"I wanna be more like the ocean: no talkin’, all action”
Prolog: Autumn 2012
Somewhere in the Arctic Sea…
Wreck divers refer to it as “hovering”, but really it’s just
floating and watching. Hovering is a boring, ponderous task that makes each
passing second crawl like a worm. Sitting there, bored because you can’t see,
freezing because you hardly move. It’s critical to stay in one position so the
divers you’re spotting for can find you if need be. This entails checking a
compass every thirty seconds, constantly adjusting for the current. Even just
below the surface of a warm sea, in tropical sunshine and high visibility,
Hovering is - at best – boring, at worst strange, and sometimes dangerous. Take
that same activity, add 3 Miles of
depth below, take away the sunlight, and throw in roiling, near freezing water,
and it’s guaranteed: Whoever’s doing the hovering will not be able to hover for
long.
Charlie Montrose knew this well from many years of floating
and watching. Beginning to feel a slight chill, underwater for almost two hours,
Charlie knew he’d be relieved soon. His brother Jimmy was many things, but unprofessional
wasn’t one. Charlie and Jimmy had been wreck divers almost as long as they’d
been alive, and under the sea, “unprofessional” eventually meant the same thing
as “dead”. So Jimmy would be here soon, no question.
Of course, for this particular dive, prompt watch relief was
pretty much the only thing Sea Bee Underwater Explorations was responsible for.
The mysterious, and largely silent, clients were a private bunch. They wanted
passage to the Frozen Keep region of the Arctic Sea, bunks, food, a competent
hovering watch, and nothing more. Jimmy and Charlie were skeptical. February
was no time to be pushing north, and Sea Bee was nothing if not a hands-on
shop. After all, wreck diving was glory. A client who needed so little was
probably a client who wouldn’t share anything when the newspapers and dive mags
came sniffing around. The client’s proposed a fee, however, changed the dynamic
a bit.
What the fuck, Chuck!?
He remembered Jimmy shouting the words with a big goony
smile. Jimmy began most sentences with the words “What the fuck?”
2.5 million buys a lot of things in Key West…
And he was right about that. The Providence Montrose’s liked
only one thing better than diving, and that was fishing, an occupation that
didn’t pay near so well. Thinking about Key West, and his half of the cash, was
keeping Charlie warmer than his heated dive suit. He was just halfway to falling
asleep on his watch when Jimmy’s voice crackled through the ship’s circuit and
into Charlie's ear:
I’m at ninety feet
faggot. Shove off. And don’t smoke all the tree on deck. Gotta ration for the
extra days…Over.
Jim was right about that as well, but there wasn’t any use
in the sentiment. Number three on the Montrose priority totem was weed. Good,
strong, awesome-smelling weed, and lots of it. Charlie once did the math: roughly a
quarter of the Wendigo provision budget was spent on green. He didn’t wait for
a visual on Jimmy, the water was too dark to see anything at all. He started
going hard toward the surface, shot back at Jimmy on the way up:
You’re the fuckin’
refer monkey, asshole. The rest is mine by rights. I’m smoking all of it as
soon as it hit the deck. Over and Out. Dick.
Nothing after “Hit the deck” got through to Jim. The ships
circuit was closed, hard-wired into only his brother’s dive cap and his own.
These, plus a password-protected feed aboard the Wendigo were the only
listening posts, and secure to all but Jim and Charlie. Their client’s system,
however, was satellite – based, and that always fucked with the ancient Wendigo
coms. That in mind, Charlie wasn’t too freaked out when a voice that was not
Jimmy’s came back at him thru digital feedback squelching:
I’m at the gate again,
three of us, on go. I’m clicking off…
A static blast interrupted, then more squelches, and the voice,
once again:
…one at a time, until
all three of us are in. After that, kill the lights
Charlie knew the voice. It was the tall guy. The one they
called “Lu”. He was the leader, and the scariest person either Montrose bro had
ever met. All of seven feet tall if he was an inch, sullen and silent for most
of the voyage so far, Lu’s weird, sullen presence had been a daily bum-out for
the good natured pirates of Sea Bee. Lu’s crew was the same. All
nine of them seemed – To Charlie – to be constantly dire and resigned, as if they’d
come here to confirm something they already knew. What that thing might be was
a protected secret, and the main reason – Ice guessed – for the hefty fee.
They’d been staging at a shelf almost 100 meters down, but the decompression
protocols they followed were for a depth almost three times as deep. Whatever
the charter’s main objective was, Charlie felt certain, it was not on the first shelf.
Charlie broke the surface and was reaching to shut off his
mic, when another missive came growling out of static over the Wendigo circuit.
Again, the voice was not his brother’s:
Copy. Ok Ok. We are
here. Stepping in…Over.
There was a long pause, more noise, then another, different
voice. This was the thoughtful one, the one the charter guys had been calling
“G”. He was out of breath, panting between the words:
Copy…Copy. Well...
Speak! Over.
Another long pause and then this:
Copy Ten. We’re all
in, all three. All Clear .Over.
The answer came back with no delay this time, and it made
Charlie Montrose forget all about the amazing weed in the Wendigo stateroom:
Copy. Well done. Ok
Ok. Now shut off your air, and take off the suits…Copy? Message repeats: Turn
off your air, take off your dry suits…Copy? Over.
Charlie's Story
The Arctic Sea was different – Jimmy always told people – than any other body of water on earth. “And I should know cause I’ve been awn all of ‘em, and fahgin IN everyfahgginwanahvum”, he’d say, generating a misty look. Overstated perhaps, but I don’t recall anybody ever having corrected him. For one thing, the fucker was right. He had been on, and in “everyfahgginwanahvum”. For another, the Arctic is fucked up. I’ve heard it said the entire thing would’ve frozen, solid and permanent, a long time ago but for the fucking wind. Constant, aggressive, tireless, seemingly predatory, the winds of the far north make a vicious foe. They drive billions of gallons of once-warm ocean to an arctic longitude, and then blow them into a maelstrom, frozen solid along the coasts, and violently unpredictable in the open waters. The ocean floor there, almost six miles down at its deepest, expresses itself at the surface. Miles-long waves, that break miles from any shore, freak swells hundreds of feet high, and roiling white-capped chop are every day - common. The Wendigo does not spend a lot of time diving in the Arctic Sea.
But every so often somebody gets a hair across their ass to
make a run up north. Mostly research teams composed of geeky, tree-hugging
something-ologists-to-be, and their snobby professors. The Wendigo was the only
wreck-diving ship fitted for duty in the frozen North. A decommissioned
mine-sweeper, there wasn’t a sea she couldn’t handle. Uncle Sam had built her
strong, and easy to handle with a full compliment of only ten hands. At a
centerline length of just 110 ft. and mid-ship beam of 35 feet, the Wendigo was
a third as wide as she was long. She could stay afloat, with minimal power, in
70 foot seas.
Jim and myself both possessed a professional familiarity of
the place, as we were part of a very small group of captains who’d been diving
there more than once. I suppose there was competition amongst wreck-divers for
more normal duty, but if you wanted to dive in the frozen North, the Montrose
brothers and Wendigo were the only game in town. Lu had confirmed this for me
over lunch: “you’ve got a sterling reputation Mr. Montrose. We look forward to
working with you, and we count on your continued privacy and discretion.”
Dude was always looking for a way to mention “privacy and
discretion”. In hindsight, that should have put us off right from the
beginning. If not that, then surely the 40 ( ! ) heavy foot lockers worth of
gear, and half – ton of weird-looking hardware and equipment they brought
aboard. Unfortunately, my brother and I were – at the time – uninterested in
science, and more concerned with mathematics: 2.5 million dollars + Key West
divided by the rest of our lives.
***
I woke up in the water. Of the storm itself I remember only dreaming,
and then coughing and gasping for air. I’d rolled out of the rack and into a
three foot flood in my stateroom. Staggering and coughing what seemed like gallons
of ice cold Atlantic, I found my feet, but instead of the floor they were
standing on a dresser. My stateroom was forward, and above the ships hold, and
so right awayI knew...Water that high in a hull listing so extremely could only
mean one result: We were going in. The Wendigo was sinking.
I’d no sooner come to the realization when the lights went
out. Looking back I’m actually surprised they lasted as long as they did – the
ship’s circuits all broke in a “splash-proof” cabinet, in the by-then submerged
forward hold. I felt out around me, driving my hands out all around me trying
to gain any sense of spatial awareness. By now the noise of the rushing water
was deafening, blasting like a jet-turbine in the pitch dark cabin. I could
hear nothing over this awesome, awful note, and I envisioned the sea gathering,
marshaling forces for a final decisive assault.
Panic began to seep and flow like the enemy ocean. I found
myself tossed around the cabin, bouncing painfully off the heavy steel fittings.
The water was working me over with loud, frozen blows to the head and body. I
could feel the water rising, I remember thinking how easy it would be to just
let go. At that moment there didn’t seem to be a fight available for winning. I
remember feeling a great heave upwards, as if all 110 feet of minesweeper had
been somehow yanked upwards by a gigantic hand. We climbed so long that, for an
instant, I thought we’d been sucked up into a waterspout, beyond saving in a
gigantic cyclone of spinning wind and water.
There was an instant of pure weightlessness, and I felt
myself floating, along with all the millions and billions of gallons of sea
water, gear, and rent steel. I heard screams all around me, but the darkness
was still total. Then we hit the water. There was a sharp jolt, another moment
of falling, and a sound like heavy metal being forcibly ripped to shreds
followed by a tremendous concussion from below-decks. After that, there was
only void for me, and it seemed like forever.
***
I woke again with a familiar voice over me, screaming into
my face from very close. Imploring:
Dude! What the fuck! Fuckin’ get up. Wake up wake up wake
up. FUCK! Charlie…Charlie!!!
My brother Jim had found me. I opened my eyes and
immediately felt a sharp burning in my side. My hand flew to the spot, and felt
an odd warmth in the icy Atlantic. I found my feet, and then my brother and I
were in frenetic transit, running, walking, finally swimming away from my
stateroom in the stern, toward the conning tower amidships. I had a hand
wrapped around a bundle of Jim’s shirt. My side was raging and throbbing, and
the pain slowed my progress. The ship was writhing all around us, subtle
movements punctuated with terrible metallic groaning from the stricken craft. Jimmy
was shouting over his shoulder as we went, his voice reedy and weak in the din
of the Wendigo’s undoing, as if he’d been shouting to me over hundreds of yards
instead of 12 inches. Finally he turned on me, leaned in, shouted into my ear:
Ok. What the fuck!? You hear me?
Nod “yes”.
I nodded. He shouted again:
The Con! Can you climb?
The Wendigo’s conning tower was a plexi-glass enclosure at
the top of a protected ladder. It was 20 feet higher than anything else on the
entire craft and contained a stripped down version of the helm: throttles,
LORAN, a radio and stowed life preservers. The con could be accessed only by a
long steel ladder, surrounded by bulletproof plexi, with an entry portal at
every deck. Jim and I were swimming by the time we got there, tossed and shaken
like ice chips in the world’s biggest blender. The water had risen to our necks,
with the ship heeling hard starboard. The Con portal was submerged, so we’d
have to dive under and up. I could see nothing. I could hear only the soaking
white noise of rushing water, and feel only the freezing North Sea, commanding
me to stop fighting, relax, submit. My brother was by my side encouraging the
exact opposite. I shouted back at him:
Go Go Go! I’ll climb Go! Go!
We dove – he first, then me - toward the portal at the base
of the conn ladder. Moments later, Jim and I were in the dry conning tower with
no great amount of time to make lots of very important decisions.
***
We gained the Con, as yet un-watered, and hanging over open
sea thanks to the Wendigo’s position, and collapsed to the floor. The space was
essentially a 20”x10” bubble, encased in steel reinforced glass and
plexi-glass. There was lightning every few seconds, and the illumination made
me long for the darkness below decks. Every flash showed me angry, shifting
mountains of water surrounding us on all sides. It was as if we’d sailed into
another dimension. Jim spoke between gasps:
The ship’s going in. You have a bad cut on your side. I’m
going to leave you here while I go. I’m going to get the air…Stay. You getting
me fucker? Stay here…
“a bad cut” he’d said. I felt the pain, searing, but blunted
some by the adrenaline. I looked down at it, and promised myself not to do so
again. I tried to reply with words, and Jim saw that. He gave me a pat on the
chest, and disappeared back down the chute.
The ship was dying. I had questions. The crew? The clients?
What had become of the project? Any sea in which a hundred foot destroyer class
can founder under power is a sea that will kill. What had the radio said about the
squall? Every crewman and charter must have realized as soon as the Wendigo
heeled, that the stakes were now at their very highest. My brother had run for
the gear and that was also telling. The lifeboats on the Wendigo were better
outfitted than most small craft. Jimmy so urgent to skip all that and dive, it
occurred to me, could only mean that lifeboats – for whatever reason - were no
longer an option.
Waves - like most things - come in waves. My brother had
gone after the air in a lull, but during the wait the pounding began again and
were swamped, just so, by three amazing swells right in a row, each one longer
in duration than the last. The lightning – pretty much constant by this point,
made everything glow ozone-white. I watched it through the glass like a horror movie.
The first wave never closed out, so we’d gone rocketing up, then crashing down
in a matter of seconds. Our momentum carried us far into the trough of the next
wave. This one did close out, and since we were heeling against the sea, my
glass bubble got a front row seat. One second we were in free-fall , with my
glass bubble still about 30 feet off the water. Almost immediately after, the
bubble was partially submerged in the trough of the next wave, and launched
like a slingshot-marble directly to it’s high, tilting crest. Now the bubble
was at 90 degrees to the water, rocketing skyward for an impossibly long time
before a momentarily-righted Wendigo. For a split second, just at the peak ,
everything stopped. The lightning snapped a picture, like to preserve the moment
for some higher posterity, and for an instant, I saw the whole North Sea
snapping and clawing 100’s of feet below, and in perfect relief.
Then gravity took over and we dropped like an anvil.
In one vast, terrible motion, the wave closed and foamed,
snapping the conning tower through a full 180 degrees above the surface, then
power bombing it through another 180 below. Centrifugal force pinned me against
the transparent wall of the con, under three feet of water. I’d taken in huge
lungfuls of the stuff before I realized what was happening and by then, the
bubble was arcing under the ship. I
looked up the ladder and saw all 110 feet of my old, beloved minesweeper,
upside-down and backlit by lightning above me. We rose again a moment later,
and popped from the waves like a buoy, leading the Wendigo, once again, into
the jaws of the Arctic Sea.
Just then my brother Jim poked his head up through the
Conning tower hatch. He said nothing, but he sent something arcing across the
room towards me. I wasn’t ready. It hit me in the head, and splashed down into
the water now hip deep in the bubble. I saw what it was a thanked whatever unfortunate
God that would hear me.
***
The Dobson mini-rescue tank, or “oh shit!” tank, in the
strange vernacular of the wreck diver, is essential Equipment. Each contains
about 20 minutes of air when full, and is attached to an integrated, flexible
plastic helmet and mask designed to fit easily over our dry dive caps. Each
diver was responsible for maintaining his own.
Before this I’d only used mine once, and Jim the same, and
it was this that I began to think about as I felt the ship jerk and buckle underneath
me. Two days before, we’d used them to follow our secretive clients and find
out what the fuck. It’d been two weeks in the North, and all that’d been
required of us was to pilot the ship, and watch over the charter from hundreds
of feet above them. As far as I could tell, we were there basically to bear
witness. Now I understand, two million dollars was a nice price for a little
witness-bearing. Even so, the Wendigo had been at risk for two weeks and
neither of its captains understood why. Jimmy was seething:
What the fuck! I don’t gotta’ know everything,
He’d said, fixing me in his “serious” face.
I just need to know something.
So we followed them, or, more correctly, Jimmy followed them
and I followed him. Our depth indicators saw a massive shelf below at around
three hundred feet, but there was an odd interference past that, washing out
into a colorless blob on the instrument panel. The depth numbers began jumping
and falling, occasionally lapsing in double and triple zero’s before another
set of seemingly random information.
10 Meters
100 meters
43 Meters
00 Meters
Jimmy had tried to confirm the shelf with Lu, but every time
he’d asked the freak had just giggled softly and looked at the floor. I’d asked
him myself a few times, same thing. So instead of one man, two hour watches, we’d
both went in the water using nothing but the rescues. Each dry suit had the
others hard wired into its operating system so everybody on a dive would be able
to see everybody else. The wet suits, however, had no such marker, electronic
or otherwise. They were full black suits with boots and integrated cap. We’d
have twenty minutes, and could at least see what lay beyond the shelf.
Instead, my body started to rebel as soon as I slid into the
water. I was wearing a full wet suit. The North Sea felt like swords of ice
cutting into the spaces between the suit and skin. Flesh sunk away in from the
cold blades. My eyes fogged. My heart started beating faster than I was
comfortable with. My muscles began to cramp and lock. Jimmy dove and began
charging for the bottom, and eventually I did too, only to be thrown back yet
again, this time by the pressure in the surging black water. It was crushing my
head like a vice with every inch of descent, and I felt as if I might die right
there. Instead, I swam like hell for my boat, and Oxygen. Jim was up ten
minutes later, and the charter started their surface procedures a little while
after.
My brother and I never got a chance to discuss the things he
saw down there, or – for that matter - if he’d seen anything at all. The important
part is we both used our rescue tanks, and Jim was underneath twice as long as
I was. all
***
All this came blasting through my mind as my ship boiled in
clouds of freezing white water. I wasn’t just thinking about our spy dive, I was actually went there. I was there, and – for a few moments – no longer in the
shipwreck. A second later, the reverie cut off, replaced by only one word,
wrought in neon, sun-bright, blinking. WAKE UP!
A low rumble vibrated from somewhere underneath, and a sound
like Gatling cannon erupted from inside the ship. I watched, stunned, as the
lightning backlit the Wendigo’s final insult. The gatling cannon became a
banshee-scream that rose and rose in pitch, as the super-structure separated
from the hull and leaked the innards of the Wendigo across the black waves.
Water flooded the hull and the conning tower snapped from the ship like a dead
branch in a hurricane. For a moment, we bobbed at the surface. The last thing I
saw before the sea swallowed the con, was the ruined hulk that had been the
proud Wendigo not 40 minutes ago, rolling over and giving up, in the final
throws of a mighty death. Then the waves closed over us, and we fell.
My brother’s rescue tank was empty, mine was half empty, and
we’d drop a mile deep before anything stopped us.
***
Except, we didn’t. Luck, for the first time in days, was
with us. We didn’t go all the way down. The Wendigo reached bottom just 40
seconds after she left the surface, dragging our glass bubble behind as part of
a massive, spiraling debris trail. We crashed into the ocean floor like a
meteor hitting a rice paddy. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me, and I was
thrown forward, bashed against a fitting. The wreck settled for a moment,
creaking and adjusting in the muck, and then things were finally still and
quiet. I wondered how much air I had in my rescue, and how far down we’d come,
when I remembered about Jimmy and his empty fucking tank.
I forced myself to illuminate the area with my watch, and
immediately realized the worst.
Jimmy was looking up at me, but he couldn’t see shit. He
must have just run out of air, because his head and shoulders were jumping as
if he were being tazed. He opened his mouth, still staring at me. For one split
second, I saw something flash through his eyes. Fear? Pain? I couldn’t say.
After that his eyes went wide, and the twitching ebbed. Within seconds, I was
stranded in a dark place, with my dead brother. I started hyperventilating,
gulping down my remaining air until I saw stars, all shapes and sizes, flashing
and streaking through my field of vision.
***
I couldn’t say how we made it out of the wreck. I couldn’t
say how I dragged Jimmy out. All that’s certain is that we got out. My head was
swimming, flipping, warp speed, through an info-deluge and trying to separate
signal from noise. I was remembering a conversation I’d heard earlier through
the circuit feed aboard the Wendigo. We’d sunk to the place where the charter
had staged, I felt certain. That meant that whatever big secret they’d been
studying…
Take off your suits…
I made one last gulp from the just emptied Oh Shit! tank. My
head felt as if a fire hose was gushing, point blank, into my open mouth. My
lungs felt blowtorched. I used the compass on my watch to take a heading, and
made for where I thought the clients had been working, feeling my way along the
bottom of the sea, one-arming Jim’s body in – what else – a dead man’s float. I
could feel my own rescue tank getting low with every stroke. By the time we got
to the shelf, I was dizzy, and breathing only empty space where oxygen had
been. I took no time for consideration. I felt the void opening under me, took
a deep breath, and started pumping straight down. Jimmy remained motionless,
still in tow, his stiffened form moving through the water with an easy grace.
They weren’t down as far as I’d assumed and thank God for
that. After a few seconds of descent, I began to see lights. With another few
strokes, we were standing on a second shelf.
I had no time left. My limbs felt like they’d been smothered in molten iron and
my head was twitching and shaking. I registered – dimly – the underwater still
life coming into focus below us. I saw floodlights, three of them, surrounding
what looked like a half a giant soap bubble, maybe 20 feet across, parked on
the sea floor. The bubble looked transparent as I approached, but pulling close
I realized it’s surface was reflective. It shimmered in the dull white glow. I
saw myself in reflection just as my mind snapped. I pulled Jimmy close. As we
both fell toward the undulating mirror-dome, my body heaved up in one desperate
attempt at bloody mutiny. I opened my mouth, and took in what felt like 1000 gallons
of the cold Arctic sea.
All divers know the stories about drowning, mostly because
we’re the ones who tell them. We all know how most doctors will tell you that
it’s by far the worst way to go. That it’s like inhaling Sterno and swallowing
a lit match. That it’s like having you lungs yanked out of your mouth. I once
knew a man who claimed to have been dead for over three hours, drowning on a
deserted Block Island beach in July, waking up in a Providence hospital in
September. He said:
“The reason it’s so bad is the powerlessness. You don’t want
to take that breath, but eventually you do, and that ocean comes flooding, and
your entire being feels melted by acid from the inside out. After that, the
last thing you want to do is take another breath, but you do, and this one if
worse. On and on it goes, and you can see nothing, and hear nothing, and feel
nothing but burning, and it’s getting worse and worse. ”
And he was right. In the .5 seconds between my horrible
inhale and falling through the bubble, I felt pure blue fire streaking across
my nervous system, seizing ground, occupying Charlie Montrose.
***
Take off your suits,
over…
The first thing I noticed was the light. It was everywhere around
us, and bright enough to burn retina. Bright enough, that is, if I’d taken any time
to look. Instead I simply registered its existence as I chocked and coughed.
The salt water had burned everything inside me, and I could do nothing but flop
and writhe on the ground. So sharp and total was my agony, that I didn’t
realize I’d been BREATHING since we entered the bubble. We were no longer in
the North Sea. We were no longer in any sea. As the pain and coughing quieted, amazement
took their place. I looked all around at that white light and my mind just shut
down. All I could do was be shocked. As I sat there, I must have said something
out loud, because a reply came back instantly:
Jesus Christ on fucking amphetamines, what have you done
this time…
I turned to look down at my brother Jimmy, speaking up at me
from the floor and grinning wide. He’d been dead, but was apparently not dead
anymore. I needed time to think, and so I passed out before either of us could
speak another word.
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