The chief petty officer looked away in silence. The radio operator said a few words in Hindi to him, but Singh made a curt reply while cutting him off with a wave of his hand.
Chloe knew then that they were hiding something. “Petty Officer Singh, if there is something going on, I need to know. My brother is the only family I’ve got left. Please.”
Singh let out a deep breath. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone this without express clearance from our Southern Naval Command. I could get into very deep trouble, Miss Gietz.”
Chloe clenched her jaw. “I won’t say a word to anyone. I’m not in the American military or with the government, so you have my promise to never give any of you away.”
Singh beckoned her to get inside the radio room. The moment she stepped into the small area, Singh checked to see if anyone was listening out in the corridor before hurriedly closing the door behind him. The chief petty officer then gestured at the radioman, who quickly sat down in front of the communications console and began queuing it up to play a recording.
“We intercepted a message on an open frequency a few hours ago,” Singh said softly. “It is very short, and it was a call between two employees of Morgenstern Oceanic.”
Chloe understood. “Are you under some sort of orders not to divulge information about that company?”
Singh gave a shamefaced nod. “It was a directive from our Naval Command. We have been ordered to steer clear of anything with regards to that corporation.”
“Please tell me what you heard.”
“I will allow you to listen to what we intercepted,” Singh said solemnly. “After that, I must delete the tape. I hope you understand this.”
“Yes, I do. Thank you.”
“And you must never say where you got this information from,” Singh intoned.
“You have my word,” Chloe said. Play it already!
As soon as Singh nodded to him, the radioman turned his attention back to his console, and played the recording. Chloe edged closer to the loudspeakers on the table to make sure she heard it all. The audio was full of static, but the words were clear.
The first voice had a Midwestern American accent, but it was someone she didn’t recognize. “Hey, it’s me. We’ve got a problem.”
“What the hell are you doing calling me on an unsecured line, mate?” a second voice demanded.
Chloe’s mouth hung open. She knew who the second voice belonged to—Clive Liger.
“I’m calling you from a lifeboat, that’s why,” the first voice said. “The Skandi Aurora is going down, and you need to pick me up!”
Chloe let out a surprised gasp.
Liger’s reply was a mix of incredulity and bewilderment. “What? That thing attacked you at Typhon? Why did it head back over there?”
“I don’t freaking know! You’ve got to help me!”
Liger cursed. “The Queequeg is at least six hours away from you. Just get to the work barge and wait for me there.”
“But that thing, it could kill me before I even get to the barge!” the first voice cried.
“You just have to bloody well take your chances. Now stay off the air in case someone gets a listen to this. Over and out.”
Chloe couldn’t take it anymore. Her advanced stages of fatigue combined with the shock of the news were too much for her mind to take in all at once, and she promptly fainted and then crumpled to the tile floor.
29
BILL LANGLEY OPENED his eyes as the shafts of morning light began filtering inside the hyperbaric lifeboat. Looking at his diving watch, he figured that he had somehow managed to sleep for a few hours.
After wiping away the accumulated scum that had formed around his eyes, he looked down at the tall, blond Norwegian lying with his back on the floor. “Haakon, are you feeling any better?”
Haakon fluttered his eyes open and groaned. Their escape from the hyperbaric chamber, and the succeeding climb through a series of winding tunnels to make it into the pressurized lifeboat along the side of the ship had been done in extreme haste. For long minutes they had waited inside the emergency vessel, hoping that Gordon and O’Keefe’s diving bell had been pulled up and the remaining pair of divers would join them inside, but it was not to be.
The last thing they heard on the intercom was their supervisor Mullins ordering them to seal the hatch and prepare to be jettisoned into the water. Haakon had just managed to check and confirm the proper gas mix within the interior before the cables holding them to the davits had either been released too early or had just snapped when the Skandi Aurora’s bow began to list forward, and the lifeboat dropped from a height of close to fifteen meters before it hit the water’s surface.
Langley was already strapped down in one of the crash chairs along the side, but Haakon was still standing and checking the gas gauges when the lifeboat hit the water. The fall had clearly broken the Norwegian’s right arm, and Langley suspected he also suffered a spinal injury. When Langley had tried to lift him up after they landed on the water, Haakon had cried out in pain and begged to stay where he was.
Crouching down beside his injured dive partner, Langley opened one of the nearby cabinets, and took out a sealed pouch from the emergency supplies located underneath. “You want some water?”
Haakon grimaced in pain. “Not yet, maybe later. Is it morning now?”
Placing the still sealed container beside the other man, Langley stood upright and moved towards the aft section. “Yeah, the sun just went up.”
“How is the gas mix?”
Langley strode over to a set of gauges and valves. “I’ve already adjusted them for an emergency decompression last night. We ought to be able to go out and walk into a diving chamber in about three days.”
“Assuming they find us,” Haakon said tersely.
Frowning, Langley turned and moved closer to the conning chair and looked at the elevated command console once again before shaking his head in disappointment. After he had given Haakon first aid the night before, Langley had looked around to try and establish communications, only to find that the radio wasn’t working. When he tried to start up the lifeboat’s motor, he also noticed that the fuel gauge stood at zero. It was apparent that someone had forgotten to add fuel, and they had been drifting ever since they’d been jettisoned from the ship.
“I can’t believe they didn’t check this damned plastic coffin for fuel before we left port,” Langley muttered, “or even look to see if they installed a radio properly.”
Haakon uttered a curse in Norwegian. “We should have checked it ourselves when we did the lifeboat drill.”
Langley bit his lip. It’s always the little things that kill you. “Yeah.”
“Or maybe… they did it on purpose.”
Langley walked back over to where the other man was. “You really believe they’d sabotage this thing just to kill us? What for?”
“Whatever it is they want to keep secret down there.”
Langley let out a deep breath. “I don’t believe that. There’ll be court cases. My wife and kids would sue the hell out of them if anything happened to me.”
“As I’m sure my wife will too. But the company we work for has deep pockets, and even deeper secrets to keep.”
“If the whole ship went down then we’re talking over a hundred crewmembers, at least,” Langley said softly. “There’s no way they can stand up against a class action suit if we all work together.”
“I do not know much about lawyers,” Haakon said. “But I do know that Morgenstern hires the best of them.”