Ark Found

Chapter 9

The crewman gripped the safe handle and tried to pull the door open. After a few futile tries, he looked up at Daedalus. “It’s locked, boss.”

“Of course it’s locked, you idiot. It’s a safe! Drill it open. Now!”

A rush of activity ensued as his crew scrambled to put drilling equipment in place next to the safe. In short order a pair of men appeared carrying a large pneumatic drill and set about preparing it for the job.

“What do you think is in there?” Carter asked. “Do you really need a few more jewels for your collection this badly?”

Daedalus shrugged. “Jewels from the Titanic are not just any old baubles, Mr. Hunt. But I think you know that’s not why I’m here, nor is it why you’re here.” He locked eyes with Carter, as if waiting for him to say something, but Carter was giving nothing away.

“I’m looking for a map. A rather old one, at that,” Daedalus went on.

Carter’s heart sank as he tried to remain unreadable, but Jayden slouched visibly, standing next to him.

“What makes you think a map even exists in one of the Titanic’s safes?”

Daedalus’ reply was delivered in a straightforward, matter-of-fact tone. “Your client, Ms. Ashley Miller, was not very private about her attempts to reach out to the deep diving submersible and Titanic communities regarding the item her great grandfather told her family may still exist in on board.”

At this Carter could only nod. It made sense. While not highly open about it, stopping short of appearing on talk shows and the like, his client did make it known amongst those familiar with deep work submersibles that she wanted a document recovered from the Titanic. Those who inquired further were told about the map. It was only after several failed rounds of meetings and negotiations with some of these people that she finally turned to Carter and his fledgling Omega Team.

“Haven’t you plundered enough of the world’s treasures already?” Carter asked. “Your organization… what’s it called, oh yeah: Treasure, Inc., right?”

“Treasure, Stink!” Jayden contributed.

Carter didn’t wait for a reaction before continuing. “Whatever you call it, your organization steals priceless antiquities and puts a price on them in the black market, robbing the public at large from ever experiencing them, benefiting only the wealthy collectors who buy them illegally.”

Daedalus chuckled softly before speaking. “I will ignore your juvenile assessment of my business for now, since it comes from a place of ignorance. As to my lust for treasure, oh but how I would give up all of my other finds — even the ruins of Atlantis, which you denied me — in exchange for this one… Noah’s Ark. If it is real, its value would be beyond compare.”

The drill started up and the men had to shout in order to carry on the conversation. Carter was glad to have an excuse to add extra intensity to his voice. “And if the map is real, but the ark is not, you could spend your whole life chasing a wild goose.”

“Maybe we should just let him do that,” Jayden said. Daedalus ignored him.

“Such is the nature of our business, Mr. Hunt. That is why I asked you if you were feeling lucky, you see?”

The workers shouted to one another as technical adjustments were made on the drilling. “Obviously I’m not feeling very lucky, Daedalus, or I wouldn’t have come across the likes of you today.”

“Got it, we got it!” came the shout from one of the workers. Daedalus motioned for Carter and Jayden to follow him over to the safe. They all gathered there as the door was swung open, creaking on its hinges. A flashlight was shined in as Daedalus was handed a pair of white latex gloves to put on, presumably to safeguard whatever objects lay inside.

“I see jewelry,” one of the crewmen said.

Daedalus knelt, reached inside the safe and pulled out a handful of gold and silver chains. He placed them into a tray held by a worker and immediately put his hand back in the safe. His hand came out again, this time with a roll of silver coins. Three more times he passed his hand in and out of the safe, each time removing valuables that were already over at least one century old, and incredulous in their own right due to where they were recovered. But his face contorted into a mask of disappointment as he stood and turned away from the safe.

“That’s it. No map or documents of any kind.”

Everyone was silent as they digested this. Jayden was the first to find words. “Gee, I never thought a bunch of people would be so disappointed to bring up a safe full of riches from the Titanic. Am I missing something?”

At this, Daedalus seemed to have reached a breaking point, for he whirled around and yelled at Jayden. “Yes, we are missing something! Stop pretending like you don’t know what it is — both of you,” he added, shifting his gaze to glare at Carter also before continuing. “Never mind. We will check the safe that you brought up now.”

At this, Carter stepped forward. “Now wait a minute, Daedalus! That—”

The leader of Treasure, Inc. nodded to one his men, who promptly produced a sound-suppressed pistol. He leveled the barrel at Carter’s chest. “You will not interfere,” Daedalus said in a low voice. Several of the crew ran back toward the Deep Voyager, while Daedalus’ goon kept the gun trained on Carter and Jayden. Carter mentally kicked himself for being so gullible, for allowing the Treasure, Inc. crew to take them aboard. But his training and experience taught him that to survive, he would need to remain focused on what lay ahead rather than dwell on events that already occurred, so he pushed his regrets aside and scanned his surroundings in a casual way that did not draw attention. He noticed a bank of green oxygen cylinders that were used for refilling the submersible’s onboard oxygen supplies.

The moon pool area they occupied was semi-enclosed, preventing him from viewing the upper deck of the ship, but he could hear footsteps up there so he knew additional crew were nearby. He wondered if all of the crew were Treasure, Inc. employees, or if, like he and Jayden, Daedalus’ outfit had chartered the ship along with a crew, adding their own men to the mix as “mission specialists.”

A crewmember wheeled a cart into the moon pool area with the still-intact safe Carter and Jayden had recovered. They moved it into position next to the drill.

“That’s our safe, Daedalus!” Carter said forcefully.

“You can have the safe,” Daedalus laughed, “as soon as we take what’s inside it.” His hired muscle hooted around them as the drill operator turned on his machine.

“Let’s just see what’s in it,” Jayden reasoned. “Could be nothing for all we know. Or some out-of-fashion necklaces that only Daedalus would wear.”

Daedalus scowled but nevertheless extended a hand toward the Asian-American sub-pilot in a gesture of reason. “Listen to the comedian here, Mr. Hunt. Your own pilot.” Carter said nothing, only stared at the safe while the drill operator brought the bit to the safe door. The shrill whine of metal on metal trilled the air and then the operator pulled the drill away, the motor slowing as the whine subsided. One of the crew swung the door open and peered inside with a flashlight.

“Got something here!” He rolled an arm rapidly in a “get over here” motion, but Daedalus was already there, shoving the technician aside, leaning in with his own flashlight.

“It’s all dry and we’ve got paper, documents of some kind….” He passed a few small pieces out to a crewman, including a passport, a black and white family portrait…”… and look at this!”

He held up a thick brown envelope, approximately eight-by-ten inches. It was thick enough so that it was either padded, or else very full. While Daedalus held the envelope up to a rack of work lights, one of the crew began removing the rest of the contents from the safe. A velvet sack was dumped into an open but gloved hand to reveal a pile of gold Krugerrand coins. A diamond broach, a pearl-handled revolver, and a silver cross with chain all came out of the safe and across the years into the hands of Daedalus’ employees. But none of these held any interest for the Treasure, Inc. leader. He slowly walked away as the items were extracted, hands turning over the brown, faded envelope.

As his fingers began to pry at the creased edge, Carter admonished, “You need to open that inside, in climate-controlled conditions! You could destroy it by exposing it to the salt air after all these years!”

Daedalus slowly looked up and turned to Carter. “Wouldn’t you like to know what’s inside?”

“Not if it means ruining the contents.”

The Treasure, Inc. leader removed his smartphone from a pocket and handed it off to an assistant. “Take photos.” Then he proceeded to rip open the envelope. Carter and Jayden moved toward him. Carter felt a strong grip on his leg and turned to see one of the crew dragging him to the ground. Another man tousled with Jayden while Daedalus sidestepped away without so much as taking his eyes from the envelope while he pulled a piece of parchment from it. The crew member with the phone began taking photos of Daedalus holding the parchment and envelope, and then closeups of the document itself.

“Heavy parchment of some kind,” Daedalus said in a detached monotone. “Perhaps papyrus.” He started to hold the document up to the light. Carter caught the briefest flash of hand-drawn outlines, foreign words placed in different areas, shading and relief in diverse sectors — enough to see that it was a map — before Daedalus suddenly pulled the document down and shoved it back into the envelope. Then he turned to his men and nodded at Carter and Jayden.

“Tie their hands. Put them in their sub. Leave the hatch open and drop it into the water. Make it look like an accident.”

Carter’s gaze immediately went to Daedalus ’ men. Would they actually be willing to carry out such a heinous order? He thought he detected maybe a glimmer of hesitation in one of the goons’ eyes, but his answer came a lot sooner than he would have liked. He felt thin plastic flex-cuffs start to close around his wrist. The same thing was happening to Jayden a few feet away. He cursed himself for letting his situational awareness slip, but after the hours-long ordeal in the mini-sub, his reflexes and perception were dulled. He knew he had to act fast, right now, or the situation would only get more difficult to extricate himself from as the seconds unfolded.

He slammed the heel of his right foot down on the toes of the crewman’s foot. He heard the rush of the man’s exhalation and then was able to slam his right elbow into his assailant’s gut as he doubled over in pain from the foot stomp. This incapacitated the crewman and Carter was able to knock him down with a simple kick to the side. Knowing he had mere seconds to act before he would be overwhelmed by the entire crew, Carter withdrew the loaded flare pistol from his waistband and fired it at the group of oxygen tanks that were in the process of being filled. Through his peripheral vision he could see pistols being drawn at him by Daedalus’ goons, but he kept his focus as he aimed the flare gun. He pointed it at the valve of one of the green oxygen tanks twenty-five feet away and fired the flare. A satisfying whooshing noise escaped from the gun as a streak of reddish orange rocketed out of it.

While everyone else either stared dumbly at the oxygen tanks or dove for cover, Carter hurled the now empty pistol at Daedalus ’ head, and without waiting to see if his aim was true, he spun around and bashed Jayden’s attacker in the side of the head with a two-fisted hammer blow. Stunned, that crewman slumped to the deck and Jayden was able to slip out of the zip-tie cuffs, which hadn’t yet been cinched all the way tight.

“This way,” Carter muttered to Jayden as he ran for a metal stairwell about twenty feet away leading up. Jayden wasted no time running for it, and was faster than Carter who still had both hands tied behind his back. The shouts of the crew and trammel of footsteps told them without having to look back that they were being pursued by multiple men. Walkie-talkies blared while they bolted for the steps….

….until the sound of the explosion overrode it all.

Jayden reached the steps first and his stomach leapt to his throat when he saw a burly crewman thundering down the steps. Behind them, billows of black smoke erupted from the fire started from the flare gun oxygen tank explosion. Carter was only a couple of steps behind, but now preoccupied with monitoring the extent of the damage dealt by the explosion, Jayden would have to do the fighting. He put one hand on each rail and pushed off the deck with both feet, swinging them up into the chest of the crewman as he ran down. The attacker’s eyes rolled back in his head as he was knocked backwards. The back of his skull bashed into the edge of one of the metal steps, rendering him unconscious. Jayden swiped the walkie-talkie from his belt, along with a heavy-duty Maglite-style flashlight that could be used as a club, and kept moving up the stairs. Carter caught up to him and turned around.

The shouts of their pursers grew louder while Carter checked the fallen foe’s pulse, which was there, but faint. “He’ll be okay,” he told Jayden.

They scanned their new surroundings, heads on swivels as they looked for signs of crew other than the herd pounding up after them from below. They could hear them over the spraying of fire extinguishers, even louder now, and knew it would be only a matter of seconds before they caught up with them.

“Which way?” Jayden asked. They stood in the center of a veritable maze of catwalks, passageways and overhead platforms. Jayden’s answer was the sharp ping of a bullet ricocheting off the stairway railing and hitting something else above them and to their right.

“Any way but here, come on.” Carter took off to their left, now able to move unencumbered, down a mesh catwalk that opened up into a wider platform about fifty feet later.

“I see sky, that way.“ Jayden pointed ahead, to where another stairway led up.

“That goes to the aft deck,” Carter said, already moving toward it.

As they ran, Jayden eyeballed the radio and recognized it as a standard marine VHF unit. He changed the channel to the common maritime emergency frequency, knowing it would be monitored by their ship, floating only a hundred yards away.

He keyed the transmit button and yelled into the radio as they sprinted across the vessel toward the stairs. “Research Vessel Deep Pioneer, this is Jayden and Carter from Deep Voyager. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! We surfaced safely in the sub but were taken hostage on the surface by the crew of the Transoceanic. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday…” He repeated the message three or four times as they ran. When they reached the stairs, he released the transmitter to listen for incoming transmissions.

More gunfire sounded behind them and they hauled themselves up the stairs by the railing. No one came from the opposite direction, but they could hear radio chatter on deck up above. Jayden considered changing channels back to the one it was on before he made the distress call, so that he could monitor the enemy crew, but the radio blared before he could change it.

“Copy, Jayden. We’re sending a boat crew now, over.”

But Carter tapped Jayden’s shoulder before he could reply and pointed to a tender vessel — a small inflatable boat with outboard motor — suspended by a crane. “Must be a second one because the other one they picked us up in is back there by the moon pool. Tell ‘em to forget the tender — they’ll just get shot at, anyway. We’ll take that one. Meanwhile, have them call for our chopper.”

Jayden spoke into the radio and relayed the information while they continued running.

“Your chopper isn’t scheduled to be here until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Buzz will come out early for us. He knows we take care of him and that if we’re asking for a major change in plans it’s critical, not on a whim. Just let him know that he needs to leave right now, out!”

“Copy that.” The radioman from the Deep Voyager’s bridge signed off and the pair of ex-Navy men continued negotiating the ship’s challenging obstacles at high speed. Down a short flight of metal grated steps here, along a solid deck for a stretch where they caught a crewman unaware on watch duty. He paid the price with an unscheduled nap on the deck after a swift blow to the back of the head with Jayden’s newfound Mag-light.

More gunfire erupted behind them at the same time they heard a walkie-talkie blare from somewhere up ahead. Carter grabbed Jayden by the shoulder. “Let’s split up and meet at the boat. It’ll make us harder to track.” Well aware of this fact, Jayden agreed. “Last one there’s a rotten egg,” he said, before leapfrogging over a metal railing and dropping down to a catwalk, parkour style.

Carter chose to sprint straight ahead, knowing he was heading toward a direct confrontation with at least one unknown crewman. Better to face an opponent who might not know he was coming than one already shooting at him. He winced in pain as his left shoulder slammed into a stairway railing when he reached the landing and tried to make the turn too sharply. It was good he did, though, since a bullet pinged off of a metal bar mere feet away. Carter took the bottom half-flight of stairs in one leap, hit the landing with a loud clang, and then bolted across a short catwalk until it opened up onto the expansive deck.

He could see the tender vessel suspended over the side of the ship about a hundred feet away. Although tempted to rush straight for it, he curbed the instinct. Being out in the open increased the likelihood of being spotted and shot. Also on his mind was Jayden. He pivoted in place, looking for him, but saw no one except for a single crewperson, handheld radio raised to his mouth but apparently weaponless.

Good as it’s going to get, Carter thought. He knew this unarmed individual was no threat to him, no match for his military training and high level of physical prowess. Still, the old adage about not being able to outrun a radio flashed through his mind as he crept toward the adversary while sticking to the shadows. Carter ducked behind a stack of life rafts and observed the crewman. This was as close as he could get to the man without walking straight out onto the wide open deck.

Suddenly the individual turned his head sharply toward the other side of the deck, where the boat was hanging. A noise was heard from that direction, and the man’s head turned, tracking it. Jayden tossing something, Carter thought, glad for the distraction. Not wanting his friend’s good thinking to go to waste, Carter silently dashed across the deck and took the crewman down with a flying tackle, cupping a hand over his mouth while simultaneously knocking the radio away. A measured knee to the throat ensured the treasure-looting thug wouldn’t be calling for help in the next minute or so, but without being fatal.

Carter left him there writhing and sputtering to join Jayden beneath the tender vessel. The boat was uncovered but still needed to be lowered into the water. Carter pointed into the boat. “You get in and get ready to start it while I get the winch.”

Jayden jumped and hauled himself into the boat, a twelve-foot inflatable with an outboard motor controlled from a steering console. “Where’s all the empty beer cans and bait wrappers? Doesn’t anybody have any fun on this thing?” Jayden wondered aloud. Carter shook his head as he moved toward the winch control station while keeping an eye out for the oncoming pursuers. His friend’s capacity for levity never ceased to amaze him.

“Something tells me these guys don’t have all that much fun,” Carter said, pressing a green button on a metal pole at the same time as a shower of orange sparks erupted six inches over his head, the result of a near-miss 9mm round. He ducked down to the deck, arms over his head, as the boat began to lower toward the water, accompanied by a mechanical hum.

“I’ll unhitch us, you just get in here without getting shot!” Jayden yelled from his hunkering position behind the boat’s steering console. But although it was the gunmen Carter worried most about, he heard pounding feet and turned in time to see a bear of a man barreling toward him with a large dive knife held out at the ready in his right hand. Stealth not being his mode of operation, the combatant uttered a hoarse war cry he lumbered toward Carter and the tender. Carter quickly looked left and right, searching for anything that might be used as a weapon of opportunity — something to throw, a loose piece of metal or cable to trip him up with, anything — but he could find nothing in the two seconds he had available before his opponent reached him.

Carter was about to stand and fight when his ears locked onto the sound of the boat lowering on the winch, and a new idea occurred to him. A split second before the fighter got to him, he turned and ran toward the tender, now out of sight below the ship’s rail, having been lowered nearly to the waterline.

“Uuuuuugh!” came the yell from Carter’s pursuer as both of them ran toward the ship’s rail. Who is this guy? Carter couldn’t help but think, even as he ran or his life. Ships’ crew weren’t exactly the upper crust of society in his experience, but this guy was a real knuckle-dragger. To make matters worse, a bullet struck the deck a few feet to his right, ricocheted, and Carter felt it lodge into the sole of his rubber boot.

From down below, Jayden called, “I’m unhooking us, let’s go!”

“On my way — bringing a friend!” Carter answered as he launched himself up and over the rail without looking back. He could feel the brute’s thundering footsteps right behind him. He heard metal clunking followed by a booming splash as Jayden untethered the tender vessel from the crane and it dropped into the water from a few feet up. Carter didn’t have the luxury of choosing the best place to land in the boat — he would simply have to hope he landed in it at all, for that matter, and pray for the best.

As he expected, the brute followed him right over the rail, intent on capturing his prey. The landing was not a pretty one, and had Jayden not had the presence of mind to kick a life jacket underneath Carter as he landed on the forward portion of the steering console, he would have broken his knee for certain. As it was, the knee screamed in pain anyway, and the right side of his face smashed into the deck hard enough for him to see an entire galaxy of stars. All this was made worse when the brute landed on top of him, limbs flailing and mouth drooling warm spit onto Carter’s neck.

Jayden was unable to help Carter with the actual fight, since getting the boat underway beneath the impending onslaught of bullets was priority number one. He was on his own with the beefy gladiator while Jayden fired up the motor, took up position behind the wheel in an awkward ducking stance to partially shield him from enemy fire, and put the tender vessel into gear. Luckily for Carter, when Jayden jammed the throttle all the way up, the sudden momentum and burst of speed caused him and his attacker to roll over one another such that Carter ended up on top, a few feet away from where they landed.

Even with bullets flying overhead, Carter wasted no time in taking advantage of the small upper hand he’d been given. He racked his left elbow into the bigger man’s ribcage, taking great satisfaction in the resulting grunt and exhalation of air. His opponent came back with a powerhouse fist meant for Carter’s temple that he ducked, sending the opponent’s knuckles into the boat’s deck. As an inflatable boat, it was a soft deck, though, granting him a bit of the luck Carter had been given earlier. He used the same balled fist to spring himself up from the deck, intending to fall back down on Carter in some kind of pseudo-pro wrestling move.

But Jayden, having cleared the vicinity of the ship where they were in imminent danger of being shot at, now came to Carter’s aid. He grabbed a nearby bungee cord that had been securing a small fire extinguisher, and used it to lash the steering wheel into position so that the boat would continue on a straight path unaided. On a whim, he picked up the extinguisher, too. Then he stepped around the console the long way to both shield himself from any further gunfire and to hide from the opponent’s view when he came in for his attack.

As he rounded the console he was distracted by a streak of white in the water — the other small boat rounding the ship’s bow and coming after them. First things first, he thought, as Carter grappled with the much bigger individual a few feet away on what little deck space there was available. Jayden pulled the pin on the extinguisher and aimed it at the head of Carter’s rival.

“Get away from him, Carter. I got this!”

Both men looked over and then Jayden blasted the brute in the face with the pressurized chemical powder from about six feet away. Not lethal, by any means, but more than enough to give the fighter pause for a few seconds, which was all Carter needed to regain his feet and kick his foe in the face. Blood splatter suddenly appeared on the boat’s PVC tubes, and then the burly crewman slumped onto the deck in an uncoordinated heap.

“Take the wheel, I got him!” Carter shouted. While Jayden retreated back around the console, Carter grabbed a life vest and strapped it on the semi-conscious man, whose eyes were open and was mumbling incoherently. Carter hefted him by the shoulders, dragged him up onto one of the boat’s buoyancy tubes, and then tossed him off into the sea. He watched to make sure the man was floating face up, and then moved to the console, where he picked up the radio. Broadcasting on an emergency channel he informed the Transoceanic that they had a crewman in the water. Then, recalling Daedalus ’ ruthlessness, he radioed his own ship as well, knowing that they would actually pick up a seaman overboard no matter what was at stake. He wasn’t so sure Daedalus would even bother to stop to pick up his own crewman.

“Pick him up first if you have to,” Carter told the Deep Pioneer’s bridge, “and then catch up to us.”