The Pharaoh's Secret

3

A shadowy figure drifted toward the seafloor in a leisurely, controlled descent. Seen from below, the diver looked more like a messenger descending from the heavens than a man. His shape was enhanced by twin scuba tanks, a bulky harness and a propulsion unit strapped to his back that came complete with a stubby set of wings. Adding to the image was a halo of illumination from two shoulder-mounted lights that cast their yellow beams into the darkness.

Reaching a hundred-foot depth and close to the seafloor, he could easily make out a circle of light on the bottom. Within it, a group of orange-clad divers were busy excavating a discovery that would add to the epic history of the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

He touched down, approximately fifty feet from the lighted work zone, and tapped the intercom switch on his right arm.

“This is Austin,” he said into the helmet-mounted microphone. “I’m on the bottom and proceeding toward the excavation.”

“Roger that,” a slightly distorted voice replied in his ear. “Zavala and Woodson are awaiting your arrival.”

Kurt Austin powered up the propulsion unit, lifted gently off the bottom and moved toward the excavation. Though most of the divers wore standard dry suits, Kurt and two others were testing out the new improved hard suits, which maintained a constant pressure and allowed them to dive and surface without the need for decompression stops.

So far, Kurt found the suit easy to use and comfortable. Not surprising, it was also a little bulky. As he reached the lighted zone, Kurt passed a tripod mounted with an underwater floodlight. Similar lights were set up all around the perimeter of the work zone. They were connected by power cords to a group of windmill-like turbines stacked up a short distance away.

As the current flowed past, it moved the turbine blades and generated electricity to power the lights, allowing the excavation to proceed at a much quicker pace.

Kurt continued on, passing over the stern of the ancient wreck and setting himself down on the far side.

“Look who finally showed up,” a friendly voice said over the helmet intercom.

“You know me,” Kurt replied. “I wait till all the hard work is done, then swoop in and collect the glory.”

The other diver laughed. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Kurt Austin was a first in, last out type who would keep working on a doomed project out of sheer stubbornness until it somehow came back to life or there was literally no option left to try.

“Where’s Zavala?” Kurt asked.

The other diver pointed to a spot farther out, almost in the darkness. “Insists that he’s got something important to show you. Probably found an old bottle of gin.”

Kurt nodded, powered up and cruised over to where Joe Zavala was working with another diver named Michelle Woodson. They’d been excavating a section around the bow of the wreck and had placed stiff plastic shields in position to keep the sand and silt from filling in what they’d removed.

Kurt saw Joe straighten slightly and then heard the happy-go-lucky tone of his friend’s voice over the intercom system.

“Better look busy,” Joe said. “El jefe has come to pay us a visit.”

Technically, that was true. Kurt was the Director of Special Assignments for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a rather unique branch of the federal government that concerned itself with mysteries of the ocean, but Kurt didn’t manage like a typical boss. He preferred the team approach, at least until there were tough decisions to be made. Those he took on himself. That, in his mind, was the responsibility of a leader.

As for Joe Zavala, he was more like Kurt’s partner in crime than an employee. The two had been getting in and out of one scrape after another for years. In the past year alone, they’d been involved in the discovery of the S.S. Waratah, a ship that vanished and was presumed to have sunk in 1909; found themselves trapped in an invasion tunnel under the DMZ between North and South Korea; and stopped a worldwide counterfeiting operation so sophisticated that it used only computers and not a single printing press.

After that, both of them were ready for a vacation. An expedition to find relics on the floor of the Mediterranean sounded like just the tonic.

“I heard you two were slacking off down here,” Kurt joked. “I’ve come to put a stop to it and dock your wages.”

Joe laughed. “You wouldn’t fire a man who was about to pay up on a bet, would you?”

“You? Pay up? That’ll be the day.”

Joe pointed to the exposed ribs of the ancient ship. “What did you tell me when we first saw the ground-penetrating sonar scan?”

“I said the wreck was a Carthaginian ship,” Kurt recalled. “And you put your money on it being a Roman galley — which, to my great consternation, has been proven correct by all the artifacts we’ve recovered.”

“But what if I was only fifty percent right?”

“Then I’d say you’re doing better than normal.”

Joe laughed again and turned toward Michelle. “Show him what we’ve found.”

She waved Kurt over and directed her lights down into the excavated section. There, a long, pointed spike that was the bow ram of the Roman galley was clearly entangled with another type of wood. Where she and Joe had excavated the sand, Kurt could see the broken hull of a second vessel.

“What am I looking at?” Kurt asked.

“That, my friend, is a corvus,” Joe said.

The word meant raven, and the ancient iron spike looked enough like the sharp beak of a bird that Kurt could imagine where the name had come from.

“In case you forgot your history,” Joe continued, “the Romans were poor sailors. Far outclassed by the Carthaginians. But they were better soldiers and they found a way to turn this to their advantage: by ramming their enemies, slamming this iron beak into the boat’s hull and using a swinging bridge to board their opponent’s vessels. With this tactic, they turned every confrontation at sea into a close-quarters battle of hand-to-hand combat.”

“So there are two ships here?”

Joe nodded. “A Roman trireme and a Carthaginian vessel, still held together by the corvus. This is a battle scene from two thousand years ago all but frozen in time.”

Kurt marveled at the discovery. “How did they sink like this?”

“The stress of the collision probably cracked their hulls,” Joe guessed. The Romans must have been unable to release the corvus as their ships foundered. They went down arm in arm, linked together for all eternity.”

“Which means we’re both right,” Kurt said. “Guess you won’t be paying me that dollar after all.”

“A dollar?” This came from Michelle. “You two have been going on and on about this bet for a month all over one measly dollar?”

“It’s really more about bragging rights,” Kurt said.

“Plus, he keeps docking my pay,” Joe said. “So that’s all I can afford to wager.”

“You’re both incorrigible,” she said.

Kurt would have agreed with that statement proudly, but he didn’t get the chance because a different voice came through the intercom system and interrupted him.

A readout on the helmet-mounted display confirmed the transmission was coming in from the Sea Dragon up on the surface. A little padlocked symbol with his name and Joe’s beside it told Kurt the call was being patched through to them only.

“Kurt, this is Gary,” the voice said. “You and Zavala reading me okay?”

Gary Reynolds was the Sea Dragon’s skipper.

“Loud and clear,” Kurt said. “I see you’ve got us on a private channel. Is something wrong?”

“Afraid so. We’ve picked up a distress call. And I’m not sure how to respond.”

“Why is that?” Kurt asked.

“Because the call isn’t coming from a vessel,” Reynolds said. “It’s coming from Lampedusa.”

“From the island?”

Lampedusa was a small island with a population of five thousand. It was Italian territory, but was actually closer to Libya than to the southern tip of Sicily. The Sea Dragon had docked there for one night each week, picking up supplies and refueling, before heading back out to hold station over the wreck site. Even now, there were five members of NUMA onshore, handling the logistics and cataloging the artifacts recovered from the dig.

Joe asked the obvious question: “Why would someone on an island feel the need to broadcast a distress call on a marine channel?”

“No idea,” Reynolds said. “The guys in the radio room were sharp enough to flip on the recorder when they realized what they were hearing. We’ve listened to it several times. It’s a little garbled, but it definitely came from Lampedusa.”

“Can you play it for us?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Reynolds said. “Stand by.”

After a delay of several seconds, Kurt heard the hum of static and a bit of feedback before a voice could be heard speaking. Kurt couldn’t make out the first dozen words or so, but then the signal cleared and the voice became stronger. It was a woman’s voice. A woman who sounded calm and yet in great need at the same time.

She spoke in Italian for twenty seconds and then switched to English.

“… I say again, this is Dr. Renata Ambrosini… We have been attacked… Now trapped in the hospital… desperately need assistance… We are sealed in and our oxygen is running low. Please respond.”

A few seconds of static followed and then the message repeated.

“Any traffic on the emergency bands?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Reynolds said. “But out of an abundance of caution, I put in a call to the logistics team. No one’s picking up.”

“That’s odd,” Joe said. “Someone is supposed to be manning the radio at all times while we’re out here.”

Kurt agreed. “Call someone else,” he suggested to Reynolds. “There’s an Italian Coast Guard station in the harbor. See if you can raise the commandant there.”

“Already tried it,” Reynolds said. “Tried the satellite phone too, just in case the radios were being affected by something. In fact, I’ve dialed every number I can find for Lampedusa, including the local police station and the joint we ordered pizza from the first night we docked there. No one is answering. I’m not trying to sound like an alarmist, but for one reason or another that whole island has gone dark.”

Kurt wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions, yet the woman had used the word attack. “Contact the Italian authorities in Palermo,” he said. “A distress call is a distress call, even if it doesn’t come from a ship. Tell them we’re going to see what we can do to help.”

“Figured you’d want to go that route,” Reynolds said. “I checked the dive tables. Joe and Michelle can surface with you. Everyone else will have to go in the tank.”

Kurt expected as much. He broke the news to the rest of the team. They quickly put their tools down, switched off the lights and began a very slow ascent, meeting up with the decompression tank, as it was lowered down on cables, in which they were hauled to the surface in pressurized safety.

Kurt, Joe and Michelle had made their way to the surface in the powered hard suits and Kurt was pulling off his gear when Reynolds gave them more bad news. Not a word had come from Lampedusa. Nor were there any military or Coast Guard units within a hundred miles of the island.

“They’re fueling up a couple helicopters out of Sicily, but they won’t be airborne for at least thirty minutes. And it’s an hour’s flying time from Sicily once they’re airborne.”

“We could be on the beach, finishing dessert and ordering a nightcap by then,” Joe said.

“Which is why they’re asking us to take a look,” Reynolds explained. “Apparently, we’re the closest thing to an official government presence in the area. Even if our government is on the other side of the Atlantic.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “For once, we don’t have to beg for permission or ignore someone’s warning to steer clear.”

“I’ll get us pointed in the right direction,” Reynolds said.

Kurt nodded. “And don’t spare the horses.”