“I thought you said it ran aground.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s just say, the events related to this accident are a little more mysterious than simple error.”
Sam shook his head again. “Come into my office. We’re heading off in less than an hour, after a British Air Accidents Investigation Branch vessel arrives. You’ve got until then to convince me.”
Chapter Seven
Sam opened the door to the briefing room.
With his hand, he gestured for Gene to take a seat across from him. Gene nodded a cursory thank you and took a seat.
Sam opened the forward door and yelled, “Elise, Matthew, Veyron… come into the briefing room… our new friend here wants to tell us a story.”
Gene narrowed his eyes. His thick curly brow closed together. “I’m sorry. The images I’m about to show are of strictly proprietary knowledge…”
Sam crossed his arms. “Hey, you came to me?”
“And I want just your opinion. If this gets out, we might be in some real trouble…”
Sam took a deep breath and nodded at the rest of his crew. “All right. I’ll hear you out, but if I accept the job, it means you take my entire team on, and no more secrets. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Sam said, “All right, Elise do you want to start preparing the black box for its flight?”
“All right,” Elise said.
Sam turned his attention to Gene, “When Tom is out of the hyperbaric chamber, I will need to discuss this with him.”
Gene opened his mouth to protest. “But…”
Sam interrupted him. “I don’t work without him. That’s not negotiable.”
Gene opened his mouth to protest, took one look at Sam’s hardened face and closed it again. “The ship was the Buckholtz. She was leaving from Hamburg on her way to the U.S. port of Quonset Point, Rhode Island. The captain was a veteran for the company with more than thirty years’ experience and had made this particular voyage multiple times a year for the past three years.”
Sam sat a glass on the table and poured a small amount of water in without asking whether his unwanted guest wanted one or not. He took a small sip of the drink and then looked at the stranger sitting down in front of him. “So, what happened?”
“The ship ran hard aground on Neuwerk Island.”
Sam studied the map and location of the accident. “What did the captain say went wrong? Anything short of a hurricane shouldn’t have affected the Buckholtz so much to send it on a direct collision course with the island.”
“He says he was following the channel and simply ran aground — only it wasn’t just mud, it was rock — and it took a fifty-foot gash out of her backside. She sank stern down within minutes with the bow dry and above water.”
“Any chance the captain was intoxicated?”
“No. He was tested for alcohol and drugs an hour after the accident. Everything was done by the book. He had three witnesses who confirm what he saw on three different systems. Depth gauge, radar, and GPS-based navigational maps all confirmed he was traveling through the channel at the time.”
“Do you think the sandbar moved?”
“No. Everything was exactly where it was meant to be. I’m telling you, it looks like the captain, second in command and watchman all just made a massive mistake.”
Sam leaned back in the big leather chair. “So, what would you like my help with? Are you having trouble getting the insurance company to pay or something?”
“No.”
“So, let the insurance company do their mandatory checks. They’ll perform a root cause analysis and come up with an answer. Sometimes these things really are just an accident.”
“Yeah, that’s what we figured. But…”
“What?”
“There’s something else. A camera inside the bridge records everything that happens. Like an aircraft’s flight data recorder, this can be used in the event of an accident or collision with another vessel to determine the cause and who was ultimately at fault. The recording provides crucial clues, including the position of the controls, the functionality of the engine, and bow thrusters.”
“And what did it say?”
“It confirms exactly what the captain and his two witnesses said — they were traveling up the middle of the channel, nowhere near the rocky beach.”
“Any chance the tapes could have been switched?”
“Not a chance in the world. The system has heavy security to make it difficult to do just that. If the crew had hours between the event and one of the company’s boarding parties arriving — I would have assumed that was the case — but there was less than five minutes between the accident and one of our helicopters dropping a team on board.”
“Five minutes?” Sam met him eye to eye. “That’s a pretty quick response for anyone.”
Gene shook his head. “No. Our engineers were on their way out to the vessel to perform some routine safety checks while the Buckholtz was on her way out to sea when this happened. It’s a fairly common procedure. Every day the ship is in harbor costs the company more than a million dollars in lost revenue and demurrage, so it works out cheaper simply to fly out our engineering teams to perform the tasks, where possible, usually on the ship’s outward journey.”
“Did they see anything strange from the air?”
“Nothing. It was night time. Not much could be seen from the air.”
“What time was this?”
“Nine p.m. Just under twelve hours ago.”
Sam asked, “Any chance one of the channel markers were out?”
Gene shrugged. “Sure. But not all of them. And besides, the island stands out like a giant shrine on the horizon. No way the captain could have missed its silhouette against the shore.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
Gene’s satellite phone rang. He answered it and swore. “All right. This changes everything.” He nodded his head to himself, hung up, and turned to Sam. “We have another issue, this one a little more pressing.”
Sam said, “Go on.”
“The Buckholtz was carrying an experimental piece of equipment inside one of its shipping containers. It was stored in the section of the hull that is now nearly sixty feet below the sea. We’re going to need your help to retrieve it. What’s more, it’s vitally important that no one know that it was on board.”
“Why?”
“The item is the culmination of many millions of man hours and more than two billion dollars spent on research and development. If it’s believed that the engine was lost due to the negligence of the captain, the news would wreak havoc on the company’s share price.”
Sam nodded his head. He understood how these situations worked. Such companies had stretched their financial reserves to the breaking point, only to have bad luck bring them down just as their big risk was about to pay off.
“What’s happened?”
“I’ve just been informed that one of our more important shipping containers, which until now we hoped was still dry, is now below the waterline.”
Sam said, “I would think the replacement cost of any single shipping container is a lot less than the value of the likely salvage and repair cost of the Buckholtz?”
“Not this one.” Gene’s tone was emphatic.
“Why?” Sam asked, studying his response. “What’s inside that’s so special about it?”
Gene shook his head. “I’m afraid that really is proprietary knowledge. I would be remiss in my duty to the owners who have paid well to maintain its secrecy. All I can say is that we are willing to pay well to have it retrieved.”
Sam said, “All right. We’ll accept the case on one condition.”