Michael Parker
The Devil's Trinity
To my darling wife, Patricia
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my son, Terry Parker, ex Royal Air Force Harrier test pilot, for refining my flying techniques. I would also like to thank David Kennedy, ex United States Navy test pilot for putting me right on American naval matters and procedure. But even with all their experience and knowledge, I have to accept full responsibility for any mistakes that have crept in.
Chapter 1
Harry Marsham, who was known as Marsh to his friends, should have died that night. His lifelong friend and business partner in their underwater exploration business, Greg Walsh was not so lucky. When the freighter loomed up out of the darkness and struck their yacht, the Ocean Quest, it caught it amidships and rolled it over into the dark waters of the sea, crushing the boat like matchwood. Luck was on Marsh’s side that night; he had a marginally better chance than Walsh because he was standing on the open deck. He was waiting to climb the main mast to check a faulty riding light, which had failed for no apparent reason. Walsh was rummaging about below decks. He had gone there to look for a torch and spare bulbs, and to see if he could figure out why the battery power had failed.
The two men were on their yacht about eight hundred miles south east of Cuba, in the Caribbean Sea. It was past midnight, but the stars were no longer visible because of the low cloud cover. The sea was calm and the air was hot and oppressive, with the heat being clamped in by the clouds, and there was no breeze to give them respite from the heat. The yacht was becalmed, its sails hanging limp.
They drifted gently on the ocean, invisible, unseen and unseeing. Marsh was standing on the deck thinking about the riding light clamped to the mast. The slight swell of the sea lifted the Ocean Quest gently. Marsh peered up the mast, waiting for Walsh to bring up a torch or a spare bulb. He couldn’t see much, but he felt as though he was doing something positive, even if just standing there looking was sufficient.
Then a sound reached his ear that was different. Despite the calm, the yacht pitched and fell gently, but suddenly there was a subtle change in the rhythm. A sound that made him turn his head and look into the inky blackness.
He could see nothing. He kept his hand on the mast and felt the rise and fall of the yacht beneath the soles of his deck shoes. But the yacht moved slightly abeam. The breeze chilled his legs and the hairs on his neck began to lift. He peered again, this time more intently. Was there something out there? Was there a whale beneath the surface, swimming close by? His hand dropped away from the mast and he took a step forward and that was when he saw the ship looming like a colossus, coming straight at them out of the night.
Marsh opened his mouth to scream out a warning to Walsh, but the warning cry stopped in his throat, cut off by the timbre of raw fear and unbelief that buried itself deep into his conscience and rendered him momentarily speechless. He tried to shout again but the freighter struck, and in an instant the Ocean Quest lifted. A shudder ran through the boat as the huge, scarred prow of the ship smashed through the hull, split the yacht in two and pitched Marsh out into the dark waters of the ocean.
He felt his world spinning as the ship cut through the yacht, crushing everything in its path, its own inertia turning the sea into a maelstrom of shattered timber and boiling, foaming water.
Marsh knew he was about to die. It was inescapable; he knew that there was nothing he could do that could save him as the yacht disintegrated and the sea enveloped him, filling his mouth and lungs with its salty bitterness.
An indescribable force spun him over and over and he could feel the cold steel of the ship’s hull raking his flesh. Hard, ripping barnacles tore at his skin, slashing his clothing and opening up cuts all over his body. His instant, uncontrollable reflexes made him scream out in pain, but no sound came because his mouth was filled instantly with water, and his soul filled with unimaginable fear. He coughed and choked, fighting like a madman, thrashing his arms about in a tremendous battle to get away from the steel hull of the ship and the life giving air on the surface.
Marsh had never considered himself a brave man although all his working life he had devoted himself to the sea and the world that lay beneath it. The sea was like a second home to him. He loved it. He had seen and experienced its vagaries, its power and its tranquillity, and he had never feared it; he had always respected it. And he had always known that he could die in it. Now it threatened to engulf him and drag him deep into its depths; no longer a friend but a mortal enemy.
He kicked out desperately as the hull of the ship banged into him again and blind panic seized him. His own, inherent fear drove him into a frenzied anger, responding like a trapped animal fighting for its life. He thought he had forced himself away from the danger but again he felt the hull of the ship and knew he could be pulled in by the power of the ship’s screws. He pushed hard with both legs and struck out with a superhuman effort to draw himself away from the pull of the swirling water and the fear of being drawn into the threshing screws.
How long he was under the water he didn’t know, but it felt like an eternity to Marsh. The reality was that he had been under for little more than thirty seconds, which for a man of Marsh’s experience was of no consequence; but the pain and violence seemed to go on for ever. Eventually he broke clear of the surface in a fit of choking and coughing. Each indrawn breath closed his throat like a trap, shutting out the sweet, blessed, life giving air. He trod water and tried desperately to control his breathing, but his natural, life preserving instincts kept him gasping like a drowning man. Slowly the coughing subsided and at last he felt some measure of control returning.
Marsh trod water as he turned round, looking for the ship that had just run them down. He saw it slide by like a moving mountain, no more than fifty feet from him. He backed away and swam further into calmer water. Then he stopped and looked back at the ship, its bulk merging with the night. Then a wave sloshed over his head and he lost sight of the ship.
He thought suddenly of his friend and forgot everything about the ship. He called out Walsh’s name, spinning round, searching for him in the swell of the water. The wash from the ship kept breaking over him. The salt was beginning to sting his eyes and from time to time he would suddenly drop beneath the water. But despite that, he kept calling out his friend’s name.
He could see very little, just the phosphorescence of the sloughing wave tops. He kept calling until his voice became quite hoarse and he realised that it was pointless; Walsh wasn’t there. He felt an overwhelming sadness engulf him when the reality dawned on him. He also felt a gnawing disbelief and anger that fate had been so cruel that in the vast expanse of that ocean, they should end up becalmed right in the path of that ship. But the noise and the violence were over now. It was quiet and he was quite alone.
It took Marsh quite some time to calm down and think of the dangerous situation he was in. He was beginning to feel the stinging effects of the salt water on his cuts, and knew there was a distinct possibility that the smell of his blood would attract any sharks in the vicinity. There was nothing he could do, he realised that. If the sharks took him, that would be the end. There would be no rescue; no miraculous survival.
What he could do though was to consider exactly what his position was and what chance he had of being rescued. It was all pointless and the thought disappeared from his head as quickly as it had entered; he had no chance.
He twisted round, letting the dying swell lift him. He knew he was about five hundred miles south east of Jamaica and about eight hundred miles south east of Cuba. But he knew he could have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for all the difference it would make; he was miles from land and would probably drown before any hope of rescue came.