“Why not?”
“Because the door’s locked.”
Sam shined his light on the small circular hole, where a modern security key might be inserted. Inside his full-face mask, his lips curled upward in a wry grin, full of curiosity. Whatever’s behind that door, someone’s gone to extreme lengths to keep it protected. He looked at it, wondering whether the blast from one of their shark-sticks might be powerful enough to damage the lock.
The flicker of a beam of light swept across his back.
Sam switched his flashlight off and turned sharply.
A second light approached. “We’ve got company!”
Tom turned his light off. “Behind you, there’s an open alcove.”
Sam moved quickly into the alcove. His eyes focusing on the shimmer of light approaching. It was filtering down from the stairs at the end of the passageway. He held his breath, hoping that he spotted the light early enough that whoever was coming down hadn’t spotted theirs.
Sam gripped the handle of his shark-stick. “Did they see us?”
“I don’t think so.”
Sam stared at the light as it approached. Its beam focused on the locked door. Sam listened intently for the sound of expelling bubbles. There were none. The divers were using rebreathers, too. Deadly silent.
No wonder we didn’t see them coming.
The diver paused. His head turned to look straight at Sam and Tom. The man seemed to be staring vacantly through them. Sam watched the crease in the diver’s forehead deepen and the diver tense. If the diver hadn’t spotted them, one thing was certain, he felt uneasy about something as though he was being watched. There was always the possibility the diver routinely checked the alcove for other divers before opening the door. But if that was the case, why hadn’t the diver shined his flashlight on them?
Sam placed his trigger finger on the shark-stick.
The diver turned and faced the locked door again.
Sam expelled his breath of air.
The diver casually turned and started swimming back the way he came. He wasn’t racing, if anything, it was merely as though the diver had been practicing a wreck dive, reached the end and turned around.
Sam asked, “Where the hell’s he going?”
“Beats me,” Tom replied. “Maybe there’s a different door?”
“So why did he come all the way down here?”
“I don’t know. Let’s follow him.”
Sam waited another fifteen seconds and then moved out into the passageway. The faint glow of the diver’s flashlight dimmed.
“Where the hell’s he going?” Sam asked.
“He must have spotted us!” Tom said.
“Quick! After him. We can’t let him escape.”
Sam started to kick hard, racing toward the end of the passage. The diver swam up the twin stairs well ahead of them.
Clank!
The hatchway slammed shut and the diver’s light disappeared.
Sam switched on his own flashlight. He raced to the top of the stairs and then swore — because the closed hatchway was now locked shut.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Virginia checked her timer. Sam and Tom had been down for thirty-two minutes. Sam and Tom said they could be down there for as much as four hours if need be, still she remained vigilant, watching the radar for any signs of them surfacing.
The GPS showed her position to their location as two miles, give or take. The Annabelle May would close that gap quickly once Sam and Tom’s personal locator beacons indicated they were on the surface of Lake Superior again.
She took a sip of coffee and watched.
The radar screen blipped as another vessel came into the five-mile radius on the screen. She had a digital pin dropped on the screen at Sam and Tom’s co-ordinates where the J.F. Johnson was located, and watched as a mid-sized vessel made a beeline for the very same spot. A trickle of adrenaline tingled at the base of her spine as she turned for their position at a slow idle. All she could do was wait. The radar showed the boat stopped directly above Tom and Sam for about five minutes, and then retraced its path back toward the protected waters of Isle Royale. Again, she waited, while all the worst-case scenarios were being borne out in her imagination.
She thought about Sam’s hardened ability as a soldier and Tom’s size. From what he’d explained to her, fighting underwater was extremely difficult, and few people chose to attempt it. If there was a problem, it would be when they resurfaced.
Virginia glanced at the loaded Remington double barreled shotgun next to the Annabelle May’s helm and hoped she wouldn’t need to use it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sam stared at the door. The beam of his flashlight pointed at the iron eyelet. A thick steel chain had been fed through the side of the hatch and was now padlocked to the ring. He checked the door for any movement with his hand. There wasn’t any. The door was locked shut. His heart hammered in his throat. He’d suffered with claustrophobia since he was a child. Wreck diving and cave diving was his ultimate achievement in overcoming that fear. But it had never completely left him. Instead, he’d learned how to manage it. How to keep it at bay, hidden. But those fears were still there.
And right now, they came flooding back.
He breathed deeply, consciously making the effort to slow his rate. “Tom, was this how you found the hatchway last time they tried to trap you down here?”
“Afraid not. Last time there was no chain.”
“You think our shark-stick might take that padlock off?”
Tom ran his gloved hand across the grooved padlock. “No way in hell. That’s a German made Granit. Almost indestructible. It can withstand up to six tons of pressure and hold together the same amount of tensile weight. The core is extremely pick resistant and uses disk detainers instead of pin tumblers.”
“Meaning?” Sam asked.
“There’s no way we’re breaking this lock.”
“Great.” Sam glanced at his gas supply. “So, we have a little under four hours to work out how to get through this hatchway. You got any ideas?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Let’s not go through it.”
“That wasn’t quite my plan. I mean, it’s nice down here, but I’m kind of keen not to spend the rest of eternity entombed here.”
“No. That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean, then?”
Tom swept the surrounding chamber with his flashlight. “I plan to go out the same way the diver does.”
“Ah, Tom. I hate to mention this, but the diver’s already gone out through the hatchway there.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
Sam glanced at the locked chain. “You’re right. That door’s locked from the inside. That being the case, where did the diver go?”
“I don’t know.” Tom shined his light down the horizontal passage. The silt was still and the water clear.
“You go that way, I’ll check out down here,” Sam said, pointing to a second compartment next to the stairs.
“Agreed.”
Sam moved, quickly recovering his confidence, having now been given a task to concentrate his attention.
Halfway down the stairs, he noticed a horizontal opening to another room. He guessed that it was a ventilation shaft from the main engine room when the ship was afloat, and ordinarily unable to be accessed. But now that the ship was flooded, it formed an open tunnel to another part of the ship. Sam flashed his light into the gap.
The silt stirred and settled near the base.
Had the diver swam through there?
With his left hand on his flashlight and his right on the shark-stick, Sam slowly entered the gap. It traveled approximately twenty feet before opening up into a large room in the deck below. Sam swept the room with his flashlight.