Ark Found

Chapter 1

To Carter Hunt’s eyes, the dark speck on the horizon was an anomaly that signaled he was almost to his destination. After over two hours of sitting in the Augusta Bell AB-212 helicopter with nothing to look at but endless open ocean, the still indistinct blob was a welcome sight. At the same time, Hunt reflected, it was a sight that filled him with a certain sadness, for it marked the wreck site of the RMS Titanic, which had sunk at this very spot over a century ago.

“Hey, can I see the binoculars?” Carter’s friend and business partner, Jayden Takada, reached a hand into the cockpit from his seat in the back. Hunt passed him the optics before turning to the pilot of their chartered craft. “Hey Buzz, winds seem pretty light? Should be a good landing?”

The pilot looked over at him and smiled from behind a pair of oversized, mirrored sunglasses. “You know what they say. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one if you ask me. Especially in a ‘copter. In a plane, if you lose an engine, you can still glide. Not so in a chopper. You just drop like a stone.”

“Thanks for making us feel better,” Hunt joked. But he knew the pilot was aware that his two passengers were ex-Navy combat veterans who’d both served with distinction, Carter as an officer and Jayden as a SEAL and submersible pilot. He wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.

“I only see one ship on site,” Jayden informed them from behind the binoculars.

Carter shrugged as he squinted out the window at the distant vessel. “That’s good news, unless of course it means whoever’s been snooping around on the wreck — I prefer to call it a grave site — already took what they were after and left.”

It was Jayden’s turn to shrug. “That’s our job either way, right? Either to get the map, or else to confirm that someone else already snatched it.”

Carter nodded. “There’s a third possibility, too.”

“What’s that?” Jayden handed the binoculars back up front. Carter focused them on the ship as he answered.

“Maybe the safe is buried in the mud somewhere in the wreckage trail and none of us will ever find it.” At this Jayden shook his head while exhaling a long breath, and Carter continued. “Or there never was any map to Noah’s ark, it was just a hoax, or something that got misconstrued and passed down more and more incorrectly from generation to generation.”

“Like that old kids’ telephone line game?”

“Exactly. Or, maybe the safe is there but it rusted open, ruining the parchment inside.”

“That last possibility would be definitive, at least. It would make our client happy to say for sure what happened.”

“True.” Carter nodded from behind the glasses. Their client. The only one at the moment, but success with her represented a large payday. Carter was unique in that he insisted his clients pay only half the total fee up front, and the other half only on successful completion of the job. This was both because he wasn’t really doing this work for the money. He’d inherited a fortune from his grandfather, and after a ten-year stint in the Navy as a commissioned officer, decided not to re-up as expected. Instead, disillusioned with the wartime looting of priceless historical artifacts he’d seen in the middle east and elsewhere, he opted to started a private company dedicated to the preservation and safekeeping of historical artifacts so that they might be conserved indefinitely for the greater good.

In this case, that meant recovering a scroll supposedly left in one of the safes not already salvaged aboard the Titanic, and returning it to the client, one Ashley Miller, great grand-daughter of late antiquities collector, Charles Miller. Ashley had explained to Carter that Chronopoulos Dimitrios’ brother, Apostolos, survived in a life boat and met with Miller in New York, to relate that his brother had gone to retrieve the map from the safe as the ship was sinking but never returned. Carter also pointed out to Jayden that providing proof the safe was no longer aboard the wreckage of the famed ocean liner, or nearby on the ocean floor some 12,500 feet down, would also be satisfactory.

The helicopter’s radio crackled to life and the pilot spoke into the transmitter, asking if they were clear for approach. A reply came back in the affirmative, and the pilot looked over at Carter. “We’re going in."

Five minutes later they hovered over the ship, an immense iron vessel with the name R/V Deep Pioneer stenciled in black paint over the white hull. A helipad marked with a yellow circle and letter “H” was situated on a raised platform above the stern. A heavy equipment crane was visible on the aft work deck, while the bridge was about two-thirds of the way towards the bow. The entire ship did not have one large flat deck, but was a complex series of structures with multiple levels, catwalks, machinery, towers, and interior spaces.

Carter and Jayden had spent many a night on vessels of this type, and it wasn’t the ship itself that held his interest as he peered out from the helicopter’s window. It was the one that lay two and one-third miles below it, the wreck of the Titanic. The coordinates of the wreck site were well known, so reaching the general location was not a major problem. But inside the Deep Pioneer was an array of sophisticated electronics that allowed the vessel to precisely detect the presence of the fated wreck far below. Side-scan sonar, bottom profiling imagers, magnetometers, pingers, sub-bottom profile data and more. In addition, as requested by Hunt, there was both a deep-dive capable Remotely Operated Vehicle, or ROV, as well as a two-person submersible capable of withstanding the immense pressures at the depths the Titanic now inhabited.

Neither Hunt nor Jayden had ever dived on this, quite possibly the most famous shipwreck in the world, and despite the fact that it was here only as the result of a terrible tragedy, he couldn’t deny the excitement he now experienced. Besides, he consoled himself, he was attempting to do a service by locating a document that, if genuine, would be beyond priceless and of limitless inspiration for the entire human population.

The location of Noah’s Ark… Despite the fact he was about to land in a helicopter on a ship at sea, the notion of what he was really searching for was too intoxicating to set aside. The irony was not lost on him that the Titanic itself was once an ark of sorts, a vessel meant to safeguard its passengers, yet one that had failed in that purpose.

An exchange of technical radio chatter snapped Hunt from his thoughts, and then their craft was descending to the ship’s helipad. Hunt glanced at the wind sock and was glad to see it hanging limply in the mostly still air. The skids touched down smoothly on the pad and all three of them unbuckled out of their seatbelts. Buzz informed them that he was going to refuel the helicopter before he would be taking off back to Newfoundland.

Carter and Jayden stepped out of the craft into the cool air of the North Atlantic. Behind them was only empty sea, while in front of them stretched the entire research vessel. While it wasn’t the busy hive of activity Carter had imagined, it wasn’t empty, either. Technology and automation meant that crew sizes could be smaller. Hunt knew, for example, that although the water was far too deep here to anchor, that the ship was kept in position over the wreck site by a GPS-controlled system of thrusters that maintained specific coordinates automatically. But there were people out and about, especially on the aft deck, and one of them came trotting up the helipad stairs to greet them now.

A bearish man looking to be in his mid-fifties with a full white beard, very broad shoulders and carrying two hard hats stepped up onto the pad and extended a hand. “Cliff Jameson, Operations Manager for the Deep Pioneer. You must be the specialists hired by Ms. Miller?”

Carter nodded and shook Jameson’s hand, noting his vice-like grip. “Carter Hunt, and this is my friend and business partner, Jayden Takada.”

Takada and Jameson shook hands. “Nice to meet you both. First off, put these on. You probably know this, but you need to wear them whenever you’re not in an inside area of the ship.”

Carter and Jayden donned the protective gear and then Jameson continued. “The way I understand it, you have a background in historical artifact preservation, and you…” He turned to Jayden. “Are the submersible and ROV expert.”

Jayden nodded. “We can both do a little of everything, but that about sums it up.”

Hunt nodded as well and then Jameson pointed down to an area on the aft deck. “Let me talk to your helo pilot for a minute to get him squared away with the refueling process. Meet me down the bottom of those stairs in five, and we’ll get you started, okay?”

Hunt and Takada descended the steps from the helipad down to the main aft deck. The sounds of various machinery cranking, men shouting instructions and ropes clinging against metal poles greeted their ears as they walked across the deck to the indicated stairwell. They took it down the equivalent of one floor to a lower deck that was still exposed to the air, but with a metal catwalk above it. Here there were two cranes on either side positioned on the rails, as well as an ROV and a mini-submersible in their respective cradles. Jayden noted aloud to Hunt that an identical ROV berth sat empty.

Behind them, a closed door with tinted glass opened and a man wearing a hard hat emerged from a dark room lit only by the indicator lights and screens of various electronics. “Hey there! You fellas look a little lost!” This man, a skinny individual with long brown hair tied in a ponytail offered a hand, which was shook by first Jayden and then Hunt.

“John Wilcomb, Submersibles and ROV Control Room Supervisor. Call me Johnny.”

“Cliff Jameson told us to wait for him here,” Hunt said.

Johnny nodded. “In the meantime, come on in. We’ve got an ROV down now that should be coming up on the wreck any minute.” He held the door open and beckoned inside with an extended arm.

“Great, thanks!” Jayden said enthusiastically. The three of them entered the space and Johnny let the door swing shut behind them. The room was occupied with a console of electronic equipment, including a bank of video monitors that now showed different views from the ROV’s six cameras. A technician wearing headphones manned the monitors. Johnny introduced him as Bud Grimes, but Bud could not afford to take his eyes or hands off of the screens and controls, and gave only a smile and a quick finger wave. Instead, Johnny pointed to the different screens as he explained what they were seeing.

“They don’t look very different now because she’s still dropping down through the water, but this one here is front-facing, this one’s rear, then we also have Left, Right, Up and Down. Obviously, because it’s black down there, it all looks the same, just what the halogens are illuminating. You will see the occasional creature floating by, though.”

As if on cue, a squid darted across the field of view of the left camera before appearing again on the front lens until it propelled itself beyond the reach of the lights. The water was not completely clear, owing to bits of particulate matter known as detritus, or “marine snow,” that were suspended in the inky liquid. A data readout in the corners of each screen displayed the date and time, water temperature and depth, as well as technical information about the ROV including remaining battery power.

“The wreck should be coming into view in just another minute or so,” Johnny said, pointing to the depth readout before adding, “We’re not going to take it inside on this dive, we’ll leave the penetration dives to you two, but we just wanted to do a general survey and test out the equipment.”

“Good idea,” Jayden said, eyes flicking back and forth between the different monitors.

“I see it!” Carter exclaimed, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. The wreck of the RMS Titanic. He found it incredible to think he was standing right over it.

“This is the classic bow view.” Johnny pointed to the front-facing feed, where the front of the ill-fated liner came into view. The railing was visible, its six bars heavily encrusted with layers of marine growth. “Those are what we call rusticles, he said, pointing to the elongated, stalactite-like formations of brownish, oxidized iron. “Very common throughout the ship, inside and out.”

Carter and Jayden nodded as they looked on while the ROV propelled itself over the rail and across the bow deck. It was amazing to Carter how intact the ship still was after all these years underwater, not to mention sinking after striking an iceberg. But he knew that the impact had occurred below the waterline — a half dozen lacerations of only about three square feet. From the deck itself, it would have appeared that the ship missed the iceberg, but since most of an iceberg’s mass is below the waterline, the ship was unable to completely avoid the obstacle. Hunt found it hard not to visualize the panicking people on board that night, scrambling around to try and fix the damage, and then starting to lose control as they launched the lifeboats.

He was brought back to the present by the door to the control room opening and Cliff Jameson walking in. “Ah, there you are! Good, Johnny found you, or you found Johnny!”

“They found me,” Johnny said, without taking his eyes from the monitors.

“So listen, gentlemen,” Jameson began as he took a seat in a swivel chair. “As you know, you were retained by Ms. Miller to hopefully recover a very special document from one of the safes aboard the wreck. I do not even know what this document is. What’s so special about it, care to tell me?”

Hunt shook his head. “I can’t—”

“Excellent! Just testing you. Security is vital to this mission. As it is, we know that someone’s been snooping around on the wreck, diving on it not only with ROVs, but with manned submersibles, systematically searching for something.”

“Probably the same something that Ms. Miller asked us to look for,” Carter said. “I can tell you this much: as you said, it’s a document, but it’s an old one, on parchment or papyrus, and if there was the slightest breach of integrity of the safe, it’s likely been totally destroyed by now.”

“Someone thinks it might still be intact,” Johnny said, still focused on the monitor, where the ROV cruised over the top of the bow deck. Sweat beaded on his brow while Bud Grimes’ right hand deftly manipulated a joystick as he sent the robot its instructions.

“You’re the only ship on the site,” Carter pointed out.

“There was another ship here before we arrived, two days ago. They high-tailed it out of here when they saw us coming,“ Jameson said with a long face.

“Not only that,” Johnny added, “but other ships have reported them in the area during the last few months. Whoever it is, they’ve been really methodical about hunting for something down there. They’re flying in the face of all the treaties too.”

“I thought these were international waters?” Jayden asked. “370 miles off the nearest coast?”

Jameson responded to this. “Yeah, but the Titanic, and the entire three-by-five mile debris field surrounding the main wreck, are special, registered as a historic grave site. No one is supposed to touch anything on the wreck. After it was first found by Dr. Robert Ballard in 1985, there was a goldrush of sorts to visit the wreck, to commercialize it by taking paying passengers down to it in submersibles. But all that was bad for the wreck, and things — dishes, jewelry, you name it — started to go missing.”

Johnny turned toward them from his position in front of the monitors. “But starting in the 2010’s, world governments — including Nova Scotia, England, Scotland, and the U.S.-managed to pass legislation aimed at limiting access to the wreck, as well as the ability to profit from items salvaged from it. The upshot of it was that both wanton looting as well properly permitted treasure seekers were reduced in number. Even so, as the deep diving technology gets better and more affordable, there are still those willing to skirt the law in order to steal a piece of history.”

Carter nodded slowly, eyes alight with intensity. The discussion was aligning perfectly with his life’s work, and he was about to formulate a response when the handheld radio on Jameson’s belted crackled.

“Bridge to Cliff, you copy?”

Jameson snatched up the radio and brought it to his lips. “Cliff, here, what’s up?”

“Sir, we’ve got an approaching vessel — a large ship — that has completely ignored our radio requests for identification and purpose. We’ve been contacting them for over an hour on multiple frequencies — even tried semaphore flags and signal mirrors, just for the hell of it — and we get nothing. Just thought you should know that they’ll likely be on site in about ten more minutes. Whether they’re just passing through, or they intend to stay, we don’t know. Over.”

Jameson eyed the other men in the room while voicing his radio reply. “Thanks for the heads up, Bridge. I’ll be there shortly. Meanwhile, continue your attempts to make radio contact, over and out.” He clipped the radio back to his belt while addressing Carter and Jayden.

“Looks like we’ve got company. I wanted to give you a full tour of the ship first, but in light of our unexplained visitors, I think it’s best if I get up to the bridge right away.” He turned to leave until Carter said, “I believe Jayden and I are ready to do a submersible dive.” At this Jayden nodded enthusiastically, and Hunt continued. “How about we get the submersible ready? Having some human presence down there in case our mystery guests decide to stay awhile might be an effective preventative move.”

Jameson looked to Johnny. “Any objections?”

Johnny shook his head while a sly grin formed on his face. “Not at all!”