Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Three: Salvaging the Wreck

Now the thick file of Incident A was brought to the conference table. Gao Xiaosong, who was in charge of the matter at the time, coughed and began to introduce the whole story. The eight-man meeting listened to a detailed introduction of the shipwreck.

After Zhou Weisen and others finished their investigation, the Executive Committee passed the decision to salvage the items from the shipwreck. A secret salvage team was established, composed mainly of personnel from the navy and the remote exploration team, including those who had participated in the exploration of the shipwreck.

In addition to salvaging items, the salvage team also had the task of establishing a temporary support base on Dongsha Island to prepare for subsequent salvage work. Of course, in the public mission announcement, the purpose of this mission was: “to excavate guano and to investigate the feasibility of establishing a relay base for navigation to Taiwan.”

After the salvage team, consisting of a motor-sailer, a large sailing ship, and several rowing boats, arrived at Dongsha Island, Gao Xiaosong, who was in charge of the salvage work, announced the true purpose of the trip to the participants. Some of the transmigrator members who were still in the dark were speechless with surprise. Everyone agreed that this group of people was a major threat to the Transmigrator Group. If they could not “abandon the darkness and turn to the light” in time, they would be resolutely eliminated!

However, everyone was also looking forward to the task they were about to undertake—a ship was a treasure trove for the Transmigrator Group. A sea-going vessel was a small world in motion, and even a fishing boat had many very useful tools and materials on board.

And the mystery of this ship aroused everyone’s speculation even more. According to Lin Chuanqing, this ship was most likely a smuggling ship engaged in illegal activities, and the smuggled goods were either drugs or arms.

This speculation raised everyone’s spirits. If it was an arms smuggling ship, they would be rich! The SKS rifle was too ugly in the eyes of many people, not to mention that it was semi-automatic. Everyone hoped to find a large number of automatic rifles like the AK-47 or even better machine guns on the ship.

Although Lin Chuanqing said that the ship might also be carrying drugs, everyone still unanimously believed that it was carrying arms.

The high-spirited “chiefs” made the carefully selected native navy personnel in the fleet feel puzzled. They didn’t know what benefits this barren little island had that could make them so happy.

Under the fanaticism of being able to salvage weapons, the work proceeded quickly. Standardized light-duty piers were quickly built on the shore. A platoon of marines searched the entire island and, after confirming that it was uninhabited, set up a temporary camp in the coconut grove that provided shelter from the wind. Then, they sent people to control the well.

The salvage work and the life and work of more than a hundred people on the island all required fresh water. The water in the well on the island was not completely fresh, so a temporary distillation station was set up next to the well for water desalination.

The salvage work went very smoothly. Although there was a lack of professional salvage equipment and not enough diving equipment, and there were only two qualified divers, with everyone’s efforts and the stimulation of fanaticism, in more than ten days of salvage activities, all kinds of items, tools, and equipment on the ship were gradually salvaged, and even the scrapped car tires used as fenders on the ship’s side were removed.

The salvaged items were first soaked in fresh water to remove salt, and then air-dried in a special shaded shed. The items were inspected, registered, and then packed into boxes for storage.

The items salvaged from the ship were varied, but the thing everyone wanted to find most—arms—was still not found.

“Those cabins haven’t been opened yet,” Zhou Weisen said. “If there’s anything, it’s in there.”

Although it was very difficult to open the locked cabin doors underwater with simple tools, Zhou Weisen and Lin Chuanqing, who were in charge of the diving salvage, still managed to open one cabin with tools. In the small cabin, there were large green canvas sheets piled up. Zhou Weisen pulled open the canvas, and underneath were long iron boxes, neatly stacked.

It took Zhou Weisen a lot of effort to drag out a small box from inside. The box was very heavy, and it took two people a great deal of effort to get the box out of the cabin and bring it to the surface with a float bag.

As soon as the box was opened, it caused everyone to cheer: inside were pistols in individual packaging boxes, a total of 12, each with 4 magazines. The box had not let in any water, and the guns were very well preserved.

“It’s a SIG P226!” someone in the crowd shouted.

“It’s a CZ99,” Zhou Weisen, who had fired countless guns in the United States, immediately recognized it. “Yugoslavian stuff!” He picked one up, pulled the slide, and confirmed again.

“Yugoslavia?” Everyone had no concept of the weapons produced by this country that no longer existed.

“This gun is not bad,” Zhou Weisen skillfully loaded the magazine. “15-round magazine, very powerful firepower.”

They had found weapons, but not the automatic weapons that everyone had hoped for most. Everyone couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. Lin Chuanqing said, “Don’t be discouraged, everyone! Since there are pistols, there will be other weapons. At the very least, we can salvage a lot of 9mm Parabellum ammunition.”

But it was a very difficult task to get the weapon boxes out of the cabin. Wreck diving required very good diving skills, which ordinary people could not do. Even someone like Lin Chuanqing, who had some diving experience, could only be considered to be making up the numbers, not to mention having to carry heavy weapon boxes through narrow passages and hatches.

After several consecutive dives, Zhou Weisen and Lin Chuanqing were completely exhausted. They managed to salvage a few more boxes, which contained some military supplies and ammunition. One of them was filled with NATO 7.62mm ammunition, which gave everyone a lot of encouragement—most likely there were rifles using this ammunition among the cargo. Zhou Weisen believed that there were very likely FAL automatic rifles or M14s.

After discussion, everyone agreed that it was too inefficient to retrieve the goods by diving—the light in the wreck was dim and the space was narrow, which not only made a thorough search impossible but also very dangerous. It was best to salvage the entire ship at once and then search it.

Lin Chuanqing particularly advocated for salvaging the ship as soon as possible. He had been the captain of a fishing boat and was very familiar with the equipment on board. Some of the professional equipment on this ship had been damaged. If they could salvage it as soon as possible, they could recover a large part of the loss, especially the equipment in the engine room. The longer it was soaked in seawater, the more serious the damage would be. By then, it could only be used as scrap steel for remelting.

“The corrosion of seawater on the hull material is also very serious, especially since various marine organisms have begun to attach to the hull. If it soaks for a few more months, this ship will be useless even if it is salvaged!” Lin Chuanqing warned.

Gao Xiaosong communicated with the Executive Committee via radio telegram and requested that the ship be salvaged as soon as possible. The Executive Committee held an emergency consultation on this issue and finally decided to salvage the wreck. For this purpose, a special 8154 fishing vessel was sent to assist.

The simplest way to salvage a ship with a water depth of less than 10 meters and a displacement of only a hundred tons is to use a crane, but unfortunately, the Transmigrator Group did not have such a large crane. Although the heavy gantry cranes and derricks used on ships were suitable, they were installed on the Fengcheng and could not be used.

Lin Chuanqing suggested plugging the leaks and then pumping out the water from the hull while blowing in compressed air. When there was more air in the hull, the buoyancy would increase and the ship could be directly floated. This salvage method required underwater leak-plugging technology, which the Transmigrator Group certainly did not have. However, the sea valve of this ship was open, and the hull and various watertight compartment doors were intact. The ship’s own tonnage was small, so this method could be used.

In the end, it was decided to adopt this relatively simple salvage method. Equipment and spare diving equipment were urgently transported from Lingao. Lin Chuanqing and Zhou Weisen risked several dives deep into the ship’s hold to find and close the sea valves one by one—fortunately, thanks to Lin Chuanqing’s experience working on American fishing boats, he was very familiar with the location and closing methods of each valve.

After nearly a month of intense labor, the American fishing boat finally floated slowly to the surface amidst the churning waves, drawing cheers from the onlookers.

After the ship surfaced, the speed of pumping water slowed down. A small boat was kept alongside to constantly monitor the changes in the draft on both sides and at the bow and stern of the ship, so as to prevent the ship from capsizing due to unstable center of gravity caused by pumping water too fast. After the ship was completely righted, it was towed alongside the large sailing ship. Lin Chuanqing boarded the wreck and manually lowered the anchor chain.

Everyone wanted to board this mysterious wreck to see it for themselves, but Gao Xiaosong ordered that no one except the search personnel was allowed to board, lest someone damage the items on board. Everyone had to continue to watch from the shore.

Led by Lin Chuanqing, several transmigrator members conducted a carpet search of the entire ship and found many more materials and equipment that had not been discovered during the dive. The iron boxes in several locked cabins were also all unloaded.

Several boxes were opened in a row, and the contents were varied. In addition to the previously discovered pistols, there were also ammunition, magazines, and the like, but there was no familiar AK. Not only was there no AK, but not even a single rifle was seen. Just as they were disappointed, they suddenly heard someone shouting:

“There it is!”

Everyone gathered around to look. In a newly opened box, they found rifles.

“Is this an AK?” someone asked.

This gun looked quite strange. It had a straight magazine inserted into a body similar to an AK-47, which seemed a bit out of proportion.

“It should be some kind of derivative of the AK,” Gao Xiaosong felt that this gun was very unfamiliar, but the shape of the gun should be an AK without a doubt. The key components such as the receiver were very similar to the AK.

Although Gao Xiaosong was a soldier, his knowledge of weapons was far inferior to that of amateur enthusiasts. He was very unfamiliar with any automatic rifle that was not an AK or M16 series. Moreover, Zhou Weisen and Lin Chuanqing were both gun enthusiasts from the world’s largest light weapons market, the United States, and they were very knowledgeable about light weapons.

“This is an M77B1 automatic rifle,” Lin Chuanqing said. “It’s actually an AKM automatic rifle that uses NATO 7.62mm ammunition,” Zhou Weisen said. “It’s also made in Yugoslavia.”

“So the arms dealer was actually selling Yugoslavian weapons. What a strange choice.”