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.Laeina turned toward the harbor.She waded into the water and went under.And she never surfaced.Chapter Forty-nineSalvageWilraven leaned over the scope, tracing the shape of the currents and the shapes of different densities in the water, noting the signal coming in weakly off their starboard side.He glanced up at Angelo, and then to Adista and Ty.“That’s Dess’s beacon.We found the Serina Beliz.She made it back.” He jammed a finger against the screen, voice rising with excitement.“Almost exactly where Inda said she would be.”He grabbed the binoculars off the dash and headed out the other side of the bridge, running right up against the rails, scanning the gray-blue chop a hundred meters off.“She’s less than her height in the water.” He pointed, glancing over his shoulder at Adista and Ty.“Masthead’s cutting through the surface.”There was a straight strip of white foam ripping across the current where the top structure and antennas stabbed into the air.Adista looked like she wanted to go over the side to investigate.Wilraven handed her the binoculars instead, calling through the open door, “Angelo, can we kill the beacon from here?”“Don’t think we need to.” The first officer shook his head, radioing the Irabarren for course and speed changes.He gave the Marcene a slight nudge to starboard, reducing speed, running parallel with their casualty—who just wouldn’t die.Wilraven caught a curiously pleased smile from Tychasis when the captain began explaining what they were seeing, making a cupped ship’s-hull shape with his hands.“We had her off the floor without a lot of trouble.She came to rest in soft sediment with minimal list, and we never pulled up the sling bags.We used them to hoist her to three hundred, then filled them, enough pressure to get the ship to neutral.Here’s the best part.When we let her go, she didn’t sink—just hung there--and we cut loose one of our ROVs to get her back into international water.”Adista looked doubtful.“On the thrusters of an ROV? Must be a strong one.”“Dess’s medium-sized.” He shook his head.“Didn’t need to be especially strong with the Serina neutral.We just didn’t want her surfacing before we got the hell out of someone else’s water.” He had already explained Corkran’s crazy plans to dump the Serina deep in Cuban water.Wilraven caught movement on the main deck.Tam and Miles from the Irabarren.He pointed starboard and shouted, “Serina’s a hundred meters off.”Angelo called out.“I think she’s slowing.Probably the end of power for Dess.”The captain shook his head at the sudden unexpected luck, but went with it.“Right on time.”The Serina Beliz hung in the water just under the surface, her pale green hull ghostly, the stern hoist beam holding the sling bags together jutting up at an angle as it rested against the deck crane.The captain waved, holding his arm high and swinging back and forth to Jeanetta and Aramesh at the helm of the Irabarren.Jeanetta gave him a quick double-flash of the fore lights.He ducked into the bridge to grab the radio.“Jean, we’re going to need a couple of anchors off Serina’s starboard.What’s the depth here? Get the Irabarren back-anchored off your starboard.We’ll work over your port.” Then he remembered he didn’t have Dewayne and Erich to man the big cranes.“Crap.Cancel that.We’ll lift the Serina’s hoist beams on this side.Aramesh, round up the ABs.We’re putting some slack in the towlines.Have Jerry untie us.I’ll be coming over in the launch with the chief, bringing the two pumps I have and some rigid and semi hose lines.What do you have on Ira?”Aramesh’s voice came back after some communicating with Jerry on the platform’s deck.“Just checking on lines and hoses, Captain.I’m sure we have enough.Four pumps over here, two more of the small sub-hydros, two of the Godwins on sleds we can forklift anywhere on the deck.I will have Miles move them to the middle.Run hoses off the starboard into Serina when she’s got her hull up to the surface, and we’ll pump off Ira’s port?”“I like it.Let’s get it going.”Turning to Angelo, “Call Rusty.Let him know where we are, not what we’ve found.Just tell him we have to stop here for a day—repairs or, I don’t know, come up with something.And that we’ll be at least a day late back in Lauderdale and Tampa.”The first officer turned to give the Marcene some back thrust, letting her rock gently in the sea right off Serina’s port.He was already on the comms with Ocean Eight when he hit the Dynamic Positioning System—DPS kept the Marcene in place, using her four thrusters to pin her to the specified coordinates.The Irabarren crept closer to Marcene’s stern, letting the towlines slacken into the waves.Jeanetta held her position there, while the chief and Wilraven kicked on the winches, drawing in the towlines, with Jerry unhooking the thick braided cables on their end.Tychasis jumped on the Marcene’s bigger knuckle boom crane, letting Wilraven know he had his shipmaster license, engineer’s license, and was crane certified.He pointed at the Irabarren’s enormous cranes.“I can operate one of those if you like?”Wilraven gave Ty a measured look, then shook his head.“We need to get the fenders deployed between us and Serina.Then we need the hoist beams in the air—hoping they didn’t twist or knot up when we blew the quick-release bolts.If everything goes well, this will take some weight off Serina, and she’ll come up to the rails just on the lift from the sling bags.”The chief, although not officially certified on the Marcene’s cranes, knew how to operate anything and he took the smaller lift crane they usually used for launching ROVs.The cranes didn’t need to lift the ship.They just had to be able to lift the hoist beams.With the towlines winched in on Marcene, and the big yellow beams climbing into the air, the Serina bobbed noticeably higher in the water, the sling bags puffing out around her, almost matching the paint color, blistering out along her length, looking like some kind of hull-bloating disease.DuFour’s quick-release bolts had worked perfectly, dropping the hoist beams straight down on the ship, and they came up without a kink or twist.The Irabarren moved to the Serina’s far side, Jeanetta hitting the DPS while every free hand, including Wilraven, manned pumps and hoses.Within an hour the air smelled of diesel exhaust and was filled with the roar of six water pumps throwing a combined three thousand gallons a minute over the Ira’s portside.The beautiful platform support ship Serina Beliz saw daylight again, inching her way out of the sea.Tears rolled down Adista’s cheeks as she stood by one of the big pumps, watching the bands of sunlight angling over the sleek facets of her towers and the defiant slant of her prow.Rivers of seawater flowed from the open bridge doors, broken windows, and ports, washing away memories and just about anything that had not been stowed or nailed down
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