Death in the Kingdom (10 page)

We were holding eighty feet and were still about twenty above it. But it was easy to realise why we'd not seen it earlier because HMS
Victor
didn't look like a submarine from the angle we were at. Tan, like me, had been looking for the shape of the conning tower. The fin was there all right, except that it was lying on its side at an angle that meant we had to be looking down on it from almost directly above, making it impossible to identify it for what it was.

The pair of us hung suspended in the water above the wreck, trying to define its actual shape and position. Yes, the sub was on its side, half-hidden beyond a section of reef. The conning tower wasn't level with the bottom, but rather lay at maybe an angle of thirty degrees. Squinting into the gloom I could see that the bow section wasn't there, as the recon report had stated. The cigar hull, covered in weeds and algae, ended about forty feet in front of the fin. The stern, from the tower back, seemed more or less complete. The rear section lay slightly uphill, propped up by an arm of the reef. The shape of a single bronze screw was clearly visible, now that my eyes were focused to see through the ocean's camouflage.

I indicated to Tan that I was going down to take a closer look and for him to hold his position. He gave me the thumbs up and held his powerhead across his chest, ready to act if jaws came screaming out of the murky shadows at him. I dropped ten feet. I needed to see if the hatch of the conning tower was open, or if there was access through the front section of the hull. There was no way on earth that the hatch could now be re-opened if it had been closed at the time of sinking. After all this time it would be welded shut by rust, and only thermal lances or similar would burn through it. We had a few of those with us but I didn't necessarily want to go that route. I wanted quick in, quick out and away.

I figured if I could get inside the hull and the main control area, I would have no trouble getting into the skipper's cabin. Even in the British navy of that vintage, the old man on the sub would only have had a curtain as a door into his tiny living space. According to Bernard, the ‘box' would be in the bottom drawer of the cabin's only desk. It had been too big to fit into the captain's safe.

I was at a hundred feet and beginning to feel the pressure as I came to the top of the leaning conning tower. I propped myself against what had once been the periscope stem, and used the beam of my torch to probe into the deck well formed by the steel spray skirt that surrounded the tower. Through the weeds I could make out the rusted deck plates. The hatch was twisted and jammed half-open. There was no way I could get through it with tanks on my back. Also half-open was the mouth of a Moray that had obviously set up house in the fin. ‘Damn!' I muttered. The eel wasn't the problem—not being able to get through the door was.

I turned away and kicked forward, dropping another ten feet so I could see the front section of the hull proper as the cone of light from my torch pushed the shadows back. The forward deck gun was still there, or at least its algae-covered shape was, but just beyond that, the whole front of the submarine looked as if a giant tin-opener had been used to rip it apart. Although covered with crap, I knew that under the weeds and growth there would be razor-sharp tongues of rusted metal that could rip a wetsuit and a diver to shreds.

I moved forward of the remaining hull and hovered there, shining my light back and inside. A tunnel fringed with waving weeds and filled with darting fish faded away into black nothingness beyond the beam of my light. It didn't appear that any of the near hatches had been closed. The force of the explosion could possibly have blown them in. I had no idea if the aircraft attack had been totally out of the blue, no pun intended. Had the sub crew gone to action stations and shut the watertight compartments, as they would have done on a full alert? Either way, the end of
Victor
must have been so damned sudden. One hit on the torpedo section and the whole front of the bloody tin can would have gone. It would have been on the bottom in minutes, seconds even. Maybe no time for anyone to do anything, let alone kiss their arses goodbye.

Above me Tan was flicking his torch on and off. I glanced at my watch. We had been down thirty minutes. While I still had half and hour of air left on my back, it was time to ease my way back to the surface if I wanted to dive again that day. I filled my fluro buoy from my regulator and sent it upwards. When the spool stopped unwinding, I peeled off another yard or two of line, locked the spindle and wound the line around the nearest coral fang to the sub's gaping maw. I now had a road map right to the front door of what was going to become my own personal house of horrors. I didn't want to think too much about what I would find inside, sixty something years on or not.

I slowly started my ascent, letting my bubble trail race away above me. I joined Tan who was hovering at eighty feet and did my calculations. We'd go to fifty and hold that for seven minutes as we swam slowly eastwards. Being rushed off with the bends to the nearest decompression chamber, which was probably down at Patong Beach, didn't figure big in my plans.

When we surfaced ten minutes later, Tan and I were the best part of a hundred yards away from
Odorama
, thanks to the currents near the surface. We didn't have to swim for it, however, because an inflatable from the gunship was heading towards us. When the Zodiac came alongside, Tan and I simply clung to the rope handles on each side of the rubber duck and let ourselves be towed back to the dive boat.

Back on
Odorama
, one look at the faces of the crew told the story. Billy and Suwat were grinning from ear to ear. They'd surfaced quite a while before us, but not before they had been into the second hold. ‘It is there,' said Suwat. ‘Just like in the picture. It was once in a wooden crate but that has turned to mud. It is so beautiful,' he added, shaking his head in wonder.

‘I think we can lift it with air bags.' Billy, the second of the former navy divers, was already planning the salvage operation. ‘If we can inflate them outside the hold to take some of the weight, then we can move the buddha into position and blow up another bag to get it through the hatch to the surface.'

‘It weighs more than a thousand pounds,' I said as I started to get out of my wetsuit. ‘That's a lot of dead weight out of the water.' I'd already done the figures based on what Bernard had given me. ‘Three of the smaller bags to move it out of the hold with your help, then add one of the big ones to get it to the surface. The net winches can lift it on board.'

‘Let's go and do it,' Suwat was saying. Billy was nodding eagerly. I shook my head.

‘Not yet! We have a break and get the equipment organised. Top up the bottles, Tan. Billy, get the air bags and harness organised. Suwat, we need an air hose from the compressor to the freighter's hold. You're linking hoses.' Instructions delivered, I left them to it as I lit a cigarette and went into the mess.

I got a coffee and sat. I was having a problem with priorities. Part of me was screaming, ‘Go and get the damned box!' The other side of my brain was calmly whispering to me, ‘The buddha. It is good. Return it to the people. What is in the box must surely be bad.' I was damned if that voice didn't sound like Geezer, or an old priest I'd once known who had tried hard to be my conscience at one time. Both of them had liked their grog but each had been, or in Geezer's case was, a wise man. Father Leonard, however, was a dead man of God. He'd been blown up by a car bomb in Armagh.

‘Tri says a Myanmar patrol boat is coming,' Niran was calling from the bridge.

‘Shit!' I leapt up the steep companionway. Niran pushed a pair of binoculars into my hands and pointed to the east. The gunboat was just a grey smudge on the near horizon. It appeared to be about the size of a MTB. There was a single gun mounted on the bow. It wasn't moving as quickly as it quite obviously could. Rather, it was just cruising. Probably just a routine patrol to see who and what was in its waters.

‘Okay.' My mind was working overtime. I grabbed the Motorola hand-held that was our direct link to our escort. I was just hoping Tri would take orders without argument because this was the first time I would try giving him one. He answered almost before I let go of the send button.

‘Yes?'

‘Get the Zodiac to cut away the two buoys we set, then you sail back to the anchorage and wait for us there,' I said.

‘Okay!' he replied. Logic ruled. No argument from Tri. Thank buddha for that. The Zodiac was moving less than thirty seconds later. There were two men in it: one perched in the bow, the other at the outboard. A knife blade flashed twice in the sunlight and they had the buoys in the bottom of the boat within another minute. Our trawler was soon moving back towards the Loughborough Passage with the inflatable in tow. I turned to Niran.

‘Cover the dive gear with nets. Pretend to have problems with a winch or something. No weapons in sight! I'll need to hide below.' The patrol boat was definitely heading towards us. We had about five minutes to become a simple prawn boat again. I headed below as Niran started rapidly firing off orders. A European on board a working boat full of Thais was going to arouse suspicion. I needed to be out of sight and pray that
Odorama
wasn't searched. I opened the engine-room hatch and gathered our weaponry from the temporary rack against the rear bulkhead. Then, juggling a pair of AK47s and our single M16 along with a big bag of loaded magazines for both, I went down into the engine room.

Room was a misnomer in this case. The ‘engine room' was a dark, narrow stinking hole dominated by an ancient Cummins diesel engine. I knew it was a Cummins because the first time I'd been down there I'd slipped and jammed my right forearm against a very hot manifold cover that bore that name. Light came from a single, dull, greasy light bulb set on the bulkhead beside the steps. It gave just enough of a glow for me to see what I had to.

I lifted a section of dirty deck grating. It was an old smuggler's hidy-hole. The normal bilge hatch was plainly identified by its cut-out handgrips and, when opened, showed oily bilge water slopping about below. This hatch opened into an open-topped aluminium tank installed for moments such as this. I lowered the carbines and the ammunition into the metal trough, then went back up the three steps and pulled down the table hatch. Someone was waiting to scatter some dishes and cards on it the moment it was closed.

I contemplated the metal coffin set in the deck. There really was no point in getting into it and pulling the section of deck down to hide me. If the Burmese searched the boat, they would find the dive gear and know something was up. There was too much sophisticated high-priced kit up there for a simple prawn boat to have on board. That being the case, I didn't want to get into the bilge hidy-hole because the game would be up long before that. I thought of the Walther that was hidden in my bedding. Damn! There was nothing to do but hope and pray. I pulled the section of deck back in place to cover the guns, then sat on the bottom step of the ladder. I flicked the light switch off, letting the stinking blackness claim me.

The stench of diesel and oil was overwhelming. Now, more than ever before, I needed to settle my rebellious gut. The ball was well and truly in Niran's court. If the Burmese were on a social call, no problem. If not, we were totally and absolutely fucked, as the actress said to the bishop!

10

I heard the arrival of the patrol boat. It would have been difficult to miss. There was the sound of powerful diesel engines approaching then fading into an idle rumbling. ‘Twin screws,' my brain told me. It was useless information, but the brain did things like that in moments of stress. One such time was when I was returning fire against a bunch of Laotian bandits in tiger country. Outnumbered and outgunned, we were fighting for our lives, but I couldn't help but notice the beautiful display of orchids that grew from the rotting log I was lying behind. Crazy, huh? We won the firefight and I'd never really looked at an orchid since. Such was the way of things.

There was what, to me, sounded like a good-natured conversation shouted between Niran and someone on board the other vessel. Down where I was, I could only guess what the hell was going on. If another vessel had come alongside and hit the tyre bumpers that hung along both sides of the
Odorama
, there would have ben a sudden lurch or thump. I hadn't felt it. So unless they had sent a dinghy over—which would have been totally unnecessary given the size of both vessels—we hadn't been boarded.

Shit, the smell of the diesel was getting to me. My head was thickening and my gut was starting to churn. A few minutes more and I would be hanging my head down into the bilges, chucking my heart out again. I tried to fill my lungs by breathing through my mouth. It didn't make any difference. I tried to think of the plus side of things. For a start, the engine wasn't on. That was a definite bonus for me. Secondly, the sea was calm and thirdly—thirdly the patrol boat had finally engaged its props and was moving away. I could hear Niran wishing them a jovial farewell.

I waited twenty seconds—that was all I could manage—then I went up the steps and pushed the hatch open. I could hear plates and cutlery hitting the deck. I didn't care as I stood there, supporting the damned hatch as I filled my lungs with what passed as fresh air. For the first time the fact the air was dominated by the pong of rotten fish didn't even register. Niran came in through the starboard door.

‘It's okay.' He grinned down at me. ‘They are just on routine patrol. Once a week they come around here. Said a big storm is coming and to take shelter. They are going to Kawthaung.'

‘Okay. Let's make tracks,' I said, feigning a degree of composure I didn't feel as I climbed up onto the mess deck and closed the hatch table. ‘How long will the storm go on for?'

‘Who knows?' Niran shrugged. ‘Maybe two or three days.'