Hell Ship (7 page)

“Well, that answers one question,”
Professor said, under his breath.

Willis returned a moment later with a rifle in each hand.
He held one out to Professor, but before the other man could take it, there was a loud cracking sound, like someone smashing a hammer into the side of the boat. The bulkhead just behind them exploded in a spray of wood and fiberglass, and a couple seconds later, the report of a high-powered rifle echoed across the water.

Both men threw themselves flat on the deck, but
Professor knew the shooter had missed on purpose; it was a warning shot from a sniper on the yacht, covering fire to protect the men on the assault boat.

Professor
’s heart sank. They were outnumbered, outgunned…helpless. Worse, there was no way to warn Maddock and Bones about what would be waiting for them back on the surface.

The memory of
the skeletons haunted Dane all the way to the surface. At each decompression stop, he wondered if the men trapped on that ship had been alive, desperately holding one last breath, or already dead when they reached this depth. The closer to the surface he got, the more certain he was that those men had been alive when the doomed ship had passed through the water where he now floated; alive and terrified.

When they were just fifty feet below the glittering emerald surface, with the keel of the
Jacinta
a black gash directly overhead, a visiting tiger shark reminded Dane that perhaps not all of the men who had gone down on the ship had drowned; there were other ways to die. He and Bones ascended back-to-back, gripping unsheathed knives, for the remainder of the ascent. The shark swam lazy circles around them, its coal black eyes betraying nothing of its intent. Because Dane’s attention was focused on the shark, he didn’t notice the more immediate danger until it was too late. As he scrambled onto the low dive platform that hung from the boat’s left side, he found himself staring into the barrel of semi-automatic pistol.

There were two men on the platform, both wearing black tactical gear and matching balaclavas.
Their captors didn’t say anything at first, but merely gestured with their pistols. Dane and Bones both held their hands up and climbed the rickety staircase up to the main deck where three more gunmen waited, along with Willis and Professor who were kneeling, hands behind heads in a classic hostage pose. Dane was relieved to see that his friends had suffered nothing more than wounded pride.

Bones shook his head ruefully.
“Come on, Professor, I thought you were the responsible one. I specifically said no parties while we’re gone. You put him up to this, didn’t you Willis?”

“Very amusing,” remarked one of the gunmen.

The speaker
was, Dane noted, one of the men that had accompanied them up from the dive platform. The man was tall and broad, and carried himself confidently. He didn’t have a discernible accent, which meant he was probably American, and given his professional comportment, Dane figured him for former military, probably Special Forces, now working as a mercenary. Crime was of course an equal opportunity career path, but Dane’s instincts told him that this wasn’t merely a hijacking.

“What do you men want?” he asked, trying to put a little quaver in his voice.

“You found the ship, right?”

Dane sensed it wasn’t really a question.

“Wow, straight to it,” Bones said with a disappointed sigh. “No foreplay.”

No kidding
, thought Dane.
The ship
. These men definitely knew who the SEALs were and what they were looking for.

The gunman nearest to Bones lashed out with
his foot, catching Bones behind his left knee. As Bones folded onto the deck, a pistol swiped across the back of his head. A trickle of red appeared from beneath Bones’ dark hair and spattered on the deck. Dane knew from experience that it took a lot more than that to put Bones down, but to his credit, the tall Indian suppressed his instinct to fight.

“How do you like that for foreplay?” snarled the gunman, jamming the muzzle of his pistol against Bones’ neck for added emphasis.

“The ship,” repeated the leader.

There was nothing to be gained by playing coy.
“It’s the wrong one,” Dane confessed. “You guys should have given us a little more time to look. There’s a wreck down there, but it’s not the
Awa Maru
.”

The leader
stared at him for a moment, his expression mostly hidden behind his mask, and then burst out laughing. “Maddock you poor dupe. Is that what they told you to look for?”

Dane was more surprised by the reaction
, and the fact that the man knew his name, than by the simple fact of the assault team’s presence. Up until that moment, he had suspected that this was might be a group of treasure hunters trying to frighten off a rival. Or perhaps that there had been a leak in the SECNAV’s office, alerting some outside interest or perhaps even a foreign power, to their clandestine search.

N
ow he saw everything differently.

There was a leak, and it wasn’
t merely a case of loose lips sinking ships. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. The SECNAV had lied to Maxie, sent them out armed with bad intel. The
Awa Maru
story was completely bogus; the ship below
was
the ship they had been meant to find, and the reason for the search had nothing to do with recovering war treasure or appeasing China.

“You seem to know more about this than we do,” Dane ventured.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten us. Maybe start with just who the hell you actually are.”

“
You can call me ‘Scalpel’.”

Bones made a choking sound t
hat Dane recognized as an attempt—not a very good one—to stifle laughter.

“Something funny?” Scalpel snapped.

“No, I was just thinking I should set you up with my cousin, Surgical Mask.”

Scalpel ignored him.
“Just answer my question. You found a ship, right? A Japanese ocean liner?”

Dane nodded slowly.
“I think they were using it to transport POWs.”

“Any remains?”

Dane nodded again.

The eyes behind the balaclava studied him for a long moment.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go back down there and find something for me. We’ll stay up here with your friends, and as long as you’re cooperative, everyone will walk away when I have what I’m looking for.”

Dane’s first impulse was tell Scalpel
exactly where he could stick his instructions, but decided that wouldn’t improve the situation; his second was to feign cooperation in order to buy time. Scalpel’s demand was patently absurd, and bespoke an unfamiliarity with the difficulties inherent in deep diving and marine salvage. That was something he could use to his advantage, but he would have to tread very carefully. “I don’t know what it is you expect me to find down there, but you do understand that at that depth, max time on the bottom is about twenty minutes. Last time, we didn’t do much more than look in the windows.”

“
Are you saying you can’t do it?” There was a dangerous edge to Scalpel’s voice.

Dane held his
hands up in a placating gesture. “Just tell me what you’re looking for.”

He sensed that the man was smiling behind his mask.
“There was a very special passenger aboard that ship. I want you to find him.”

“There were hundreds of skeletons.”

“I think you’ll recognize Lord Hancock when you see him.”

“Is he related to Graham Hancock?” Bones interjected. “You know, the dude with all the theories about aliens and ancient civilizations?”

“Keep that up and I’m going to shoot you in the head just to shut you up,” Scalpel said. He turned back to Dane. “Lord Hancock has a metal plate in his skull.” The man tapped the side of his head, just above his right ear. “Right here.”

Dane a
ccepted this with another nod then gestured toward Bones. “He can’t dive with that cut. There are sharks down there.”

Scalpel
shook his head. “Just you. The rest of your crew will stay here to insure your cooperation.”

“I can’t dive alone.
It’s not safe.”

“Oh, I’m not letting you out of my sight.
I’ll be going down with you.”

Dane hung his head, as if in weary resignation,
but managed to shoot a meaningful look in Bones’ direction. Bones met his gaze and winked.

The shark still circled
lazily as Dane descended along the anchor line half an hour later. Scalpel, now wearing the wetsuit and equipment that had originally been purchased for Willis Sanders, was just a few feet behind him. Dane’s new diving partner carried a harpoon gun, but Dane didn’t have so much as a knife; his had been confiscated as soon as he and Bones had returned from the first dive, and Scalpel did not seem inclined to let him have it back. That was fine with Dane; let the other guy worry about the local wildlife. He was focused on the task at hand.

It took only a few m
inutes to reach the bottom. This time Dane didn’t pause to take in the scenery, but swam directly toward the dark opening on the main deck. He glanced back just once, verifying that Scalpel was right behind him, and then pulled himself through the doorway.

On the swim down, h
e had rehearsed this moment in his head a dozen times, recognizing that there would be only this one opportunity to act and no second chances. As soon as he was through, he switched off his light and pulled to one side, pressing his body tight against the bulkhead. For a moment, he was in total darkness, but then a rectangle of illumination appeared above him as Scalpel shone his light through the opening.

Dane didn’t hesitate
. When Scalpel poked his head through, Dane struck like a viper, tearing at the other man’s mask and regulator. A cloud of bubbles enveloped them both, momentarily obscuring Dane’s field of view, but he fumbled blindly until his fingers closed around his foe’s equipment harness. He hauled the struggling man through the doorway.

Amid the oddly muted sounds of the struggle, Dane heard a loud snap and felt somethi
ng brush his arm. It was the trident-tipped harpoon from a spear gun. He ignored the dull throb of pain that followed and continued grappling with Scalpel, tearing at loose equipment and doing everything he could to keep the man from finding his air supply. One hand found the familiar knurled grip of a dive knife, sheathed and strapped to Scalpel’s calf. He ripped it free and stabbed it into the yellow flotation bladder of his foe’s buoyancy compensator.

Through another rush of bubbles,
Dane saw the dark silhouette of the other diver struggling ineffectually as he settled toward the tangle of skeletons below. Dane didn’t linger to assess the results of his attack but hauled himself through the opening and began kicking furiously away from the wreck.

In his haste to put some distance between himself and Scalpel, Dan
e blew through the first two of his decompression stops. He’d spent only a few minutes at depth, so the danger was probably minimal, but he added a few extra seconds to each of the remaining stops. The time passed by quickly. There was no sign of the other diver, and if by some miracle Scalpel had survived, the chance of him actually catching up to Dane was just about nil, unless of course the mercenary was willing to risk a debilitating bout of decompression sickness.

It was
only when Dane was halfway to the surface and saw a dark shadow moving in the green expanse overhead that he remembered being hit by the harpoon. Sure enough, there was a hole in the neoprene of his wetsuit, and beneath it, a stripe of red. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was nevertheless an open wound, leaking blood into the water. He tugged his wetsuit sleeve up to cover the cut and swam up another ten feet to the next decompression stop.

The shadow turned his way; the tiger
shark had smelled his blood.

The shark’s movements were hypnotic and as it circled closer, Dane had to force himself to look away long enough to check other avenues of approach; if there was one shark, there might be others.

As he moved up another ten feet, the tiger made its move.

It
was big, easily fifteen feet, which probably explained why there weren’t any of its relatives in the neighborhood. Its jaws gaped wide, and Dane found himself staring into a maw that was almost big enough to swallow him whole. He twisted out of the way at the last instant, felt the beast’s rough skin scrape against him, the solid muscular body underneath striking him like a full body tackle. The blow shuddered through him, driving his breath out along with his regulator. His mask was knocked askew and cold water splashed into his eyes, blurring his vision, and despite all his training and experience, Dane felt a rush of primal panic.

He slashed the knife back and forth blindly, encoun
tered nothing. He could imagine the shark just hanging back, waiting for him to wear out or drown.

Calm down, damn it.
Focus. You need to see. You need to breathe.

He straightened his mask, blowing through his nostrils to clear the water, and
even as he pressed it tight to his face to seal out the salt water, he began looking around, frantic to locate the monstrous predator.

The shark was gone.

He didn’t question this bit of good fortune, but instead found his regulator and jammed it between his teeth. After several calming breaths, during which time he kept a constant lookout for the tiger, he resumed his ascent.

He soon located the outline of the
Jacinta
, and subsequently found its anchor line which he followed back to the surface. After his final decompression stop, he shrugged out of his equipment harness and after taking one last deep breath, allowed the nearly spent tanks to sink into the depths. He swam up the remaining length of cable, breaking the surface an arm’s length from the
Jacinta
’s overhanging bow.