Everything will be all right if you just go slowly.”
Goraksh nodded but he didn’t believe it. He didn’t think for a moment that the crew had gotten off the ship in time. He only hoped that they’d all been lost to the sea.
W ITH THE AQUALUNG STRAPPED to his back and an underwater floodlight in one hand, Goraksh dropped into the ship’s hold through the hole he’d cut. He was in total blackness except for what little light entered the hold through the cut-away hole.
He stayed submerged for a moment and blew into his face mask to equalize the pressure. Then he shone the floodlight around the hold. Boxes lay on what had been the hold’s ceiling or floated in the water. The air pocket between the hull and the waterline was less than three feet deep.
Goraksh didn’t know what was keeping the cargo ship afloat. Thinking like that made him nervous, though. If the ship suddenly went down, the sea bottom was nearly a half mile down. If he didn’t get out quickly enough, it would take him with it.
Don’t think about that, he instructed himself. Get the job done.
He surfaced and shone the floodlight up at Karam. “Send down the net.”
Karam nodded and dropped the cargo net down. Other members of the crew used battery-operated saws to widen the hole in the hull.
Goraksh grabbed a fistful of the rough hemp strands and pulled the net under with him. He selected a crate at random and wrapped the net over it. Then he yanked on the rope to signal Karam and the others to haul it out of the hold.
An arm settled around Goraksh’s neck and shoulder. Fear ripped through him as he flailed in the water with his free hand to turn around. He aimed the floodlight behind him and instinctively centered it on the figure.
The dead man’s mouth and eyes were open. Yellowed eyes and yellow, crooked teeth showed.
That was all Goraksh noticed before he screamed in terror and tried to swim backward. The respirator dropped from his lips and his face slammed into a suspended crate hard enough to almost knock him out. He swallowed seawater as he tried to breathe, then remembered he was underwater.
Fighting the panic that filled him, unable to get the dead man’s face out of his mind, Goraksh dropped the floodlight and used both hands to shove crates away from him so he could reach the surface. He pushed off on a floating crate and got enough lift to reach the edge of the hole that had been cut in the hold.
Sick, barely able to breathe because of his fear of dead things and the seawater he’d swallowed, Goraksh hauled himself out of the hold. He couldn’t stand and ended up on all fours as he retched out the seawater.
When his stomach finally settled, Goraksh felt drained and embarrassed. He forced himself to his feet and stood on shaky legs amid the mess he’d made.
“Are you through shaming me?” his father roared from the other ship.
Goraksh faced his father and intended to speak roughly, as a man would do. But his words were soft and without direction.
“The crew went down with the ship,” he said.
“Good. Then maybe they didn’t have time to call in this location,” his father said. “Maybe we’ll have more time to work.”
Even after all the years he’d lived with the man, Goraksh couldn’t believe how callous he was. Rajiv had brought Goraksh along on the pirating expeditions after storms for eight of his twenty years. During the past four, Goraksh had been expected to take part in stealing whatever cargo they could salvage.
Finding the illegal salvage was one thing, but getting away with it was quite another. The Indian navy and merchant marine, the British navy and the International Maritime Bureau, were all problems. Rajiv Shivaji considered those risks a part of doing business.
Goraksh recognized them as an end to the life he wanted. His father was a pirate. Rajiv Shivaji carried on an old family enterprise. Goraksh never romanticized the nature of what his father did.
But if Goraksh was ever caught doing his father’s business, he knew his dream future was forfeit. Still, he loved his father. After his mother had died, his father had raised him and had never taken another wife. It had only been the two of them.
If Goraksh was ever to be asked if he feared or loved his father more, though, Goraksh didn’t know what his answer would be.
K ARAM USED a crowbar to open the crate Goraksh had selected from those in the flooded hold. Water, foam peanuts and boxes of iPods spilled out across the ship’s hull.
“They’re ruined,” Rajiv snarled. “Go below and find something salvageable.”
Goraksh put the respirator back in his mouth and dived back into the hold. He recovered his floodlight and tried not to look at the dead man floating amid the boxes. Then he found two more.
He bagged more crates and sent them up. During the time he waited for the net to be sent back down, he scouted the hold. Two hatches, one at either end, normally allowed access to the upper decks. Both of them had jammed.
If there was anything in the crew’s quarters, they wouldn’t be able to get to it without cutting through the floor or forcing the hatches. Goraksh hoped his father wouldn’t demand that. Doing either of those things might upset the equilibrium of the ship.
Even now he truly believed the ship had sunk lower in the water. He reached the opening they’d created more easily.
Pounding echoed throughout the hold. Goraksh felt as though he were trapped in a gigantic drum. He netted a final crate, thinking his efforts were going to be as wasted as the other times. He surfaced.
Karam leaned down into the hold. He cupped one hand around his mouth to be heard over the sound of the sea against the hull. “Your father wants to leave.”
“All right,” Goraksh responded. He swam through the maze of boxes to the opening and wondered what had made his father change his mind. Not even the fact that they’d only pulled up ruined electronics in over a dozen attempts would have made Rajiv Shivaji give up on the hope of turning a profit.
Something had happened.
“I S ANYONE OUT THERE ? Can anyone help us?”
Goraksh stood beside his father in the ship’s wheelhouse and listened to the broadcast over the shortwave radio. His sodden clothing gave him a chill.
“Hello? Hello? God, please let someone be out there. We need help. Our boat is sinking. Please. Please! ”
The voice belonged to a woman. She sounded young and frightened.
Rajiv glanced at the radio operator. The man worked quickly with a slide rule, compass and map. He made a few tentative marks and watched his instruments again.
“Why don’t you answer her?” Goraksh asked. For a moment he couldn’t help imagining his girlfriend at the other end of the radio connection. Then again, Tejashree feared the open ocean and wouldn’t accompany him sailing.
“Because I don’t wish to answer her,” Rajiv said.
Goraksh fell silent and knew
