Lost Empire (Fargo Adventures 2)

Again he reached the bottom of his excavation. They evacuated more debris, then he kicked out his toeholds and went to work with the stick. On his first strike, he heard the solid thunk of wood on wood. He did it again with the same result. He dug out the remainder of the shaft, then craned his neck downward, illuminating the bottom with his headlamp.

“I’ve got decking,” he shouted.

HE LOWERED HIMSELF until his feet touched the deck. The wood creaked and bowed under his weight. After shoving debris to one side with his boot, he slammed his heel down and got a satisfying crack in reply. A dozen more stomps opened a ragged two-foot hole. The rest of the detritus plunged through the opening.

“I’m going through.”

Hand over hand, he lowered himself through the deck. The light from the surface receded and faded, leaving him suspended in the glow of his headlamp. His feet touched a hard surface. He tested his weight on it. It was solid. Cautiously, he released the rope.

“I’m down,” he called. “Looks okay.”

“I’m on my way,” Remi replied.

Two minutes later she was beside him. She clicked on her headlamp and illuminated the hole above their heads. “That has to be the deckhouse roof.”

“Which would make this the berth deck,” said Sam.

And a tomb, they quickly realized, panning their beams around the space. Running down each side of the space at sporadic intervals were twenty or so hammocks hanging from the overhead. All of the hammocks were occupied. The remains were mostly skeletal, save patches of desiccated flesh on whatever body parts weren’t covered in clothing.

“It’s like they simply lay down and waited to die,” said Remi.

“That’s probably accurate,” Sam replied. “Once the ship was buried, they had three choices: suffocation, starvation, or suicide. Let’s move on. You choose.”

The only blueprints they’d seen for the ship had come from the original shipbuilder; they had no idea what, if any, changes either the Sultan of Zanzibar or Blaylock might have made to the interior layout. This berth deck seemed close to the original, but what about the rest of the ship?

Remi chose forward and started walking. The deck was almost pristine. Had they not come in the way they had, it would’ve been impossible to tell they were under fourteen feet of earth.

“Has to be the lack of oxygen,” Remi said. “It’s been hermetically sealed for a hundred thirty years.”

Their beams swept over a wooden column blocking their path.

“The foremast?” Remi asked.

“Yes.”

On the other side of this they found a bulkhead and two steps leading up into what had once been the petty officers’ quarters; it had since been turned into a storage compartment for timber and sailcloth.

“Let’s head aft,” Sam said. “Providing Blaylock wasn’t on deck when they got hit, I’m guessing he’d be in either the wardroom or his quarters.”

“I agree.”

“As much as I’d love to explore, I think this is one of those ‘discretion equals valor’ moments.”

Remi nodded. “This will take a full archaeological team and years of work.”

They walked aft, their footfalls clicking dully on the deck and their murmured voices echoing off the bulkheads. They stepped through the berth-deck hatch and found themselves facing another mast, this one the main; on the other side of this were a bulkhead and a ladder leading up to the main deck.

“Dead end,” Remi said. “Unless we want to push through to the main deck and tunnel our way aft to the wardroom.”

“Let’s call that Plan B. According to the blueprints, on the other side of this bulkhead are the coal bunkers, the upper level of the engine room, then the aft hold. The Sultan was known to deal in illicit cargo from time to time. Let’s see if he made any covert adjustments to the layout.”

The bulkhead was six feet high and ran the width of the thirty-foot deck. Using their headlamps, Sam and Remi scanned the bulkhead from one side to the other. Directly below the spot where the ladder pierced the deck above, Remi spotted a quarter-sized indentation in one of the planks. She pressed her thumb into it and was rewarded with a snick. A hinged hatch swung downward. Sam caught it, then lowered it the rest of the way. On tiptoes, he peered into the opening.

“A crawl space,” he said.

“It’s heading in the right direction.”

Sam boosted Remi through the hatch, then chinned himself up and followed. They headed aft, knees and hands bumping along the wood.