When they reached the bottom, Mitchell dug his thermos from his pack and opened it. He poured out a hot cup of sweet tea, and took a sip before sharing it with Jackson. They stood on the beach, drank their tea, and looked back up at the hill towering above them.
Jackson shuddered in the cold. He looked at Mitchell, with his hands on his hips, studying the side of the barren hill. “What are you thinking, Ryan?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, as he walked toward a massive pile of rocks that had once been part of the cliff, but had fallen down sometime in the past. The massive debris field led all the way out to the sea. He turned to face Jackson. “I don’t think this slide was natural. Several of the boulders have sharp edges. These have to have been caused by blast fragmentation. Looks more like the aftermath of an explosion than erosion.”
“I’ll take your word for that. I’m not a geologist.”
Mitchell said, “My uncle used to work at a quarry. When I was a kid, I used to go and watch him work. The man was an artist. He could bring down thousands of tons of rock at a time using only a few sticks of dynamite in carefully selected spots on the rock face. This looks amateurish in comparison.”
“So you think someone blew away the face of the cliff. Why?”
Mitchell shrugged. “I’m not sure. Let’s take a look around and try to find out why they did it.”
With Mitchell in the lead, they began to carefully climb over the wet rocks.
After a few minutes, Jackson stopped to wipe his sweat-covered brow. It may have been close to freezing outside, but under his layers of clothes, he was boiling. He took a seat and opened his jacket, wisps of steam escaping from his overheated body. After a long swig of cold water to quench his thirst, he grabbed the ground-penetrating radar from his pack and turned it on. He waited for the instrument to calibrate before slowly moving it over the rocky ground. He knew that the device could penetrate down as far as fifteen meters; however, he doubted that it would work as well through solid rock. With one eye on the GPR’s screen and the other on the treacherously slick boulders, Jackson carefully followed Mitchell.
Mitchell was about to step over onto a car-sized rock when he heard Jackson call out. He turned his head and looked at his teammate. Jackson was moving his GPR between two large stones. “Have you got something?”
“No, I’m wasting my time. This thing can’t see through this pile of rocks. I hate to say it, but we’re not going to learn anything crawling around out here. Why don’t we try looking on the other side for a way back up to the top of the hill? I didn’t particularly like the last path we took to get down here.”
Mitchell knew Jackson was right. He carefully led them over the debris and back down onto the beach. He stopped a moment to catch his breath and to wait for Jackson. With the cold wind driving the rain down harder on them than it had been only an hour ago, Mitchell was beginning to think about heading back to their camp for a few hours to dry out and have a hot meal.
“Lead on, Captain,” said Jackson.
Mitchell picked a footpath leading off the beach. When they reach the side of the cliff, Mitchell saw that the path rose steeply. He turned to warn Jackson to watch his footing when he saw him hunched over, looking between a couple of large boulders nestled against the hill.
“Find something?” asked Mitchell.
“I’m not sure,” replied Jackson. “I almost fell into this opening.”
“Opening?” Mitchell made his way over and looked over Jackson’s shoulder. “What can you see?”
Jackson had a flashlight in his hand and was shining it down into a narrow fissure in the rocks. “I think this leads somewhere.”
“What makes you say that?” said Mitchell, instantly forgetting the cold.
“Because I think I can see a path.”
Mitchell got down on all fours and peered inside. The space beyond was dark and foreboding.
“Here, take this,” said Jackson, as he handed Mitchell his light.
Mitchell shone the light into the opening. He grinned when he saw that Jackson was right. A few meters away was a man-made path dug into the rock.
“Do you think you could fit in there?” asked Jackson.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mitchell replied as he hauled his pack off his back and removed his jacket. Legs first, he slid down into the slender passage between the rocks. It was a tight squeeze, and at one point, Mitchell had to contort his body to make it past a jagged rock that jutted out, almost blocking his way. After nearly a minute of twisting and turning, Mitchell found himself able to stand up straight. He dug out the flashlight Jackson had given him and moved the light all around as he tried to get his bearings. He saw that he was inside a tunnel that led to a set of stairs carved into the rock.
“Are you okay in there?” called out Jackson.
“Yeah, I’m more than okay. I’m standing in a tunnel carved into the rock. I think I may have found what we are looking for.”
“What do you see?”
“Fair-sized tunnel, and a set of manmade stairs. I’m going to take a quick look around,” replied Mitchell.
“Okay, but be careful.”
Mitchell headed down the darkened passage to the top of the stairs. A metal handrail had been fastened to the rockface many years ago. Carefully, Mitchell proceeded down the staircase.When he came to the bottom, he found himself standing in a vast cavern. The air smelt musty and old. He slowly turned in a circle, scanning the space with his flashlight. What he found was so unexpected that he just stood there and stared in awe.
19
Jackson was becoming worried. Mitchell had been gone for far too long. He was about to crawl down into the hole after him when, like a jack-in-the-box, Mitchell’s head popped up.
“Nate, you’ve got to see this!”
Nate blinked at the excitement in Ryan’s voice. “What is it?”
“Just drop the pack, take off your jacket, strip down to your undershirt and follow me,” replied Mitchell as he ducked back down below.
Already cold and wet, Jackosn didn’t fancy the idea of taking off his Goretex jacket or his warm sweater, but he did as he was told. After a couple of tight squeezes through the narrow passage, in which he thought he would get permanently stuck and never get out, he fell facefirst onto the cold floor. Mitchell stood there, looking down at him with a grin on his face.
“Ryan, before you say a word, I swear I’ll go on a diet when we get back home.”
“I’ve heard that before,” replied Mitchell as he helped his friend to stand. “Put your clothes back on before you get hypothermia.”
Jackson shivered in the cool air of the tunnel, and quickly redressed.
“Dig out your flashlight and be prepared to be amazed. Trust me, you’re not going to believe this,” said Mitchell.
“Why? Did you find another horde of hidden pirate treasure?” Jackson asked, alluding to a fortune in diamonds that Mitchell found buried under a hill in Liberia.
“No, but I think I may have found the next best thing…a ghost.”
Jackson followed his friend down the stairs and out onto a concrete-and-steel platform. His jaw dropped open the instant he saw what Mitchell was going on about.
With a flourish of his arms, as though he were performing a magic trick, Mitchell said, “Nate, I give to you the U-1309.”
Jackson stood there for a long moment, staring at the German submarine resting in a shallow pool of black water inside the massive grotto. It was leaning off at a slight angle on its port side. White painted lettering on the conning tower clearly identified the boat as the allegedly sunk U-1309. Jackson had never seen a World War Two submarine up close. He judged that it was at least sixty-five meters in length, with a beam of about six meters. Its tall conning tower rested almost dead center of the craft. Situated directly behind the tower were three anti-aircraft guns, all aimed up towards the darkened roof of the cave as if expecting a spectral bomber from the past to dive down at any moment and try
to sink the sub. Sealed off from the rest of the world for seventy years, the submarine looked to be in remarkably good shape.
“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” said Jackson as he ran his light along the length of the vessel.
Mitchell said, “In Jen’s email she wrote that there are only two known instances of Nazi U-Boats evading capture at the end of the war only to turn up in Argentina. I guess we now have proof of a third one that the Nazis didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“I bet this was going on for years,” Jackson said. “The writing had to be on the wall for the Nazi leadership. Their mounting losses in Russia combined with our entry into the war meant that they couldn’t win. So they decided to cut their losses and sneak out as much loot as they could to help finance their activities after the war.”
Mitchell agreed. “As for the sub, all they had to do was sail it in when the tide was low, offload whatever they had brought with them, and then sail out with the next low tide. However, at the end of the war, after they delivered their last load of stolen treasure, they must have attempted to scuttle the sub right before they brought down the side of the hill, sealing off the entrance to the grotto.”
“You’ve got to hand it to them. If we hadn’t stumbled across that opening the world would still be in the dark about all of this.”
Mitchell pulled out his camera and started taking pictures. He focused the lens on a painting of a stylized fish with a large mouth filled with oversized teeth just below the ship’s identification markings and took several pictures. He then walked to the end of the platform and looked over at the hull of the submarine. He took a couple of steps back, ran, and leaped up into the air. Mitchell landed on the hull, rolled over and came up on his feet.
Jackson muttered under his breath and followed. He, however, didn’t land well and tumbled headfirst onto the hard, unforgiving metal outer surface of the sub. He had to reach out and grab a metal bar to stop him from sliding off the side and into the black pool of water below.
Mitchell reached over to help his friend up. “You all right?”
“I seem to be accident-prone today. I only landed on my head. Nothing vital,” Jackson replied wryly.
They walked over to the conning tower and climbed up the handrail. The hatch leading down into the interior of the submarine was open. Mitchell shone his light down inside. They could see a metal ladder that descended into the dark interior of the vessel.
“After you, Ryan,” said Jackson. “If it’s booby-trapped, you should be the one to find out.”
“Why me?”
“I’ve got a kid, and a wife. You’ve got a girlfriend and old, beat-up Jeep. I think I win on this one.”
With his flashlight in one hand, Mithcell mumbled a few choice words to himself as he climbed down into the submarine. The first thing he noticed was that there was water covering the floor. He saw that moving about safely was going to be a challenge with the way the sub listed. Mitchell tentatively placed his foot in the ice-cold water and found that it came up over the top of his boots. It was cold, but nothing he couldn’t live with for an hour or so. “It’s safe, come on down,” Mitchell yelled.
Jackson joined Mitchell. Together, they looked around the deserted control room, at walls that were covered with tubes and gauges. It was a tight fit for the two broad-shouldered men. Neither man could imagine what it would have been like being cooped up inside the narrow confines of a submarine for months at a time.
“Damn, it’s cold in here. It’s worse than my refrigerator back home,” groused Jackson.
“At least you don’t have to crawl through a rock tunnel to get to your fridge. If you did, you wouldn’t go as often and you could lose some of that spare tire you’re carrying around with you.”
“Touché,” replied Jackson. “So what exactly are we looking for in here?”
“I’m not sure. I think we can pretty much guarantee that there won’t be any stolen treasure still on the boat. So let’s look for anything that might give us a clue as to who may have been on board back in 1945, and where they may have taken the treasure.”
“Which way do you want to go?”
Mithcell paused for a second while he looked around. “Let’s start aft and make our way to the stern.”
For the next few minutes, they carefully searched the control room. Aside from a couple of old charts and maps, the room was empty. They decided to push on. The next room they entered was tiny compared with the last one. It had barely enough space for a small folding table in it. Mitchell guessed that it was the officers’ dining room. As before, the room contained nothing of value. The crew’s quarters were next. All of the bunk beds, suspended from the roof, were devoid of anything; not even old blankets or pillows had been left behind.
“They really cleaned this place out before they left,” said Mitchell.
“Yeah. It’s so empty it’s starting to give me the creeps,” said Jackson as he looked around.
“I know what you mean,” replied Mitchell as he stepped into the forward torpedo room. All of the boat’s torpedos were still securely fastened to the heavy metal racks where they had been placed in 1945.
“Hey, Ryan, check this out,” said Jackson.
Mitchell turned his head and saw that Jackson was examining one of the torpedos. Its casing had been opened near the explosive warhead and a timing device had been wired into the weapon.
“Looks like our friends intended to blow up their submarine,” Jackson said as he looked at the wiring. “They set it up correctly. Not sure why it didn’t go off.”
“Luckily for us that it didn’t,” Mitchell said as he looked at the torpedo. “You don’t think it might accidentally explode, do you?”
Jackson shook his head. “No, but just to be safe, I disconnected the timer from the warhead.”
“Okay then, this looks like another dead end. Come on, let’s check the back of the sub.”
They quickly retraced their steps. Neither man said it, but their feet were turning numb in the bitterly cold water sloshing at their feet. The sooner they could head back to their camp to dry off, the better. The first room they came to after the control room was another one full of bunk beds. The light from their flashlights sent long, dark shadows against the hull. Like the other sleeping area, it was devoid of signs of occupation. The smell of diesel and oil wafted from an open doorway. Mitchell turned his flashlight and saw that the next space was the vessel’s engine room.
Jackson peered inside at the machinery that filled the room. “I don’t think they had guys my size in mind when they built these things.”
“Probably not. You stay here while I take a look around.” Mitchell worked his way past the engines to the back of the room. It had been picked clean. Aside from some rusting tools, there was nothing there to say anyone had ever been there. He was beginning to doubt if they would find anything, when he went to step into the aft torpedo room and froze in his tracks.
Jackson saw the hesitation and called out, “Something wrong?”
“I think I just found some of the crew,” replied Mitchell over his shoulder. He stood still, moving his light over six skeletons jammed into a corner. Their lifeless eye sockets stared back at him. Tattered remnants of their dark-blue coveralls hung from their skeletal remains. Carefully, he stepped into the room and bent down to examine the bones. He could see that all of them had been killed by a single shot to the back of the head. Without moving the remains too much, he dug through the pockets of their threadbare uniforms. He swore under his breath when he found that their pockets had also been picked clean decades ago. He had hoped to find something like a set of dog tags, or an item of jewelry which might help identify who they were. Like the rest of the vessel, the men were ghosts.
He stood up and turned to leave when his flashlight made something in the water shine. Mitchell stepped forward and reached for the item. He smiled when he found that it was a man’s wedding ring. He picked it up and examined it in t
he light. He could see some writing on the inside of the band. He saw that there were two names, Rolff, and Heike. As he turned the ring, he saw a date. It read February, 12th, 1945. Mitchell looked down at the pile of skeletons and wondered which one of the poor souls the ring had once belonged too. He had no doubt that the man was probably no more than eighteen or nineteen years old when he had shipped off on his last voyage, only to never come home again to his young bride. Mitchell joined Jackson and showed him the ring.
“I think it’s time to go,” suggested Jackson.
Mitchell nodded. “I want to get in touch with Jen and Fahimah. I’ve got a million questions that I need answering.”
“Second the motion of getting out of here. I’m done for the day.” He paused. “It feels too much like we’re trespassing in a crypt.”
“I know how you feel.” Mitchell took one final look at the skeletons. “Rest in peace, gentlemen.”
20
Back at their base camp, with a fresh change of dry clothes and a meal being warmed up on the stove, both men felt relaxed and at ease.
Mitchell sat on his cot and downloaded the pictures from his camera onto their laptop. A few minutes later, the images were on their way to Jen’s work computer, along with a long list of questions. He checked his watch and saw that it was late in the afternoon. He knew that Jen would not leave the office until nearly midnight, just in case he needed help with something.
Jackson handed Mitchell a warmed-up meal of chicken pasta while he sat down to eat ravioli in meat sauce. After the day’s exertions, both men hungrily devoured their meals.
Barracuda Page 11
