Chapter 1
Caribbean Sea, 1945
The night was dimly lit by a sliver of the moon low in the sky, barely visible in the gathering cloud. The day had begun with calm seas but the wind had steadily picked up from the south, throwing up a swell that worsened as the evening wore on. The U-boat rocked and rolled as a young submariner, Andreas Jaeger, stepped from the deck of the sailboat tied alongside the steel decking of the Type VIIC/41 submarine. He glanced back and caught a final nod from his captain.
The sailboat was 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 had lost one man overboard in heavy seas. To each of them, that seemed like 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 sailor in the muggy warm air of the Caribbean; a far cry from the chilly early spring days they had 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, seventy-foot Kauri yacht away. The beautiful pleasure craft was owned by a French national of German descent who lived on Grand Cayman, the unseen island they currently floated a dozen miles from.
Andreas climbed the conning tower. 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 earlier, and this was only her third patrol of the war. A war that was rapidly drawing to a close. Naturally, the coded messages from command gave no indication of this, but every radio broadcast they picked up from France, America and now throughout 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. They could finally get 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 putting on a headset he 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 cranked the ballast tank handles, moving along them systematically to lower the boat evenly. The U-boat still rocked in the surface waves but quickly became more stable as she submerged. The caged bulbs of the interior lights cast oddly shaped shadows around the control room, silhouetting the myriad of pipes, handles and wheels that littered the cramped walls and ceiling. Normally the red interior lights were used to keep the men’s eyes adapted to the dark night sky. Always 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, or being seen first and blown to pieces before they could submerge back 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 rigid inflatable boat sped across the azure blue waters off Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach. It was another glorious day in the Caribbean, and the young woman at the helm deftly cruised the boat up to a buoy bobbing in the ocean. With the efficiency of two people having performed their roles repeatedly, AJ positioned the boat perfectly and her deck hand, Thomas, hooked the line floating below the surface with a gaff. Threading a bow line through the loop from the buoy, he tied it off to a cleat and AJ shut down the motors. The lettering on the side of the centre console read ‘Mermaid Divers’.
The RIB was the kind employed by US 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 manoeuvrability in rough seas, the boats were the choice for rescue services as well as military applications. Driven by twin Yamaha 250 horsepower, four-stroke outboards, the vessel had more power than a dive operator could ever need in the coastal waters.
RIBs 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 a boat this one came up at auction. A formerly wealthy young stock investor had been indicted in America for insider trading, resulting in all his assets being seized, including a condo on Seven Mile Beach, a Mercedes and the RIB in the marina. She snapped up the boat 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 bit. A tomboy in her youth, she had been a dynamic centre forward for her school football team and had cared a lot more about sports than her studies. She made decent grades but not the straight A results her barrister mother and CEO father had hoped for.
AJ’s life had completely changed on a rare family holiday to the Cayman Islands when she was sixteen. Her father Bob hired a firm called Pearl Divers to take the three of them scuba diving and it was game over for AJ, she was hooked. She instantly fell in love with the freedom of gliding through the open water, soaring 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 mesmerised her, and she couldn’t get enough.
AJ negotiated a deal with her father. If she achieved As in her O-Levels, he would pay for her scuba certification. She just scraped through with some A-minuses in the mix, but he had agreed on As 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.
Great 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 coastline, especially the ships and submarines that were victims of the Second World War.
She laboured through two years of A-Levels to keep her parents appeased and continuing to fund her diving exploits, but she could not find any enthusiasm for university. She avoided her mum and dad’s pressing inquiries over her continued education as best she could. She fended them off by visiting a few universities and sending letters to a few more, but it was really for show. She had no intention of going to any of them. AJ 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 could not lie to her father and came clean that she had no intention of heading into continued 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 would be. He shook his head but couldn’t hide a slight grin. He commanded respect and got his way in the toughest corporate boardroom, 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 crap 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.
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