The Minoan Cipher

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Falstaff wasn’t designed to peel off like a fighter plane breaking out of attack formation. But that’s what Hawkins was asking it to do. He yanked the joystick over and gave the right vertical thruster all the power he could.

The submersible rolled into a forty-five degree angle. Hawkins hoped the move would get them out of the way of the Sancho Panza, but the boat clipped Falstaff—a glancing blow, before continuing its plunge to the bottom.

Falstaff bounced off the hull like a ping-pong ball off a paddle. Hawkins struggled to control the yaw. The vehicle rolled to the left, catapulting him out of the pilot’s seat. His shoulder slammed against the inside wall of the sphere. The submersible swung violently the other way. He was about to land on Kalliste, who’d been similarly tossed about. Swiveling his body to the side in an attempt to avoid crushing her, he was thrown against the sphere once again.

Falstaff went into a tumbling free fall, rolled two more times then hit bottom. The soft sand absorbed some of the impact. The submersible bounced once more, then abruptly came to rest almost right-side-up against the hull of the ancient ship.

Hawkins and Kalliste lay in a heap in the darkened globe. As soon as he caught his breath, he wiggled his fingers and toes, disentangled himself and called her name. She groaned in response.

“Try to move,” he said.

He heard a rustling, and mutterings that sounded more like anger than pain.

“Everything works,” Kalliste said. “What about you?”

“Shoulder got banged up. Nothing broken.”

He groped under the pilot seat for a flashlight and switched it on, keeping the beam low to avoid blinding Kalliste. Her face was about a foot from his. She brushed the hair away from her eyes and looked around. “What the hell happened?”

“The Sancho Panza sank and hit us on its way down.”

She snapped out of her daze. “The shadow coming from above? My God! The captain and his son. Rodriguez. They must have been killed. How could this have happened?” She paused.

“Those loud thuds we heard were explosions.”

“The boat couldn’t — wait, did you say explosions?”

“The ship must have been attacked. We can’t do anything about that. We have to help ourselves.”

He cupped his hands around the light to minimize reflection and held it close to the cabin wall. After moving the light back and forth several times, he sat down again.

“Remember that trouble we had finding the wreck? Well, it found us this time. We’re leaning up against the hull.”

“Will we be able to get back to the surface?”

“Looks that way. The lights in the control panel are glowing. We still have power. The fathometer dial shows us at two-hundred-forty-seven feet. Both lateral thrusters work. The one on the left side seems okay. The right must have been knocked off in the collision. Pumps that regulate the pontoons are in working order, though. I could eject water from them and give Falstaff the buoyancy needed to make the ascent, and then level off using the remaining thruster.”

“But that presents another problem. We won’t have a support ship.”

“Got that covered. Remember the fishing boats we passed on the way in? We’ll call for help.”

He rummaged in a gear bag and pulled out what looked like a hand radio. The device would broadcast an SOS and their position. He handed the transmitter and flashlight to Kalliste and began to work the controls. The hum of the pontoon pumps was like music to his ears. Even more encouraging was the submersible’s slight rocking motion as it gained buoyancy and lifted off the bottom.

Falstaff rose a few feet and came to a thumping stop under the ship’s overhang. Using alternate bursts from the lateral thrusters, he wriggled the submersible free. He ran the good thruster in reverse to balance off the loss of the other, and Falstaff began a wobbling ascent.

“Hang in there. We’re going to be okay,” he said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kalliste said.

She pointed the flashlight at their feet. The beam reflected off sparkling ripples. Hawkins leaned over and stuck his hand into frigid water that was only a couple of inches deep, but flowing in fast. He had designed Falstaff to be as watertight as humanly possible. His computations never took into account being T-boned by a salvage ship.

“The impact must have cracked a seal,” he said.

“What can we do?”

“Keep moving. Try to stay ahead of the leak.”

“I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but even if we get to the surface the submersible will sink under us.”

“I’ll blow the pontoons. There should be enough buoyancy to keep us afloat until help arrives.”

It would be a tight squeeze. The cold water was lapping at their shins by the time the fathometer marked them at the one-hundred-fifty-foot mark. He gritted his chattering teeth and kept his eyes glued to the dial.

One hundred feet.

Kalliste was using every ounce of stubbornness in her body, but the cold was eating away at her resolve. Hypothermia was setting in. Hawkins was shivering, and her teeth were clacking.

“Matt, the water is at my knees.” Her voice held a panicked edge.

“Promise me something, Kalliste.”

“Yes. Anything,” she said through chattering lips.

“That we’ll have dinner together back in Cadiz.”

She turned to Hawkins in the pale light, incredulous at his calm grin even with the prospect of death staring him in the face.

“I can’t believe I’m here with a crazy man. Yes, of course we’ll have dinner.” She brushed the hair out of her face again. “But I will have to look better than I look now.”

Hawkins placed his arm around her shoulders.

“You look like a Greek goddess.”

“Oh!” she said.

Her startled reaction had nothing to do with his attention. Falstaff had popped to the surface where it was lifted high by a swell and dropped back down between the angry waves.

By then, the water was at waist-level.

And all around them was darkness.