Clive Cussler: The Pharaoh's Secret

“But what if I was only fifty percent right?”

“Then I’d say you’re doing better than normal.”

Joe laughed again and turned toward Michelle. “Show him what we’ve found.”

She waved Kurt over and directed her lights down into the excavated section. There, a long, pointed spike that was the bow ram of the Roman galley was clearly entangled with another type of wood. Where she and Joe had excavated the sand, Kurt could see the broken hull of a second vessel.

“What am I looking at?” Kurt asked.

“That, my friend, is a corvus, ” Joe said.

The word meant raven , and the ancient iron spike looked enough like the sharp beak of a bird that Kurt could imagine where the name had come from.

“In case you forgot your history,” Joe continued, “the Romans were poor sailors. Far outclassed by the Carthaginians. But they were better soldiers and they found a way to turn this to their advantage: by ramming their enemies, slamming this iron beak into the boat’s hull and using a swinging bridge to board their opponent’s vessels. With this tactic, they turned every confrontation at sea into a close-quarters battle of hand-to-hand combat.”

“So there are two ships here?”

Joe nodded. “A Roman trireme and a Carthaginian vessel, still held together by the corvus . This is a battle scene from two thousand years ago all but frozen in time.”

Kurt marveled at the discovery. “How did they sink like this?”

“The stress of the collision probably cracked their hulls,” Joe guessed. The Romans must have been unable to release the corvus as their ships foundered. They went down arm in arm, linked together for all eternity.”

“Which means we’re both right,” Kurt said. “Guess you won’t be paying me that dollar after all.”

“A dollar?” This came from Michelle. “You two have been going on and on about this bet for a month all over one measly dollar?”

“It’s really more about bragging rights,” Kurt said.

“Plus, he keeps docking my pay,” Joe said. “So that’s all I can afford to wager.”

“You’re both incorrigible,” she said.

Kurt would have agreed with that statement proudly, but he didn’t get the chance because a different voice came through the intercom system and interrupted him.

A readout on the helmet-mounted display confirmed the transmission was coming in from the Sea Dragon up on the surface. A little padlocked symbol with his name and Joe’s beside it told Kurt the call was being patched through to them only.

“Kurt, this is Gary,” the voice said. “You and Zavala reading me okay?”

Gary Reynolds was the Sea Dragon ’s skipper.

“Loud and clear,” Kurt said. “I see you’ve got us on a private channel. Is something wrong?”

“Afraid so. We’ve picked up a distress call. And I’m not sure how to respond.”

“Why is that?” Kurt asked.

“Because the call isn’t coming from a vessel,” Reynolds said. “It’s coming from Lampedusa.”

“From the island?”

Lampedusa was a small island with a population of five thousand. It was Italian territory, but was actually closer to Libya than to the southern tip of Sicily. The Sea Dragon had docked there for one night each week, picking up supplies and refueling, before heading back out to hold station over the wreck site. Even now, there were five members of NUMA onshore, handling the logistics and cataloging the artifacts recovered from the dig.

Joe asked the obvious question: “Why would someone on an island feel the need to broadcast a distress call on a marine channel?”

“No idea,” Reynolds said. “The guys in the radio room were sharp enough to flip on the recorder when they realized what they were hearing. We’ve listened to it several times. It’s a little garbled, but it definitely came from Lampedusa.”

“Can you play it for us?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Reynolds said. “Stand by.”

After a delay of several seconds, Kurt heard the hum of static and a bit of feedback before a voice could be heard speaking. Kurt couldn’t make out the first dozen words or so, but then the signal cleared and the voice became stronger. It was a woman’s voice. A woman who sounded calm and yet in great need at the same time.

She spoke in Italian for twenty seconds and then switched to English.

“… I say again, this is Dr. Renata Ambrosini… We have been attacked… Now trapped in the hospital… desperately need assistance… We are sealed in and our oxygen is running low. Please respond.”

A few seconds of static followed and then the message repeated.

“Any traffic on the emergency bands?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Reynolds said. “But out of an abundance of caution, I put in a call to the logistics team. No one’s picking up.”

“That’s odd,” Joe said. “Someone is supposed to be manning the radio at all times while we’re out here.”

Kurt agreed. “Call someone else,” he suggested to Reynolds. “There’s an Italian Coast Guard station in the harbor. See if you can raise the commandant there.”

“Already tried it,” Reynolds said. “Tried the satellite phone too, just in case the radios were being affected by something. In fact, I’ve dialed every number I can find for Lampedusa, including the local police station and the joint we ordered pizza from the first night we docked there. No one is answering. I’m not trying to sound like an alarmist, but for one reason or another that whole island has gone dark.”

Kurt wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions, yet the woman had used the word attack . “Contact the Italian authorities in Palermo,” he said. “A distress call is a distress call, even if it doesn’t come from a ship. Tell them we’re going to see what we can do to help.”

“Figured you’d want to go that route,” Reynolds said. “I checked the dive tables. Joe and Michelle can surface with you. Everyone else will have to go in the tank.”

Kurt expected as much. He broke the news to the rest of the team. They quickly put their tools down, switched off the lights and began a very slow ascent, meeting up with the decompression tank, as it was lowered down on cables, in which they were hauled to the surface in pressurized safety.

Kurt, Joe and Michelle had made their way to the surface in the powered hard suits and Kurt was pulling off his gear when Reynolds gave them more bad news. Not a word had come from Lampedusa. Nor were there any military or Coast Guard units within a hundred miles of the island.

“They’re fueling up a couple helicopters out of Sicily, but they won’t be airborne for at least thirty minutes. And it’s an hour’s flying time from Sicily once they’re airborne.”

“We could be on the beach, finishing dessert and ordering a nightcap by then,” Joe said.

“Which is why they’re asking us to take a look,” Reynolds explained. “Apparently, we’re the closest thing to an official government presence in the area. Even if our government is on the other side of the Atlantic.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “For once, we don’t have to beg for permission or ignore someone’s warning to steer clear.”

“I’ll get us pointed in the right direction,” Reynolds said.

Kurt nodded. “And don’t spare the horses.”

As the Sea Dragon closed in on Lampedusa, the first sign of trouble was a pall of dark, oily smoke rising high above the island. Kurt trained a pair of high-powered binoculars on it.

“What do you see?” Joe asked.

“A ship of some kind,” Kurt said. “Sitting close to the shore.”

“Tanker?”

“Can’t tell,” Kurt said. “Too much smoke. What I can see is burnt and twisted metal.” He turned to Reynolds. “Head toward it, let’s take a closer look.”