Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

Forbes came over, “all right but just a cursory look at this point, gentlemen.”

David, who’d been working with his own laser knife, had destroyed any hold the door had on his side. He replaced the laser in its holster as it was apparent that the big green door was done for. They barely had to push inward with their combined weight to have it not simply open but to topple slowly in the dead zone water, shakily, eerily at first before giving way and striking the bottom of the cargo hold itself. This gave the men a first glimpse of the shadowy, dark outline of a row of anchored automobiles in this, their hundred-year-old prison.

“Careful, Jacob!” David shouted, seeing a ragged section of the green door bob up at the other man as if retaliating. But Mendenhall didn’t slow his rush toward the prize, oblivious to the danger inches below him.

“Leave it for tomorrow’s dive, man!” David said in his most commanding voice. “Captain, Dr. Entebbe, will you please order Mendenhall off!”

But Jacob Mendenhall appeared as a man possessed at this point as he struggled through the brackish water with its limited visibility. There was no slowing or stopping him and the orders coming from above fell on deaf ears.

David realized that what they had seen of the cars before was merely the tip of the show here beneath the dark waters. He also felt terribly small here in this huge dead zone area, while just ahead of him Jacob continued to rush toward the prized items he so wanted to claim for the expedition—dangerously so. More horrid thoughts of how easily their space-age suits might be compromised filled David’s mind, returning him to that damnable sub in the Sea of Japan. Still, all seemed well enough before the sight of not one row but four or five rows of anchored vehicles here with them. All were rather miraculously preserved. The moment recalled to David the time he’d visited China to see the terra cotta warriors unearthed after thousands of years and now the archeological find of the last century. He thought the cars aboard Titanic , once tidied up and placed in the Smithsonian would be the find of this century—and his name would be among those who’d recovered them. Pride filled him at this moment. He certainly understood Mendenhall’s insistence on gaining access and the other man’s boyish excitement now.

His reverie was broken when Jacob, beside him and staring at their find, said in dry humor, “Not even that mummy and its sarcophagus over at the aft section can compare to this, eh, David?” Jacob slapped him on.

“You have no idea just how close that damned door came to wreaking havoc on you, my friend!” David informed Jacob.

But Jacob’s and David’ combined lights and cameras illuminated almost the entire square of twenty automobiles in fixed rows, very much anchored to the floor with chains that’d held them in place for the horrendous dive a hundred years ago.

Only miniscule eddies caused by their own movement could be seen in the dead water about them. They were inside this cavernous area with all manner of loose debris and cargo floating about like plastic film props on a set. They must maintain focus and keep their bodies firmly in control so as to not be snagged on any protrusions either at their feet or along the walls where any normally safe item could become deadly in an instant if a man let his guard down. Jacob had been lucky earlier—lucky by a hair’s breadth. All concerns that now seemed pedestrian on locating the treasures they’d found, ostensibly to raise from the depths.

Those aboard Scorpio had fallen silent on seeing the feed sent up by Jacob and David. As he’d gotten closer in on the underwater garage before them, David’s own heart rate had gone up several notches according to Dr. Entebbe. The chrome and brass was as shiny and reflective as the day these motor cars had left the manufacturer’s hands.

“Good as new, Captain!” Jacob shouted the words to Juris Forbes and the others above. “We’ll need to remove four sections of the hull… take these beauties straight up on the lift. Going to take days, maybe a week.”

“How many do you count in good condition?” Forbes asked. “Any snap their moorings?”

“Hard to tell until we swim entirely around the collection,” replied Jacob.

“This is a religious experience down here, Captain,” David added, bringing on some laughter from above.

No longer fearing for his dive partner’s life, feeling a good deal more in control, David calmed and laughed at Jacob’s form now going about the cars—not remaining on the outer perimeter but swimming in among the rows like a big kid, excited, rattling off the names of each car. Obviously, he had studied the records involving the autos with great concern as he darted from an Austin-Healey to a pair of Renaults until he gasped at leaping onto the running board of one auto. He kiddingly pretended to be taking a ride bobbing in the wind on the running board, shaking the entire car with his weight when a sudden jolt against the driver’s side interior window displayed the intact features of a dead man against the glass—the dead driver at the wheel, his wife on his shoulder, followed by his children looking out at them from the rear window.

Jacob responded as anyone might, shoving off the running board, sending the ghosts of Titanic back into the gloom of an interior filled with brackish water, but as he recoiled from the sight, his back skimmed over the hood of the Renault which may well have been Dr. O’Laughlin’s car to become suddenly snagged at the spine by the hood ornament.

David now gasped, a hand raised as he shouted, “Jacob! Don’t move!”

But Jacob’s earlier momentum sent him scraping across the sharp ornament. It was a sudden end to Jacob’s partying and antics. Jacob hadn’t seen this coming, nor had David. Some poor souls had obviously decided to die with their investments, dragging family along for the ‘ride’ so to speak as now David thought he saw one of the children in the rear seat wink at him, while hearing the outcry from Scorpio , several voices at once pleading for an answer as to what happened—their camera eyes having gone completely cart-wheeling away with Jacob’s implosion, and David’s being hurled about with fragments of Jacob’s suit and body.

As he tumbled back toward the entryway to this strange place, David crazily thought of the poor children inside the car that, for so long, had been their undisturbed coffin. He could only imagine how slowly they had died if indeed they had survived the impact, which likely sent them into the roof of the Town Car—likely crushing skulls and breaking necks. Those inside were perfectly preserved, faces intact since the day of their demise. Seeing them come out of the gloom—even had they been expecting these permanent residents to be on hand—simply startled a man. Little wonder it’d sent Jacob back-peddling across the hood of the car behind him, and David had seen it happening in slow motion as Jacob’s backside slid across what would normally be a harmless item on the hood of a car transformed into a deadly weapon, wielded it seemed by the spirits here.

Jacob had swam on his back, kicking fins high, rending a long scar along his spine as he backed over the hood ornament, and David helplessly watched in the same instant as Jacob Mendenhall imploded, his suit fragmented from the force of the implosion. Compressed pieces of his flesh rained around David like blood-red flakes of fish food.

The autos and the ghosts within them, a fatherly figure at the wheel, wife beside him, children in the rear, were by now filling screens topside, fueling the imaginations of some, the greed of others. Books and films were inevitable deals in the works, for sure, thought David. Scorpio ’s monitors would create the first glimpse mankind would have of these buried treasures—thanks to Mendenhall’s rash action when in fact their orders had been to locate Kelly and Swigart, and to reunite with them. But the allure of seeing up close and personal Dr. William O’Laughlin’s Renault touring car had taken a sudden deadly turn.