A Thousand Suns

Chapter 8 The Second Dive

They descended along the buoy’s rope in silence, the last flickering rays from the trawler’s floodlight quickly dwindling to nothing. Once again, at about fifty feet down, their torches picked out the wing tip of the B-17.

‘There’s Medusa. You beautiful thing, you,’ said Chris. This time around he didn’t want to waste any precious dive-time — straight inside was what he wanted; straight inside, hopefully to find something, or perhaps the remains of someone. Either way, he was almost certain he’d stumble across a find of some sort in the next half an hour.

Mark pointed his torch towards the front of the plane. ‘Let’s not hang about, then. You want to make straight for the cockpit, right? I’ll go in first this time, okay?’

‘Thanks. You can shoo out any critters in there for me.’

‘And like I said to you this morning, this time we’re staying together. Okay?’

‘You’re the boss, Mark.’

Mark swam towards the cockpit and Chris followed him down to the seabed beside the nose of the bomber. He shone his torch at the open belly hatch. ‘Right, Chris, gently does it this time. Okay?’

Chris nodded as he floated beside him.

The big American stuck his head up through the hatch into the observation blister and shone his torch round before pulling himself in carefully.

‘Okay. No eels in here. I’m going up the ladder into the cockpit.’

He moved slowly up the short ladder, feeling the edges of the hatchway catch on his air cylinder. He backed down, leaned forward and rose again slowly, listening unhappily to the gentle metallic scraping sound of the cylinder on the hatchway as he pulled himself up inside the cockpit.

He shone his torch around, coming to rest eventually on the body.

‘I’m in the cockpit, no eels here either,’ said Mark. ‘You can come up.’

‘Roger that.’

‘I’m going to move to the back of the cockpit to the doorway, there should be room for you to enter. Be careful on that hatch from the observation bit into the cockpit, it’s much tighter than the first hatch.’

Chris pulled a face, remembering the damage he’d done to Mark’s equipment.

‘I’ll go slowly. Promise.’

Chris eased himself up inside the plane with extra care this time, and then climbed the ladder and squeezed tentatively through the even tighter hatchway into the cockpit.

Mark was waiting beside the bulkhead leading back into the fuselage. ‘Hi there.’

Chris nervously shone his torch down through the opening, half expecting a rerun of his ghostly hallucination. The beam of light picked out the navigator’s desk and the bomb bay.

He then turned his torch on the body. ‘Okay, I want to make sure this guy wasn’t just a souvenir-wearing Yank, sorry, no disrespect, Mark.’ He reached out and peeled back the leather of the flying jacket. It tore like tissue paper and a cloud of soft debris billowed out.

‘Gross,’ said Mark, curling his lip in disgust.

The debris took its time to settle. Chris stared at the tattered shreds of the dark tunic beneath. The silver eagle on the right of the tunic was remarkably untarnished thanks to the leather that had been covering it for the last sixty years.

‘Okay, he’s either a German or he’s someone who took souvenir-wearing a little too far.’ Chris took a couple of shots of the exposed remains of the Luftwaffe tunic.

‘Seems like you really have got a genuine story on your hands,’ said Mark.

‘Let’s go in further. Somewhere back there we’ll find the story, the reason why this plane’s here.’

‘I’ll take point again.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Chris with a jittery, anxious grin.

Mark pulled himself through the bulkhead with an agility that reminded Chris of this man’s impressive experience in wreck diving. He followed through behind him, flippers clumsily disturbing a cloud of silt from the floor.

‘Go easy on the flipper action, Chris. There’s over half a century of undisturbed sediment sitting on every surface in here.’ He was right of course. The less motion they produced, the less time they’d waste waiting for it all to settle.

Mark panned his torch around the navigation booth. The beam picked out a small desk. He reached out a hand and very gently swept the silt off a corner of it. It billowed up into a small mushroom cloud that took a dozen seconds to settle to the floor.

‘See how I did that? If you sweep it off gently it settles down really quickly.’

‘Gotcha.’

Mark looked down at the corner of the surface he’d exposed.

‘There’s a map here.’

Chris glided over. He reached out to sweep away some more of the silt.

‘Gently… if that’s paper it’ll shred with the slightest touch. Here, let me.’

Mark lightly wafted his hand above the surface of the table. The sediment began to rise into a cloud. He stopped moving, and gradually it settled elsewhere, revealing a large section of the map detailing the coastline of New York State.

Chris looked up from the map. ‘They were heading for New York… or on their way back from a trip there?’

‘Jeeez.’

‘Mind your eyes.’ The camera flashed brilliantly as he took a couple of shots. ‘Do you know the story of Rudolf Hess?’

Mark shook his head. ‘No. A Nazi, I guess.’

‘Yes, a pretty senior one. I forget when it was, sometime after they’d kicked our arses out of France, near the beginning of the war… but this guy sneaked over to Scotland without Adolf’s permission to negotiate a peace deal with Churchill. He came over by plane.’

‘You think we might find the body of some other high-ranking Nazi, uh? Doing the same thing? Doing a Hess?’

Chris smiled. ‘Be one helluva great story, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t forget your old buddy when you’re rich and famous.’

‘Mark, if this turns out to be half the earner I think it’s going to be, then trust me, I’ll put a smile on your face too. Shall we press on?’

Mark checked his watch. ‘Yeah, we should. We need to be making for the surface in twenty minutes.’

Chris led the way. The space narrowed ahead as they passed through empty bomb racks on either side of a narrow walkway above an open space below.

Chris pointed down at it. ‘Bomb bay.’

‘Wow, there’s space for a lot of bombs on these racks,’ said Mark.

‘Yup. They carried a pretty impressive amount of ordnance.’

Chris shone his torch down into the open bomb bay. He could see past what looked like an immersion heater through the open hatch to the sea floor. The outer bomb bay hatch must have been open when she ditched, or perhaps ripped off by the sea on impact.

That’s an interesting shot.

It was a nice twist on the classic ‘bombs away’ image he’d seen in countless World War Two documentaries. The only world visible through the frame of the bomb bay was the sea floor. It was what Chris considered a concept shot; it summed things up nicely.

‘Mind your eyes.’ He took a couple more pictures.

They pressed on, making slow progress between the racks as their equipment frequently snagged and scraped on the metal spars. Mark looked anxiously at the racks. This kind of environment could trap a diver easily, especially with reduced visibility. He decided to reduce the dive time by five minutes to allow them some additional contingency. If they overran for whatever reason and had to come back through these racks in a hurry it would be inviting trouble, especially with Chris being so inexperienced at wreck diving and so easily disorientated, as the other night’s episode in the cockpit had clearly demonstrated.

Disorientated? Scared shitless more like.

Mark had been involved with a team of marine archaeologists who had discovered a U-boat off the coast of Gibraltar. It had attracted a lot of experienced divers with a passion for World War Two wrecks, and he’d been on site as a safety watchdog. One father-and-son team had pushed deeper into the sub than they should have and not allowed themselves a safety margin of air. They’d managed to kick up a lot of debris and lost their way in a blizzard of sediment and flakes of rust. The more they panicked the worse it had got. Mark pulled them out several hours later, quite dead. He had found them with the father’s regulator still in the boy’s mouth. The boy’s air must have run out first and the father had sacrificed his life to buy the lad a few more minutes.

On the far side, the plane opened up again and they came across the waist-gun ports.

Mark shone his torch down at the cabin floor. ‘Jesus, look at that.’

Mottled green cylinders the size of cotton reels littered the floor.

‘Spent shell cases. You see how many there are? This plane saw some pretty heavy action on the way over.’

‘The plot thickens, eh?’ said Mark.

‘Yup. Eyes.’

Mark closed his eyes as Chris’s flash popped with the succession of half a dozen shots. He stopped for a moment and looked up at Mark. ‘Here’s a question for you. Who was this plane fighting on the way over?’

‘Americans?’ ventured Mark.

‘Or Germans?’

‘Germans?’

‘Yeah. Maybe there was some rocket scientist looking to come over to join you guys and the Nazis didn’t want you to have him. How’s that for a story?’

‘I think you’re reaching.’

‘Okay, so I’m just getting a little excited here.’

‘Shall we continue, Chris? I give us nine minutes, and we’ll have to squeeze back through those racks again on the way out.’

‘Yup, let’s go on.’

Both men began to head further down the plane when they picked out a second body on the floor of the cabin. It was completely buried by the silt, but the recognisable contour of a prone body was unmistakable. Chris swam closer and gently brushed some of the sediment away exposing another skeletal face.

‘Well?’

Chris looked up. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Very funny.’

He waited for the cloud of mud to settle before brushing away some more to expose the body’s clothes. Chris saw the faded yellow oak leaves on the collar.

He aimed his camera. ‘Another Luftwaffe guy. Eyes.’ The flash popped several times. Mark pulled himself over to look at the body.

‘Two guys only so far. I thought these big planes had big crews?’

‘Well, they did, about nine or ten I think. But you could get somewhere with just two, a pilot and a navigator.’

‘You think there were any more? Maybe some escaped from the plane when it ditched.’

‘Possibly,’ Chris answered, recalling McGuire’s story about the body on the beach.

Mark checked his watch. ‘We should quickly check the rest of the plane then start heading back out.’

Chris nodded. ‘Fine, let’s do it.’

They glided up to the tail-end of the bomber, briefly investigating the belly-gun hatch and the tail-gun. There appeared to be no other bodies aboard the plane.

Mark announced they had to start heading out, and Chris was happy to agree. He patted his camera, convinced that there was a big story sitting comfortably on the roll of film nestled inside it. What exactly the story was he had no idea. It looked like it was going to take some unravelling, and he wondered whether one place to start would be with this young lad and his father who supposedly vanished after the discovery of that body on the beach.