Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Read online

  It was a powerful suggestion, one that must be obeyed, one he could not combat no matter how much he longed to see home, hearth, the wife.

  He knew the nearest fellows to the mine were men working at the shipyards. He knew that his feet—the same as had kicked McAffey back into the mine shaft, now moved toward the distant lights of the shipyard at Belfast as if made of wood on the one hand, and as if they had a mind of their own, these extremities, and were guided by a hand other than his own.

  “Company of others… don’t want being alone… time like this.” He heard himself saying now as he ambled in mechanical fashion toward where they had labored for so long now building Titanic and her sister ships via the iron ore provided by the mine.

  Francis had forgotten McAffey’s name now; could not dredge it up. Then he realized he’d forgotten his own name as well. He wondered if he might live at least long enough to take in the air of the world outside the mine in the company of other fellows, perhaps raise a pint to his lips, smoke a cigar before his mind should completely go—but what else did it all mean? A man spending a lifetime, learning, filling his mind and for what? So it ends a blank slate? Why? How? What was at root of living and dying?

  “Some seed in that damned, cursed prehistoric dog carcass,” he muttered to himself, feeling an overwhelming urge to live, and to do so among other men—other men who would allow life to continue—yet a life he did not recognize. All he knew was that he must survive long enough to get to others of his kind. In fact, it replaced the one mantra in his head—to get out and to get air—with another that pleaded for other warm bodies.

  Some time later, O’Toole stumbled into the sprawling Belfast shipyard looking like a drunk at the midnight hour. He passed below the huge gantry, a part of his brain unsure in the dim light how he’d gotten here, how he’d come so far, how he remained alive when that other fellow… a man with whom he’d been… someone he’d known but could not so much as picture in his mind now… how that other fellow had died so quickly and violently. That much he remembered.

  He felt not at all in control of his limbs, felt no control of his will, yet he was alive, despite the horrible belief that some kind of dreaded disease had grabbed hold of him and would never release its grip. It seemed madness to contemplate, but it felt as if the thing that’d taken hold had somehow transferred itself from this other fellow’s corpse—to him. And there had been this curious creature he’d carelessly handled. It may well’ve come from that ancient creature.

  Whatever it was, it hadn’t killed him as it had the other miner. Instead, it was intentionally stretching out its time with O’Toole—using him up in a more controlled fashion as if it could… as if it could manage to control its feeding within.

  While it had so quickly and voraciously fed on the other man, it had now ushered in a powerful self-control. Whatever it might be called otherwise, this thing was sentient.

  It directed him deeper into the shipyard; it seemed to want to get as far from its former prison as possible. To that end, it wanted O’Toole aboard the ship just built, a ship that was made from ore taken from the mine that it had snuggled alongside for how long—as if it had an affinity for the iron walls.

  Or perhaps it realized that Titanic could act as its perfect lair.

  While his conscious mind had no true evidence of any of it, his every remaining human instinct said it was so.

  In any case, O’Toole had no choice but to carry out its wishes.

  By now realizing himself to be just a conduit, a vehicle to move it from the mine to here, O’Toole thought of killing himself, but he had no ready method of doing so save leaping into the water as he could not swim. He made a move in that direction but was turned about. While his mind still fought for itself, his body was no longer his. He guessed that he’d debated over suicide too long, and it knew his thoughts, and as a result, it was ahead of him on this.

  Francis moved now below the giant letters a hundred feet overhead and twenty feet apart. Letters that read: TITANIC.

  TWO

  The Pier at Woods Hole Institute, Massachusetts, April 11, 2012

  The screeching pelicans and seagulls overhead seemed quite out of their minds with the unusually early morning activity surrounding the bizarre-looking research vessel in its slip at the harbor. Human activity. Human excitement. It must mean food scraps for them. What else might it portend, wondered David Robert Ingles, feeling a bit like Ishmael of Moby Dick fame, readying for the voyage with the mad Ahab—in this case Captain and Doctor of Oceanography, Juris Forbes, a man obsessed with Titanic, but then who wasn’t?

  The research vessel, Scorpio IV—four times the size of anything else docked here in Woods Hole—was jam packed with superstructure that supported two enormous cranes, affording sea birds all manner of handy perches; in fact, the birds patiently awaited any opportunity for scraps and fish heads to eat. However, the primary purpose of the two super cranes was hardly for the birds, but rather for lifting tons of weight from the depths of the ocean and positioning heavy objects weighing tons onto Scorpio’s deck. In a matter of weeks, the computer operated, hydraulic cranes would be hauling up treasures plucked from the mysterious interiors of the one-hundred-year-old shipwreck named Titanic. The treasures would be placed in sealed vaults to protect them from the change in pressure from the deep to the surface.

  It was now April 2012—precisely one hundred years—the Centenary of Titanic’s launching and her demise when she struck an iceberg at 22 knots.

  David Ingles took notice of the birds—thankful the seagulls weren’t a flock of albatrosses. He gave a flash thought to his reading of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, imagining he would undoubtedly run into an ancient sailor on board Scorpio this trip—old timers with short fuses and little patience for the young and foolish who got men killed at sea as quickly as scratching an itch. If the old timers aboard Scorpio knew his history, or his latest failed mission, they’d surely be wary of him the entire way out and back.

  Ingles came aboard without fanfare and no one to greet him. Everyone on the pier and on board busily work at their jobs. It was obvious orders were to ship out within the hour.

  At the center of Scorpio, Ingles found the ‘oil well’ over which the largest derrick supported a myriad of equipment strung with cable as thick as hemp on a Cutty Schooner. But this ship was far from a schooner, and while faster, hardly as romantic or beautiful. Essentially a high-tech outfitted drill ship, Scorpio’s primary drilling derrick stood amidships. But rather than use a traditional drill pipe, Scorpio’s gleaming derricks supported her enormous cables—hundred pound Cryo-Cable to be exact. Her cable could withstand the most frigid conditions on Earth—or rather below the seas—including the bottom of the North Atlantic exactly two and a half miles below the surface.

  Ingles, carrying his gear, now ran a strong hand along the huge steel derrick. With her electronically controlled pulleys, Scorpio could hoist anything imaginable, even a Titanic-sized bulkhead if need be. If the Titanic were in one piece and not the ripped apart, pancaked-in-on-itself ship that it’d become, David had no doubt that the mighty little Scorpio could “Raise the Titanic.” She was that strong.

  However, their mission was not to raise Titanic so much as to raid and plunder her. Some news accounts used the term ‘rape’ her, but Ingles didn’t see it that way. Not in the least. It was well documented in the literature that Titanic took down many treasures with her—far more than dishware—and the belief held that even the sealed hold that carried a treasure-trove of vintage automobiles would be perfectly preserved at the depths where Titanic resided. Even a sandwich at such depths would be perfectly preserved and edible unless found in a Stover’s lunchbox—which would be permeated then with corrosive salts and more toxic than sea water. So what of the stash of mailbags crossing the Atlantic in 1912? They resided in a sealed section of the ship. A wealth of letters, documents, and bank notes alone. So what of all the jewelry stowed in the safes aboard yet to be discovered?
Not to mention brass and gold fixtures and shipboard items within the ship? The treasures that had survived all these years—museum pieces for world showcases, and each item itself worth a fortune!

  It was just a matter of using modern means to salvage the treasures awaiting them from what remained inside the various safes aboard, the staterooms, the varied first, second, and third-class dishes and silverware, the mailbags, the secret cargo in the holds—like the rumored crates of Vickers automatic machine guns destined for the US Army, and a stash of now quite antique automobiles. Not to mention an Egyptian mummy on its way to New York.

  Yes it was all extremely controversial, and Ingles’d had to walk through a sizeable crowd of protestors noisier than the seagulls to get aboard, but history would eventually prove the mission the right thing to do—of this he was certain. Otherwise the enormous sacrifice of all those 1600 souls aboard the night Titanic went to its watery grave would have been in vain. At least that was the sound byte put out for the media and the public.

  The other side argued that Titanic was a cemetery, sacred ground; they championed Dr. Robert Ballard, who had consecrated that solemn peace of the death ship at the bottom of the Atlantic. Ingles recalled Robert Ballard in a Red Sox ball cap when the discoverer of the Titanic in its grave had last left Titanic’s ruins decades ago. He had certainly put his stamp on the discovery and had every good intention to proclaim it a last resting place, a sanctified ground, a place not to be disturbed, a place nothing should be removed from.

  Author Rod Serling’s brother Robert’s worst novel—Ghosts of the Titanic—prevailed in the minds of many, but for Ingles and other scientists such concerns amounted to superstitious claptrap—Twilight Zone nonsense.

  “Make no mistake about it,” said a white-bearded stout fellow confronting Ingles, jabbing at the derrick with his pipe. “This monster can hoist up an entire Sherman tank from below if you give the order, Dr. Ingles. If need be, we can bring up that blasted ship piece by piece, compartment by compartment.”

  “Capable of a quarter million pounds of lift,” David replied, smiling. “May sound like science fiction but there you have it. Please, call me David.”

  “Indeed, young man… indeed.” They shook hands.

  “Your voice sounds somewhat familiar. You’re Dr. Dimitri Alandale, aren’t you, sir? We’ve spoken. You called my iPhone.”

  “Aye—first mate, science officer, and you look like your photo, yes? Sometimes a good thing!”

  “You’ve got me!” Ingles joked, and they both looked out to sea.

  “Ahhh, yes! I called you from my Droid—lot of interference. Cell phones don’t always work out at sea. Well, son, our captain’ll see you soon ’nough. Busy with that bloody press conference.” He pointed to the pier with his pipe.

  “Good to meet you, sir.”

  “Sorry there’s no one to welcome you aboard other than me.” A tall, gaunt man perhaps in his early to mid-sixties, Dr. Dimitri Alandale was half Greek, half Scotsman. He looked the picture of a graying oceanographer and seaman, and Ingles took an instant liking to the man whose laugh came so easily.

  The two seamen, young and old, stood in silent admiration of the machinery before them. They understood its enormous power, that its express purpose was to lower and lift a massive platform on which thousands of tons of sensing devices, search and salvage equipment, as well as recovered artifacts would rest. This equipment would be made available two miles below the surface to the diving teams, men and women whose experiences uniquely qualified them to participate in this historic dive into the very bowels of Titanic.

  Ingles would be among the divers using the new underwater breathing apparatus that allowed divers to explore the vast interiors of the sleeping giant below the North Atlantic.

  He would be among two other divers set to dive the bow section of the shipwreck while another team of three divers were planning to explore the aft section of the wreck. Swigart would pilot the sub carrying all the divers below, while an eighth man, Kyle Fiske, almost Swigart’s age, would help monitor the dive teams from the control room aboard Scorpio along with Dr. Entebbe and Captain Forbes. In essence, two teams of three divers, two additional diver-ready backup men in the form of Fiske and Swigart manning controls—eight in all. Overall Commander of Divers and making all the decisions at this point was Lou Swigart. Fiske was considered the man to take over for Lou in the event something happened to Swigart. Fiske could also step in for any one of the others in the event he was needed.

  All of them had passed extensive tests utilizing the new technology that amounted to breathing oxygenated liquid into their lungs. Essentially, they were going through an act of ‘de-evolution’—returning to a fish-like existence in that their lungs would be filled with liquid, but liquid from which they could sustain life.

  It was a technology developed by the US Navy, and Ingles had been among the first test subjects. It essentially involved a moment of death before coming out on the other side, unless a diver panicked, in which case, there was no other side. Having the liquid pumped from the lungs after mission accomplished was no picnic either, but breathing from lungs filled with what scientist had finally come up with for deep ocean and exotic diving, OPFC, a highly oxygen-enriched, lighter than typical liquid perfluorocarbon as clear as vodka which allowed for breathing and safe pressures as deep as two and a half miles below the surface—the same depth as where Titanic awaited.

  In any event, there was no room for error.

  “I can hardly imagine being able to withstand temperatures of minus 1,700 degrees,” muttered Alandale in Ingles’ ear. The man’s large-faced, wide grin was infectious, and now Ingles placed his looks: Alandale had the bearing and appearance of the actor Max Von Sydow in his later years.

  “Our dive suits are made of the same material as the Cryo-Cable here,” David replied, giving a mock-squeeze to the huge cable. Ingles had imagined this trip and the dives ahead of them many times over; he’d imagined the giant four-sided, metal basket atop a huge platform at the bottom of the sea chockfull with treasures that Neptune would cry for. Treasures that would find their way to public museums across the globe. Treasures dredged up by human hands from Titanic’s secret interiors.

  Sure I’m in it for the money, but I’m here for the adrenaline rush, too, he thought, being honest with himself.

  The press called them fortune hunters, mercenaries, but there was more to it than money—far more. Ingles turned at the shouting of orders from below. From where he stood alongside Alandale, he could see that every major media outlet had shown up, some with microphones milling about the pier. Others made moves to come aboard the research vessel but were held in check by a pair of brawny crewmembers.

  Reporters, Ingles thought. Most would kill their mothers for an inside story.

  The last time Ingles had spoken to a reporter was on his return from Japan where he’d been branded a hero for saving lives. No one said much about Wilcox. Hell, Wilcox had saved his life so that he could himself go on to save others. But Wilcox had died in the tragedy—no story in that, he facetiously realized. And him… made out the big hero. Twisted story indeed so far as David Ingles was concerned. No, he’d failed his best friend when Terry most needed him.

  Ingles’ dark glasses lightened when the sun slipped behind a cloud, relieving the scene of the blinding April morning glare. He wore a sailor’s Navy Pea coat and matching watch cap, looking like any crewmember as he’d hoped to get through the reporters without notice, without anyone recognizing him, and it’d worked. He just wanted to blend in at this point; he could be himself and was seldom at ease any longer when not at sea.

  His wide shoulders, height, and good looks usually tagged him as some sort of Billy Budd, but this particular Budd held two diplomas and a doctorate in underwater forensics—investigating shipwrecks with an eye to what brought them down. His long, sandy blond hair curled up from below the hat. As always, he maintained his regimen of exercise to keep in peak athletic shape.
A former Navy Seal, he routinely involved himself in various triathlons across the country and overseas.

  Ingles’ attention was suddenly drawn to a figure pushing through the crowd, a young woman who offered a reporter a sharp reply to what looked like either an annoying question about her mercenary tendencies, or an annoying pass. Ingles guessed who she might be, and he thought her stunning, and from her catlike reaction to the reporter, she didn’t take anything sitting down. He noticed how she took in the crowd, eyes darting in every direction as if searching for someone she’d hoped to meet on the pier, someone other than reporters.

  Looking over her shoulder like me these days, he wondered, thinking maybe they had something in common—detesting reporters. Regardless, he found himself unable to take his eyes from her. He watched her go about in a circle, making him wonder why she was taking her time on the pier. Looking for a boyfriend who was supposed to see her off, no doubt. Still searching it seemed, when she suddenly looked up at the ship and straight at David. He blinked and pretended to look away. He then turned and leaned into the railing, hair lifting in the breeze. But he soon looked back. Had she found who she was looking for? Was she in search of the so-called hero, David Ingles? Was she a pushy, snooping reporter or was she Dr. Kelly Irvin? Irvin was another of the divers whose specialty was marine biology and creatures of the deep. Word had it that Woods Hole insisted the expedition have a marine biologist aboard, and they expected specimens brought up from the deep.