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The Treasure Hunter.

Who the fucking hell would board a sunken German U-Boat, and how would they know it hadn't been flooded?

The first part of the question was easy enough for him to guess. Marine archaeologists would be fascinated to discover something like this, a submarine stranded on the bottom of the sea, and was unable to surface, lost with all hands, but without any flooding on the inside.

It was a gold mine to any marine archaeologist worth their salt, and if any halfway decent archaeologist learnt of the existence of a submarine-like this they would break down doors just to get the funding needed to board the vessel.

But as he considered it, Harry instantly dismissed the notion of marine archaeologists. From the sounds of it, whoever it was who was boarding the submarine had parked something big outside. No archaeologist would do that, regardless of what reckless things Indiana Jones and other fictional archaeologists did in order to spice things up for the masses. But in the real world, a rarity such as a shipwreck which hadn't been flooded completely would need to be treated carefully. They would examine the wreck thoroughly and discover the best way in and out of the U-Boat before doing it carefully so they wouldn't damage the submarine. They wouldn't just land either a small submersible or a diving bell (god, it was amazing what you could learn from the right books) on the outer hull.

No, this was someone else.

And whoever it was, they clearly did not give a damn about the condition of the U-Boat, or they didn't know how fragile it must be. Either way, he didn't care, but he wondered why someone would go to so much trouble.

Harry didn't have the time to properly answer his questions because one of the people who'd just suddenly docked with the U-Boat appeared in his line of sight. Judging from the expression in the man's face, he was just as surprised to see Harry as the teenager was surprised to see them.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked conversationally as if he and the other man were meeting in a park.

The question seemed to snap the other out of their surprise, and he raised a gun and fired but Harry had already slammed the old hatchway and locked it before he went back through the control room and rushed to the conning tower ladder and climbed up as quickly as he could. He knew it wouldn't take them long to unlock the door, but it would give him the time he'd need to get to the top of the submarine and get out.

He returned to the hatchway in the tower which was the only thing separating him from millions upon millions of gallons of seawater. He slipped on his mask and shoved his breather into his mouth before he picked up the bomb he had left there only a few minutes ago. He examined the detonator and he timed it for one minute before he shoved it into the hatch wheel.

As the detonator clicked on, slashing one second after another off to reach the 60th second, Harry prepared himself for the inevitable while he heard from down the ladder the people who'd boarded the U-Boat storm their way through the hatch he'd closed. He shook his head in amused contempt when he heard the sounds of feet running and then the echoes fading, guessing correctly they had just run down the length of the U-Boat. They thought he had just run the whole way down, but he knew by the time they realised he hadn't gone down that way which wouldn't be long since the U-Boat wasn't that big and there weren't many places to hide they would receive a wet surprise.

In the meantime he focused on his occlumency barriers, preparing himself for the shock that was going to happen while he silently used his wand to cast a warming spell on his body. The detonator was just reading ten seconds to go by the time the intruders realised he hadn't escaped that way, but the bomb exploded before they realised where he was. Harry had closed his eyes when the detonator indicated two seconds, and he reinforced the occlumency barriers he had around his mind.

He heard the explosion of the bomb, which weakened the seal of the hatch until with a roaring groan, the seawater which had been held back for years burst through almost impatiently. The bomb explosion had only weakened the hatch, but with the pressure of the sea, millions of gallons worth of seawater, came pouring through the hatch and down the coning tower, the hatch was literally ripped off of its rusted hinges by the force of the cascading water.

The sound of cascading water was so loud Harry simply could not hear anyone else, but if he could he would not be surprised if they were running in terror and surprise at what had happened.

Harry ignored all of it as he sat cross-legged near the hatch, waiting patiently for the water to flood the coning tower. It would be hopeless to try to squeeze himself out of the hatch right now. All he had to do was remember what he had read about submarine escapes. They had airlocks which the divers used to fill with water, and they would let the pressure within the airlock equalise with the pressure of the water outside. Once that happened, it was safe to leave.

Trouble was with the size of the U-Boat, with the different compartments it would take a little while before the coning tower was flooded. But Harry was patient. He had learnt over the years the best things usually occurred when you waited a while for it to take place. When he finally felt the water level rising around him, Harry waited for the water to rise around him, gently breathing in and out as he waited before he felt sure the pressure inside the boat matched that of the sea outside. Grabbing a hold of the watertight bag, Harry lifted himself up, and he floated towards the hatch, lighting the tip of his wand as he went before he cautiously swam out.

It was a long, slow trip to the surface - he might have been a wizard, but Harry knew even magical biology gave away to the scientific fact if he was right. He was worried he'd get the bends and to stop that from being a possibility, he swam up very slowly and he stopped at certain points along the way up to the surface. It felt like an eternity before he reached the boat he'd stolen from the harbour, but as he reached the boat he closed his eyes, feeling exhausted. He had just used a lot of energy up getting to the surface, having to pause at regular intervals just to ensure he didn't get the bends. Harry worked up the effort and he managed to push the exhaustion aside to look around himself. It was still dark, but he could see light starting to appear on the horizon. It was almost daybreak, but he didn't have time to think on that when he spotted the running lights of a large boat a short distance away from where he'd anchored his own boat. There was a lot of activity on that boat, he noticed people running to the stern of the boat before he distantly heard what sounded like some kind of winch.

Oh, so that was what they'd used, some kind of submersible or a diving bell. That would be more than enough for a small group of divers to reach the U-Boat underneath and then come back without having to go through what he had. Soon, they would be able to find him and he didn't want that to happen. With that in mind, Harry reached for his wand and tapped it on the sides of the boat.

Slowly and inexorably but with increasing speed, the boat moved off and turned around in a circle before speeding off back for the port. As the boat sped off for the Caribbean port, Harry took the time to strip off his diving equipment and he rubbed his face tiredly.

"God, I've got to really get used to this."

XXX

On the larger boat a tall, thin man was looking out over the horizon. The sun was coming up, casting a beautiful hue over to the sky with a mix of reds and yellows while the sea itself was a mix of shining colours with hues of dark reds and purplish blues. He had always enjoyed dawns and sunsets, as it showed a blend of hues and combinations of colour rarely seen during the day or the night, even if he preferred the night.

However, right now he was struggling to believe everything that had happened.

The U-Boat had been flooded.

When he and his organisation had found a submarine on the seafloor in these waters, he had already been looking for a fully operational submarine to sue for the operations he had in mind to rob yachts and cruise ships moving about in these waters. His own subordinates and colleagues had suggested it, but he had seen the issue that came up with it. If he had gone through channels to find a more modern submarine, it would leave a trail. Even worse the Coast Guard and the Navy were not stupid; as soon as they heard about disappearances in a certain area, sonar contacts of something moving, reports of a submarine, they would begin to investigate. And they would. They would tear up the Caribbean Sea for the submarine, and at the same time, they'd look for clues about who was running it.

He had not wanted that to happen, although he had accepted that there was no other way - either he would need to buy a submarine and the equipment and weapons needed to fuel and arm it, or he would need to find a poorly defended Naval base somewhere in the world, or a scrapyard and just steal one from there.

The U-boat had solved so many of his problems all at once. With the U-Boat, he had a submarine he didn't need to steal since no-one would report one missing since it had been lost since the Second World War, and all the money he'd need for it was to resurface the fucking thing and restore it to full working order while focusing on repairing the outer casing and repair the damage which had forced it down in the first place. Once that was finished, it would have been a simple task to rearm it and then use it as a pirate submarine.

But now it had been flooded by who appeared to be the same kid who had apparently gone down earlier to the U-Boat. He was in two minds about what to do about that; he was tempted to go after the kid and make him pay for what he'd done, but on the other hand, he didn't want to do anything when he needed to concentrate on other matters.

He was snapped out of his thoughts when he was approached. He turned. "Well?" He asked simply.

Tucker, his engineer sighed as he stood in front of his boss dripping wet in his wetsuit and still wearing half of his underwater equipment. He had just spent the last half an hour studying and surveying the wreck of the U-Boat, even swimming inside the sunken submarine. "We already had problems with the idea of resurfacing the U-Boat when it hadn't been flooded. Now we're going to have to pump out every single compartment before we can even think of resurfacing it."

"Do you think we can still do it?"

Tucker looked thoughtful again. "Possibly. However, it will just take longer to pump the water out, and it would take hours to patch up the hull to resurface the sub. It was going to be hard, anyway. Now it's just going to be harder. Yeah, we could pump all the water out, but it will take much longer, and the longer we're out here, the easier it will be for the Coast Guard to realise we're here."

The man sighed and was silent as he considered the problem. "Recommendations?"

Tucker shrugged. "It's your call," he said unhelpfully, although the man was an old student of reading body language. It was a dying art, which was a shame since being able to read the facial expressions, voluntary or otherwise, and tell who was lying at him. When he had developed it over the years, many of his enemies wondered if he was reading their minds. Nothing quite complicated as that, it was just simple observation studying the facial expressions and what the eyes did. It had given him the truth on many occasions.

Right now his instincts were telling him that Tucker, like quite a few others, felt that resurfacing a sunken U-Boat was a step or two too far. But as he thought about it, he had to admit they had a point. Resurfacing a sunken U-Boat would be a complicated task as it was, but now…

He sighed. "Okay. Tell them to get underway. We're done here."

"Right, what about the kid who was done there?" Tucker asked.

The man was silent as he thought through his options. Finally, he shook his head. "Leave him."