Twelve Mile Bank Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Harvey

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2017

  First & Second Revisions 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-0-692-99046-9

  Mermaid illustration by Tracie Cotta

  Cover design by author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner unless noted otherwise. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Except Jen and her Greenhouse Restaurant, you can’t make up Jen.

  The Twelve Mile Bank exists as described but the two pinnacles are fictional. The dive sites and wrecks described around Cayman, except the U-1026, all exist and are as fantastic as described. The German submarine designated U-1026 was planned but never constructed.

  For Cheryl, my mermaid.

  Chapter 1

  Caribbean Sea, 1945

  The night was dimly lit by the sliver of a moon low in the sky, barely visible in the gathering cloud. The seas had started the day calm but the wind had picked up from the south throwing up a swell that was worsening as the evening wore on. The U-boat rocked and rolled as a young submariner, Andreas Jaeger, stepped from the deck of the sail boat tied alongside the steel decking of the Type VIIC/41 submarine. He glanced back and caught a final nod from his Captain.

  The decks of the sailboat were packed with forty one sailors, the majority of the full complement of forty five men they’d left Wilhelmshaven with several months ago. Off the east coast of America they’d lost one man overboard in heavy seas. To each of them it seemed that was a lifetime ago. Forty one tired, dirty, hungry men watched Andreas struggle across the decking in the growing winds and rising swell. Sweat glistened from the brow of each man in the muggy warm air of the Caribbean, a far cry from the chilly early spring days they’d left behind in northern Europe.

  The Captain loudly barked an order in German to be heard over the wind and several men untied the lines holding the sailboat to the submarine. The seas quickly pulled the smaller boat away. The sailing vessel was a seventy foot Kauri yacht, a beautiful pleasure craft owned by a French national of German descent who lived on Grand Cayman, the island they currently floated about a dozen miles from the shores of.

  Andreas climbed the conning tower and with a last survey of the seas and a glance at the sailboat hardly visible now a hundred yards away, he lowered himself down the narrow ladder into the U-boat and closed the hatch above him, dogging it tight.

  U-1026 was built in 1943 in the dockyards of Blohm & Voss in Hamburg. She was finally commissioned and launched in early 1944, 12 months ago, and this was only her third patrol of the war. A war that was rapidly drawing to a close. The coded messages from command naturally gave no indication of this but every other radio broadcast they picked up from France, America and now through the Caribbean told a different story. They all knew defeat for the Reich was only a matter of time.

  Andreas dropped into the control room where the remaining two members of the crew were waiting. Lars and Wilhelm looked pensive and anxious but clearly relieved to see Andreas and finally getting on with the task at hand.

  “Okay, here we go” Andreas tried to sound confident. “Is the boat sealed?”

  “Yes, we have a seal” Lars replied, scanning a panel of lights.

  “Good, to the engine room Lars, be ready”. Lars nodded and hurried aft to the electric motor room.

  Andreas stepped out of the control room to the tiny radio room and put on a headset and pinged the sonar. “Thirty one metres… good, we’re still over it, start blowing the ballast tanks Willy, slowly now, slowly,” he ordered, returning to the control room.

  Wilhelm wiped the sweat from his face and started cranking the ballast tank handles, moving along them systematically to lower the boat evenly. The U-boat was still rocking in the surface waves but became more stable the further she sank towards the bottom. The caged bulbs of the interior lights cast odd shaped shadows around the control room, silhouetting the myriad of pipes, handles and wheels that littered the cramped walls and ceiling. Often the alternative red lights were used to keep the men’s eyes adapted to the dark night sky, ready to focus through the periscope or dash up the narrow ladder to the observation deck upon surfacing. Seconds could make the difference between spotting an enemy ship waiting to pounce and being seen first and blown to pieces before they could submerge to safety. But no one was spotting them tonight.

  U-1026 was taking a one way trip down.

  Chapter 2

  Grand Cayman, 2017

  A thirty foot RIB boat speeds across the azure blue waters off Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach. It’s another glorious day in the Caribbean and the young woman at the helm deftly cruises the boat up to a buoy bobbing in the ocean. With the efficiency of two people having performed the task repeatedly, AJ positions the boat perfectly. Her deck hand Thomas hooks the tie line floating below the surface with a gaff and ties it off on a cleat on the front of the boat. The sign on the side of the centre console reads ‘Mermaid Divers’.

  The rigid-inflatable boat was the kind used by the Seal teams and SAS soldiers. Used in the toughest marine environments the hard hulled craft had the upper constructed of flexible, inflatable tubes. Lightweight, incredibly buoyant and known for speed and maneuverability in rough seas they are the choice for rescue as well as military applications. Driven by twin Yamaha two hundred and fifty horsepower four stroke outboards the vessel had more power than they could ever need in the coastal waters.

  The RIB boats were not cheap and would not normally have been affordable or the first choice for a dive operation, it was purely by chance that when AJ was looking to buy her boat this one came up at auction. A formerly wealthy young stock investor was indicted in America for insider trading and all his assets were seized, this included a condo on Seven Mile Beach, a Mercedes and the RIB boat in the marina. She snapped it up at one third of its value, added benches and tank holders along the sides and now had the fastest dive boat on the island.

  Annabelle Jayne Bailey stood five feet and four inches tall… if she stretched, tippy toed and lifted her chin up a little too high. A tomboy in her youth she was a dynamic centre forward for her school football team and cared a lot more about her sports than her studies. She made decent grades but not the straight A stuff her barrister mother and CEO father were hoping for.

  AJ’s life completely changed on a rare family holiday to the Cayman Islands when she was sixteen. Her father Bob hired Pearl Divers to take the three of them SCUBA diving and it was game over for AJ, she was hooked. She fell instantly in love with the freedom of gliding through the open water, the ability to soar in three dimensions. It felt like another world, completely detached from the clumsy two dimensional land topside. The colours, the abundant life, the majestic swaying of the fans and soft corals, it all mesmerized her and she couldn’t get enough of it.

  She negotiated a deal with her father that if she got A’s in her O-Levels he’d pay for her SCUBA certification. She just scraped through with some A-minuses in the mix but he’d agreed on A’s and stuck to his end of the deal. The south coast of England was a far cry from the crystal clear, balmy waters of Grand Cayman but AJ didn’t care. Cocooned in layers of neoprene and anchored down with a steel tank and heavy weights to counteract the buoyancy of the thick wetsuit, she lumbered around on shore but felt the same abundant freedom once submerged.

  G
reat visibility off the Sussex coast was fifteen feet on a perfect, calm day yet she was fearless. She soon passed her Open Water Certification and was taking trips with the local dive shop to more interesting locations along the coast and over to the Isle Of Wight. She was fascinated by the wrecks which littered the coast line, especially the ships and submarines that were victims of the Second World War.

  She laboured through the two years of A-Levels to keep her parents appeased and continuing to fund her diving exploits, but she couldn’t find any enthusiasm for university and avoided her mum and dad’s pressing over her continued education. She visited a few universities and sent letters to a few more but it was really for show as she had no intention of going to any of them. She had the full court press going on her diving education, racking up dives at every opportunity and was halfway through her instructor training when her father finally sat her down and insisted she share her future intentions with him.

  AJ had a strong streak of rebelliousness in her but it was always dampened by her underlying love for her parents. She couldn’t lie to him and came clean that she had no intention of heading into further schooling and furthermore planned to grab an overseas divemaster gig as soon as she was done with her A-Level exams. Robert Bailey was not as shocked as she thought he’d be. He shook his head but couldn’t hide a slight grin. He commanded respect and got his way in the toughest corporate board room but his daughter melted the man and he adored her free spirit and sense of adventure. Her mother was not so easy.

  Beryl Bailey didn’t take shit from anyone. As a barrister she handled mainly high profile corporate cases, making her living in a predominantly male dominated world of cut throat business. She dressed confidently, she walked confidently and she asserted herself confidently. Beryl liked to hear the facts, discuss both sides in a concise manner and then make a decision, all wrapped up in a neat bundle, handled, put to bed. She wasn’t a cold woman, she was a loving and caring mother and she and Bob, after some rough years early on in their marriage, had found an even balance between their take charge personalities. She liked to have a plan and she liked everyone to stick to that plan. AJ was definitely not sticking to the plan.

  Six customers on the boat began bustling about preparing their dive gear, eager to splash in and enjoy the warm waters. Thomas, a light brown skinned local with a heavy Caymanian lilt to his English, which to the unfamiliar sounded Jamaican, busied himself helping the customers into their dive gear, checking air tanks were turned on and masks were defogged. AJ dropped the ladder over the back between the outboards and pulled her lightweight wetsuit up, wriggling into the snug, flexible neoprene. The divers would back roll over the sides for entry but use the ladder to return to the boat.

  “Welcome to Neptune’s Wall everyone, this will be our first dive this morning”. For a petite girl she had a firm, assertive voice, a trait she inherited from her mother, and everyone had eyes on her while she gave her briefing.

  “This is a sloping reef down to around a hundred feet and then it drops off sheer down to almost a thousand, a little deeper than PADI likes us to go! We’ll stay around that hundred foot mark please”.

  The crowd chuckled nervously, enjoying a touch of humour. Most recreational divers visiting the Caymans dive only a few times a year so it’s always a little nerve wracking leaping off a boat and dropping down the equivalent of a ten story building, especially when a mistake can take you into the abyss. AJ was skilled at making people feel at ease and coaching them through each step, one of the reasons her client base was predominantly return customers.

  AJ wore her blonde hair short, cropped at her neck with flashes of brilliant purple highlights. She had several piercings in each ear. Her muscles were toned from working the boat all day, schlepping dive tanks around at thirty five pounds apiece, and her skin a very un-English tanned brown. But her most striking feature were her half sleeve tattoos on both upper arms. Her left depicted a vibrant reef with brightly coloured fish and her right a more sinister scene of a ship wreck with sharks and a vintage style deep sea diver in copper helmet and bulky dive suit.

  Her mother was horrified when she saw the tattoos, her father sighed and hugged his little girl. She was twenty two, living in Florida at the time, and he rarely saw her so why be mad when he did? Beryl finally came around to some level of acceptance, AJ promising she was fully decorated with no intention of getting more. Her mother cornered her one day and in an uncharacteristically bumbling style asked if Annabelle was interested in other women. AJ laughed and swore she was not a lesbian. The idea actually appealed to her that people might be unsure, she felt it gave her an edge somehow, knocked some people off balance a bit. For a girl that grew up thin on self-assuredness it felt good to sense she may have the upper hand sometimes.

  “Bottom time around twenty five minutes and I’ll have you back to the boat. Everyone’s on computers so if you’ve got air remaining you’re welcome to cruise a little longer just please keep the mooring in sight and back on the boat with no less than thirty five bar, that’s five hundred psi. Top of the reef here is around sixty to seventy feet so watch your no deco time carefully and make sure you get a full three minute safety stop in. Any questions?”

  She scanned the group and with no takers she continued. “Great, keep your eyes peeled for turtles, eels and smalls on the reef. This is a good spot for sharks and rays as well out over the drop off so scan the open blue water from time to time. Pool’s open, let’s dive!”

  With that she stepped aside so Thomas could start helping the customers finish gearing up and back roll over the side of the RIB boat into the ocean. AJ quickly slid her gear on and was in the water and descending before all her customers were in.

  It was a chamber of commerce day above and below the water, blue skies, eighty six degrees, light breeze and flat calm up top and crystal clear, no current below. AJ loved her job.

  She descended down to the top of the reef around sixty five feet and her group gathered near her where the mooring line was fixed. The sunshine easily penetrated the crystal clear waters and saturated the colourful reef in radiant light. Vibrant blue, green, purple and orange corals painted a perfect backdrop for the myriads of fish busying themselves around the reef.

  AJ had always been impressed how the Caymanian government strictly regulated the diving industry in the islands waters and created a mooring system for the boats to tie off to. By drilling and bolting to rock or dead parts of the reef the mooring lines were well anchored and ran to the surface with a buoy to mark the spot. Using a tie line, about thirty feet long that came off the buoy, the boat captains had a secure tether. Rotating the buoys regularly gave each reef some peace and quiet undisturbed by divers, enhancing healthy growth. Anchoring a boat directly on any of the reefs was strictly forbidden. As a protected marine park, the waters surrounding the islands had ‘no touch, no take’ rules, further promoting the perfect natural environment for the reefs to continue to flourish.

  AJ, along with most professionals in the diving industry, did all they could to help coral preservation. With the oceans progressively warming, along with pollution and over fishing, a fifth of the world’s reefs have already been lost. Coral grows at less than an inch a year in the best conditions and branchy corals at a maximum of three to four inches a year so a diver can inadvertently cause decades of damage. A boat scraping the reef or dragging an anchor can set it back hundreds even thousands of years of growth.

  Once she’d got an okay sign from each of her group AJ gently finned towards the wall where the reef sloped easily down to a sheer drop into the pitch black abyss. It was an unnerving sight at how vast the ocean suddenly seemed and how small and insignificant each human felt.

  AJ unhooked a stainless steel carabiner she carried clipped to her buoyancy compensator, or BCD as they’re known, and softly tapped it against her air tank. Pointing ahead and down a little deeper she got the group’s attention to see a Hawksbill turtle taking bites from an orange sponge. The divers
moved in closer and several pulled out cameras and filmed the young turtle having his breakfast.

  AJ levelled off at the hundred foot mark and started along the edge of the reef with the drop off on her right. The group peeled away from the turtle, who didn’t seem to care that he had an audience, and fell in line behind her. Further along she tapped again and pointed off into the deep blue of the open water and made a hand signal like pulling the trigger of a gun. A small school of silvery Ocean Triggers were sweeping in for a look at the edge of the reef, their larger top and bottom fins giving them a distinctly ethereal appearance.

  As the Triggers turned in a long arc back out to open water a movement was sensed more than seen from deeper below. It caught AJ’s attention and she stayed absolutely still and let her eyes adjust to the darker water below. There it was again, a slight movement of something larger but barely detectable. She held up both hands to signal everyone to hold still. Her divers tried to follow her line of sight, puzzled as to what to expect.

  With an almost lethargic sway a shadow emerged from the depths. It appeared to move effortlessly, the casual ease of a creature lulling the world into a sense that it couldn’t be bothered to mess with you. The Hammerhead shark was about seven feet long. Because light refracts through water at a greater angle than through air, everything underwater appears bigger. To AJ’s group this appeared to be a ten foot monster.

  All but two of the group froze motionless, mesmerized by the prehistoric looking creature casually swimming towards them. The teenage son of an investment banker from Milwaukee flailed around trying to get his GoPro camera fired up and pointed in the right direction. In his haste he fumbled it and watched it drop down the wall, past the approaching Hammerhead which ignored it completely, continuing into the depths. Unseen, somewhere around two hundred and fifty feet the plastic housing imploded as the water pressure became too much for it to stand.