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

“Thank you, Mary.” Havelock waved her off as he put his lips to the steaming cup, then pulled back. “And one more thing. I’ll be needing a nautical chart of the east coast of Ceylon.”

Blow Down

Bay of Bengal, eight nautical miles east of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Present day.

Malcolm Rausing gazed out the pilothouse window of the dive support vessel Depth Charge into the black night. In the distance to the west he could just make out the twinkling lights of Batticaloa. Otherwise it was pitch black, and he could hear the waves gently lapping at the hull 40 feet below. It was a new moon, so no silver beams of light on the sea, no reflection of any kind. Rausing’s face was illuminated by the green light of the instrument panel in front of him. The crescent scar on his forehead stood out in relief, disappearing into his V-shaped hairline. In the artificial light, his pale blond hair, pulled back into a tight ponytail, had the cast of silver mercury. His large grey eyes were intelligent and probing as he scanned the horizon, like a nocturnal predator searching for prey. Satisfied with what he saw, he turned to face the group of three men who stood a respectful distance behind him, all of them wearing black starched shirts with epaulets and the sleeves rolled up neatly, buttoned at their biceps.

“We’ll dive in an hour,” Rausing said to them. “Get the divers blown down to bottom pressure.”

“Yes, sir,” the big man on the end said with a Scandinavian accent. He turned on his heel and left the pilothouse through the outside door, his footfall receding as he clanged down the metal staircase. The humid sea air had briefly entered the cabin, adding some warmth to the chill of the air conditioning.

“Scholz, make sure we have a couple of Zodiacs around the perimeter of the ship keeping an eye out for fishermen,” he said to the angular man with the shaved head and mustache. Scholz nodded and also left the pilothouse, this time through the rear door to the ship’s interior, leaving only the captain, a bearded, portly man with a bad complexion, and Rausing.

“The scope shows no other boats in the vicinity, and the fishing fleet won’t be back this way until dawn,” the captain said with the heavy tongue of an Eastern European accent. He stepped forward towards the ship’s controls before catching Rausing’s piercing eyes and stopping short. Rausing smiled and patted Captain Balázs Kovács on the shoulder like a principal reassuring a wary schoolboy.

“I’ll leave you to it then, Captain,” Rausing said. “This is your ship.” Kovács knew better. He may have been responsible for driving the ship and overseeing the crew’s daily duties, but Rausing was really in control. The Depth Charge was his boat, part of the Rausing Oceanic fleet, acquired five years earlier and retrofitted to be a dive support vessel, with a hoist, pressure chamber, hyperbaric lifeboat, and moon pool. Rausing had even changed the ship’s name, ordering the paint spelling out Baltic Star scrubbed from its hull, in defiance of superstition. In a matter of only a few months, all remnants of its former life as a gritty North Sea salvage boat were gone, replaced by the starched uniforms and gilt logo china plates of the DSV Depth Charge. Captain Kovács didn’t complain. Life was better than ever, with a fat salary, a sparkling refurbished ship, and the tropical climate of his new temporary home, Sri Lanka.

“I’ll be in my quarters until dive time. Fetch me if anything changes out there,” Rausing said, gesturing towards the black sea outside, though the windows only reflected their own green lit faces. He strode to the door and was gone. Kovács exhaled, then stepped out of the port-side door onto the stairs for a cigarette. Rausing disapproved of smoking but hadn’t forbidden it other than among the team of divers, but Kovács still felt sneaky every time he lit up.

On the dive deck two levels below and aft of the pilothouse, two clean-shaven, fit-looking men were contorting into heavy dive suits made of black crushed neoprene. Few words were exchanged between them and a third man, Murray, the bell man, besides affirmatives after each zipper was snugged. The divers, Rory Aitkens and Gus McElroy—both Scots—sat side by side on a bench, sweating profusely in the tropical night air. Under their neoprene they wore woolen union suits to ward off a hypothermic chill at the sea bottom.

“Transfer to the chamber for blowdown,” echoed a canned voice from a speaker mounted on the wall. It was Dive Control, the command center for all diving activities on the Depth Charge, housed in a dark room in the ship’s belly. The divers each lifted a gloved hand to the camera mounted in the corner of the room and gave the “OK” sign with index finger and thumb pressed together.

Aitkens and McElroy were saturation divers, about as far from recreational scuba divers as a kite-flying child is from a fighter pilot. Rather than swimming freely with tanks on their backs, their breathing gas, a mix of helium and oxygen, would be continually pumped down to them through a long “umbilical” system from the support ship. This umbilical also bundled communication cables and electrical power for their headlamps and camera. A hot water system circulated warm water through their suits. Though the surface temperature of the Indian Ocean was 87 degrees Fahrenheit, at 350 feet, it would be in the 60s, enough to chill a diver working for several hours.

The divers would not travel to and from the sea bottom by their own power, but rather be transported inside a diving bell, pumped up to the same pressure as the surrounding water at depth, thus staying dry inside. Once at the bottom, the divers exited the bell and swam or walked to their work sites, where they could