“Doesn’t matter,” Langley said. “If I get out of this alive I’m still going to sue, even if they compensate me. I owe it to Gordy and Don.”
“What do you think happened?”
Langley sat down and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. We were both asleep in the sat chamber, remember?”
“And then we heard all that banging, as if the ship was being hit by a torpedo,” the Norwegian said. “Have you tried the intercom again?”
Langley reached over and activated the microphone, but all he got was static. “I think the whole ship is gone. There’s nothing but open ocean out there.”
“You think Mullins and the tenders made it out?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
Hearing a klaxon coming from the outside, Langley looked up in surprise. The veteran saturation diver quickly ran over to the forward hatch and looked out through the porthole. Sure enough, he could see a gray-hulled, medium-sized diving support vessel drifting near the port side. Turning to look back at the Norwegian, he let out a delighted holler.
“Is it a boat?” Haakon asked.
Langley grinned while pumping his fist. “Hell yeah. We’re saved.”
“Did they see us?”
“Sure did,” Langley said. “They’re lowering a launch over the side and she’s heading towards us.”
LIGER STOOD BEHIND the gunwale, near the midsection of the Queequeg’s starboard hull, watching the dinghy as the smaller watercraft headed towards the orange hyperbaric lifeboat floating in the water less than fifty meters away. Turning to his right, he glanced at the heavyset man standing beside him. “Do your men know what to do?”
Captain Rudenkov’s stony visage didn’t change, despite the chilling orders he had received. “Da. Of course.”
“And you promise they won’t say anything about this?”
“Da, da. They are paid well enough to retire, so they will not say anything,” the captain of the Queequeg said, before pointing with his thumb towards Pete Poole, who was observing from the lower aft deck. “But what about him?”
Liger frowned as he turned and cupped his hands so that Poole could hear his yelling from above deck. “Hey Pete, get back inside, you don’t have to see this.”
Poole looked up at him, a mix of sadness and regret in his eyes. “Can’t we just bring them back to the barge or something? They can’t have seen anything down there, boss.”
“We’ve got orders—you know this,” Liger argued. “Now get back inside so you don’t have to see what happens next.”
“But…”
“Do it!”
After seeing Poole slink back into the ship’s interior, Captain Rudenkov shook his head slightly. “Oy, oy, oy. I don’t think you can trust that one to keep his mouth shut. In fact, I guarantee he will talk when all this is over.”
“How do you know that?” Liger asked.
Rudenkov pursed his lips. “His eyes. They do not lie. When I was in the Russian Navy throwing Somali pirates back into the water, they had the same look, even though they were telling me they were innocent.”
“I’ve worked with him for many years, living together in a sat chamber for weeks at a time,” Liger said. “I know him. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”
“That is what you said about your other diver—the man you call Fitzroy,” Rudenkov said. “Now his body is in the hold, along with the other two you’ve lost.”
Liger glared at him. Bloody Russian mercenary. “If he betrays us, I promise you I’ll deal with him myself.”
The Queequeg’s captain flashed a toothy grin at him. “You have proven yourself in my eyes, so you are good. If you wish, my men can take care of him for you. They have experience in such matters.”
“I can handle Pete if that time ever comes,” Liger said tersely before turning his attention back towards the drifting lifeboat and placing a pair of binoculars over his eyes to get a closer look.
LANGLEY’S BROAD SMILE turned into a suspicious scowl as the approaching rubber dinghy slowed and bumped against the starboard bow of the lifeboat. A gray-eyed man with a crew cut peered through the porthole, but his demeanor seemed detached, almost indifferent. The man’s eyes then scanned the interior of the lifeboat before he turned and nodded to the two other men in the dinghy.
“Don’t try and open the hatch, you idiots,” Langley muttered while waving his hands around. “We’re pressurized in here.”
“What’s going on?” Haakon said as he continued to lie down on the floor.
Langley turned and gave him an irritated look. “I have no idea. It looks like that ship sent over a bunch of morons to rescue us. They’re not even signaling to me about what the situation is. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a hyperbaric lifeboat before.”
“What are they doing?”
Langley shrugged. “Hell if I know, and—” His words were quickly cut off as he suddenly noticed the man at the outside beginning to attach something to the hatch of the lifeboat. After hearing the heavy thud of an object being placed onto the lifeboat’s sealed door, Langley began slapping at the walls, hoping they would turn their attention back to him. “Hey, what the hell is happening out there?”
Haakon’s eyes opened wide in surprise. Even though he couldn’t see anything from his horizontal position, he could hear the clanging sounds of metallic tools, seemingly trying to chisel their way through the lifeboat’s hull. “What in God’s name are they trying to do?”
Langley’s hopes turned into instant dismay as he saw the dinghy with the three men shoving off and the small watercraft began moving away from the lifeboat. “They’re l-leaving, they attached something to the hatch and—”
Moments later, the shaped charge blew part of the pressurized hatch open, and the lifeboat’s interior experienced an explosive decompression. The detonation had created a hole thirty centimeters in diameter, allowing the pressurized air inside to escape at an extremely accelerated rate.
Being closest to the breach, Langley was forced through the small hole at blinding speed—his blood, flesh, and entrails shooting out in a violent dismemberment that lasted less than a second. The release of lifeboat’s interior air pressure was so intense that it expelled all the internal organs from his chest and abdomen right through the expanding breach, except for his trachea and thoracic spine, which just splattered onto the floor. The right side of Langley’s skull was instantly crushed as it collided with the still secure part of the hatch before being pulled out as well.
Haakon’s body was thrown around the lifeboat’s interior. His flesh was instantly shredded by the numerous protruding devices, chairs, and levers along the walls before flopping down into a bloody mess. The pressure gradient burst most of his internal organs, including his lungs and heart, as the mixed gasses forced their way out from his body, completely shattering it like a burst balloon.
The lifeboat’s hull sustained numerous punctures from additional explosive charges placed below her waterline, and the stricken vessel soon began to sink. In less than an hour, all that was left floating on the surface of the water were bits of trash and bloody entrails as several schools of fish began converging on the area.
30
STANDING BESIDE THE helm controls inside the Wanderer’s bridge, Ethan looked out at the darkening skies of the Arabian Sea with a mixture of trepidation and uncertainty. A few hours ago, his meeting with the heads of the multinational search and rescue teams on Kavaratti Island had been interrupted when a commotion involving his business partner occurred on the second floor of the headquarters building.