The Last Airship (5 page)

He
knew all about hurricanes, and he always hated them.

As
a boy, he promised himself that he was going to move as far from water as
possible. When he finished secondary school, he joined the Marines as a helicopter
pilot, happy to have distanced himself from the sea and the risk of hurricanes.

Not
long after his initial training, he served in Afghanistan, where he mainly
performed Hot Drops with Navy SEALS and Medevacs. It was dangerous work, but at
least there was no enormous body of water below him. 

Two
years ago, his chopper had been shot down. Of the twenty men aboard her, he was
the only one to survive. It was pure luck, nothing more. There wasn’t anything
he could have done to change that outcome. He should have been killed with the
rest of them. When he attended their funerals, he felt no desire to change
places with any one of the good men who had sacrificed their lives so that
America could protect its way of living for future generations.

He
felt no survivor guilt, but all the same, when he looked at their loved ones,
their wives, children, parents, brothers and sisters, there was simply a deep
well of pain inside him, which could never be repaired even with the military
might of the U.S. Marines.

Tom
tried to continue on with his military career, but it was pointless.

Much
to the concern of his father, Tom eventually applied for an honorable discharge
from the U.S. Marines. It had taken months for his discharge to be finalized.
As a highly awarded helicopter pilot, with three separate tours of duty to the Sand
Pit under his belt, he could only assume that despite his father being adamant
that he would not intervene, he was indeed responsible for the delay. When it
eventually came through, Tom signed the paperwork, handed in the last of his
uniforms, and walked home from the base.

When
he arrived home, Sam Reilly was there waiting for him, with a job offer he
couldn’t resist.

Although
they had been childhood neighbors, they came from very different walks of life;
both struggling with their unusual vicissitudes with equal enthusiasm and
tenacity. Tom’s own father was an Admiral in the Navy, and although he earned a
salary well into six figures, and was even on a first name basis with a number
of Senators and Congressmen, was considered relatively poor in comparison to
the others living in the affluent community of La Jolla, California.

Sam,
on the other hand, had more money than he would ever get to spend in his
lifetime. The two men shared a similar love for cave diving since childhood.
Once they reached adulthood, much to the disappointment of his friend’s father,
Sam decided to join Tom, and the two became cadet helicopter pilots
never
had any aspirations to reach Flag rank in forty years’
of service to the Marine Corps.

The
two of them completed their pilot training and Sam had even served the start of
one tour of duty in Afghanistan with him. But then, for no reason that anyone
could comprehend, Sam had returned stateside and completed his studies at MIT.
There had been some unsavory sentiment throughout the military that once Sam
had tasted the awful realities of war, he had used his father’s influence to
bring him home again.  

To
this day, Tom had never discovered the real reason behind his mate’s sudden and
early departure from the Marines, but he doubted very much that Sam had been
incompetent and Tom was incapable of believing his friend to be a coward. Sam
had returned to MIT to complete his Master’s in Oceanography, and the two men
usually met several times a year to go cave diving together. It wasn’t much,
but it was all the off-time that the Marines would give him, and all that Sam’s
studies would allow.

He
was surprised to see Sam at the door on the very day that he had received his
honorable discharge. It might have been sheer luck that their two lives were
about to collide once again, but, although he believed in luck, Tom also knew
that Sam was often the precursor to its development.

It
wasn’t a coincidence.

Sam
must have known what was going to happen.

Tom
still remembered their conversation fondly, despite his current position, and
the irony of all that he’d been offered.

It
occurred just over a year ago now. 

“I
was formally discharged from the Corps today,” Tom said.

“So,
I was told.” Sam looked cheerful and then said, “I’ll bet your dad was stoked.”

“Mom’s
already called to give me the heads up that it will take him a while to cool
down after this one. Anyway, that’s about all with me. I have no reason to feel
sorry for myself. The truth is, I gave the Corps six years of my life, and
three tours of duty in some of the most hostile conflicts in recent history.
I’m glad to be out. I never had any aspirations to be an Admiral in forty
years’ time like my old man. Now, since I doubt that you’re here to cheer me
up, what do you want, Sam?”

“My
dad has convinced me to return to the family business.”

“I
thought you hated what your father does?”

“No,
I’m indifferent to the whims of an overly rich hyper-intelligent man child.”
Sam smiled again as he described his father. “Despite what he wants, I won’t
ever become Global Shipping’s next Chief Executive Officer.”

“So,
you’ll become what, a tugboat Captain?” Tom said, incredulously knowing that
his friend wouldn’t find that interesting either.

“No,
he wants me to take over one of his smaller auxiliary companies, Deep Sea
Salvage.”

“Salvaging
big ships and tugboat driving?”

“Not
exactly, but I suppose we might be responsible for something like that. He’s
offered me the position of Director of Special Operations, which is a fancy way
of saying that I pick the work that I want to do, which is primarily ocean
research, deep sea salvage operations, and water quality studies.”

“What
did you just say to the offer?” Tom asked.

“I
said, it depends whether or not I can convince you to leave the Marines and
join me.” Realization slowly dawned in Tom’s eyes, as Sam continued, “My old
man told me not to worry about it. You were thinking of quitting anyway.”

“I
got a phone call at 8 a.m. today, telling me that the paperwork had finally
gone through! When did you speak to your dad, Sam?”

“We
talked at about 7:30.”

“That
bastard! He’s the only person who has ever gotten the best of my father, and he
controls the world’s largest Navy.”

“Yeah,
not to discuss whose is bigger, but my dad controls the world’s richest one.
So, what do you say, do you want to have an adventure or do you want to find
out what other bureaucracy your father intends for you join?”

“You
know I hate the ocean!” Tom knew that this wasn’t an entirely true statement.
Since he’d nearly been killed by a hurricane during his boyhood, he’d
subsequently had a number of nightmares regarding the sea and so, when he met
and befriended Sam, he’d spent years being dragged out into the ocean on
adventures with him. Hurricanes still scared the shit out of him, but he had
learned to love the ocean as much he’d come to deeply respect its awesome
power.

“No,
you don’t hate it. You’re just a little frightened of it, that’s all. That will
actually help where we’re going. Besides, we mainly look after diving
operations, deep sea retrievals and leave the ocean disasters to the other
guys. I can put you in charge of Special Projects. Besides, we need a
helicopter pilot. What do you say?”

“It
sounds like a lot more fun than moping about here,” and just like that, Tom had
been hooked into a life at sea; a life in which he discovered a place and
happiness he’d never before known.

Tom
laughed as he recalled the conversation, and remembered how both Reilly men had
the unique power to convince others to join them, regardless of their original
intentions.

Tom’s
thoughts returned to the present.

Despite
the heavy soundproofing in the operations room, the 40,000 hp twin diesel
engines could be heard humming away in the background as they propelled the
Maria Helena at full speed towards the troubled Hayward Bulk, somewhere off the
coast of North Queensland, Australia.

Tropical
cyclones, he knew, were the southern hemisphere’s equivalent of his dreaded
hurricane.

The
Hayward Bulk was a 500,000 ton supertanker.

It
was on the Japan to South Africa run when its engine impeller broke and the
supertanker’s built-in safety system cut the power to the engines to protect
it.  The Mary Rose, which provided offshore support to the vessel, had refused
to come to its aid because cyclone Petersham was on its way.  

The
Hayward Bulk was one of more than thirty supertankers owned by Global Shipping.
Deep Sea Expeditions was its smaller arm. It’s CEO and owner, shipping mogul
and old man, James Reilly, had contacted the skipper of the Maria Helena and
informed him that they were being diverted from their current duties in
Townsville in order to deliver a team of engineers and some heavy equipment to
the lame ship.

If
they reached her in time, Tom would be required to fly them over to the
troubled vessel.

For
twelve months his good luck had kept him away from any such disaster at sea. As
he stared at the meteorological reports on his laptop, Tom realized that
Cyclone Petersham was going to be one of the worst to ever reach this part of
the world.

Fate,
he realized, was inexorable.

*

The
swell had risen above forty feet, and for the first time since leaving Sydney,
Sam started to wonder if he’d gone too far this time. Where the waves had
previously been spotted with whitecaps, they were now walls of water, forty
feet high and covered in white, angry, frothy sea. The wind had risen to 80
knots, gusting up to 120.

To
make matters worse, the extreme low off the coast of South Australia was just
about to collide with the southern tip of Cyclone Petersham’s low. This would
form the most deadly of barometric systems, known as a squeeze. Seen on a
synoptic chart, the two lows could be identified by a number of gradient
pressure lines, with an area of relative normal pressure in the middle about to
be squeezed between them. There was no rational way to predict how the sea
would respond to such a collision of natural forces.

Sam
relished this type of meteorological event at sea.

Below
deck, barely audible above the sounds of the storm, he heard his satellite
phone ringing. Only three people in the world had this number – his father,
James Reilly, his meteorologist, Mark Stanton, and his best friend, Tom Bower.
Even his mother didn’t have it.

Whatever
had happened, it would be important.

He
stepped down the ladder and picked up the phone.

“Sam
here.” Despite the cold air, he could feel the sweat on his hand with which he
held the phone against his ear.

It
had to be his father.

He’d
already spoken to Mark earlier today, and the man had made it abundantly clear
that there was no possible way to tell, with any reasonable certainty, what the
hell was going to happen when the weather systems collided. So, that left only
his father, who never called unless there was a problem. Sam decided to hope
that it was Mark on the phone, telling him the storm was going to be worse than
he’d originally predicted.

“Sam,
its Blake Simonds.” There was a pause after that.
What the heck is Blake
doing ringing me?
“I got your picture,” the man continued, as though he’d
anticipated Sam’s lack of response as an indicator of non-recognition.

He’d
almost completely forgotten about the gold ingot.

“Oh,
yeah, do you know where it’s from?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,
it’s from the Oppenheimer and Goldschmidt family.” He could tell by the tone of
Blake’s voice that the man assumed that everyone knew about the family.

“Never
heard of them.”

“They
were an extremely wealthy Jewish family who disappeared during the Holocaust.”

“Don’t
you mean that they were murdered?” Sam corrected him.

“No,
their deaths couldn’t have been kept secret, not even during the Holocaust.”

“Any
idea where they are now?” Sam asked.

“No.”
Sam heard Blake sigh on the other end of the line. “But that’s just it. No
one’s heard from them since.”

“Any
relatives?”

“No,
the last anyone saw of them was when they tried to escape Munich on the
Magdalena.” Blake sounded excited, as though he was close to discovering
something of great importance.

“What’s
the Magdalena?”

“She
was a luxury airship, like the Titanic’s equivalent of a Zeppelin airship. It
was said that her owner, a Mr. Peter Greenstein, made a number of trips aboard
her, attempting to rescue rich Jewish families in the early days of the war.”

“Just
the rich ones?” Sam, having grown up with a father who considered himself in
financial trouble when his name didn’t appear in the Top 10 Rich List in Forbes
Magazine, found that irritating and typical.