....Walking back to his bike, he lit a cigarette and tried to put things together. Something wrong? Christ, nothing was right. He ticked off the points in his mind:
Wayne. If he was really a marine insurance investigator, he was either very inexperienced, or very dumb.
The charts. The position of the ship had been marked by a cross. Normally a presumed site was located by a broad circle, as much as a quarter of a mile in diameter. Never a cross—never so exactly.
Grave Descend by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange (1970)
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Grave Descend is a brief thriller (under forty thousand words) about a motorcycle-riding scuba-diving pro hired to dive on a sunken yacht called The Grave Descend. There are untrustworthy employers, untrustworthy dames, and one local Jamaican as sidekick.
....She meant that Yeoman was deep enough that McGregor would not hit him rolling off. A man with a hundred-pound tank, ten pounds of weight, and his own body mass sank a good distance in the water.
McGregor nodded, winked at Sylvie through his mask, gripped the glass so that it would not be pulled off as he entered the water, and fell back. His tanks broke the water, and he was down, in a silver swirl of bubbles. He took a breath, the sound of the air and the clicking regulator loud in the water.
He began to descend. Directly facing him was the stern of the boat, riding in the water. Looking forward, he could see the bow and the anchor line. Yeoman came up; he made a signal with his hands, a flexing of his fist, to indicate he was getting the guns. McGregor waited, hanging quietly at twenty feet, while Yeoman broke surface, his body mirrored from beneath, decapitated, his head above.
McGregor looked down, to the blue beneath him. The Grave Descend was directly below, just outside the wall of the far reef, which plunged sharply down from near the surface to almost a hundred feet. The ship lay partly on its side, just as he had seen from the air. No bubbles trailed up from it now.
He looked carefully. A small school of barracuda swam past, and there were jacks, majors, and other tiny fish that moved almost immediately into any wreck, but no sharks.
Not yet.
Yeoman came back, clutching two guns in his hand. He gave one to McGregor, handling it carefully. He pointed to the handle, to indicate that the safety was on. McGregor nodded, and pointed down at the wreck.
They upended, and kicked downward. Though the surface water was warm, as they went down it became colder. McGregor was glad for the wet-suit. He gripped the handle of the gun, feeling the balance.
His depth-gauge showed sixty-two feet as they reached the stern of the Grave Descend. As always, whenever he came upon a wreck underwater, he was struck by the size of it. A boat which appeared only moderately large on the surface was huge underwater, when you could see all of it, and were free to swim around it. Yeoman went around, kicking easily, his arms at his sides. McGregor followed him, and they disappeared into the shadows beneath the curve of the stern. The propellers, five feet across, large bronze and polished, were directly ahead. Yeoman checked the shafts while McGregor checked the undersurface of the stern.
It was only a few minutes before he saw the gaping hole, somewhat forward from the stern. It was a large, neat hole which looked as if it had been punched out from within; the metal was torn outward. McGregor ran his fingers lightly over the jagged edge, knowing that human skin in water was fragile; he did not want a cut.
The hole was four feet across. He was easily able to wriggle in, his metal tanks clanging once against the edge. It was dark inside; he flicked on his underwater flashlight and swung the yellow beam around.
The engine room. To the left and right, large twin diesels faced him. He turned the light to the walls of the room, looking for damage, pitting, blacking, the signs of an explosion …
There were none, of course. This explosion had been carefully prepared. Its force was directed almost entirely outward, through the hull.
Yeoman appeared at his side, and gestured to indicate that the propellers were all right. McGregor signaled that they should begin looking further; Yeoman nodded. From the engine room, they swam forward and squeezed through a door, going down a carpeted hallway. The rooms opening off the hall were simple; plain metal bunk-beds, lightweight metal dressers. These were the crew's quarters. At the end of the hall there was a narrow stairs. They kicked up, gliding past the rungs, and came onto the deck. The staterooms were here, and the guest quarters. The walls and doors were polished mahogany.
McGregor, remembering the plan of the ship, moved forward to the main stateroom, opened the door, and went inside. His air burbled up, struck the ceiling, and ran trickling along the roof to the open window, where it climbed to the surface.
He swung the torch around the room. It was elegant, a fitting room for the rest of the yacht. He looked for the sculpture.
He didn't see it.
He looked again, the torch beam sweeping across the floor, in case it had fallen.
There was no chrome sculpture.
Peculiar.
He kicked over to the aft wall, opened a cabinet, and found the safe. It was not large, but firmly bolted down. He gave a tug, then felt beneath the cabinet to the large bolts.
Yeoman came over, and signaled he was going up to the bridge. McGregor nodded and followed. They moved down the deck passage, Yeoman floating above the carpeted floor as he kicked smoothly ahead.
They came out on the stern deck, and clicked off their torches, then swam up to the bridge. They examined the charts and maps which remained on the shelf.
It was then that McGregor heard it.
For a moment, he could not be sure. He signaled to Yeoman to stop breathing for a moment. The two men hung silent in the water, and listened.
There was a low but distinct humming sound.
Yeoman gestured with his hands to indicate he thought it was a surface boat far off. McGregor shook his head: outboards didn't sound that way. They were sharper, more a buzzing sound. This was a hum, and it was coming from below.
From the boat.
He kicked down, reentered the deck passage, and slipped forward. Every so often he paused, holding his breath, and waited until the trickling of his bubbles on the roof had died.
Then he would hear the humming sound, fix it, and move toward it.
Yeoman, understanding, had remained on the aft deck. The fewer people inside, where their air would make noise, the better.
McGregor found himself moving to the narrow galley, and still further toward the bow, into a forward storage room of some sort. It was very dark; the flashlight cut a narrow pale beam in the water.
The humming was loud in this room, very loud. He swung the beam around. There were life preservers, floating up against the ceiling; there were oars, canned food, tarps, supplies in a jumble in the room.
And the humming.
He frowned as he moved the beam. He saw something reflect back, and swam closer.
It was a metal box, elaborately sealed and waterproofed, attached to the deck, humming softly. From it, two wires ran off. He followed them forward and came to an amorphous packet, wrapped in several layers of plastic.
McGregor stared. He knew what it was: tetralon, the latest underwater explosive. There were at least fifty pounds of it here. And the small humming box was a radio-controlled detonator.
His first thought was that it was originally intended to explode with the stern charges, thus sinking the ship. But then he had another thought about its purpose. He swam back to Yeoman, and signaled him to surface.
Grave Descend is peppered with quotations from Dr. Samuel Johnson. The only one Crichton leaves out is: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
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Jay
23 June 2020
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