Sam laughed at that.
Why is it that when people know that you work for an underwater salvage company in the role of Special Operations, they automatically assume you’re interested in treasure hunting?
He studied the picture for a couple of minutes.
Gold had never held any special interest for him. After all, what was he going to do with it? What piqued his interest was the story behind how the gold came to be.
He then forwarded the image to Blake Symonds, a merchant banker in Venice. A friend of his father’s, the man specialized in gold bullion and fine European antiquities. If anyone knew about where the ingot had come from, it would be him. With the photo attached, Sam asked the simple question, do you know whose emblem this is? He then drew a red arrow pointing to the G&O impression.
That done, Sam climbed into his bunk and went to sleep, while Second Chance sailed on south toward Hell.
Tom Bower was sitting in the dark hull of the Maria Helena, staring at his laptop. Despite the powerful air conditioning, his face glistened with beads of sweat as he examined the catastrophic low that was rapidly approaching the northeast coast of Australia.
He had hazel brown eyes and a permanent smile, which best expressed his happy-go-lucky attitude towards life. His dark, curly hair and olive complexion suggested a Mediterranean ancestry, even though he was a third generation American. At six foot four, he was considered much too tall to be a pilot, and even less suitable to the world of cave diving. At both of which, he was an expert. At the age of twenty eight, Tom had already achieved more than most people would achieve in a lifetime.
His general demeanor was relaxed, and he believed that he would always manage to get through whatever happened to him. His smile was kind, and his friends often found his insouciance, despite any given disaster, as one of his most endearing yet infuriating traits.
In front of him, were a multitude of meteorology reports.
Even after having discussed the weather with the three brightest meteorologists in the world, the best information he could gather was not much better than what had been available when he was a child.
There was a cyclone heading towards the northeast coastline of Australia, and depending on where it hit, there would almost certainly be a lot of damage to people, buildings and the environment.
All the science that was designed to protect them could sink right to the ocean floor, for all its usefulness today.
Tom had spent four years in Florida as a young boy while his father was posted there with the Navy.
He knew all about hurricanes, and he always hated them.
As a boy, he promised himself that he was going to move as far from water as possible. When he finished secondary school, he joined the Marines as a helicopter pilot, happy to have distanced himself from the sea and the risk of hurricanes.
Not long after his initial training, he served in Afghanistan, where he mainly performed Hot Drops with Navy SEALS and Medevacs. It was dangerous work, but at least there was no enormous body of water below him.
Two years ago, his chopper had been shot down. Of the twenty men aboard her, he was the only one to survive. It was pure luck, nothing more. There wasn’t anything he could have done to change that outcome. He should have been killed with the rest of them. When he attended their funerals, he felt no desire to change places with any one of the good men who had sacrificed their lives so that America could protect its way of living for future generations.
He felt no survivor guilt, but all the same, when he looked at their loved ones, their wives, children, parents, brothers and sisters, there was simply a deep well of pain inside him, which could never be repaired even with the military might of the U.S. Marines.
Tom tried to continue on with his military career, but it was pointless.
Much to the concern of his father, Tom eventually applied for an honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines. It had taken months for his discharge to be finalized. As a highly awarded helicopter pilot, with three separate tours of duty to the Sand Pit under his belt, he could only assume that despite his father being adamant that he would not intervene, he was indeed responsible for the delay. When it eventually came through, Tom signed the paperwork, handed in the last of his uniforms, and walked home from the base.
When he arrived home, Sam Reilly was there waiting for him, with a job offer he couldn’t resist.
Although they had been childhood neighbors, they came from very different walks of life; both struggling with their unusual vicissitudes with equal enthusiasm and tenacity. Tom’s own father was an Admiral in the Navy, and although he earned a salary well into six figures, and was even on a first name basis with a number of Senators and Congressmen, was considered relatively poor in comparison to the others living in the affluent community of La Jolla, California.
Sam, on the other hand, had more money than he would ever get to spend in his lifetime. The two men shared a similar love for cave diving since childhood. Once they reached adulthood, much to the disappointment of his friend’s father, Sam decided to join Tom, and the two became cadet helicopter pilots never had any aspirations to reach Flag rank in forty years’ of service to the Marine Corps.
The two of them completed their pilot training and Sam had even served the start of one tour of duty in Afghanistan with him. But then, for no reason that anyone could comprehend, Sam had returned stateside and completed his studies at MIT. There had been some unsavory sentiment throughout the military that once Sam had tasted the awful realities of war, he had used his father’s influence to bring him home again.
To this day, Tom had never discovered the real reason behind his mate’s sudden and early departure from the Marines, but he doubted very much that Sam had been incompetent and Tom was incapable of believing his friend to be a coward. Sam had returned to MIT to complete his Master’s in Oceanography, and the two men usually met several times a year to go cave diving together. It wasn’t much, but it was all the off-time that the Marines would give him, and all that Sam’s studies would allow.
He was surprised to see Sam at the door on the very day that he had received his honorable discharge. It might have been sheer luck that their two lives were about to collide once again, but, although he believed in luck, Tom also knew that Sam was often the precursor to its development.
It wasn’t a coincidence.
Sam must have known what was going to happen.
Tom still remembered their conversation fondly, despite his current position, and the irony of all that he’d been offered.
It occurred just over a year ago now.
“I was formally discharged from the Corps today,” Tom said.
“So, I was told.” Sam looked cheerful and then said, “I’ll bet your dad was stoked.”
“Mom’s already called to give me the heads up that it will take him a while to cool down after this one. Anyway, that’s about all with me. I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. The truth is, I gave the Corps six years of my life, and three tours of duty in some of the most hostile conflicts in recent history. I’m glad to be out. I never had any aspirations to be an Admiral in forty years’ time like my old man. Now, since I doubt that you’re here to cheer me up, what do you want, Sam?”
“My dad has convinced me to return to the family business.”
“I thought you hated what your father does?”
“No, I’m indifferent to the whims of an overly rich hyper-intelligent man child.” Sam smiled again as he described his father. “Despite what he wants, I won’t ever become Global Shipping’s next Chief Executive Officer.”
“So, you’ll become what, a tugboat Captain?” Tom said, incredulously knowing that his friend wouldn’t find that interesting either.