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

suited him, living on the outlaw sea, free to sate his own appetites with no one watching.

In Sri Lanka, the Chinese were pumping money into infrastructure projects in exchange for long term leases on deepwater ports, city property, and airports. It was a part of their “Belt and Road” initiative that would give them a strategic foothold in developing countries throughout Asia and Africa.

In Batticaloa, the small city on the east coast of Sri Lanka, a Chinese contractor had plans to develop a port for cargo vessels. It would require dredging a nearby lagoon, installing modern loading docks, and laying communications cables and pipework under the sea bed. Rausing Oceanic was hired for much of the underwater construction and commercial diving support. It would turn out to be the perfect cover for Malcolm Rausing’s larger and more ambitious project.

The Deep Blue

Four miles south of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Monday evening.

Just prior to entering Batticaloa, on the west side of the A15 coast highway, sits a large lagoon that floods with the high ocean tide. Every day, as they have for centuries, enterprising local fishermen wait for the tide to ebb to scout the shallow lagoon for mud crabs. These large crustaceans are sold in the town markets up and down the east coast, most often cooked into a deliciously spicy curry. The dish was brought to Sri Lanka by Hindu Tamils from India, but is distinctly non-denominational, eaten by everyone but the most hardcore Buddhists, who eschew eating any sort of sentient being.

As they drove across the lagoon bridge, Tusker watched the fishermen poling the placid water for crabs. Another time perhaps, this scene would seem serene. It reminded him of road trips he’d taken back home, a girlfriend sleeping off an early start while he enjoyed a Lake Michigan summer sunrise. But he could only think of Upali.

The town of Batticaloa lies roughly halfway down Sri Lanka’s eastern flank. In addition to its famous crabs, it boasts a lighthouse built by the British in the early 1800s. The town’s population has changed over its history, first Buddhist Sinhalese, then ethnic Tamils brought in by the British to work, and now, a large Muslim community. It is a small town, with a bustling high street jam packed with shops festooned with competing, mismatched signs and walls dripping with dark mildew. Women in hijabs carry umbrellas against the scorching equatorial sun and dodge the swaying buses that lurch past down the narrow streets.

Batticaloa has had a troubled history. It was at the heart of the eastern territory controlled by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the civil war that ripped the country apart for decades. Then came the tsunami and Batticaloa was ground zero. The low-lying town was consumed by a two-story wave that swept a mile inland, killing over 3,000 people and laying waste to anything in its path.

Road travel was exhausting in Sri Lanka. There was never a stretch of road where you could relax. The countless animals, motorbikes, and people on the narrow, winding roads meant it was constant slowing, stopping, and accelerating, all the while being pitched back and forth nauseatingly.

Ian managed to sleep in the front passenger seat for most of the six-hour drive, while Tusker brooded in the back, perched uncomfortably over the hot, noisy engine. A full day wasted in this damn van, he thought, looking out the dirty side window at the flashing scenery. When they stopped for a lunch of fish buns and tea at a roadside cafe back in Gampaha, Tusker didn’t talk much, picking at his food and leaving his tea half drunk.

Back on the road, he turned over every possibility of how the Taprobane could have sunk. We’ll get out there and dive it as soon as possible, he resolved to himself. There will be clues. I’m an archaeologist after all.

On the outskirts of Batticaloa, along an empty strip of sand and scrub pine, are several pockets of buildings that somehow survived the tsunami or were partially rebuilt. Stalks of rebar poke up from cement foundations, houses forever unfinished. It is out here, at the end of a long hard packed sand road, where you’ll find the Deep Blue Resort and Diving School.

As the tired van bumped and lurched across the road, trailing a plume of dust, Tusker wondered why this man, Sebastian, would want to run a dive resort at this desolate dead end. He was starting to doubt they’d ever find it. Srivathnan had to stop every half mile or so to ask locals on bicycles where the place was, and it seemed like every one sent them in a different direction than the last. But finally, after passing under a canopy of low, thorny trees, Tusker saw the whitewashed wall of a building with the silhouette of a diver on it and the words, “Deep Blue Resort — We’re the Wrecks-perts” on it.

Tusker slid open the van’s side door and shimmied out, bending over to stretch out his stiff back. Ian emerged sleepily, rubbing his eyes. The grounds of the resort were strangely silent, other than the ticking of the cooling engine and a chorus of buzzing cicadas somewhere in the trees. No one came to greet them and the place seemed deserted.

The Deep Blue was a series of single story, white buildings with red tile roofs laid out almost like barracks, in a line with a stone path running in front of them. Each “hut” had a number on it, presumably the room numbers. Opposite the sleeping quarters was an open air dining area covered by a thatched roof and an enclosed kitchen at one end.

“Where’s the welcoming committee?” Ian said. “I was expecting a pretty girl with an umbrella drink.”

Tusker ignored him and crunched further up the path. At the far end, there was a larger building, a bit more industrial looking than the rest and painted dark green. He could hear the unmistakable muffled roar of a compressor emanating from within. He