Mirage

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They were lucky in the sense that they knew to within a couple of miles where the Sakir had been when she’d been attacked. All members of the Corporation team had GPS tracking chips surgically embedded in their thighs. The chips weren’t powerful, so the signal was intermittent. But they had gotten a ping off Linda’s chip when she’d ventured on deck twenty minutes before the Sakir was capsized, cutting down the search area tremendously.

They were unlucky, however, that the ceiling of clouds had dropped, forcing them to an altitude of four hundred feet and thus cutting how far they could see to the horizon. For ten minutes, as the chopper’s turbine sucked gas like a drunk at an open bar, they crisscrossed grid lines Gomez had laid out on his kneeboard chart. And they found nothing.

“I don’t want to add to our woes,” Adams said over the chopper’s communications net, “but we’ve got about five minutes of fuel remaining.”

Linc didn’t take the binoculars from his eyes when he said, “Pessimist.”

And a moment later, he was proven correct. “There.” He pointed ahead.

Juan leaned forward between the two front seats and accepted the glasses from the former SEAL.

Like a belly-up fish floating dead in the water, the capsized hulk of the once beautiful luxury craft lay lost and forlorn, with waves crashing along its length and remarkably little debris around it. As they drew closer still, Juan saw two people, who’d been sitting near where one of the propeller shafts emerged from the hull, stand up and begin to wave frantically. For a moment he was hopeful one was Linda Ross, but it quickly became apparent they were both men dressed in identical dark suits.

“Security guards,” Juan said. “They must have been on deck when she flipped. They would have been thrown clear and then swam back to wait.”

Gomez flew them in, hovering over the yacht just aft of amidships. He timed the hulk’s gentle roll and settled the helo with its skids straddling the Sakir’s keel. He killed the engine and powered down the electronics. The two guards rushed over to them, ducking below the still-spinning blades to reach the chopper.

Juan swung open his door. “Is it only the two of you?”

“There was a third,” the more senior man said. “He was with us on deck, but he never surfaced after the ship flipped over.”

“Any sign of other survivors? Have you heard anyone tapping from inside the ship?”

It was clear neither had thought to listen. Linc was already on his hands and knees sounding the hull with a giant wrench, his head cocked like a dog’s listening for a response.

Juan began to gather up his scuba equipment. “Let me get my gear out, and you two can sit in the chopper and warm up.” The guards were soaked to the skin and looked grateful for the opportunity to get out of the wind and rain. “My ship should be here in another hour or so, and we’ll get you some dry clothes and a hot meal.”

“Who are you?”

“Juan Cabrillo of the Corporation.”

“You’re the outfit the Emir hired for additional security.”

“The irony isn’t lost on me,” Juan told them.

Five minutes later, he walked down to where water pulsed and surged against the hull with his flippers in his hand. He bent carefully under the load on his back and slipped the fins over his dive boots, then settled his mask. He turned and walked backward off the side of the hull until the sea took up his weight and he was floating. He swam a few feet farther on so the waves wouldn’t toss him back against the unyielding steel. He adjusted his buoyancy by dumping some air from his vest.

A moment later, he was falling along the edge of the hull. Ten feet down, where the water was much calmer, he passed the Plimsoll line where the red antifouling paint gave way to the snowy white livery the Sakir was noted for.

Cabrillo hadn’t fully recovered from the stress and strain of yesterday’s dive, and he wasn’t diving with a partner, two cardinal sins, but if there was the slightest chance of saving Linda he would push on through to the gates of hell. He peered into a couple of portholes, encouraged when one of the rooms had only a little water on the floor — or what had been the ceiling. He tapped the glass in what looked like an officer’s cabin but got no response.

Once he reached the inverted main deck, he was at a depth of thirty feet. He flicked on his dive light even though visibility wasn’t too bad, considering the storm up on the surface.

The teak deck had been swept clean when the ship turtled. Gone were the chairs and tables, the piles of fluffy towels at the edge of the hot tub, and the cut-crystal glasses. Farther below him were the second deck and then the third, where the bridge was located. Down farther still were the ship’s radar domes, radio masts, and her mammoth funnel.

Juan found a sliding glass door that had survived the violent forces of the ship’s capsizing and forced it open. Because it was upside down, it didn’t roll smoothly, and he really had to fight to squeeze through. The corridor went forward and aft. He arbitrarily started for the bow, checking rooms as he went. Each cabin was a flooded maelstrom of bedding, loose furniture, and clothing still swirling and dancing through the water.

He moved on and found his first body. It was a young woman dressed as a maid. She was floating in a cabin that she must have been servicing. Her cart lay on its side in a corner of the room, and extra sheets fluttered in the beam of his light like undulating sea creatures. She was facing away from Cabrillo, so he swam closer and gently spun her around.

He blew out a startled breath that overloaded his regulator.

The poor woman must have hit a wall face-first because her features were distorted beyond recognition. Juan recalled the big ship’s near-instantaneous flat roll and guessed she would have met her death when the wall smashed into her at better than twenty miles per hour. It looked no different had she been struck with a baseball bat.

He moved on, knowing that his task was only going to become even grimmer.

Cabrillo found two more bodies on this level. One was dressed like the security detail, in a plain dark suit with tie, and the other wore a chef’s white jacket and gray gingham pants. By the way their heads swiveled so loosely on their necks, he was sure both had died like the maid when they crashed into a bulkhead.

He reached the main stairs, a grand, sweeping affair that curled around an atrium which had once had a glass ceiling. Juan shone his light down on it, seeing that few of the panes remained in the ornate wrought-iron cupola. Below it, the ocean was inky black.

A sense of dread creeping up on him, Juan swam up the staircase. This level appeared fully flooded, but he couldn’t take shortcuts on a mission like this. He laboriously checked every nook and cranny for someone who’d found an air pocket and survived his ordeal. He’d been aboard the Sakir on more than one occasion. It was hard to wrap his mind around all this destruction when he remembered her as the epitome of opulence.

Sadly, there were more bodies. Juan recognized one of the men as the Emir’s nephew, a likable teen who had ambitions of being a scientist. Particle physics, he remembered.

Each gruesome discovery made his anger at Kenin burn that much more, and the cut was doubly painful because these people were never the intended targets. Kenin put their deaths squarely on Juan’s shoulders, and as much as Juan would have liked to rationalize away the guilt, he could not. These people’s deaths were almost as much his fault as they were the rogue Russian admiral’s.

The next deck, closer to the surface and thus the waterline, was the crew’s area. Gone were the elegant silk wall coverings, the plush carpeting, and subdued lighting. Here was a world of white steel walls, exposed electrical conduits, and linoleum tile. The Emir had the money to give them better surroundings for when they were off duty, but leaving the space so stark was a not-so-subtle reminder that they were merely staff and he was the master. Sometimes the pettiness of the rich irked Cabrillo.

He expected to find a lot more bodies, but he didn’t find any at all. Surely there had been some staff down here when the ship capsized, yet he found no one. He eventually located an entrance hatch to the engineering spaces. It had an electronic lock with a card reader, but when the ship lost power, the locks automatically disengaged. He swung open the steel door and swam up what was essentially a ladder because it was too steep to call a stairway.

The main engine room was as clean as the Oregon’s own. The massive diesels, suspended from the ceiling, were painted white, while the floor had been green anechoic tiles. Juan found two bodies here, both in the overalls of engineering staff. He pushed on through to the auxiliary equipment room, where the ship’s sewage and garbage were processed and fresh water was produced by a reverse osmosis desalinator.

He was dismayed that he hadn’t found more victims and came to the sad conclusion that they had all been up on the second deck. Because of the physics involved in a ship flipping over, they would have all been killed by violent impact or so wounded that they could do nothing to prevent their drowning when water flooded into the ship. He was just about to go explore the upper decks when he spotted a hatch overhead that had once been in the floor. It had to be bilge access. He swam up to it and tested the dogging wheel. It spun as if it had been oiled that morning.

The hatch swung down on its hinges, and Juan popped his head and arm into this new space, startling himself when he realized he had broken into a chamber free of water. He didn’t think he’d reached the surface level, and a glance at his depth gauge confirmed he was still under eight feet of water. The air in the chamber was pressurized enough to stop the water from gushing in. He cast his light around what appeared to be an antechamber, because it was a small space, and there was another closed hatch to his right. There was only about four feet of headroom. He removed his tanks.

He realized that if the entire bilge was filled with air, it must be providing the buoyancy that kept the Sakir afloat. Eventually it would bleed out, but, for now, it was keeping the luxury cruiser from plummeting to the ocean floor.

He closed the first hatch and opened the next hatch, his dive light thrust out ahead of him. He was greeted with a tableau of death. There were thirty people stretched out along the walls, some clinging to one another, some off by themselves, others in little groups as if they’d been chatting before falling over. He had no idea how they’d gotten here or what had killed them. The air tasted fine, a bit musty and tainted with salt but breathable.

And as his light swept past one of the corpses, its eyes opened, and it screamed. In an instant, the rest of them came alive. They’d all been sleeping in the cloying blackness of the ship’s bilge.

Two flashlights snapped on, adding their glow to the animated faces of people picking themselves up and rushing at Cabrillo. Several remained on the deck, and Juan could tell they were injured. Questions were hurtled at him in a half dozen languages, but one voice eventually drowned out all the others.

“About time you showed up,” Linda Ross chided him. “Air’s getting a tad thin in here, and I was bored. I lost my last cent playing gin rummy.”

Linda topped out at five feet two, had an elfin face with large eyes and a button nose. She had a few freckles that made her seem even younger and a girlish voice.

“What happened?”

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

Their conversation got derailed for a few minutes as the Emir, whose moniker stretched over eleven names and who Juan called Dullah, short for Abdullah, thanked him again and again for deliverance.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, old friend. The Oregon is still a half hour away, and I’m afraid if we cut our way down here, the air in the bilge will escape and the Sakir will sink like a stone.”

He turned to Linda. “What happened after you capsized? How did everyone end up here?”

“It was her,” the Emir said, beaming at Linda. “She did it. She saved us all. When the ship rolled over, she knew to get us down here as quickly as possible. She knew that water would enter the boat and she rushed us here. You should have seen her, my friend. She was like a lioness protecting her cubs. I could barely pick myself off the floor, and your lovely Linda was organizing us so the strong could help the lame.”

Juan shot Linda an appraising look. She had a ghost of a smile on her lips, loving the emotional praise from the Emir but too coy to gloat.

“I tell her already,” Dullah went on, “that I will pay her ten times what you give her to be my personal bodyguard. While my men wandered in a daze, she was saving our lives. I say it again, a true lioness. In all my life I have never seen one so brave, one so strong, one so…”

Dullah finally ran out of praise, so Linda said, “You forgot the part where I turned water into wine.”

“I believe you could,” the Emir rejoined.

Juan looked at her. “Linda, are you sure there’s enough room in here for us and your ego?”

“Plenty,” she shot back saucily.

Good job, he mouthed to her, and then addressed the crowd: “I need to speak with an engineer.”

One of the men stepped forward. “Heinz-Erik Vogel, chief engineer.”

He was Teutonic, from the top of his blond head to the soles of his work boots, and stood as if at attention. Juan shook his hand.

“I’m Juan Cabrillo, Linda’s boss.” He went on to explain his theory as to why the ship hadn’t sunk yet, and the engineer heartily agreed, having come to the same conclusion himself. They agreed the best way to get everyone out was to breach the hull plates over the anteroom through which Juan had first entered the bilge. They could better prevent the air from escaping by using its access hatch like an air lock, opening it just long enough to get a group of people inside and then closing it up again while they were helped outside by Cabrillo’s people.

A second hole would need to be drilled into the bilge and air pumped in at high pressure to make up for the expected losses when the hatch was opened.

They worked out the precise location of the antechamber as it related to the ship’s propeller shafts, the only reference point Cabrillo would have on the otherwise bare hull bottom.

When they had settled all the details, Juan turned to Linda. “I’ve got enough air for us to buddy-breathe back to the surface.”

She didn’t consider his offer for a second. “These are my people now. I’m responsible for them and I’m not leaving them until they’re all safe.”

He bent and kissed her forehead. “I knew you wouldn’t. Close the hatch behind me. This should take about an hour to set in motion. We can start cutting now, and once the Oregon arrives, Max’ll rig the air hose. When I tap on the hatch three times, that means I’m going to open it. Send through the first five people. Worst injured first, but they need to be quick, so have healthy people help them.”

“Got it.”

“Then we’ll lever the hatch closed, clear the antechamber, let the pressure build back up inside here, and do it again.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay, hotshot. See you later.”

It took Juan just ten minutes of quick swimming and a few minutes of decompression to reach the surface and drag himself back onto the Sakir’s hull. Linc was there in an instant to help him off with his gear. “Well?”

“Linda saved all but a couple of them,” Juan said with a proud smile.

“Booyah!” Linc whooped. “I knew my girl would pull through. What happened?”

“She got everyone down into the bilge after the Sakir rolled but before it completely filled with water. They’re in there now, inside a bubble of pressurized air. I worked out with the ship’s engineer how to rescue them and not have this tub sink from under our feet. What about the Oregon?”

“Launched MacD and Eddie twenty minutes ago, and, if you could see past the rudder, you’d know she’s about ten minutes from pulling alongside of us.”

“Perfect.” Juan strode over to the chopper to open a line to Hanley. He laid out what they would need, and Max promised to have it ready by the time they arrived.

While Linc got the cutting torch ready, Juan changed out of his scuba suit, dried himself with a rag Gomez promised was clean, and threw on the outdoor clothes he’d grabbed from his cabin, complete with rubber boots that went up to his knees.

As soon as the Oregon was in position on the windward side of the Sakir so that her massive bulk shielded the work crew from the worst of the storm, a Zodiac shot out of the boat garage, trailing a thick rubber hose. Max was at the controls, and with him were some of his boys from the engineering staff.

There was no time for small talk. The storm was intensifying. Soon waves would sweep clear across the hulk and suspend any attempt at getting the survivors out. From the measurements Vogel had given him, Cabrillo marked out a three-by-three-foot spot on the hull, and Linc got busy with the torch. Molten metal was soon drizzling through the cuts he made as the torch slowly ate the inch-and-a-half-thick plate. Hanley had brought over a second plasma torch, and he was at Linc’s side cutting with abandon. Farther along the hull, the Oregon’s engineers were preparing to drill a hole to insert the air hose. They had tubes of industrial contact glue ready to seal the hose into place once the nozzle was inside the bilge. Gomez Adams was warming the chopper for the short hop back to the hangar.

In all, Cabrillo’s people were working like the well-oiled machine he knew them to be.

Juan had told Linda that they’d be ready in an hour. He missed that deadline by only two minutes and that’s because he didn’t factor in the time it would take Max to set up a hydraulic ram down in the antechamber. They would need its power to close the hatch against the pressure of air gushing out. Fortunately, it wasn’t high enough to warrant decompression for those trapped inside.

Cabrillo gave her the signal, she tapped back that she was ready, and Juan opened the hatch. In the explosive blast of air, five people tumbled into the antechamber, sprawling on the ground in a tangle of limbs. One woman screamed when her already-broken leg was smashed against the far wall. Max activated the ram and it slammed the door closed, as promised.

“What do you think?” Cabrillo asked. The ship didn’t feel like it had settled any deeper.

“How should I know? You didn’t leave a barometer in there. Gunner’s manning the compressor. He should be able to tell the back pressure. That’ll give us an idea of when we can let out the next group. But truth be told, I think it worked like a charm.”

Juan grinned. “Me too.”

By being patient and cycling air back into the bilge space, it took forty minutes for the last group, including Linda, Vogel, and the Emir, who had insisted despite everyone’s entreaties not to wait, to emerge from the bowels of the ship. Max dogged down the hatch while the last survivors picked themselves up.

Dullah shook Juan’s hand again. “Now we are, as you say, out of the forest?”

“Close enough, my friend, close enough.”