A Thousand Suns

Chapter 4 The Wreck

The reinforced-plastic diving helmet felt infinitely less claustrophobic and uncomfortable than a regular diving mask and regulator. They were Mark’s latest equipment purchase, his pride and joy.

It’s like being an astronaut, going EVA.

Chris looked around. He was immersed in total darkness. Above him there were only a couple of flickering shards of light from the trawler. Suddenly a strong blue shaft of light cut the world in two in front of him as Mark aimed his torch upwards.

‘You might want to turn your torch on,’ Mark’s voice hissed out of the speaker. Chris fumbled for the switch on his torch and found it.

‘Whoa, that’s bright,’ he said, panning it around, admiring the power and length of the light beam.

‘Two-hundred-watt halogen bulbs,’ said Mark proudly. ‘Only got about forty minutes charge time on the battery pack, though.’

Mark shone his torch at the buoy’s line.

‘Okay. We’re going to follow that down.’ He kicked his legs out and began to swim down, holding the line in one hand and torch in the other. Chris followed suit, keeping an eye on the dwindling beam of Mark’s torch below.

‘Not so fast, mate,’ he said with an edge in his voice. ‘You’re leaving me behind.’

‘Relax, I’m just down here. You can see my torch, can’t you?’

‘Yup.’

Chris kicked his legs and pulled himself down the buoy’s line. Mark was waiting for him, treading water.

‘See? I’m here. Stay calm, okay? Things go wrong only when you lose your cool and start getting worked up. We’ve got half an hour, remember. So we haven’t got a lot of time.’ He checked his depth gauge. They were thirty feet down. ‘It’s seventy-five feet down, you said? We should see it soon.’

Mark resumed swimming downward with slow strong strokes. Chris followed, struggling to keep up and breathing harshly with the exertion. For a few moments all that he could hear over the helmet speaker was the even, relaxed, rhythmic breathing of his partner. It was strangely soothing, like a heartbeat or the ticking of a clock.

‘Ahh here we go… I think I see something down there.’

Chris pushed hard with his legs and a moment later he was floating alongside Mark. Below, their two torch beams picked out the unmistakable oval silhouette of a wing tip. The beams worked their way along the wing, passing over the bulge of an engine casing, then another, and finally coming to rest on the cylindrical form of the plane’s fuselage.

Chris turned to Mark. ‘Bingo.’

They swam down the last few feet and settled with a gentle bump on the wing. Chris reached out and ran a hand along its surface. Only a slippery coat of algae covered the sheet metal. It belied the years underwater. His fingers danced over rivets that had experienced only a small amount of corrosion.

‘Isn’t it bloody beautiful?’

‘Amazing. This is a big plane,’ said Mark.

‘It’s a B-17, nicknamed the Flying Fortress. Looks in fantastic shape.’

Mark studied the ghostly grey giant. ‘Yup, it is. But then it’s a cold, low-salt water environment.’

‘No, I don’t mean corrosion, or marine growth. I mean there’s hardly any impact damage. It’s like it was just gently placed here.’

Chris pulled out his camera and took a couple of shots. The flash on the camera flickered like a strobe. He swam along the wing towards the inner port engine.

‘Look at that.’ He gestured towards the propeller.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘The propeller blades are intact. Do you know what that means?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘It means this particular propeller wasn’t spinning when she touched down on the ocean. If it had been the blades would be bent to buggery.’

‘Oh.’ Mark watched as Chris photographed the engine and the prop. He checked his watch; they had been down five minutes. Twenty-five left.

Chris swam back to the fuselage and slowly drifted down the side towards the rear. His torch eventually picked out the barrel and small opening of the portside waist-gun.

‘Come and look at this!’

Mark followed the glaring beam of Chris’s torch and found himself staring at a long line of bullet holes that ran diagonally up the fuselage side towards the waist-gun’s porthole.

‘Looks like she’s seen some action. Maybe that’s why she ditched?’

Chris shook his head. ‘That would make some sense off the coast of France or England.’ He looked at Mark. ‘But off the coast of Rhode Island?’

Chris took a couple of shots of the bullet holes and the waist-gun and then pulled himself closer to the opening and shone his torch inside it. He could see little past the corroded barrel of the old machine gun.

‘I want to find a way in.’

Mark looked at his watch. ‘We’ve used six minutes. Twenty-four left. If we find a way inside, we give ourselves a clear ten minutes to find our way out. Okay? That means you get fourteen minutes from now to do all the inside stuff you want, and that’s all.’

‘Okay, Mom. Listen… you work your way to the back of the plane and I’ll work my way to the front. There’s bound to be some hatch we can prise open to get a look inside.’

‘No way. I’m not leaving you on your own. You’re paying me to—’

‘Mark, I appreciate you’re looking out for me, but time is limited, I’ve got to get a shot inside… okay?’

Mark wasn’t convinced.

‘Please, I promise I won’t go inside without you, we’re just looking for a way in, that’s all.’

‘You’ll be okay, if we lose visual?’

‘Yeah… I’m getting braver.’

‘That’s what’s worrying me.’

Mark headed aft, one hand dragging along the rough metal of the fuselage for guidance, the other panning his torch up and down in search of an opening. Chris headed the other way, towards the front of the plane.

It didn’t take him long before he came across the plexiglas canopy of the cockpit. He shone his torch across the panels hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside, but they too were coated in a thin layer of algae.

Swimming down, he found the front end of the plane was raised enough to swim underneath her belly. And then he found what he was looking for.

‘Mark! I’ve found a way in.’

‘What have you got?’

‘It’s a hatch leading up into the cockpit. It’s open. I’m going to stick my head up inside.’

‘Be careful! I don’t want you knocking that equipment, or even worse, puncturing your tank. No squeezing through anything, okay?’

‘Okay… okay, no squeezing.’

Chris shone his torch up through the belly hatch into what looked like the bomb-aimer’s observation blister. The torch beam slid across the plexiglas panels and metal struts of the canopy, throwing them into sharp relief and sending phantom shadows dancing across the confined space. He could see a short ladder leading up from the blister into another area above.

The cockpit?

Chris studied the width of the hatch and decided it was wide enough to climb through. With a tug on the hatch rim he pulled himself up. His helmet thudded noisily against a cross strut inside. ‘Shit!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

‘I’m fzffzfing forward.’ Mark’s transmission crackled. Chris silently mouthed a curse. He must have given the radio a knock. There’d be a lecture coming his way when they went topside, and Mark discovered the damage.

Great.

He shone his torch down inside the fuselage. There was a bulkhead six feet back and a narrow doorway. The light picked out a cloud of floating debris hanging in the space between the blister and the bulkhead. Shreds of paper, a pair of headphones, several life jackets.

‘Some of this stuff looks like it could have been left here a couple of days ago.’

‘Yeah? I’ll be ther… a second.’ Mark’s signal was getting worse.

Chris took another couple of shots and then reached out for the short ladder leading up to what he guessed must be the cockpit. He studied the size of the opening, it was narrower, but still just wide enough to get through. Chris, much more carefully this time, pulled himself up through the opening. He heard his air cylinder scrape noisily against the edge of the hatchway and cringed at the thought of the scratches it would leave.

Mark was going to kill him.

He shone his torch around inside the cockpit. There was a lot less space than he’d imagined, and he found himself bumping and scraping on all sides. His torch panned up and across the co-pilot’s seat.

He lurched backwards. ‘Oh Jesus!’

‘What… it?’ he heard Mark call.

He took a few deep breaths to steady himself and then trained his torch back on the seat.

‘I… uh… think I’ve found one of the crew,’ he said pulling himself closer to get a better look.

The skeletal remains, long since stripped of soft organic material save for a few fibrous strands, seemed to be held together and in place by the body’s clothes and the seat’s harness. It was all there, a complete human form except for one of its hands. Chris spotted a leather flying glove on the cockpit floor. He picked it up delicately by a fingertip and a cloud of organic mush floated gently out, followed by a cluster of small white bones that see-sawed down through the water and settled on the grey, silt-covered floor.

It looked like the remains of a KFC dinner. Chris felt his stomach churn ever so slightly at that thought.

He heard his helmet speaker crackle. ‘… found?’

Chris tapped the radio casing with his torch. It crackled and hissed in response.

‘Mark? Can you hear me? I’ve found one of the crew.’

‘Jeeeez, glad you found him and not me.’ Mark was coming through clearly now.

Must be a loose wire, then.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘He’s not a pretty boy. I’m going to grab a couple of shots.’

‘Okay. I’m coming up over the other side of the fuselage. I can’t see any tears or breaks or any way to get in. How do I… in up there?’

‘Hatchway right under the nose.’

‘Okay, see… in a second.’ The signal was breaking up again.

Chris continued to study the corpse. He was amazed at how intact the clothing and equipment was. The only concession to sixty years of undisturbed submersion was a thin coat of grey sediment that seemed to have settled on everything. The leather flying cap still rested dutifully on the body’s skull, a solitary tuft of pale blond hair poking out from beneath it, and its radio mouthpiece dangled from the end of a short length of coiled rubber flex beside the lower jaw of the skull. The jawbone had at some point fallen away and now rested on the collar of the thick, fur-lined flying jacket.

Chris reached out slowly for the jawbone, careful not to disturb too much of the sediment. He lifted it up and placed it back as it should be and then pulled the radio mouthpiece in underneath to hold it in place.

He felt a passing twinge of guilt for messing with the body. But, it did make for a better picture, having the skull and jaw reunited again. Without the jaw it simply wasn’t a face. Chris had learned from freelancing in several war zones in the last ten years that you needed to have a face in the shot when photographing a body. People always look for it, look for an expression on it. Perhaps as a way of understanding what death must be like, what emotion is drawn at the moment it occurs.

Without a face, a body is just a bundle of clothes.

Chris unhooked his camera and aimed it at the long-dead pilot.

‘Say cheese.’ The flashlight of the camera strobed again as he hit off a few shots.

He heard Mark’s voice. ‘I can li… out seeing the…’ The popping and whistling on the helmet speaker was driving him mad. He tapped the radio housing.

‘What’s that, Mark? Your signal’s breaking up again.’

He tapped it again, this time much harder, hoping his big-mallet repair philosophy would deliver the goods. The low-frequency, almost inaudible buzzing that had been constant since locking the helmet down and turning on the speaker suddenly stopped. The only sound he could hear now was his own breathing reverberating inside the plastic bowl of the helmet.

‘Mark? Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

It’s not just a loose wire now, you muppet; you’ve broken the bloody thing.

Mark was going to be pissed at him for that. He decided he’d offer the guy money to replace it. He could afford it.

He turned back towards the body of the co-pilot and took a few more shots. The camera flash strobed again, throwing a blinding white light at its fleshless face. He half expected the skeleton to angrily reach out with its one remaining hand and snatch the camera from him.

Professional guilt. Ignore it and finish the job.

Movement.

An eel shot out through the opening in the bulkhead; a silvery streak headed straight towards his face and thumped against the glass plate of his helmet. Chris, startled, dropped both the camera and his torch. The torch landed face down in the silt. The light inside the cockpit was suddenly gone, leaving it in absolute darkness. He could sense the eel thrashing around in the cockpit with him, disturbed currents of water, disturbed sediment floating once again.

‘Shitshitshitshitshit!’

Chris felt himself beginning to panic. The damn thing was going crazy. He felt its long and strong body bump against him several times, each time anticipating the needle-sharp teeth slicing through the neoprene of his dry suit and into his flesh. It passed between his legs, and then with no warning he felt it clunk against the glass of his helmet again.

A hard clunk, not a soft thump. That was the sound of a tooth hitting the glass.

And then suddenly it was gone.

Chris could feel the water around him quickly growing still once more. He waited for the eel to return, to renew its attack on him. Seconds passed.

It was gone.

He bent down carefully and let his hands fumble along the floor, desperately seeking the torch.

‘Mark? I’m in trouble. Mark?’ He heard his voice beginning to break. It scared him even more.

In absolute darkness, in this cockpit with a ridged floor and all manner of debris and silt sitting on it, he was not going to find his torch by touch. That simply wasn’t going to happen.

‘Oh shitshitshit,’ Chris found himself muttering.

Mark’s coming, should be here any second. For fuck’s sake calm down.

A faint light turned the world outside the plexiglas cockpit from black to a deep blue. It flickered brighter and darker, but over time it was growing steadily stronger.

Chris sucked in a big breath and puffed out a sigh of relief.

He saw a dark form through the algae-fogged glass of the cockpit. It was treading water outside. No doubt Mark was calling for him on the radio and probably getting worried that he wasn’t receiving an answer.

Chris found himself smiling with relief. The cavalry was here.

Bless you, Mark.

He could see Mark’s foggy form moving across the cockpit plexiglas, the torch came up and he shone it into the cockpit. The bright halogen beam shone into his face. Chris gestured for Mark to aim it down to the floor of the cockpit, hoping he would be seen through the thin film of scum on the plexiglas.

The beam changed direction and tilted downwards.

Immediately Chris could see the outline of his torch and the camera. He reached down and picked them both up.

But his eye was drawn to movement ahead of him.

The light from Mark’s torch shone through the bulkhead into the radio operator’s booth and beyond down the inside of the fuselage to the waist-gun stations. Manning these positions, silently looking through their gun sights, stood two ghostly young men in flying leathers. They remained motionless, squinting into the darkness, awaiting the inevitable swarm of enemy fighters.

My God!

One of them turns towards Chris as if finally aware that he is being watched. He nods.

And that was the last thing he clearly recalled. The rest was a jumble, Mark entering the cabin and pulling him out, the slow ascent, the short pause for decompression halfway up… and him babbling away to Mark about ghosts in the machine.

Will begrudgingly handed him a mug of coffee. ‘There you are. This’ll help.’

Chris took it gratefully and held it in both hands, savouring the warmth seeping through the chipped enamel to his fingers. ‘Thanks.’

Mark was already out of his dry suit and back in his clothes and starting to pack away the diving helmet. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he said.

‘Like a bloody moron,’ replied Chris.

‘You were saying all kinds of strange stuff coming up.’

‘Yup, rambling like a fool no doubt.’

Mark smiled. ‘Kind of.’

‘Nitrogen narcosis… I know, I know.’

‘Yeah. You were all over the place when I pulled you out. What got you so worked up?’

Chris looked guiltily at Will. ‘I was taking some shots in the cockpit and I guess the flash must’ve spooked an eel or something similar. It knocked me for six on the way out. I lost the torch and the camera, and I suppose that’s when I started losing it.’

‘Yes, you sure did. You gave me a pretty nasty scare back there.’

‘I was sitting in the dark, no radio contact. I lost it… you know, panicked.’ Chris shook his head, angry with himself.

‘Don’t beat yourself up over it.’

He looked up at Mark. ‘Thanks for coming in and getting me. That was nasty back there, it really shook me up.’

‘No sweat. Diving on wrecks, those confined spaces… shit like this happens. It’s easy to get rattled when you’re boxed in.’

Will was ready to start up the engine and take the Mona Lisa back to Port Lawrence. ‘You Boy Scouts done for the night?’

Mark answered before Chris could get a word in. ‘Yeah… No more diving for us tonight.’