The Pharaoh's Secret (4 page)

As the surviving criminals fled, the steel deck beneath the tank began to soften and buckle. Within several minutes, the deck became weak enough that one end of the heavy cylinder fell partway through. The tank was now held up at an odd angle and the jet of flame was redirected along its side. From this point, it was only a matter of time.

For twenty minutes, the burning ship continued west, a traveling fireball that could be seen for miles. Shortly before dawn, it hit a reef. It was only a half a mile off the coast of Lampedusa.

Early risers on the island came out to see the blaze and take pictures. As they watched the propane tank rupture, fifteen thousand gallons of the pressurized fuel burst forth and a blinding explosion lit up the horizon, brighter than the rising sun.

When the flash subsided, the bow of the M.V.
Torino
was gone, the hull split open like a tin can. Above it, a dark cloud of mist drifted toward the island, hanging on the breeze like rainfall that never quite reaches the ground.

Seabirds began dropping from the sky, hitting the water with tiny splashes and thumping the sand with dull thuds.

The men and women who'd come out to watch the spectacle raced for cover, but the outstretched tentacles of the drifting fog quickly overtook them and they fell in their tracks as they ran, crashing to ground as suddenly as the gulls had fallen from the sky.

Pushed by the wind, the Black Mist swept along the island and off to the west. It left behind only silence and a landscape littered with unmoving bodies.

Mediterranean Sea, seventeen miles southeast of Lampedusa Island

A shadowy figure drifted toward the seafloor in a leisurely, controlled descent. Seen from below, the diver looked more like a messenger descending from the heavens than a man. His shape was enhanced by twin scuba tanks, a bulky harness and a propulsion unit strapped to his back that came complete with a stubby set of wings. Adding to the image was a halo of illumination from two shoulder-mounted lights that cast their yellow beams into the darkness.

Reaching a hundred-foot depth and close to the seafloor, he could easily make out a circle of light on the bottom. Within it, a group of orange-clad divers were busy excavating a discovery that would add to the epic history of the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

He touched down, approximately fifty feet from the lighted work zone, and tapped the intercom switch on his right arm.

“This is Austin,” he said into the helmet-mounted microphone. “I'm on the bottom and proceeding toward the excavation.”

“Roger that,” a slightly distorted voice replied in his ear. “Zavala and Woodson are awaiting your arrival.”

Kurt Austin powered up the propulsion unit, lifted gently off the bottom and moved toward the excavation. Though most of the divers wore standard dry suits, Kurt and two others were testing out the new improved hard suits, which maintained a constant pressure and allowed them to dive and surface without the need for decompression stops.

So far, Kurt found the suit easy to use and comfortable. Not surprising, it was also a little bulky. As he reached the lighted zone, Kurt passed a tripod mounted with an underwater floodlight. Similar lights were set up all around the perimeter of the work zone. They were connected by power cords to a group of windmill-like turbines stacked up a short distance away.

As the current flowed past, it moved the turbine blades and generated electricity to power the lights, allowing the excavation to proceed at a much quicker pace.

Kurt continued on, passing over the stern of the ancient wreck and setting himself down on the far side.

“Look who finally showed up,” a friendly voice said over the helmet intercom.

“You know me,” Kurt replied. “I wait till all the hard work is done, then swoop in and collect the glory.”

The other diver laughed. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Kurt Austin was a first in, last out type who would keep working on a doomed project out of sheer stubbornness
until it somehow came back to life or there was literally no option left to try.

“Where's Zavala?” Kurt asked.

The other diver pointed to a spot farther out, almost in the darkness. “Insists that he's got something important to show you. Probably found an old bottle of gin.”

Kurt nodded, powered up and cruised over to where Joe Zavala was working with another diver named Michelle Woodson. They'd been excavating a section around the bow of the wreck and had placed stiff plastic shields in position to keep the sand and silt from filling in what they'd removed.

Kurt saw Joe straighten slightly and then heard the happy-go-lucky tone of his friend's voice over the intercom system.

“Better look busy,” Joe said. “
El jefe
has come to pay us a visit.”

Technically, that was true. Kurt was the Director of Special Assignments for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a rather unique branch of the federal government that concerned itself with mysteries of the ocean, but Kurt didn't manage like a typical boss. He preferred the team approach, at least until there were tough decisions to be made. Those he took on himself. That, in his mind, was the responsibility of a leader.

As for Joe Zavala, he was more like Kurt's partner in crime than an employee. The two had been getting in and out of one scrape after another for years. In the past year alone, they'd been involved in the discovery of the S.S.
Waratah
, a ship that vanished and was presumed to have sunk in 1909; found themselves trapped in an invasion tunnel under the DMZ between North and South Korea; and stopped a worldwide counterfeiting operation so sophisticated that it used only computers and not a single printing press.

After that, both of them were ready for a vacation. An expedition to find relics on the floor of the Mediterranean sounded like just the tonic.

“I heard you two were slacking off down here,” Kurt joked. “I've come to put a stop to it and dock your wages.”

Joe laughed. “You wouldn't fire a man who was about to pay up on a bet, would you?”

“You? Pay up? That'll be the day.”

Joe pointed to the exposed ribs of the ancient ship. “What did you tell me when we first saw the ground-penetrating sonar scan?”

“I said the wreck was a Carthaginian ship,” Kurt recalled. “And you put your money on it being a Roman galley—which, to my great consternation, has been proven correct by all the artifacts we've recovered.”

“But what if I was only fifty percent right?”

“Then I'd say you're doing better than normal.”

Joe laughed again and turned toward Michelle. “Show him what we've found.”

She waved Kurt over and directed her lights down into the excavated section. There, a long, pointed spike that was the bow ram of the Roman galley was clearly entangled with another type of wood. Where she and Joe had excavated the sand, Kurt could see the broken hull of a second vessel.

“What am I looking at?” Kurt asked.

“That, my friend, is a
corvus,
” Joe said.

The word meant
raven
, and the ancient iron spike looked enough like the sharp beak of a bird that Kurt could imagine where the name had come from.

“In case you forgot your history,” Joe continued, “the Romans were poor sailors. Far outclassed by the Carthaginians. But they were better soldiers and they found a way to turn this to their
advantage: by ramming their enemies, slamming this iron beak into the boat's hull and using a swinging bridge to board their opponent's vessels. With this tactic, they turned every confrontation at sea into a close-quarters battle of hand-to-hand combat.”

“So there are two ships here?”

Joe nodded. “A Roman trireme and a Carthaginian vessel, still held together by the
corvus
. This is a battle scene from two thousand years ago all but frozen in time.”

Kurt marveled at the discovery. “How did they sink like this?”

“The stress of the collision probably cracked their hulls,” Joe guessed. The Romans must have been unable to release the
corvus
as their ships foundered. They went down arm in arm, linked together for all eternity.”

“Which means we're both right,” Kurt said. “Guess you won't be paying me that dollar after all.”

“A dollar?” This came from Michelle. “You two have been going on and on about this bet for a month all over one measly dollar?”

“It's really more about bragging rights,” Kurt said.

“Plus, he keeps docking my pay,” Joe said. “So that's all I can afford to wager.”

“You're both incorrigible,” she said.

Kurt would have agreed with that statement proudly, but he didn't get the chance because a different voice came through the intercom system and interrupted him.

A readout on the helmet-mounted display confirmed the transmission was coming in from the
Sea Dragon
up on the surface. A little padlocked symbol with his name and Joe's beside it told Kurt the call was being patched through to them only.

“Kurt, this is Gary,” the voice said. “You and Zavala reading me okay?”

Gary Reynolds was the
Sea Dragon
's skipper.

“Loud and clear,” Kurt said. “I see you've got us on a private channel. Is something wrong?”

“Afraid so. We've picked up a distress call. And I'm not sure how to respond.”

“Why is that?” Kurt asked.

“Because the call isn't coming from a vessel,” Reynolds said. “It's coming from Lampedusa.”

“From the island?”

Lampedusa was a small island with a population of five thousand. It was Italian territory, but was actually closer to Libya than to the southern tip of Sicily. The
Sea Dragon
had docked there for one night each week, picking up supplies and refueling, before heading back out to hold station over the wreck site. Even now, there were five members of NUMA onshore, handling the logistics and cataloging the artifacts recovered from the dig.

Joe asked the obvious question: “Why would someone on an island feel the need to broadcast a distress call on a marine channel?”

“No idea,” Reynolds said. “The guys in the radio room were sharp enough to flip on the recorder when they realized what they were hearing. We've listened to it several times. It's a little garbled, but it definitely came from Lampedusa.”

“Can you play it for us?”

“Thought you'd never ask,” Reynolds said. “Stand by.”

After a delay of several seconds, Kurt heard the hum of static and a bit of feedback before a voice could be heard speaking. Kurt couldn't make out the first dozen words or so, but then the signal cleared and the voice became stronger. It was a woman's voice. A woman who sounded calm and yet in great need at the same time.

She spoke in Italian for twenty seconds and then switched to English.

“. . . I say again, this is Dr. Renata Ambrosini . . . We have been attacked . . . Now trapped in the hospital . . . desperately need assistance . . . We are sealed in and our oxygen is running low. Please respond.”

A few seconds of static followed and then the message repeated.

“Any traffic on the emergency bands?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Reynolds said. “But out of an abundance of caution, I put in a call to the logistics team. No one's picking up.”

“That's odd,” Joe said. “Someone is supposed to be manning the radio at all times while we're out here.”

Kurt agreed. “Call someone else,” he suggested to Reynolds. “There's an Italian Coast Guard station in the harbor. See if you can raise the commandant there.”

“Already tried it,” Reynolds said. “Tried the satellite phone too, just in case the radios were being affected by something. In fact, I've dialed every number I can find for Lampedusa, including the local police station and the joint we ordered pizza from the first night we docked there.
No one is answering.
I'm not trying to sound like an alarmist, but for one reason or another that whole island has gone dark.”

Kurt wasn't the type to jump to conclusions, yet the woman had used the word
attack
. “Contact the Italian authorities in Palermo,” he said. “A distress call is a distress call, even if it doesn't come from a ship. Tell them we're going to see what we can do to help.”

“Figured you'd want to go that route,” Reynolds said. “I checked the dive tables. Joe and Michelle can surface with you. Everyone else will have to go in the tank.”

Kurt expected as much. He broke the news to the rest of the
team. They quickly put their tools down, switched off the lights and began a very slow ascent, meeting up with the decompression tank, as it was lowered down on cables, in which they were hauled to the surface in pressurized safety.

Kurt, Joe and Michelle had made their way to the surface in the powered hard suits and Kurt was pulling off his gear when Reynolds gave them more bad news. Not a word had come from Lampedusa. Nor were there any military or Coast Guard units within a hundred miles of the island.

“They're fueling up a couple helicopters out of Sicily, but they won't be airborne for at least thirty minutes. And it's an hour's flying time from Sicily once they're airborne.”

“We could be on the beach, finishing dessert and ordering a nightcap by then,” Joe said.

“Which is why they're asking us to take a look,” Reynolds explained. “Apparently, we're the closest thing to an official government presence in the area. Even if our government is on the other side of the Atlantic.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “For once, we don't have to beg for permission or ignore someone's warning to steer clear.”

“I'll get us pointed in the right direction,” Reynolds said.

Kurt nodded. “And don't spare the horses.”

As the
Sea Dragon
closed in on Lampedusa, the first sign of trouble was a pall of dark, oily smoke rising high above the island. Kurt trained a pair of high-powered binoculars on it.

“What do you see?” Joe asked.

“A ship of some kind,” Kurt said. “Sitting close to the shore.”

“Tanker?”

“Can't tell,” Kurt said. “Too much smoke. What I can see is burnt and twisted metal.” He turned to Reynolds. “Head toward it, let's take a closer look.”

The
Sea Dragon
changed course and smoke above them grew thicker and darker.

“The wind is dragging that smoke right across the island,” Joe noted.

“Wonder what she was carrying,” Kurt said. “If it was something toxic . . .”

He didn't need to finish the statement.

“That doctor said she was trapped and running out of oxygen,” Joe added. “I had visions of the hospital having fallen down around her ears after an explosion or an earthquake, but I'll guess she meant they're hiding from the fumes.”

Kurt took another look through the binoculars. The front of the ship looked as if it had been torn apart by a giant can opener—in fact, it looked like half the ship was gone. The rest of the hull was blackened with soot.

“She must be sitting on the reef,” Kurt said. “Otherwise, she'd have gone down. I can't see a name. Someone put a call into Palermo and let them know what we've found. If they can determine what ship this is, they might be able to figure out what she was carrying.”

“Will do,” Reynolds said.

“And Gary,” Kurt added, lowering the binoculars. “Keep us upwind.”

Reynolds nodded. “You don't have to tell me twice.”

He adjusted their course and reduced speed while they called in the news. When they were five hundred yards from the freighter, a crewman called from the front deck.

“Look at this!” the crewman yelled.

Reynolds chopped the throttle to idle and
Sea Dragon
settled while Kurt stepped out onto the deck. He found the crewman pointing to a half dozen shapes floating in the water. The objects were about fifteen feet in length, roughly torpedo-shaped and colored a dark charcoal gray.

“Pilot whales,” the crewman said, recognizing the species. “Four adults. Two calves.”

“And floating the wrong side up,” Kurt noted. The whales were actually lolling on their sides, surrounded by seaweed, dead fish and squid. “Whatever happened on that island it's affecting the water too.”

“It's got to be that freighter,” someone else said.

Kurt agreed, but he didn't speak. He was busy studying the inanimate cluster of sea life drifting by. He could hear Joe talking to the Italian authorities over the radio, reporting their latest find. He noticed that not all the squid were dead. Some were clinging to each other, wrapping their short little tentacles around the other in a spasmlike embrace.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” the crewman suggested, pulling the top of his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth as if that would stop whatever poison might be floating through the air.

Kurt knew they were fine where they were because they were a quarter mile upwind of the freighter and there wasn't the slightest scent of smoke in the air. Then again, he had the safety of the crew to think about.

He ducked back into the cabin. “Take us out another mile,” he said. “And keep an eye on that smoke. If the wind shifts, we need to be gone before it reaches us.”

Reynolds nodded, bumped the throttle and spun the wheel. As the boat accelerated, Joe put the radio microphone back in its cradle.

“What's the word?”

“I told them what we've found,” Joe said. “Based on AIS data from last night, they're guessing the freighter is the M.V.
Torino
.”

“What's she carrying?”

“Machine parts and textiles, mostly. Nothing dangerous.”

“Textiles, my eye,” Kurt said. “What's the ETA on those helicopters?”

“Two, maybe three hours.”

“What happened to getting airborne in thirty minutes?”

“They took off,” Joe said. “But based on our report, they're returning to Sicily to refuel while a hazardous-materials crew is rounded up.”

“Can't say I blame them,” Kurt replied. Still, his mind was on the fate of the doctor who'd radioed them and the NUMA team members who were still not responding to calls, not to mention the five thousand other men, women and children who lived on Lampedusa. He made a quick decision. The only decision his conscience would allow.

“Let's get the Zodiac ready, I'm going in to look for our friends.”

Reynolds overheard this and responded instantly. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Possibly,” Kurt said. “But if I wait around for three hours to find out whether our people are living or dead, there'll be no doubt I'll end up losing my marbles for sure. Especially if it turns out we could have helped them but sat on our hands instead.”

“I'm with you,” Joe said.

Reynolds shot them a stern gaze. “And how do you propose to not die of whatever it is that apparently affected the rest of the people on that island?”

“We have full-face helmets and plenty of pure oxygen. If we wear them, we should be fine.”

“Some nerve toxins react with the skin,” Reynolds pointed out.

“We have dry suits that are waterproof,” Kurt shot back. “That ought to do the trick.”

“And we can wear gloves and tape up every gap,” Joe added.

“Duct tape?” Reynolds said. “You're going to bet your lives on the integrity of duct tape?”

“Wouldn't be the first time,” Joe admitted. “I used it to tape the wing of an airplane back together once. Although that didn't work out the way we planned.”

“This is serious,” Reynolds said, baffled at what the two seemed intent on doing. “You're talking about risking your lives for nothing. You have no reason to think anyone is even still alive on that island.”

“Not true,” Kurt replied. “I have two reasons. First, we received that radio call, which was obviously made after the event happened. That doctor and several others were alive—at least at that time they were. In a hospital, no less. They mentioned being sealed-off, presumably to keep this toxin from reaching them. Others could have done the same thing. Including our people. Beyond that, some of the squid aren't dead out there. They're flapping around, grabbing onto each other and moving just enough to tell me they're not ready to be thrown onto a barbecue yet.”

“That's pretty thin,” Reynolds said.

It was thick enough for Kurt. “I'm not waiting around out here only to find out there were people we could have helped if we'd have moved sooner.”

Reynolds shook his head. He knew he wasn't going to win this argument. “Okay, fine,” he said. “But what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Keep an ear to the radio and an eye on the pelicans sitting on that buoy,” Kurt said, pointing to a trio of white birds on the channel marker. “If they start to die and drop off into the sea, turn the boat around and get out of here as fast as you can.”