Depth Charge by Jason Heaton (carter reed .txt) 📗

but Upali was sure that it was. The old war records and British Admiralty charts showed no other shipwrecks in this area, and judging from its size and armaments, it was clearly a destroyer. To know for sure, Upali would compare the footage from the ROV to the photos and engineering drawings he had of the Vampire back at the Deep Blue. He was ready to call it a day. They’d be back out tomorrow with more definite surveying goals. Upali pulled out his phone and dashed off a cryptic message: “Think we’ve found Dracula.” He smiled. Tusker would be so jealous.

“Hey, come look at this,” Suresh called from the monitor. Upali yawned and came back inside. “There’s a perfectly rectangular hole in the hull here. There’s no sea life growing around it either. Almost looks… fresh.”

There, on the monitor, was a wide maw into the ship’s hold, outlined in a black jagged rectangle. It couldn’t be from a torpedo or explosion of any kind. “Maybe a hatch that came free when she sank?” Suresh mused.

“No, not there. That’s below the water line. I’ve never seen anything like that,” Upali replied. “Can you get inside there safely?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Suresh said, tweaking the joystick. The ROV responded. “That hole is big enough for a car to drive through.”

Inside was a jumble of debris, covered in seven decades of silt, unrecognizable. Upali gasped aloud. What a treasure trove for an archaeologist—a time capsule unseen since World War II. Suddenly, a bright object appeared on the monitor, so out of place it caused the two men to jump. It was yellow, spherical, and reflected back the white light of the ROV lamps. As Suresh moved the craft in closer, Upali leaned in and squinted. He could make out writing. He mouthed the words, “Kirby Morgan…”

“It’s a dive helmet!” he shouted, recognizing the famous maker of commercial diving gear. This was a saturation diver’s helmet, no question, and not the kind used for salvaging wrecks long ago. No, this was the kind of helmet seen on modern commercial divers welding oil pipeline and laying cable in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico… or Batticaloa harbor.

Upali’s skin went cold. The Depth Charge. That explained the fresh hole in the hull, the doused running lights, the nighttime anchorage. Were they cutting up the Vampire for her higher carbon steel, which would fetch millions on the market? But that sort of clandestine poaching was typically done by ill-outfitted amateurs in shallower waters, not a commercial diving company in over 300 feet of water. He’d have to report this to the police. No—the Sri Lankan Navy.

“All right, shut her down,” he said. “Let’s get back. We may have gotten into something a little deeper than our old shipwreck.”

Night Moves

Bay of Bengal, one mile offshore of Batticaloa. 2:48am the next morning.

The Zodiac bounced across the light swells, following the coastline. The two men in the Depth Charge’s rigid inflatable said nothing to each other, even as the sound of the motor raised a nearby school of dolphins, which arced out of the water as if to play. Scholz glanced at their silvery backs and then turned away again, training his eyes forward. To the west, the Batticaloa lighthouse stood impotent in the dark, its light long since extinguished.

The man at the back cut the outboard motor and the boat coasted to a sloshing stop. The only sound now was the distant roar of the surf breaking over the sandbar at the entrance of the lagoon. The handsome white cruiser lay at anchor ahead of them, about 200 yards away, a single white light atop its cabin illuminated for safety.

Scholz, perched at the bow of the Zodiac, was almost sure no one would be aboard at this hour, but he pulled a night vision scope out of a black duffel and scanned just to be certain. He tossed it back in the bag and nodded to the man at the motor, who wore a thin black rash guard of the type tropical surfers wore for sun protection. But here, in the wee hours of a Sri Lankan morning, he wore it for a different reason. In the humid air, his face glistened with sweat.

Scholz, who was wearing a black, two-millimeter hooded wetsuit, pulled on a pair of Scubapro Jet Fins and spat into a diving mask. He rubbed the glass with two fingers to keep it from fogging, rinsed it in the sea, hoisted an aluminum scuba cylinder and harness onto the Zodiac’s gunwale, secured his mask, bit down on his regulator’s mouthpiece, and backrolled into the water with only a small splash. He’d done this sort of thing before.

Bobbing to the surface, he held up the large bubble compass strapped to his wrist. He aligned the lubber line with the white boat in the distance, then signaled to the other man, who lifted a large rolltop drybag from the bottom of the Zodiac and handed it over the side. Scholz sank out of sight. After a few seconds, a trail of bubbles on the surface marked his progress straight towards his target.

_________________________________________

At around 3:00 in the morning, Upali Karuna awoke with a start. He lay on the hard mattress in his room at the Deep Blue Resort, his senses alert. Had Suresh said something? He listened. All he heard was the rhythmic breathing of his roommate in the next bed over and the ticking of the ceiling fan above him in the dark. Must have been a car backfiring, or maybe a mosquito in his ear. Might as well have a piss. He quietly got up and padded across the concrete floor to the bathroom. Without turning on the light, he found his way over to the toilet, raised the seat and let go, enjoying the sweet relief. They’d celebrated their finding with a little too much beer in the Deep Blue’s dining area.

Through the open window of the bathroom he heard a motor in the