.
“I think it is,” Brody replied in a sepulchral tone that sent a finger of ice along my spine. He turned to look at me. His face was pa
le behind the plate of his mask, “That’s Bausch!”
We stood for a long moment. Both of us were suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer weight and significance of the scene and the final moments that had played out here.
After nearly a minute of dead silence, Brody patted me on the arm and pointed to the open forward hatch. We made our way through, moving carefully and not even wishing to disturb the scene with words.
“Officer’s country,” Brody whispered, “Quarters, galley and mess along this passage. Then the torpedo room. This room here would’ve been Reinhardt’s cabin.”
Brody pushed aside the curtain that still hung and acted as the door. He slipped inside and I leaned in, shining my light to give a better view for him. The cabin was Spartan and cramped. A bunk, small writing desk and a door that must have led to the captain’s private head. The room was a shambles, of course, yet even less encrusted than the control room had been.
Brody squatted down and peered beneath the desk, “There it is… looks intact.”
He tried to pull the safe, which probably weighed a couple of hundred pounds, out from under the desk. It wouldn’t budge. He sighed and took a small ball peen hammer from a pouch around his waist. He began carefully tapping at the edges of the safe where its bottom met the deck. The tink, tink, tink of his careful taps sounded incredibly loud in the silent interior, each blow seeming to reverberate through the entire ship.
It sounded like a death knell.
“Growth has welded it to the deck,” Brody explained, “But not too bad. I think I can get her loose in a minute or two.”
I said nothing, just listened to the metronomic regularity of his taps. I’d periodically shine my light up and down the corridor. I was moderately creeped out, I’m not ashamed to admit, and my mind was doing a good job of flashing vivid imagery behind my eyes that made my flesh crawl.
There’s a scene in Jaws: The Revenge where Mike Brody… and yeah that irony wasn’t lost on me at the moment… was being chased by the shark. He managed to get inside a sunken freighter but so did his pursuer. At one point, Brody was trying to wrestle a door open to a cabin at the end of a long passage. Meanwhile, old Bruce was slowly and inexorably swimming closer. The scene would switch between the shark’s point of view and Brody’s, which showed the bulky great white passing through light and shadow as he approached.
