Ghost Ship

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Someone will come,” Gamay said with determination. “Paul won’t leave us down here.”

Elena nodded grimly and stared into the black. “I don’t want to die,” she said.

“Who does?” Gamay replied.

Elena smiled at that, but it faded quickly.

What could be taking them so long? Gamay wondered. They had to know by the lack of communications that something had gone wrong. They had to have known for at least two hours.

To conserve air, they hadn’t moved and had barely spoken. But the silence made it torture and the minutes felt like hours. Gamay was aware of every little creak and groan and she nearly jumped out of her skin when the hull reverberated with a bang.

Looking up, she saw a modicum of light through the frost. Excitedly, she reached forward and scraped it off with the palm of her hand.

She saw nothing at first and then recognized the Condor’s ADS.

She grabbed the flashlight, switched it on, and signaled to the diver that they were alive but freezing and running out of air.

In response, the diver began to tap on the hull.

Don’t worry. Saving you is on my honey do list for today.

“It’s Paul,” she said with a sigh of relief.

He continued to tap. Get ready to be reeled in. You first, then Duke.

Thank you, she tapped out. You are my knight in shining armor.

Paul flashed his lights a few times and moved to the side. Only now did she see the ROV beside Paul, a high-strength cable gripped in one claw. Showing surprising dexterity for a man with giant metal pincers for hands, Paul hooked the cable to the Scarab’s pickup bar and stepped away.

The cable went taut and the Scarab began to rise once again. This time it continued upward, hauled by the winch for thirty solid minutes, until it broke the surface at the aft end of the Condor. Thrilled to be on the surface, Gamay and Elena were both surprised not to be lifted aboard and instead only secured to the side of the ship.

“What’s going on?” Gamay asked as she climbed out of the hatch.

“Technical difficulties,” the chief replied. “Sorry it took us so long to get you but we’ve had our own problems.”

Gamay smelled smoke and noticed that portable generators were rumbling beside the winch that had just hauled them from the seafloor. The cable was spooling out so that it could be hooked to Duke’s stricken sub.

“We’ve had to jerry-rig everything,” the chief said. “We’re operating on one engine, and the men are controlling it by hand. If it gets any worse, we’ll be sewing the bedsheets into a sail.”

Something told Gamay it wouldn’t get that far, but she wouldn’t leave the deck until Paul surfaced with Duke’s Scarab beside him. As he came up, smoke began pouring from the vents to the engine room, and two of the crew came stumbling out through the smoke.

“That’s it, Chief,” one of them said. “The bearings have gone out on the starboard gearing.”

“Fire?” the chief asked.

“No,” the crewman said, “just smoke.”

The chief nodded. “Keep an eye on it.”

Paul was lifted aboard moments later. As he was extricated from the ADS, he was given the bad news.

“Get on the radio,” he said. “Call for a tow.”

“Right away,” the chief said.

“And, Chief,” Paul added. “Tell them not to send anything fancy. We want the oldest, least automated rust bucket of a tug they can scrounge up.”