Chapter 3: Off the coast first recovery.
They had a full day’s delay before the divers were ready for the next dive onto the wreck. Richard put a stop to the jokes in the mess hall for those that had not gotten the word that he passed to the diver support team. Karl was still getting the bends taken care of when Richard put the dive helmet on the table next to the plates of some that had been making those jokes at Karl’s expense in the ship’s very small mess hall. It had only two words printed on card stock added to the diving helmet. It said “Bull Shark” and it was attached to the front glass of the helmet without covering the damaged view port of the helmet.
That display was enough to squash any more jokes, for the rest of the mission. Back at the bars around Mombasa when this was all over was going to be another issue all together, and one outside of Richard’s power to stop. But anyone that had seen the insides of a huge bull shark’s throat was going to have a lot of street cred and free drinks at those same bars when it was shown not to be the normal fisherman’s tail. Anyone who gave Karl grief was at best going to get that spun copper helmet slammed upside the head. And if they were unlucky, it might not stop there. That scarred diving helmet was going to stop any claim of it being a fish story.
That same dive helmet would be mounted on the communication station of this vessel for the rest of the mission, just to make sure it didn’t walk off. Karl didn’t even look at the mounted brass helmet while he preps for his next dive, not even when he inspected the diving gear of his partner for the day. Karl did make sure that his back up spear gun held four bolts, and one was not in the device while they were on the deck. The rest of the divers took their cue from him and made sure that they had a full quiver of bolts all of their own.
The pair of divers did one final weapons check when they were about five meters below the water on the “elevator” going down to the wreck. The water at this depth was just enough to dampen the wave action going on above the heads of the divers. Karl would take turns looking around in the water column and then back to his diving partner. This trip down to the sunken cargo ship was a lot faster than Karl’s first dive to the wreck site. All the way down the water column, Karl was looking for anything moving that was larger than a baby’s head. He was always seeing something out of the corner of his eye. But when he turned to look, there was nothing there.
Karl was almost surprised when the cage lift came to a stop on the port Bulwark of the sunken vessel. He reached to touch a button near his mouth but on the outside of the copper diving helmet to activate his mic. “Diver 2 this is Diver 1. Attach the four lift bags to middle edge…………. on the forward half……… of hatch Number One. I will watch you, and watch out for sharks.” Karl was more worried about getting the words right, and not speaking properly.
A harsh accented voice came back to Karl’s ears. “Diver 1, this is Diver 2. I understand. I will attach the bags to forward part of Hatch One.”
##
They were at half an hour on the bottom so far, and Karl was impressed with his new diving partner. The other man moved with a purpose that spoke of having done something like this before, if not doing it this deep as this mission required. The local diver used the same tool that Karl had used two days before to attach the lifting pulley and guidelines, only this time it was used to attach four of the QB 200 lift bags along the edge of the hatch. The two divers only put enough gas into each of the lifting bag devices to get the upside-down purse to float at the end of the attached lines. The hard part was doing this without causing enough up force that over penetrating the thinner metal of the hold cover with the anchor bolts was a risk.
Karl was inspecting the lines of the lift bags when a large shadow went over the group. He jerked his head up, around, and back and forth as he tried to find what had just “over flew” them with a shadow. Underwater it could have been a smaller fish very close to you or a large ship a lot higher in the water column going over them, and either way this was not a good thing for Karl’s mental health. The shape was gone from sight in the murky water, before Karl could work out what and how far away the fish might have been. That didn’t stop him from looking and his odd movements had drawn the eyes of the second diver. In diving you had to know what was going on around you almost as much as a fighter pilot.
The second diver had not seen the shadow, but he had seen the new helmet that was now useless on the dive master’s radio. While he was looking around one part of the compass, Karl was looking the other way. They were covering each other’s back, and this was needed due to the restricted viewing that the diving helmets allowed the divers. Still, it was Karl that saw the same shadow coming through the murk again.
“Diver 2, this is Diver 1. To your right. Bull Shark!!” Karl was fighting to keep his breathing level and his voice as calm as possible as his worst nightmare started coming to life…. again.
The other diver turned and pointed to the shark coming closer to them. His weapon was a glorified spear thrower, but it came up as he started talking almost too fast for Karl to understand. “That shark has no horns!! That is a Zambezi!! Big One!!”
It was like a light in the dark of night, and Karl understood what must have happened on the deck of the support ship when he had been asking questions about the local conditions. Bull Sharks and Zambezi sharks were the same damn animal. Karl pulled “Helga” out of her holster, and he made sure that it was ready to fire…. underwater. As they watched more and more Bull sharks started to come out of the gloom around the divers standing on the deck of the sunken cargo ship. It didn’t take long for almost two dozen of the underwater predators to be seen gliding in and out of visual range of the two divers in the low light conditions. Just like they trained in case of events like this the pair of divers slowly moved together. Each man was keeping his back to the other one with weapons out and towards the perceived threat of the predators. Then as quickly as it had started, all of the sharks moved away from the two divers.
Karl waited for what seemed like an eternity before he contacted the support vessel far over their heads. “Diver 1, to Dive Master. Please tell the cook and the deck gang, that they are not to throw anything over the side of any of the ships for the next few days. This place has way too many teeth for my liking.”
The two divers still standing back-to-back didn’t hear anything, but a simple acknowledgement from topside. While one man watched just for sharks, the other finished attaching and working on the lift bags. The last project that needed to be done took both men on this dive, but they would still try to keep an eye out for the Bull Sharks returning. The two divers would have to pull the locking pins that were emplaced to keep the lid over the cargo hold closed during bad weather. Only these were metal locking pins in metal eyes, and all of that had been underwater for almost two years and salt and most metals do not mix. So that task had not been that easy to do for one person when they were well greased. After two years of being underwater for so long, it was going to be a major workout for both divers.
Once those were done, both divers were thankful for the sweat bands the helmet makers had added to this model of diving device. Swinging a hammer underwater was not something done for long or very well. Karl took over the workload on removing the hatch pins for the second time on the last pin. After four solid hits the final pin came out of the last eye and fell to the metal deck. Karl felt his shoulders slump now that this most physical part of the dive was over. Karl gave a thumbs up and then pointed towards the next project they had to work on.
Slowly the pair moved to the hovering heavy lines, and with the liberal use of the extra air hose attached to their work belts. The four large heavy canvas purses were filled with enough gases that the air started to spill out the open bottom of the lift bags in huge bubbles. But they had not moved towards the surface by more than a few inches, and that was not what they had been hoping for. It was good but not great. It was a good thing that they had planned for something like this before they had even gotten to this part of the ocean.
After the last bag was over filled with air, the lid still over the hatch had not moved in any way that the divers could tell. This was not helpful for the mission, and both men added their muscle power to the one half of the metal hatch cover that the four lift bags were attached to. With the bags adding 800 pounds of lifting force to the job. The two men’s arms and legs gave it just enough force, so that the lid moved a whole eight inches before it would not move any more. With a nice sized crack opened to the forward cargo hatch and half of the lid moved, then both men shifted around to see what could be seen in the crack with their helmet and handheld lights. It was not much, but they could tell that at least four shipping containers were “floating” right under the hatch lid of this cargo hold.
There was nothing more that the pair of divers could do, and the dive was called to a close due to no more work being able to be done that was worth the risk of the divers’ lives or loss of equipment. All of the planned work had been planned around the idea that they would be able to fully open the hatch covers to allow access to this cargo hold. It still would take the divers a few hours to get top side again so that they would not have to deal with cases of the Bends. Even with those stops in the water column, they would have to spend the night in the pressure chamber after they were helped out of their diving gear. At least this time the deck crew didn’t have an additional mess to clean up when the dive book was closed.
The divers and support crew were getting into the pattern on how this mission was going to be exercised. At least until this mission was called off, this chamber would be the home for all of the divers when they were not underwater for their own long term safety and rest. It was not a great way to live, but it was a living, and the pay was great. Besides, chicks dig scars and stories of daring do when you were at the bar. Currently salvage diving during World War 3 is rated right up there with special forces working behind the lines to get just the right kind of attention.
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At dawn the next day, all four divers on the Savior were getting ready to dive onto the huge ships so far below the surface of the ocean. On this trip all four divers would ride the elevator down at one time. The two newest divers would be “inside” the open sided cage/elevator and Karl and his partner would be on the “outside” of the lightly made device holding on for more than dear life. Now it was time to train one of the locals how to do the checks on another diver under real world conditions and stress for depths like this. This was not checking the box, technical diving at this level was all about how it was the small things that can kill you.
Karl was okay with all four divers going down at once, but the Americans said this was not a good idea in their diving manuals. In the meeting Karl had said that it was okay, and he was the one with the most experience at dives like this in all of Kenya. It gave Karl three more sets of eyes looking for sharks, and it gave him two more extra weapons in case the sharks wanted to cause any problems near him. Besides doing it this way had allowed him to train the whole deep-water team, all at one time. Not only would this speed up the training operations, but this would also make the mission go faster. And the sooner this mission was done? That would mean less time that Karl would be underwater with the Bull Sharks that seemed to like this area so much.
As soon as the four divers were down on the cargo ship, the elevator went back up to the support ship a lot faster than it had been able to while going down the water column. It soon would be on the way back down carrying a load of supplies that were needed for the next part of this complex mission. The heavy-duty crane on the modified salvage ship could have done this work in only one lift, but there was not enough room in the cage for all of the men and the needed equipment. Human bodies needed more elbow room for a given mass than just steel.
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Karl watched as the primary and fastest way to get back to the surface disappeared over their heads in the gloom of the weak early morning light. They still had the dive safety line running from the bow of the wreck going up to the salvage vessel over their heads, and it still held the spare air tanks along with a few other odds and ends. The heavy-duty line that the elevator used to move up and down didn’t have any air tanks attached, but it could also be used if things really went badly for this group of divers. If you had to use it, well that was why you had a PACE (primary, alternate, contingency, emergency) plan while diving.
Karl looked back to the other three divers standing on the more or less level deck of this war wreck they were standing on. “Diver 2 and Diver 4, attach a dead man weight on the bow, and then run a line and pulley block and tackle system to the marked half of hatch one. Diver 3 refill the lifting bags, then join me watching for Zambezi’s.”
At the mention of the local word for Bull Sharks, the other three divers started looking around, but they did this without the wild head movements that a green diver would have done looking for the notoriously aggressive sharks. They also moved more efficiently while looking to cover “around the clock”. It would only take all of the divers a minute to get to work now that orders were given from the pre diving brief. Karl only had to make one suggestion while the team attached a heavy rope line to the bow of the ship. It was imperative that this line had to be kept clear of the emergency diving line that was near the new working line.
The dive team had only about ten minutes worth of breaks, before the diving elevator returned with the needed equipment for the rest of today’s planned work. Karl could only shake his head, at what some of the locals had come up with in the way of salvage equipment for use underwater. They didn’t have enough readymade lifting bags in the largest size, so the people back in Mombasa had made their own out of local resources. It was not like they could just order more from the United States or Germany that were the number one and number two producers of underwater salvage equipment for the whole world before the war.
While Diver 4 took a pulley to attach to the lines, and then the other divers attached what looked like a metal box frame built around two oil drums and a diving gas cylinder from the elevator. The elevator held three of these odd-looking devices, one was a backup or could be used later in the mission if they needed it. This was something that had not been done by anyone from around here, and they were making up the rules as they went. Normally in diving this was how safety briefings were made, but this long into WW3 it was just another day ending in Y.
As the two divers pushed the contraption over to the hatch on Hold Number One, Karl started getting it ready for the next movement. Now, did they need the air tank on the contraption to get the device to work? No, but why modify something that already had been proved to work? While one of the divers hooked up the twin oil drum package to the pulley and ropes on the hatch cover. When the other divers were ready and signaled that they were “at a safe distance.” Karl attached the supplied cap and valve assembly from his work belt to the open capped water filled oil drums. He had to make sure each of the caps and valves was as tight as he could get them with the few tools on his diving belt. Karl needed to make sure they were airtight or as airtight as he could get them.
With a slight turn of the bottom valve on the device Karl had attached with one last try of the wrench, air started to flow into the old oil drums, and this started to displace the water within the drums. This water went out the bottom mounted valve the drums were fitted with before being sent down the water column to the wreck. As each of the lifting barrels slowly added almost 900 pounds of lifting force, the contraption would open the half deck cover on the cargo hold and it would slide down the rope in such a way that the maximum force kept being exerted on the hatch. It did not take long for the four lifting bags and the four oil drums to fully open the half hatch on its rusty hinge. With two divers pushing the perpendicular half opened lid, the other two were watching for sharks and other underwater dangers. The open lid was pushed past its balance point by hand, and it slowly was lowered back to the ship’s deck with the air released from the attached lifting gear by hand.
Karl floated about two meters over the now half open cargo hold. “Diver 1 to Dive Master. We are running early. Cargo Hold Number One…Hatch Cover Alpha….. Hatch Cover is fully open and lashed to the deck. Hatch Cover Bravo is still in place. I can see, maybe six shipping containers… They are blocking access and are floating at the top of the hold. I think we can start Phase 1 recovery. Dive Master, am I clear to start Phase 1 recovery?”
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On the aft deck of the M/V Savior, the mission commander on this task smiled and made a mental note about his dinner plans. He had just won a bet with some of the more conservative leaders of this mission that currently were sitting back in Mombasa. Richard had been counting on that the four lifting bags would have broken any rust on the hinges, and the added lifting drums would easily move the metal cover if that had been the case. Most others thought they would need to drop down and deploy the specialized cutting torches to get into the cargo hold. Richard was an army captain, and so he had to go with the “advice” of the navy people even if he had thought that they were wrong. Looks like he was more right than wrong…. this time.
The diving master only needed a quick look to know that the commander was willing to move forward in the plan. The diving master waved to the lift deck crew and then the devices now needed for the dive team to start Phase One were sent down. While they worked on the deck, the dive team were told that they were cleared to start the next phase early. While the elevator was on its way down to the wreck with the needed support items. Richard had ordered the LCU to back its aft to the bow of this salvage vessel. This was almost a day earlier than the plan worked out in Mombasa had expected. The bow mounted 7.5-ton King post style crane on the Savior was running a line over the bow and stern of the LCU to a huge block and tackle near the side mounted pilot house of the landing craft. Soon this very heavy line would be on its way down to the divers.
The dive master could only shake his head before handing over a Five pound note to the other man sitting beside the dive master. The dive master had been one of the crew that thought the plan was overly optimistic in to getting Phase One started on time much less early. “Diver 1, Dive Master. A line will be down shortly, the rest of the tools are already heading down. Advise that you try to pick out a small one for this test lift. We will have one of the real heavy lift bags coming down as soon as we can get one of them rigged up.”
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Karl had to smile in his dive helmet. He didn’t know about this particular bet, but he could picture by the tone that the Master had lost a bet after so many dives under his belt with this group. Then Karl had to get back to work, he knew enough about diving to know if you started daydreaming underwater, you would soon not need to worry about seeing the surface ever again. Karl tapped Diver 3 on the shoulder to get him to stop looking at the half-opened hatch to get him back to being a safety diver for the whole mission. You know the job he should have been doing instead of wondering how much of a bonus they would be getting. Now Karl could watch the operation while Diver 3 kept a look out for sharks.
Two of the divers would work on trying to shift one of the shipping containers with a set of long metal poles that had been sent down with the lifting drums. Those poles were both pry bars and shark pokers if they needed them. After the pair of divers proved that they could move one, with those two poles, a heavy rope line was attached to one of the corner lifting points on the sea/land vans. No one currently in Mombasa or on this mission had any idea of what this ship had been carrying. Between the sinking of the vessel, and the use of nuclear weapons in this war. That data had been very effectively lost, and without that data they had to do things the hard way. The recovery team had no idea how well one of these metal boxes would float, much less how they would float after almost two years of being underwater. The recovery team most likely would not need the Heavy lift bags for getting the shipping containers to the surface, but they would need the rope so that they didn’t lose the damn thing on the way up to the surface.
The work on the wreck did not stop, not even when the school of bull sharks came by to see what was going on and then see if they could eat it. It was just bull sharks, being bull sharks. Them just showing up just slowed things down while all four of the divers at first “beat” the sharks away from the work area. After the stress of the surprise shark swarm had worn off the two working divers could get back to doing ”real” work. Even with two divers dedicated as lookouts, the other two working divers spent most of their time looking over their shoulders for any bull sharks that might be still around them. And that was not a bad thing, not when you were dealing with Bull sharks who like to see what everything tasted like.
At the last-minute Karl stopped watching for sharks and he turned his full attention on the huge industrial sized heavy lift bag. He ordered the tag line removed from the lifting device and attached to one end of the ship. Then Karl wanted the first of the empty twin oil drums attached to the north end of the TEU and the second set of tanks was vented back to neutral state and attached to the south end of the shipping container they had been able to move with the poles. When the oil tanks were again filled with air, Karl gave a signal, and the dead man rope attached to the container was released by Diver 4. All they could do was now watch and see what would happen.
The 20-foot-long container did not shoot to the surface of the ocean with these four air-filled old oil drums. It more or less rose very quickly away from the ship, and soon it was lost in the gloom over the diver’s heads. As the metal box rose in the water column out of sight of the wreck, it started to slow down in its rising. The water in this part of the world was colder, denser, and saltier the deeper that you were. Even with the four oil drums filled with air, the container reached neutral buoyancy in the lower density water while it was still 30 feet below the waves. It was not that bad of a first test at the start of a mission like this one. The worst case would have been if the TEU had instead gone deeper into the water instead of going up.
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The lead pilot of the LCU was only called “Captain” when one of his dozen crewmembers on the LCU were in trouble. When he saw the heavy line suddenly go slack in the water out the thick pilot house window, he had signaled the crane to start taking up the sudden slack in the thick guideline. This was half a minute of frantic work before he had been messaged from the aft of the same ship that he was on about the slacked lines. He made a note to work on the training for his crew. Thanks to some training they had done back at port, he knew that now it was going to be a balancing act so that the metal box didn’t slam into the flat bottom of his landing craft.
Bill, the pilot/commander of this small vessel looked over at the woman running his loading deck of the LCU. “Sherry, lower the landing gate and get our divers in the water. Then drop the other line all the way down until the lines starts to float. This is your mission now, just do it the way we practiced back in Mombasa.” Bill didn’t need to tell her that this time they might be lifting a few tons of unstable explosives or other ammunition and not a rock filled container while safely docked next to a support base.
Four scuba divers were soon walking off the end of the lowered bow gate of the LCU. Each one of the divers had a rope line in their hands that ran back to the cargo deck of the LCU. That rope was attached to four metal angle iron bars with heavy duty, but small wheels. The device had been “recovered” from the cargo handling part of the harbor of Mombasa late one night. The divers were to attach these wheels to the bottom of this test container so that they could drag it across the deck without sinking the small craft in the process. Land crews across Africa had been doing this ever since the first fuel shortages and missing spare parts made using the specialized lifting cranes problematic at best even in the largest ports.
CPO Sherry Windrow had one hand on the metal cable that connected “her” landing gate to the ship and the other hand was ready to help were needed. Right now, the other hand had a push to talk radio set to talk to anyone within a km of her. The other radio like this one was with the bow crane crew over on the Savior. Yelling loudly would have worked to get her orders across for the rest of her twelve crewmembers. She was a very good yeller, and she had a lot of experience doing it. Still, it was always better to use technology when you had it.
Sherry looked into the clear blue water and saw the rust red container coming up as the line was slowly moved not far from her boots. “Crane, slow down by half.”
CPO Sherry Windrow didn’t even look to her right to speak to her crew. She just yelled loud enough to be heard all over the world. “Start the gate lift, handsomely.”
She knew that as soon as the lifting bags hit the surface, they would provide even less lift to the cargo container than the warm water. The idea was to line up the container and as the gate lifted “up” it would help the small King post crane carry the load. That move would also keep the container from bashing into her ship like a multi ton battering ram. Still, she had some concern when the sound of metal on metal was felt in the soul of her boots.
The 20 foot long container was half way out of the water, but it was still at a steep angle in the water and the motor on the gate was starting to smoke under the strain of the mass of the metal gate and waterlogged cargo container. Sherry looked around and started to yell with all the force her leather lungs could provide. “Everyone on the lines. Someone get the cable line from the Toyota’s front winch and…….. pull!!!”
In less than a minute, the only person not on a line was the backup pilot in the pilot house. Even the Captain was on the lines adding his mass to the effort. Sherry was giving commands like she was the captain of an old fashioned tug-a-war competition. The old 4x4 at the far end of the small loading dock was sending up four different clouds of smoke as the tires spun in place and the engine was over revving under the load to keep from being pulled into the ocean. But slowly the gate, crane, truck, and crew were able to get the container onto the flat loading deck of the LCU.
Sherry was first on her hands and knees before she was fully rolling onto her back. She was sucking in air like a lovesick jet engine. She saw the ship’s commander bent over with blood leaking from between his finger caused by the metal cable they had been working on without gloves. Between gasps of air, she vented some anger at the vessel’s commander. “Sir, I think we need a bigger boat. I know we need a bigger damn crane, if we are going to try this bullshit again.”
The LCU’s Captain straightened up and with a fling of his hands he sent droplets of blood flying from his “rope burns” across the rust and gray painted deck. “Sherry, I think you’re right. That was pretty high on the suck meter. But at least no one was shooting at us.”
He looked down at this CPO and saw the look. Only then did he realized that he had just tempted Murphy. If anything happens for the rest of this mission about someone shooting at them, she was going to let him know about it.
Richard came running as soon as he heard the squealing of tires coming from the bow of the Savior. He couldn’t see much until the 4x4 carried at the back of the LCU had shut down, but he saw the water leaking container was sitting on the bow of the LCU when the sea breeze had done its job on the burnt rubber smoke. Richard also saw the spent crew spread out in the well deck of the LCU like something out of a horror movie. That was enough for him to work out what had happened, or at least get him most of the way there. He would wait for the briefing, but he had a call to make that was more important than checking on some exhausted crew. After all that was why each ship had a commander, and he was the mission lead.
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It was well past dark and the key staff for this part of the mission was in a stand-up meeting on the aft part of the Savior. It was the only place on the two ships that was big enough to have a meeting like this one. Well, they could have done it in the well deck of the LCU but currently the salvage/tugboat was the flagship, and the Navy had a thing about how something with that title should act. So, the meeting was on the Savior.
The Dive Master was first to brief the group. “The base idea worked, but the bow crane is too weak for this kind of job. If that cargo container van had been a 40-ton load? They would have never gotten it landed on that LCU in the first place. I think we will need the Aft King Post for any future loading, that is if we want to keep to this mission plan. She has a 75ton max load capacity and she has enough heavy cable to do a double loop for any very heavy loads we might run across.” Double looping a cable threw a block and tackle was a way to cheat the system to double the lifting force… if you were willing to risk it.
Richard smiled at the Dive Master and pitched his voice to carry. “I already talked to the LCU commander about this issue. She will be moving aft of the Savior in the morning. It will be up to you to make sure she is not in the way of diving operations. Now how are the divers, and how did the rest of the dive go?”
The Dive Master used half of the top of the mixed gas pump to park his butt on, and he really gave the mission commander a detailed look. This subject had come up faster than he had expected from a ground officer. “They’re okay. I think they pushed a little too hard on this dive to move so far ahead of the plan. I would like to call off diving operations for two days. I need to show the divers that there is a line not to be crossed when getting ahead of the mission without proper support.”
He waited until Richard gave him a slight head nod in agreement, and the dive master was again surprised that he would not have to get into a fight about his management of the diving team. “While we were dealing with that first container and landing it on the LCU. Oh yes, I told them to pick up a small one for the first try even if they had to work harder to get it. Two of the divers went into the Number One Hold while the others kept an eye out for sharks and that van coming back down onto their heads. They said that all of the heavy equipment that they could see is still chained to the decks of that hold. They could not see any damage, the only thing that showed up in the lights was the white shipping plastic covering the equipment.”
Richard looked around the group standing around them. “I think giving our people two days of no diving and light duty is a good idea. At least after everything they all have done over the last few days. I sent word out, that we did find and that we have successfully recovered items from the Nordland. HQ told me that the Boulder and the Patriot are being given orders to divert back to us as we speak. They are expediting unloading of their cargos, and they should be leaving port in the next few hours. The South Africans have a bad need for any fuel products they can get, or they will be heading down the tubes. HQ feels like the payment can be delayed for a while.” He was not going to go into details about that part of the mission. OPSEC was a thing even when radios and SATCOMs were not so much a thing thanks to the war.
Richard let the group mumble for a few seconds before he finished. “They should be here in about three to five days, weather, and other military issues dependent. I would like to have the LCU loaded with the recovered shipping containers by the time that they get here.”
He gives a loud snort that any “real” US naval officers would have rolled their eyes at hearing it come from a mission commander. “I told them that the LST will be a better fit for this mission over the LCU before we left. But now that we have found the ship and that we have proved that we can recover items from her. HQ has upped the level of support they are willing for us to use. Mombasa will decide if we need more support, after the “regular” navy decides that it’s worth the effort. I think that we surprised them that this had worked so well and so soon after arriving here.” Richard was all smiles and teeth.
Richard’s chest swelled up. “We have done great work. Let’s not screw it up now. We have no idea how the locals will like us sitting out here for this long. I trust you all know what to do, so please continue on.”
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