The Seventh Secret

Chapter 13 — The Eye of the Storm

Turmoil prevailed on the salvage tug, Aleayn Yam. It had been three days since it departed from its home port of Safaga on the east coast of Egypt. Crystal Meyer owned several salvage operations across the globe, especially in locations and countries of historical significance where wreck salvages were common and dives for long lost scrolls and treasures were almost daily occurrences. On the Red Sea, the sun stung whoever stayed out on deck for too long, but the fishermen and dock workers of the coastal settlements were used to it.

There was always work to be done, and hiding from the scorching heat of the climate here would interfere with their productivity. No-one could wait for the day to grow cool enough for comfort — nothing would ever get done that way. The incessant, almost year-round heat was part of the weather of Arabic countries and Africa in general. Most of the people here had grown accustomed to temperatures people from other regions couldn’t bear without falling victim to heat exhaustion.

German master diver, salvor, and maritime lawyer Crystal Meyer owned the small tug operation in Safaga and had summoned the crew to sail south toward Madagascar for a project — the salvage of a World War II vessel, which was supposed to be conducted in secret.

Many tribulations had troubled the tug boat since it left Safaga, but the worst struck just as it navigated into the waters of the Gulf of Aden. A freak storm ensued from the heat of the past day, which had been abnormal even by their standards. But the vessel stayed on its course as best as its crew could, considering the swells and currents that would have put any other ship with a less than competent skipper into serious trouble.

Overhead, the clouds hung heavily even after spewing down torrents of rain into the heavy sea below. Ships and boats barely stayed afloat with every squall and leviathan breakers that battered them, but what disturbed the crew most was the storm itself. It was a rather rare occurrence, like the category III tropical cyclone that had hit the Arabian Sea a few years prior; but unlike back then, there had been no warning of these conditions by the weather stations in Yemen or India this time around. As a matter of fact, this insidious weather system had developed as if some malevolent god under the sea had summoned it.

At least, the latter was what Ali Shabat, skipper of the tug, believed. His bloodshot brown eyes scanned the instruments before him, unable to make sense of what was happening outside. His leathery brown skin tingled with the bite of cold air that had come with the storm as he and his first mate Manni tried to keep the tugboat from crashing into a wave trough.

The crew was terrified, but each man kept to his post while they pulled out the rum and khat for the nerves in the galley. On the tug, there were two engineers and eight permanent crew members, among which two mechanics, who handled countless tasks on the vessel, from cleaning and cooking to manning the cranes and checking the engines.

“Hold course!” Ali commanded his first mate. He left the bridge and ran for the head. In the chaos of the sea storm, his stomach had turned on him. He bemoaned the awful timing of his digestive system as he just made it to the door before the fountain of bile surged.

In the storage cabin, two men held on to the bars of the fixtures placed there for securing cargo. Praying and crying out, they were hoping their pleas would be heard by their god. Hissing and crashing against the hull and tiers of the tug, the sea made certain that screams were futile and that the limits of the ship were tested. One of the men, amazed by the resiliency of the Aleayn Yam, shouted to his crewmate, “Good thing this is a German-built boat!”

“Egyptian engineering is just as good,” the other one scoffed.

“If you say so, Fakur! But can you imagine if this boat didn’t belong to Meyer? It would not have any of the high-tech systems that have helped us to many times,” he argued. Fakur, the other engineer, scowled.

“You’re a fool. Either that or you’re an incurable optimist! How is your beloved German engineering helping us right now, huh? How is it going to keep us from drowning?” he roared, wincing as his knee hit the wall.

“I know.” The other man said, “But whining won’t help us either. We probably won’t survive this storm. It is going to end badly for us, so why dwell on things we can do nothing about?”

“We can do something about it!” Fakur hissed. His leg was aching unbearably. “But nobody has the guts to try and do it.”

“One cannot go against fate,” his companion asserted. “Stop moaning about what you cannot change! You will just get tired.”

"I'm tired already," Fakur admitted, trying to stay upright as a headache from the head injury he sustained when the trouble had first started grew worse.

From there, the two men suffered their fate in silence and stopped arguing over something they had no bearing on. Ali felt dizzy from dehydration, but while the huge tugboat rocked, rose and fell at the whim of the sea, he made his way back to Manni in the bridge.

“I’ve gone to sea more than twelve years now, Ali,” Manni said, looking out over the raw, untamed power of the water, “but I have never felt so close to death before, my friend.”

"Maybe your mother's god is punishing you," Ali replied mockingly. He had a laugh and grabbed the bottle without a label that held the last of the rum they had been drinking to calm their nerves. Manni and Ali had been mariners all their life, but all men were capable of fear when it came to nature and her fury. There was something formidable about the destructive indifference of natural phenomena, especially the sea, where myths and legends remained abundant throughout the ages.

“You’re joking, but you are tempting fate,” Manni warned, taking the bottle from him. “My mother’s god hates me. You know that. Don’t talk about him; not now, not here. It is like speaking out the devil’s name knowing he will come.”

“You are too superstitious, brother,” Ali said. “That is why I am the skipper of this boat and not you. You give in way too easily. I thought you were strong, but now you sound like a woman.”

Manni leered at his friend, but Ali ignored him. He had always hated Ali's indifference, his total lack of respect for the sea and the unseen forces. But he had no choice than to keep working with his childhood friend on this admittedly lucrative path they had chosen to embark on. He could become a laborer, but then his life would be without adventure.

“We are approaching the Equator, Manni. I have not crossed it in over two years, you know?” Ali smiled, revealing his oversized incisors that shone brightly under his brown lips as he checked the instruments where the bearings changed by the second. Manni paid him no mind. So what if it is the first time in two years that Ali was crossing the Equator? It was not a special feat or an unusual thing for sailors, especially those in their line of business.

The lightning did not hit the waters. It merely made the clouds light up. Manni’s heart pounded at the sight of the mighty forces that threw the boat about like a cork in a river.

“Have you checked on the crew?” Ali asked his superstitious mate.

“No, I haven’t. I’ll do that when this storm subsides,” Manni replied. Ali turned to him with an intimidating stare. His teeth had now retreated behind his lips and when he stepped up to Manni the skipper’s 6’4” frame loomed over him. Ali was never one to pull rank, so the first mate nodded quickly and left the bridge to check on the crew.

A few minutes later he reappeared in the door with wild eyes and panic in his voice. His skinny fingers clutched at the doorway as the boat fell deep left into the waves. “Ali! Ali! The engineers are gone! And so is Baashi!”

Ali spun around. “How can they be gone? We are on the open sea, you imbecile!” he thundered over the boisterous rumble of the storm. Baashi was one of his best men and Ali was furious to hear that he was gone. He could not have left the boat unless…

“Overboard? Get the others! Find out when they last saw them and find out where they are! Now!” Ali screamed. They had no time to lose, especially now that they were on their way to a particularly profitable venture in the Indian Ocean. He could not afford to lose any of his men. He would have searched the boat himself, but under these conditions he had to stand attention at the wheel or they would all perish before they even made it into the Southern Hemisphere.

While he monitored the engines and the bearings he could not help but feel a jolt of worry take hold of his mind. He didn’t have enough men for the job as it was, and now three were gone. At this rate, they would never successfully make it to Madagascar to get the exact coordinates from the South African team. They would be lost at sea or would have to return home, probably without sufficient fuel, or worse yet, no profit.

Finally, when the nagging fear would let go, and he decided to leave the bridge to see what was happening aboard the Aleayn Yam. Water was pouring in with every onslaught from the massive waves that crashed against the hull of the boat. Ali slid down the jack ladder to get on deck where he had last spoken to the crew, braving the assault of the waves washing mercilessly over the vessel.

He found nobody there, so he dashed for the shelter of the corridor where the majority of the cabins were lined along the length of the tug boat. Over the rush of the sea, he could vaguely hear two of his men shouting and followed the sound toward the other exit. As Ali reached the second door from the exit, it swung open with a mighty scuffling.

Two men bolted from the cabin so fast he could hardly recognize who they were before they fell through the exit doors where one was hurled over the rail, disappearing into the white death of the furious spray. The other man desperately held on to the firefighting compartment that protruded from the wall. It was Manni.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Ali screamed at him.

“There is bad juju on this boat, Ali!” Manni screamed in terror. “Asaab is dead. The storm has cost us two lives already.”

Ali helped him inside and wedged the doors shut. His stern eyes looked at the body of one of his men, Asaab, lying in the corner with a broken neck.