Moments later, Sam stood at the starboard toe-rail of the aft deck in his fins and mask, holding tightly to the lifeline. To his right he watched the boom of the crane as it dipped and swayed toward the broken swell, accentuating the uneven movement of the ship. The dark green foaming sea reached up to his feet with the troughs between waves, and then sucked away deeply as the boat climbed another peak. He ensured his shoulder strobe was flashing and checked again for his pocket EPIRB. Rain and sea spray whipped at him as he checked his air supply once more.
Time to go.
Sam waited for the moment when the Maria Helena was at her lowest in the water at the aft. He planned to step out into the water, descending as quickly as he could and getting as far from the boat as possible.
Veyron prepared a running line for the 8 inch thick steel cable that Sam would bring down with him with the attachments to make the new cradle.
Sam ran his eyes across the cable, appraisingly. “You’re certain it will carry her?”
Veyron nodded. “That’ll carry as much as the Maria Helena’s capable of lifting.
“All right. Let’s get this thing done.”
Elise came out again, with the sat phone in her hand. “Sam, it’s Gene Cutting.”
“Who?”
“The guy who wants your expert opinion for the insurers…”
Sam shook his head. “Tell him I’m not interested. Tell him I’m diving.”
“I already did. He didn’t want to listen. Said he appreciates you’re busy. Says his company’s willing to pay big, just for your insight. Nothing formal. Doesn’t want to drag you through the courts — just wants some expert opinion on what could have possibly gone wrong. Apparently the Buckholtz, a large container ship ran aground under some fairly unusual and mysterious circumstances as it was leaving Hamburg this morning.”
Sam sighed. “What happened?”
“Apparently the Buckholtz came out of its shipping lane while leaving the Elbe River, turned ninety-degrees and ran aground into Neuwerk Island.”
“Neuwerk Island?” Sam confirmed, with an incredulous grin. “How the hell does a large cargo ship manage that?”
“No idea. That’s what Gene Cutting wants you to find out.”
Sam held his palms upward in supplication. “We’re already racing to raise the tail of the Dreamlifter and gain access to the main fuselage so that we can retrieve the damned black box. If this isn’t an isolated incident, and there’s a generic virus or fault with the program, we’re going to see a lot more 747s crash — and next time we might not be so lucky — it might be a commercial passenger jet that gets hit, so I’m afraid we just don’t have time for him.”
“He says he’ll come to you…”
“I’m not interested!” Sam placed the full-faced dive mask over his face, gripped the eye of the 8-inch cable with its hook, and dropped over the stern of the Maria Helena, disappearing into the dark waters below.
Chapter Three
The icy water enveloped Sam’s body in an instant.
Despite his protective layering, the extreme temperature shift was enough to shock him into focus. He didn’t wait on the surface to check his dive equipment. In the violent seas, the safest place for him would be deep below the raging waves.
Without any air in his buoyancy control device, he immediately started to sink. The weight of the hook and cradle afforded Sam a gentle descent, at the measured rate of the crane’s cable. He had attached a lead-line to keep the lifting tackle at a comfortable distance, to allow for the rise and fall of the boat on the swell above.
He swallowed as he descended, allowing his ears to equalize to the new pressures. On his heads-up display, he watched as the depth increased rapidly. His eyes swept over the other gauges, confirming that his air supply readings remained where they belonged.
The stormy conditions at the surface denied the sea much of its ambient light, making it difficult for Sam to see very far as he trailed the hook into the deep ocean water, but after closing half the distance to the bottom, he could start to make out the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter on the seabed. From his high viewpoint, the great jet already started to fill his entire vision. Tom and Genevieve’s flashlights danced off the fuselage far below, like tiny stars as they prepared for the arrival of the new cradle.
Sam took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He took in the surrounding vista, just being present. Lifting the tail of the submerged juggernaut would be complex, and he wanted a clear mind. Even after thousands of hours spent diving, he still loved every minute of his time underwater. He allowed the chilly embrace of the water and the serenity of the seascape to engulf his thoughts, just for a moment. As the white mass of the aircraft loomed ever larger from below, the scale of the task at hand hit home.
At 235 feet in length, and a wingspan of 211 feet, the bulbous Dreamlifter was a beast of the air. Originally created to transport the pieces of the huge Boeing Dreamliner passenger jet to assembly locations, it is a monstrous creation. She had a payload over 840,000 pounds fully loaded, the largest capability in the air.
The entire front section of the airplane was compromised during impact, bashing in the nose of the plane like a squeezebox. This had rendered the side doors useless leaving only one point of access, the articulating tail section of the aircraft. During normal operation, the entire rear end of the plane opened like a huge door. It swung away to the port side, facilitating full access to the cavernous 65,000 cubic feet of cargo space.
With the first lift, Tom and Genevieve had successfully broken the suction of the fuselage from the seabed, so Sam hoped that they could hover the tail section a couple of feet off the sea floor using lifting bags and the new cradle. The Maria Helena would then drag the cargo door open after the divers manually disengaged the locking mechanism. It was a complicated and difficult maneuver, but Sam knew his tech diving crew well and trusted them to perform at the highest level.
Veyron had sent the lifting bags down ahead of Sam, and when he arrived at the bottom, Tom and Genevieve had attached almost enough to hover the fuselage with the nose down. Genevieve was filling the second-to-last float to half full, and Tom was attaching the final bag. The aquatic lifting bags looked like two rows of miniature hot air balloons, assembled for a race.
“How long have you guys been down now?” Sam asked over the radio mike.
“About two hours,” Tom replied, consulting his watch.
“I hope you put a good book in the decompression pod, you’re going to be in there for a while!”
“Yeah well, I’ve got good company, so it could be worse,” he said, grabbing the compressed air tool line from Genevieve and filling the last lifting bag.
“Too bad I can’t say the same thing!” Genevieve chimed in, swimming back to the other side of the sunken airplane.
A puff of silt clouded up from the body of the aircraft where it met the ground, and the huge cargo plane’s tail lifted ever so slightly. “We have lift-off!” Tom said.
“Nice! I’m hoping that the wings will stabilize this baby enough in the mud for us to swing the tail open. Let’s leave her as low as we can now that she’s off the floor.” Sam said.
“Genevieve, are you okay to check all the bags are secure? Tom and I are going to see about these locks.” Sam said.
“Sure thing.”
On the underside of the fuselage on both sides, there were emergency release levers for the hydraulic locks that keep the tail closed under normal conditions. Not requiring power, the releases break the seal on the closed fuselage, allowing emergency crews access to the stricken airplane. Sam and Tom took one of the levers each and broke the tail. The seal cracked, and a small amount of air escaped from the top of the body as the giant rear section opened about two inches.