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.