Kurt grinned. To him it was as obvious as night and day. “I’m a sucker for a mystery,” he said. “And so far I’ve been punched, shot at and thrown in the mud twice all because we tried to help someone. At this point, I’d really like to know why.”
CHAPTER 10
The gusting wind had become a gentle breeze by the time Kurt, Joe and Morgan arrived at the beach. The sky above remained solid gray, and the spitting rain never quite cleared up, but conditions had improved. Studying the updated forecast on his cell phone, Kurt knew it was now or never. “This is as good as it’s going to get. Let’s be quick.”
As Joe parked the truck, Kurt climbed out. With the reduced wind, the waves were no longer whitecapped, but they were still rolling in and crashing hard on the beach.
Morgan stopped and stared. She seemed taken aback. From down on the beach the waves looked even larger than they had from the road up above. “This is a little mad.”
“This,” Kurt echoed, “is a nice twelve-foot, left-hand break. Perfect surfing conditions.”
Joe laughed and shook his head. “If you don’t mind frigid water and being smashed against the rocks.”
Having coaxed a nervous smile from Morgan, Joe raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “Lights are out,” he said. “And she’s almost completely submerged. Take a look.”
Kurt took the binoculars from Joe and studied the wreck. Only the top of the wheelhouse and the booms used to deploy the fishing nets remained above the waterline. Every wave crashed over the boat and swamped it.
Lowering the binoculars, Kurt checked his watch. “Tide has nearly peaked,” he said. “And the boat has settled a bit. Must be sitting flat on the bottom at this point. We need to get this done before the tide changes and drags it off the rocks.”
“With the hull underwater, we won’t be able to park on the deck this time,” Joe said.
“No,” Kurt agreed. “We’ll need to be dropped off and picked up.” He turned to Morgan. “This isn’t going to be easy. How much diving have you done in rough weather?”
“Enough,” she said. “I’m deepwater-certified and I spent three months training with the Royal Navy’s Maritime Counter Terrorism Unit, subsurface and rescue. None of it in a swimming pool.”
Kurt found her snarky tone charming. “Then it’s best if you and I make the dive. Joe will be our chauffeur.”
The plan was simple. Joe would pilot the aqua sled, drop Kurt and Morgan near the wheelhouse of the sunken trawler. While they went inside, Joe would move out into the channel and ride the waves, waiting patiently for them to signal him. As long as the waves remained steady and the wind held off, it would actually be safer for Joe to stay out in the swells than to come back to the beach, where he’d have to deal with the breakers on the way in and out.
With the helmet-mounted communication system, they would be able to talk through most of the dive, but each of them carried emergency equipment and flares in case the comm system failed.
After changing into wetsuits, Kurt and Morgan pulled on dive harnesses and tanks. While they’d brought a catalog of equipment on their expedition, they lacked something fairly simple—extra weights. As Joe readied the aqua sled, Kurt handed Morgan two mesh artifact bags used to collect things on the bottom of the sea.
“Fill these with stones and hook them on your belt. We’ll be in rough water while getting in and out of the trawler. The safest way to deal with all that is to be heavily weighed down. Otherwise, we might be swept away.”
Morgan filled both bags with smooth round stones and connected them to her dive harness. Between the gear and the extra weight clipped to their belts, it was difficult to walk onshore. But once they’d waded into the surf, she and Kurt fared better than Joe.
After almost losing the sled once, Joe hopped on board and goosed the throttle to keep the craft under control. Morgan climbed on behind him, Kurt climbed in third.
“Go!”
Joe twisted the throttle and moved them out into the surf. He cut power for a second, allowing them to drift back, as another wave loomed and then crashed. The white water swept toward them and Joe accelerated briskly, rushing out to meet the next wave before it had a chance to break over them. From there, it was a smooth ride, up and down the swells, out to the trawler.
With the trawler resting in a flatter position, Joe came in from the bow, which allowed him to avoid the submerged spires of rock. After some maneuvering to get past the booms, he pulled up beside the roof of the wheelhouse and held station by modulating the throttle.
“This is your stop,” he called out.
Kurt was already off the sled, dropping into the murky water and sinking to the deck. He landed hard and grabbed for a handhold. One moment he was in ten feet of water with the throbbing aqua sled’s engine and the cresting phosphorescent wave above him, the next moment he had to make sure he was off to the side so the sled, with Joe and Morgan on board, wouldn’t club him on the head as it dropped behind the passing wave.
Now his head was briefly above water. He gave the thumbs-up and watched as Morgan slid one leg over the aft section of the craft. She dropped into the water as the crest of the next wave arrived. Sinking fast, but also being pulled away from the wheelhouse.
Kurt stretched out and grabbed her dive harness with one hand while he wrapped his other hand around the frame of the hatchway. For a moment it felt like he was being pulled apart, but the pressure relented and the water swirling past slowed.
Kicking with her fins, Morgan swam up next to him and grabbed onto the hatchway herself. “I thought the extra weight would do more than that,” she said, her voice sounding flat through the comm system.
“Without them, we’d have been swept off the deck,” Kurt insisted. “But we’d be smart to be extra-cautious.”
She nodded.
“Follow me.”
Kurt pulled himself inside the wheelhouse, which was filled to the ceiling with silty water.
Once inside, he flicked a switch on the lower part of his dive harness. It turned on a set of lights embedded in the gear. NUMA had learned long ago that the best way to light up the water without degrading a diver’s vision was to position the lights away from the diver’s mask. In this case, they were integrated into the harness itself.
And there was the added benefit of freeing the diver’s hands.
“Switch on your lights,” Kurt said, pointing to the right side of the harness.
Morgan found the button and pressed it. With both sets of yellow-green LEDs set on high, the wheelhouse went from a murky environment to one filled with definition and shadows. There was plenty of silt wafting around, but Kurt could see through it to the far wall. He quickly got his bearings. “Follow me.”
Another swell rolled over the trawler. It rocked the vessel as it passed, creating a current inside, pushing Kurt and Morgan forward and then drawing them back. With the extra weights, it was only a mild distraction.
Kurt pressed forward. “Next stop on our walking tour—the stairs.”
“Right behind you.”
Kurt descended the stairway slowly, feeling like an astronaut on the moon. While the air tank and the harness restricted his mobility, the buoyancy acted like a low-gravity environment. Instead of walking down the stairs, he took a short hop and dropped easily onto the lower deck.
“Tell me more about this Bloodstone Group,” he said.
“That’s not part of our deal,” Morgan said, landing behind him.
“I’m going to find out from my government anyway,” Kurt said, “you might as well share the obvious stuff.”
“Fine,” she said. “They’re arms dealers by trade. But they’ve been funding their activities with conflict diamonds and unethically sourced gems.”
“Is that what they were bringing in here?”
“No,” she said. “With the cooperation of Interpol and other government agencies, we’ve managed to cut into that trade. The big clearinghouses in Antwerp have assisted the effort by tightening controls
and buying only from reputable sources.”
“That’s awfully nice of them.”
“Partly,” she said. “People cooperate more easily when things are in their best interest. They have no desire to see the market flooded with low-margin gems from desperate sellers.”
“Good point.”
“There are still loopholes,” she added. “But the clamps have come down hard enough that Bloodstone has switched to another source of hard income.”
“Which is?”
“Antiquities. Artifacts and relics from ancient cultures.”
“Arms for antiquities,” Kurt said. “I’ve heard that trade is growing again.”
“What connection does NUMA have with antiquities?”
“We do a lot of archeological work. We’ve had to put extra security on at some of the more sensitive sites. Where does the Bloodstone Group source its relics?”
“Anywhere they can,” she said. “They steal from museums, private collections and especially from active digs. Things that haven’t been cataloged and recorded are more valuable because they can’t be traced.”
Kurt knew the rest. “They sell what they steal to wealthy buyers and use the cash to buy weapons.”
“Exactly,” Morgan said. “And then they trade the weapons to their old contacts fighting in the war-torn countries of the world.”
By now they’d reached the second stairway. The rope he’d seen earlier was still tied to the rail.
“What’s that for?” Morgan asked.
“Either to haul the cargo up or serve as a guideline,” Kurt said, double-checking the security of the line. “Considering the raft they tried to make out of life jackets, whatever they were carrying must have been pretty heavy.”
Morgan turned so that the lights on her dive harness joined Kurt’s in shining down the flight of stairs. Floating bits of sediment gleamed in the light like a field of stars. The trawler shifted gently as the waves continued to roll over it. Aside from the sounds of their regulators expelling gas and the creaks and groans of the hull, it was quiet. “Almost peaceful down here.”
“Trust me,” Kurt said. “It wasn’t that way a few hours ago.”
Kurt stepped off the top stair and propelled himself forward, then dropped down and landed on the lower deck.
His feet stirred up a small cloud of sediment as they hit the deck. It wafted around his legs as it thinned out. Kurt saw above him, trapped against the ceiling like helium balloons, the life jackets the captain had fastened together.
He moved forward as Morgan landed next to him.
“See anything of interest?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Kurt said.
He moved past where he’d found the captain floating and arrived at a door that had been held ajar. A stainless steel crate lay wedged between the frame and the door. Kurt bent down to examine it. He found a heavy rubber seal where the lid met the body. It had a padlock attached for security.
“This must be it,” he said, pushing the door back and grabbing a handle on the crate. With a solid heave, he pulled one end of the crate off the deck and then slid the crate forward. It was heavier than he’d expected.
Releasing the handle, he listened as the metal trunk hit the deck with a muted clunk.
“It’s at least eighty pounds,” Kurt said.
Morgan moved up and took a quick look at the lock on the crate. “We’ll need a key or a pair of bolt cutters,” she said and then slid past him and into the cabin beyond. “Let’s see if it’s part of a matching set.”
Kurt joined her in the cabin. They found no additional crates, but as they turned to a far corner their lights fell across the body of a man sitting propped up against the bulkhead.
His arms were floating up as if asking for help while his hair wafted in the current and his lifeless eyes stared straight ahead. In the tinted light, his skin looked ghostly pale, almost green.
“Vincennes,” Morgan said. “Our informant.”
“The captain said he’d drowned,” Kurt replied. “But this room had only three feet of water in it at that point.”
Morgan was examining his neck. Bruising around the Adam’s apple suggested he hadn’t drowned. “His neck is broken. He was probably dead long before he had a chance to drown.”
She ran her gloved hands through the pockets of Vincennes’s jacket and then left him and drifted over to the far side of the room. There she found a computer bag and a cell phone. Dumping some of the rocks from one of her artifact bags, she slid the electronic equipment inside. “The boys at the lab will want to take a look at these.”
Kurt looked through the rest of the room and found it empty. “Let’s get that crate topside and call Joe to pick us up.”
Back out in the corridor, they positioned themselves on either end of the trunk, grabbing the handles. “Ready,” Kurt said. “Lift.”
With the trunk in hand, they moved toward the stairway with Morgan walking forward and Kurt walking backward.
CHAPTER 11
Joe Zavala sat astride the padded seat of the aqua sled, riding the swells and holding station approximately two hundred yards from the submerged trawler. Out in the center of the channel, the waves rolled past with hypnotizing regularity.
Joe still had to deal with the occasional crossing wave or merger of two approaching swells, but for the most part he could time all his movements in advance, accelerating up the face of an oncoming wave, cutting the throttle near the top and then dropping smoothly down the other side.
It became easy, almost soothing.
That didn’t really surprise Joe. He was at home aboard a machine like this. Unlike Kurt, who took some kind of masochistic pleasure from self-powered efforts like rowing on the Potomac or the even sketchier sailing where one depended entirely on the fickle wind, Joe preferred the horsepower of engines and machines. He’d begun rebuilding his first motor at the ripe old age of ten. He’d tuned and fixed cars all through high school and then had enrolled in engineering courses while in the Navy. Since then he’d designed and built boats, ROVs, submarines and even an airplane, which he’d yet to fly. He’d even created a self-powered diving suit that acted like a shell of artificial muscle, enabling a diver to swim twice as fast and several times as far.
In Joe’s world, horsepower had been created for one reason—to replace human power—and his general rule of thumb was the more, the better. Even the aqua sled boasted a racing engine modified by Joe, a fact he gave thanks for every time he twisted the throttle.
He glanced down at the glowing display panel. Plenty of fuel, no warning lights, but a dwindling amount of time. The tide would soon be turning and that would cause rougher waters and a dangerous current trying to fight its way out of the loch.
At nearly the same time, the lull in the storm would end. Judging by the return of the whitecaps, the wind was already picking up.
Joe eased down another wave, accelerated at the bottom and then put the spurs to his steed as the rising face of the next wave came on. Reaching its top, he eased back on the throttle again and glanced toward the trawler. He saw nothing to indicate that Kurt and Morgan had surfaced, but something else caught his eye, something in the distance moving just beneath the rolling clouds.
At first, he thought it was a bird—a wild albatross or some other seabird—that had ventured out during the lull in the storm, but the truth dawned quickly. The black spot in the gray sky was a bird, all right—a mechanical bird, a helicopter—and it was heading their way.
Joe thumbed the TALK switch and broadcast the information. “I hate to tell you two, but we’re about to lose our exclusive claim on this salvage operation. We have a blacked-out helicopter inbound. Any chance it’s from MI5 or the Royal Navy?”
Morgan replied first. “I haven’t called anyone,” she said. “I wouldn’t count on it being friendly. Not if it’s flying without running lights.”
Kurt’s voice came through next. “How soon will they be on our doorstep?”
Joe
was dropping back down as the question came. When he looked over, the helicopter had closed a quarter of the distance. “No more than a minute. Are you two ready to get off that trawler?”
“We found what we’re looking for,” Kurt said. “Heading topside now. Meet us at the wheelhouse.”
Joe didn’t wait for the next swell to lift him up. He gave the throttle a nudge and sped off, curving to the right. This path took him to a position where he could approach the wreck with the waves coming straight at him. Like a plane taking off and landing into the wind, this angle gave him more control.
He timed the swells and eased forward, guiding the sled around the fishing booms that now stuck out of the water like dead trees. With a little side slip, he bumped up against the wheelhouse.
“Is that you knocking?” Kurt asked over the radio.
“Just wanted to let you know I’m here.”
“Hang tight,” Kurt said. “We’re coming up the stairs.”
Joe was pushed back, but as he came forward again he saw lights dancing around inside the boat. He heard heavy breathing and short grunts as Kurt and Morgan struggled with their discovery.
“Sounds like you’re breathing heavy,” Joe said. “You might want to spend more time in the gym once we get home.”
“Very funny,” Kurt said. “This little treasure chest is heavier than one might think.”
Much as he wanted to help, all Joe could do was work the engine and stay in position.
He glanced back. The helicopter was over the beach when a pair of spotlights beneath its chin bubble came on. They were pointed straight down, lighting up the stony beach and then focusing on the white F-150.
The helicopter hovered there for a moment and then began to move again. Its circle of light crossed the beach, lighting up the foamy water in the shallows, and then picked up speed as it traveled out over the dark rolling swells.
Kurt emerged through the hatch as some of the water started draining away. He was walking backward, with the water swirling around his shoulders. Joe noticed he was holding his hands forward and down. Morgan was still inside the wheelhouse.
Journey of the Pharaohs - NUMA Files Series 17 (2020) Page 7
