Gold Sharks (7 page)

Few people argued with John Jameson who stood a full two meters tall and weighed in at a very fit ninety kilos. Also known as Big J: “But only to close friends!” as we was wont to scowl. Big J trained all his divers personally and insisted on maximum fitness and discipline. Their diving boat was a converted sea-going tug. He'd bought it from the Royal Navy when it disposed of much of its fleet of small vessels at the time when Hong Kong and New Territories were handed back to China. The vessel was over forty metres long and supplying power to its four bladed variable pitch propellers were two enormous diesel engines, enabling the ship to tug heavy loads effortlessly or to make a rapid passage in the open sea. It was the ideal dive platform, with plenty of deck space from which to launch and recover their extensive inventory of underwater vehicles.

The contract -to repair a wellhead in deep water thirty miles off the Hong Kong coast - had been awarded to them conditional upon their accepting a second contract to train a local Chinese diving team in the art of “do it yourself repairs”.

“Why teach them Big J?” one of the divers had asked. “Isn't it doing us out of a job?”

“Listen, if we don't teach them, someone else will. So why not us?” He raised his eyebrows. “Anyway, we could do with the work, yes?”

There was no more argument.

It was the first time they had worked for the Chinese - so the negotiations had been long and detailed. But Big J had stolidly refused to compromise the quality of the job or the fee.

He announced the acceptance to the crew with obvious pleasure.

“The buggers have finally agreed to all our terms and even transferred the funds to our lawyer!”

He waved the faxed confirmation to the men standing around on deck. “We sail in two days boys. OK with you?”

“You're bloody right it's ok!” one shouted up to the bridge.

“Good, then get off the lot of you and clear the decks with families girlfriends or whatever. We could be at least a month or six weeks out there, plus travelling time, I'd say another week each way, OK? Now off you go. I'll see you here to sail at o-nine-hundred Thursday morning.”

He turned to John Lawrence standing at his side.

“Do you mind staying on for a bit to get everything else ready?”

“My pleasure, I only live five minutes away; it's no bother to me.”

There was little time for John to be with his wife. Over the next two days, he and Big J checked over every bit of equipment and with the help of a couple of local lads, loaded and stored the huge mountain of supplies necessary for a long period at sea. Finally, late on the Wednesday evening with the vessel fully refuelled, Big J turned to John,

“Well I don't think there's much more we can do here, so off you go and bid farewell or whatever to that lovely wife of yours.”

John laughed, “OK, see you in the morning then. Goodnight”

John Lawrence strolled along the dock to the edge of town to the cottage they had temporally rented while he served his time with Big J's diving company.

Nancy was obviously pleased to see him.

“I was frightened you were going to have to work all night and I wouldn't see you,” she sighed, falling into his arms.

“Steady now my darling,” he consoled her. “You don't really think I would have sailed away for a month or so without saying au revoir to you both!”

He patted her swollen tummy.

“I'd have dragged you off that wretched boat if you'd tried,” she scolded, dragging him urgently towards the bedroom. “Time for bed young man!” She challenged him.

He didn't resist, happily undoing his shirt in anticipation as he was towed towards the bedroom. They loved and teased with joy and tenderness. John stroked and kissed the swollen incubator of their rapidly growing child. Soon love and passion merged into a tender all-consuming embrace. Eventually they lay together, wallowing in the afterglow of their mutual bliss.

“Please come home soon my darling. Every time you're away I worry about the past catching up with us, you know what I mean?” Nancy said, gripping his hand until it hurt.

“I'll be back just as soon as the contract is complete - after all, where else can I find loving like that?” he teased.

She reacted with a vicious thump with a clenched fist on his chest. “You date anyone else John Lawrence and you'll never be loving anyone again!” Her hand slithered down and grabbed his now deflated “passion stick” as they had lovingly named it. She held it without actually hurting the softened tender organ, the fingers of her other hand miming the cutting action of a pair of scissors.

“Fear not my love,” he replied in mock horror and pulled her close. She nuzzled her head on his shoulder. “In any case, I could only cope with one lover as passionate as you!”

She thumped his chest again, “Too much for an old man eh?”

He did not reply, just lay holding her close and secure.

f

The following morning every man reported in good time to sail with the tide at nine o'clock.

“The weather is set fair so we should make good time,” Big J confidently predicted as they headed for the open sea.

Ahead of them was a two thousand five hundred mile journey through some of the most difficult and treacherous waters in the world; at an average of sixteen knots it meant at least seven days at sea.

At dawn one week later, exactly as estimated, they arrived at the disabled oilrig; work started almost immediately. The first two days was spent carefully assessing the hugely complex problem and another full day was needed to assemble the array of equipment they would need to replace part of the damaged wellhead.

The sturdily constructed platform easily survived a battering by a heavy oil tanker in a severe storm but by some freak, the heavy mooring chains, kedged out in the attempt to keep the tanker away from the platform, dragged and tangled with the valves at the wellhead, seventy metres below the surface.

The valves are connected by a giant manifold, which in turn is clamped onto the numerous deep oil drills at the seabed. One of these connections had been almost completely pulled away and would have to be resealed - in addition to replacing at least two of the huge valves.

Crude attempts to free the cables by the drilling rigs own crew had resulted in even more damage. Big J was surprised that the immense pressure was still being held back.

Initially the rig crew had called for assistance from their own Oil Authority but already over-stretched, mainly through lack of trained crew, trying to repair three or four other damaged wells, they were in no position to help and so were reluctantly obliged to contract out this particularly difficult repair.

The Chinese authorities believed that they could also use the opportunity to train more of their own desperately needed divers, thus avoiding having to trade with the “Capitalist Oil Corporations” in the future.

Six Chinese novice divers had already been sent to the rig to participate in the repair.

“You will be learning advanced critical techniques from the Australians,” they had been told - but the three youngest and least experienced had not waited for Big J and his team to arrive. Impatient and determined to prove that their skills were at least as good as those of the decadent westerners, they free-dived to the site, intending to make their own assessment of the damage.

With only compressed air to breath, however, the time they could spend at that depth was limited. It was cold and murky at seventy metres; they knew they should not spend more than one or two minutes at that depth, if they were to surface without a long decompression and seriously risk their lives through the bends and narcosis.

Undeterred, they sank gracefully towards the bottom in a cloud of bubbles as the air slowly released from their buoyancy aids, allowing their lead weights to take them down. Two of them stayed close together as they had been trained to but the other, ignoring the words of his mentor, drifted away and descended ahead of the others. The pressure built up in his sinuses; he tried to squeeze his nose and blow to ease the pain but it wouldn't clear. The agonising pain increased - he could think of nothing else - and suddenly he hit the top of the rusting steel manifold. Stunned and disoriented in the murky water, he slithered down the side of the slippery metal wall and sank into the silt, kicking up a great cloud of mud.

At that moment the blood vessels in his nasal tract burst and his facemask was splashed with a mixture of blood and mucus. Beginning to panic now, he nervously gulped at the compressed air but could not pull enough through his regulator. His brain seemed to be swelling inside his skull. Desperately he tried again to clear the pressure and clear his mask; pushing his thumb up inside the seal he gingerly let in some water, it was only partially successful.

He was breathing too fast; the nitrogen pumped into his adrenalin-filled blood far too quickly. With his brain starved of oxygen, his body and mind were in turmoil. Suddenly the panic left him and he felt calm. Somehow he knew that he was not going back to the surface but he didn't seem to mind as the inevitable narcosis permeated into his deranged mind. Everything had stopped spinning now; as he just floated and relaxed he was suddenly aware of how beautiful it was relaxing in the half-light.

A small fish drifted up to his visor. He could see that it was panting for air. He knew that he could save it. Removing his mouthpiece, he offered it to the gulping creature but it backed away. He tried to follow as it moved but he had become tangled in the safety line, so he couldn't catch up with the silly fish. He held out his hand as far as he could to offer the life-saving mouthpiece. He tried calling but no sound emitted from his purple lips. The water flowed softly into his lungs, it soothed the pain, and soon he could rest. His final thoughts were of that stupid fish, “If only he'd accepted the air! He didn't need to drown.”

The diver relaxed. He was warm and contented.

When the other two divers found him he was floating with his mouthpiece held out firmly in front of him. They tried to make him breathe but it was already too late. They tried to pull him to the surface but his safety line was hopelessly tangled with his legs and some broken metal debris. They tried to cut him free - but both fumbled in their distress, dropping their knives within seconds. In mild panic now, and aware that their own submerged time had been significantly exceeded, they abandoned their comrade and rushed to the surface without stopping to decompress at any level. They broke the surface, ripping their masks off and gulping greedily at the air. They were pulled onto the safety boat and craned up to the rig where both were found to be suffering from severe shock and, even more seriously, having surfaced far too quickly, showed symptoms of the “bends”. There were no decompression facilities on the rig to support them.

Far beneath the waves, the body of the diver, still attached by the safety line, drifted alongside the wellhead where it dangled like bait on a fishing line.

When Big J met the other Chinese divers (all of whom spoke English, having originated in Hong Kong he was relieved to note) the first thing they excitedly reported was the desperate condition of their two young comrades and the tragic and unnecessary death of the third.

Big J was angry.

“What's the matter with you people? You should know better than trying to show-off underwater. Nobody's fucking politics can ever bend the rules of nature and diving rules are sacred with me. Get those buggers across here pronto! We'll have to waste precious space in our chamber now.” He stomped away angrily then shouted down to his own crew, who had casually assembled at the sound of the excitement.

“I won't have heroes in my team. Remember, we work as a team. Clever buggers like those stupid sods cause more trouble than they're worth. So just you look at this bunch and remember!”

He pointed towards the ailing divers as they were being carried across to the tug.

“And don't any of you forget, I don't write letters to no weeping widows.” He paused looking seriously down from the bridge, a few seconds ticked by. “I can't bloody write anyway,” he grinned at his men.

There were a couple of patronising guffaws but none was really amused. They were all too well aware of the thin line between life and death beneath the surface of the sea.

“OK let's get some work done?” He turned to John standing at his side. “How long has he been down there?”

“About ten hours I guess?” John replied with a grimace.

“Not good, not good,” Big J repeated, shaking his head. “It's not that deep so I suppose we'd better get the small dive chamber ready first and send a couple of the boys down on helium. Three minute dives only.” He stopped pacing. “Wait, perhaps a better idea would be to send Jake - he's got the strongest stomach - and the other two Chinese divers; we'll let them recover their own mate or what's left of him.” He looked through the screen to the men busying themselves on deck. “It should teach them a lesson in following the rules!” He walked away shaking his head. “What a bloody waste,” he mumbled in despair.

The three divers entered the cramped pressurised capsule, where normal atmospheric pressure would be maintained, and were lowered to the seabed.

The divers would be able to leave the pressure vessel and, by breathing a sophisticated mixture of gases be able to spend just a few minutes at a time on the outside, without any risk. In this way the whole crew would be able to surface quickly and without decompression.

The remote video camera scanned the murky water for the wellhead and the lost diver. Within seconds, the slimy metal side of the vast manifold came into view. They manoeuvred slowly along the metal wall; suddenly they came across a great army of crabs piled up in a pyramid. As the sphere got closer the crabs began waving their arms and claws in protest. The object of their attention suddenly became sickeningly clear. According to the survivors the diver had been tangled in some kind of obstruction. The lure of dead flesh had soon attracted hoards of predators to a welcome feast.