Beneath his full-faced dive mask, Sam grinned. “How about we use that?”
Chapter Thirteen
Tom could barely contain his laughter as he and Sam started to vigorously pump the mechanical arm, sending their submerged iron handcart racing through the flooded tunnel, and making him feel more like a torpedo.
They quickly picked up momentum, and the heavy iron handcart rushed through the water. Ahead, Sam’s headlamp lit up the tunnel like the headlights on a train.
The duct keel appeared sound and intact.
Tom said, “Any chance the Buckholtz grounded her bow on the muddy island, only to slide backward into the water and slice the side of her hull, above the keel, with an uncharted reef?”
“It’s possible,” Sam admitted. “Unlikely, but possible. Let’s get to the end of this and then we’ll have a better look.”
Their trip across the flooded section of the duct keel ended approximately two-thirds of the way along the length of the Buckholtz.
The hand-cart broke through the surface of the water, marking the end of the flooded section of the ship. Tom kept pumping the arm, and the cart continued its journey into the progressively shallower water until they were running along dry rails.
The cart picked up speed, despite the slight incline.
Tom said, “Think the air’s breathable?”
“Not a chance,” Sam replied, shining his flashlight across a set of rusty pipes. “Oxygen is depleted by oxidization of steel. Without access to the outside air, my guess is the air here contains well under 21 percent oxygen required to sustain life.”
“I suppose, on top of that, carbon monoxide, inert gasses, and methane from the breakdown of carbon within the ballast water are all potentially present to form a lethal cocktail.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll keep my dive-mask on.”
Tom kept pumping the cart’s arm.
The tunnel never seemed to change. There were three large pipes running parallel to the handcart — one for fuel and two for ballast water.
Tom studied his surroundings as he moved, without finding anything that appeared out of place.
“You see anything?”
“No. Not a thing.”
“Which means, we will have to go back to searching the external hull.”
Sam lightly pulled the brake, and the cart came to a stop.
Tom said, “Did we reach the end?”
“No,” Sam replied.
“What is it?”
Sam stood up, stepping off the handcart. He swept the area with his flashlight before settling on something lying on the middle of the tracks. “That.”
Tom looked at the body. It seemed fairly intact, with little sign of decomposition. A male approximately fifty to sixty years old, overweight, but not obese. The body was lying prone so that he couldn’t see the face. Tom leaned over and felt for a pulse, almost expecting to find one.
The body was cold.
Not like ice, but no warmer than the inanimate steel it was lying on.
“The guy’s dead,” Tom confirmed.
Sam rolled him onto his side. “There’s no sign of any injuries.”
“What do you think killed him?”
“My guess, he got trapped down here while doing his routine maintenance check of the duct keel, only to become trapped, and then suffocated.”
“That makes sense.” Tom barely suppressed a grin. “Although, I’d like to know why Gene denied any injuries or fatalities when the Buckholtz ran aground?”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe he genuinely didn’t know yet.”
“Or, he was murdered,” Tom suggested.
“What makes you say that?”
Tom shined his headlamp on the man’s hand. It still gripped a notepad. He picked it up and handed it to Sam. “Read that.”
Sam took the note and ran his eyes across it. “I’M SORRY, SVETLANA. THEY MADE ME DO IT.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sam stepped back onto the handcart.
He committed the name, Svetlana, to memory. It was a common enough Russian name, but maybe Elise would be able to put the name and the dead man’s face together somewhere. She could be quite the magician when it came to locating unknown people.
“You don’t want to go to the end?” Tom asked.
“No. We already know it doesn’t lead anywhere and any damage farther toward the bow can’t possibly have caused the flooding, because it was out of the water the entire time.” Sam glanced at the body one last time. “No. The duct keel hasn’t told us anything about where the water came in from — only that someone used it to murder someone.”
“So instead of answers, we got more questions.”
“Yeah, like what he knew got him murdered.”
“Exactly.”
Sam flicked the gear lever downward, changing the direction of the handcart to run toward the stern. He and Tom started pumping the arm until they built up speed and then alternated between one another every few minutes.
Sam glanced at his gauges. Everything was as expected. They had been on the dive for 41 minutes, and their maximum depth was 51 feet. Using their closed circuit rebreather system, they still had more than three hours of dive time available.
He glanced at Tom. “How are your gauges looking?”
“Good,” Tom replied. “At current consumption, I still have three hours and fifteen minutes of gas before I’m going to need to hit the reserve. Why? Did you want to search the internal hull throughout each of the individual bays?”
“No. But if you’re up for it, I wouldn’t mind eyeballing Mr. Cutting’s precious secret shipping container. Maybe it might reveal a clue to the murder.”
“Okay, I’m keen.”
It took nearly twenty minutes to reach the engine bay.
Sam was happy to leave the narrow confines of the duct keel, and happier still, to be on the outside of the watertight doors through which they had entered.
On his heads-up-display, a compass was projected in front of him. He glanced at it, setting a heading for south-southwest at 220 degrees — the same direction in which the Buckholtz’s keel ran aground toward Neuwerk Island.
Beneath the compass, was a digital image of the ship’s schematics superimposed on what Sam was looking at to provide a sort of augmented reality. His computer system updated instantly providing their predicted location and mapping, based on what Sam was able to see. It made diving within the massive cargo ship much more achievable.
He kicked his fins, swimming directly over the top of the large diesel powerplant and through a closed set of blue doors.
Sam pushed through the doors, which opened to Bay 9. Rows of shipping containers were stacked to the ceiling. A narrow steel gangway formed a platform to walk throughout the containers, with a series of ladders to take sailors up or down a deck.
He followed the passageway all the way to port side and then followed it toward the bow in the next bay.
Sam’s display popped up with his location, 10/14/08.
Sam mentally retrieved the precise location of the secret shipping container.
Bay 10/ Row 14/ Tier 08
He gently kicked his fins, moving slowly forward.
A small marker on the gangway below him was the only evidence he’d passed into the 10th bay. He stopped and shined his light through the series of intricate tunnels formed by the placement of multiple shipping containers, stacked upon themselves.
“Do you see it?” he asked Tom.
“Not yet. It should be directly below us.”
He searched for a way to get down. The passageway they were on didn’t allow them to descend. Instead, they would need to get much lower. Swimming another twenty feet forward, he turned right to follow an internal passageway toward the Buckholtz’s centerline.