Every man is a man in trouble, and Drew Saint, Peter Simons, and Jim Major are not exception. Hundreds of miles out to sea in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, stories begin to change, facts begin to blur and emerge, and tempers begin to flare. What they thought would be a difficult but fairly routine mission becomes twisted with lies and perils, as the three unsuspecting friends find themselves deliberately drawn into a complex, high seas, high stakes historical take of betrayal, revenge, greed, and murder.

Clemency

The Saint Chronicles, Part 1By Charles G. Turner III

abbott press

Copyright © 2012 Charles G. Turner III
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0358-8

Contents

Prologue..............................................viiiChapter 1: Thieves....................................1Chapter 2: Innocence..................................7Chapter 3: Ignorance..................................18Chapter 4: Guilt......................................28Chapter 5: Tomorrow...................................37Chapter 6: An Absurd Idea.............................47Chapter 7: Exposure...................................57Chapter 8: Roller Coaster Ride........................69Chapter 9: The Captain................................84Chapter 10: The Tree..................................94Chapter 11: The Dinner Party..........................103Chapter 12: For the Love of Money.....................116Chapter 13: Unexpected Company........................130Chapter 14: The Collapse..............................142Chapter 15: Dead Reckoning............................151Chapter 16: Resurrection..............................164Chapter 17: Reward....................................175Epilogue..............................................184

Chapter One

Thieves

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is bad luck. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time with no luck is a catastrophe. —Unknown

September, 2003

They had come a long way personally and professionally, but not together. They certainly didn't know each other well enough to have descended to the depths. At 291 feet, they were caged in a darkness rivaled only by the unseen depths of a cave and in a cold that kills in a few fleeting and delirious moments. In the most inhospitable environment on Earth, three souls were inextricably connected. Their destinies were identical now. Without each other, none would survive. But in the interest of the larger goal, they accepted this and clung to each other almost as much as they clung to their flashlights. Revelations were presented to them by the thin ribbons of light that pierced the darkness, forcing them to constantly identify, reevaluate, and determine where they were physically on this giant hulk. All would be disclosed and unfolded a single foot at a time.

They were brought here by research, desperation, and the drive for the almighty dollar—or rather the almighty ingot. Let there be no misgivings about their intent. They had weighed the risks and responded as best they could with the resources they had. Confidence was high, at least for one of them, and the objective was clear. Their dives were expected to be short; so where they could, they cut corners. If an off-brand item was cheaper, but it served the same purpose, they bought it. After all, they needed to pay the captain and for the fuel and expenses of his boat for a week. They would live or die on the razor's edge between deliverance and death.

Inevitably, they would taste a little of the brine leaking in behind their regulators. They would be a little colder because circumstances deemed they forgo the better dry suits and thicker polar fleece liners. Even though much of their salvaged equipment had been rigged up in a garage because they couldn't afford the catalog version, this was no suicide mission. The numbers were daunting; the margins for error were thin. But to these men, it was workable. The rewards far outweighed the risks. The act of suicide is not for those who have a fear and loathing of death; rather, it is a commitment for those who have a fear and loathing of suffering, which was the last expectation here. They imagined bills paid and dreamed of a blowout celebration at Christmas. Even though it felt like an Arctic winter at the moment, fortunes were about to change forever in fall 2003.

All were experienced divers even if it not at this depth. As such, they didn't talk about their cheeks burning from the subfreezing saltwater. They felt the salted water molecules entering every pore of exposed skin on their faces as if they were being reamed by a hot poker. They didn't think about the fact that a twenty-two-story building's worth of water was over their heads. They ignored the notion that one miscalculation while coming up from the depths would literally boil their blood with nitrogen. Strokes, heart attacks, and aneurisms, were just some of the ways that could end their dreams. . They would die as victims of their own folly. There had been no more discussion of any of this. They had a leader, a plan, and an expected result. The rest of the possibilities be damned—at least there were no sharks.

As they floated effortlessly up the companionway of the Clemency, one diver casually banged a hammer on the side of her rusting hull. He was looking for a weakness, a soft spot, maybe her point of entry. The ship had suffered from the relentless grinding of the cold, the saltwater, and the tide. She no longer looked anything like her former self. Her clean, sharp lines and shining fixtures had been eaten from the inside out. The salt finally had won out and penetrated her skin. Violently pushing its way outward in silence, her skin was covered with rust that hung down like a wrinkled blanket over the entire ship. It was difficult to find even the telltale frames of her windows or doors.

The divers searched for raised mounds of rust that might indicate hinges and ghostlike wheels that protruded from the decay to reveal a door. Spinning the water up against her side with a fin or testing her metal with a hammer brought on a rash of complaints. These included a rain shower of rusty flakes and a brown, iron smoke suspended in protest, which covered her fresh multilayered pock of a wound. The brine had brought her to this point. It would continue to eat her flesh, layer by layer, year after year, decade upon decade, long after they were gone until she would finally collapse, exhausted.

The divers glided to a halt at the end of the companionway and faced the door to her upper hallway. Each diver reached down to remove his fins, clipped them together, and then clipped them to the remnants of the railing by their straps. As there could be no direct communication between them, save for hand signals and dive slates, the leader motioned for the others to move back before turning toward the door with his hammer. Violently and repeatedly, he banged on the spokes in the center of the wheel. The concussion of the blows, seemingly in slow motion under the pressure of the deep, rang out for miles in the desolate silence. Debris the color of milk chocolate rained down from above, enveloping the laborer in a fog of fury.

But in this contest, it would be the unyielding who ultimately would win out over the unwilling, forcing the years of decay to release its grasp millimeters at a time until the remnants of remaining sea grease in the bearings of the lock, coaxed the wheel to spin freely. The door sprang from its frame only a few inches and stopped, exposing a band of midnight darkness through the suspended sediment from the terrifying and inviting hall beyond. They knew where they were and exactly where they were going. Suddenly, it wasn't as cold anymore; the sting of the frigid brine had become a memory.

Returning the hammer to its hanger on his belt, a diver raised his left, finless foot and planted it against the door jamb, pulling the door open with both hands as hard as he could through the water's resistance. He quickly pushed the door all the way open and against the outer bulkhead. The divers...