Текст книги "Deep Six"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

There had been no written invitations!

None of it made any sense.

Lucas was putting on his coat, about to leave his office, when the phone linked to the command post buzzed.

“Lucas.”

“This is ‘Love Boat,’ “ replied George Blackowl, giving the code name of the movement in progress.

The call was unexpected and like a father with a daughter on a date Lucas immediately feared the worst. “Go ahead,” he said tersely.

“We have a situation. This is no emergency, I repeat, no emergency. But something’s come up that isn’t in the movement.”

Lucas expelled a sigh of relief. “I’m listening.”

“ ‘Shakespeare’ is on the boat,” said Blackowl, giving the code name for the Vice President.

“He’s where?”Lucas gasped.

“Margolin showed up out of nowhere and came on board as we were casting off. Dan Fawcett gave him his stateroom and went ashore. When I queried the President about the last-minute switch in passengers, he told me to let it ride. But I smell a screwup.”

“Where’s Rhinemann?”

“Right here with me on the yacht.”

“Put him on.”

There was a pause and then Hank Rhinemann, the supervisor in charge of the Vice President’s security detail, came on. “Oscar, we’ve got an unscheduled movement.”

“Understood. How did you lose him?”

“He came charging out of his office and said he had to attend an urgent meeting with the President on the yacht. He didn’t tell me it was an overnight affair.”

“He kept it from you?”

“ ‘Shakespeare’ is tight-mouthed as hell. I should have known when I saw the garment bag. I’m sorry as hell, Oscar.”

A wave of frustration swept Lucas. God, he thought, the leaders of the world’s leading superpowers were like kids when it came to their own security.

“It’s happened,” said Lucas sharply. “So we’ll make the best of it. Where is your detail?”

“Standing on the dock,” answered Rhinemann.

“Send them down to Mount Vernon and back up Blackowl’s people. I want that yacht cordoned off tighter than a bass drum.”

“Will do.”

“At the slightest hint of trouble, call me. I’m spending the night at the command post.”

“You got a line on something?” Rhinemann asked.

“Nothing tangible,” Lucas replied, his voice so hollow it seemed to come from a distant source. “But knowing that the President and the next three men in line for his office are all in the same place at the same time scares the hell out of me.”

7

“We’ve turned against the current.” Pitt’s voice was quiet, almost casual, as he stared at the color video screen on the Klein hydroscan sonar that read the seafloor. “Increase speed about two knots.”

Dressed in bleached Levi’s, Irish knit turtleneck sweater and brown tennis shoes, his brushed hair laid back under a NUMA baseball cap, he looked cool and comfortable with a bored, indifferent air about him.

The wheel moved slowly under the helmsman’s hands and the Catawbalazily shoved aside the three-foot swells as she swept back and forth over the sea like a lawn mower. Trailing behind the stern like a tin can tied to the tail of a dog, the sidescan sonar’s sensor pinged the depths, sending a signal to the video display, which translated it into a detailed image of the bottom.

They took up the search for the nerve agent source in the southern end of Cook Inlet and discovered that the residual traces rose as they worked westward into Kamishak Bay. Water samples were taken every half-hour and ferried by helicopter to the chemical lab on Augustine Island. Amos Dover philosophically compared the project to a children’s game of finding hidden candy with an unseen voice giving “warmer” or “colder” clues.

As the day wore on, the nervous tension that had been building up on the Catawbagrew unbearable.

The crew was unable to go on deck for a breath of air. Only the EPA chemists were allowed outside the exterior bulkheads, and they were protected by airtight encapsulating suits.

“Anything yet?” Dover asked, peering over Pitt’s shoulder at the high-resolution screen.

“Nothing man-made,” Pitt answered. “Bottom terrain is rugged, broken, mostly lava rock.”

“Good clear picture.”

Pitt nodded. “Yes, the detail is quite sharp.”

“What’s that dark smudge?”

“A school of fish. Maybe a pack of seals.”

Dover turned and stared through the bridge windows at the volcanic peak on Augustine Island, now only a few miles away. “Better make a strike soon. We’re coming close to shore.”

“Lab to ship,” Mendoza’s feminine voice broke over the bridge speaker.

Dover picked up the communications phone. “Go ahead, lab.”

“Steer zero-seven-zero degrees. Trace elements appear to be in higher concentrations in that direction.”

Dover gave the nearby island an apprehensive eye. “If we hold that course for twenty minutes we’ll park on your doorstep for supper.”

“Come in as far as you can and take samples,” Mendoza answered. “My indications are that you’re practically on top of it.”

Dover hung up without further discussion and called out, “What’s the depth?”

The watch officer tapped a dial on the instrument console. “One hundred forty feet and rising.”

“How far can you see on that thing?” Dover asked Pitt.

“We read the seabed six hundred meters on either side of our hull.”

“Then we’re cutting a swath nearly two thirds of a mile wide.”

“Close enough,” Pitt admitted.

“We should have detected the ship by now,” Dover said irritably. “Maybe we missed it.”

“No need to get uptight,” Pitt said. He paused, leaned over the computer keyboard and fine-tuned the image. “Nothing in this world is more elusive than a shipwreck that isn’t ready to be found. Deducing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel is kindergarten stuff compared to finding a lost derelict under hundreds of square miles of water. Sometimes you get lucky early. Most of the time you don’t.”

“Very poetic,” Dover said dryly.

Pitt stared at the overhead bulkhead for a long and considering moment. “What’s the visibility under the water surface?”

“The water turns crystal fifty yards from shore. On the flood tide I’ve seen a hundred feet or better.”

“I’d like to borrow your copter and take aerial photos of this area.”

“Why bother?” Dover said curtly. “ Semper Paratus,Always Ready, is not the Coast Guard’s motto for laughs.” He motioned through a doorway. “We have charts showing three thousand miles of Alaskan coastline in color and incredible detail, courtesy of satellite reconnaissance.”

Pitt nodded for Giordino to take his place in front of the hydroscan as he rose and followed the Catawba’s skipper into a small compartment stacked with cabinets containing nautical charts. Dover checked the label inserts, pulled open a drawer and rummaged inside. Finally he extracted a large chart marked “Satellite Survey Number 2430A, South Shore of Augustine Island.” Then he laid it on a table and spread it out.

“Is this what you have in mind?”

Pitt leaned over and studied the bird’s-eye view of the sea off the volcanic island’s coast. “Perfect. Got a magnifying glass?”

“In the shelf under the table.”

Pitt found the thick, square lens and peered through it at the tiny shadows on the photo survey. Dover left and returned shortly with two mugs of coffee.

“Your chances are nil of spotting an anomaly in that geological nightmare on the seafloor. A ship could stay lost forever in there.”

“I’m not looking at the seafloor.”

Dover heard Pitt’s words all right, but the meaning didn’t register. Vague curiosity reflected in his eyes, but before he could ask the obvious question the speaker above the doorway crackled.

“Skipper, we’ve got breakers ahead.” The watch officer’s voice was tense. “The Fathometer reads thirty feet of water under the hull – and rising damned fast.”

“All stop!” Dover ordered. A pause, then: “No, reverse engines until speed is zero.”

“Tell him to have the sonar sensor pulled in before it drags bottom,” Pitt said offhandedly. “Then I suggest we drop anchor.”

Dover gave Pitt a strange look, but issued the command. The deck trembled beneath their feet as the twin screws reversed direction. After a few moments the vibration ceased.

“Speed zero,” the watch officer notified them from the bridge. “Anchor away.”

Dover acknowledged, then sat on a stool, cupped his hands around the coffee mug and looked directly at Pitt.

“Okay, what do you see?”

“I have the ship we’re looking for,” Pitt said, speaking slowly and distinctly. “There are no other possibilities. You were mistaken in one respect, Dover, but correct in another. Mother Nature seldom makes rock formations that run in a perfectly straight line for several hundred feet. Consequently, the outline of a ship canbe detected against an irregular background. You were right, though, in saying our chances were nil of finding it on the seafloor.”

“Get to the point,” Dover said impatiently.

“The target is on shore.”

“You mean grounded in the shallows?”

“I mean on shore, as in high and dry.”

“You can’t be serious?”

Pitt ignored the question and handed Dover the magnifying glass. “See for yourself.” He took a pencil and circled a section of cliffs above the tideline.

Dover bent over and put his eye to the glass. “All I see is rock.”

“Look closer. The projection from the lower part of the slope into the sea.”

Dover’s expression turned incredulous. “Oh, Jesus, it’s the stern of a ship!”

“You can make out the fantail and the top half of the rudder.”

“Yes, yes, and a piece of the after deckhouse.” Dover’s frustration was suddenly washed away by the mounting excitement of the discovery. “Incredible. She’s buried bow-on into the shore, as though she were covered by an avalanche. Judging from the cruiser stern and the balanced rudder, I’d say she’s an old Liberty ship.” He looked up, a deepening interest in his eyes. “I wonder if she might be the Pilottown?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“One of the most stubborn mysteries of the northern seas. The Pilottowntramped back and forth between Tokyo and the West Coast until ten years ago, when her crew reported her sinking in a storm. A search was launched and no trace of the ship was found. Two years later an Eskimo stumbled on the Pilottowncaught in the ice about ninety miles above Nome. He went aboard but found the ship deserted, no sign of the crew or cargo. A month later, when he returned with his tribe to remove whatever they could find of value, it was gone again. Nearly two years passed, and she was reported drifting below the Bering Strait. The Coast Guard was sent out but couldn’t locate her. The Pilottownwasn’t sighted again for eight months. She was boarded by the crew of a fishing trawler. They found her in reasonably good shape. Then she disappeared for the last time.”

“I seem to recall reading something…” Pitt paused. “Ah, yes, the ‘Magic Ship.’ “

“That’s what the news media dubbed her,” Dover acknowledged. “They described her disappearing act as a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ routine.”

“They’ll have a field day when it gets out she was drifting around for years with a cargo of nerve agent.”

“No way of predicting the horror if the hull had been crushed in an ice pack or shattered on a rocky shore, creating an instant spill,” Dover added.

“We’ve got to get in her cargo holds,” said Pitt. “Contact Mendoza, give her the position of the wreck and tell her to airlift a team of chemists to the site. We’ll approach from the water.”

Dover nodded. “I’ll see to the launch.”

“Throw in acetylene equipment in case we have to cut our way inside.”

Dover bent over the chart table and stared solemnly at the center of the marked circle. “I never thought for a minute I’d stand on the deck of the Magic Ship.”

“If you’re right,” said Pitt, staring into his coffee mug, “the Pilottownis about to give her last performance.”

8

The sea had been calm, but by the time the Catawba’slaunch was a quarter-mile from the lonely, forbidding coast, a twenty-knot wind kicked up the water. The spray, tainted by the nerve agent, struck the cabin windows with the fury of driven sand. Yet where the derelict lay beached, the water looked reasonably peaceful, protected as it was by jagged pinnacles of rock that rose up a hundred yards offshore like solitary chimneys from burned-out houses.

Far above the turbulent waters Augustine Volcano seemed calm and serene in the late afternoon sun. It was one of the most beautifully sculptured mountains in the Pacific, rivaling the classic contour of Mount Fuji in Japan.

The powerful launch surfed for an instant on a whitecapped swell before diving over the crest. Pitt braced his feet, gripped a railing with both hands while his eyes studied the shore.

The wreck was heeled over at a twenty-degree angle and her stern section blanketed in brown rust. The rudder was canted in the full starboard position and two barnacle-encrusted blades of the propeller protruded from the black sand. The letters of her name and home port were too obscured to read.

Pitt, Giordino, Dover, the two EPA scientists and one of the Catawba’sjunior officers all were garbed in white encapsulating suits to protect them from the plumes of deadly spray. They communicated by tiny transmitters inside their protective headgear. Attached to their waist belts were intricate filter systems designed to refine clean, breathable air.

The sea around them was carpeted with dead fish of every species. A pair of whales rolled lifelessly back and forth with the tide, united in rotting decay with porpoises, sea lions and spotted seals. Birds by the thousands floated amid the morbid debris. Nothing that had lived in the area had escaped.

Dover expertly threaded the launch between the threatening offshore barrier of projecting rock, the remnant of an ancient coastline. He slowed, waiting for a momentary lull in the surf, biding his time while carefully eyeing the depth. Then as a wave slammed onto the shore and its backwash spilled against the next one coming in, he aimed the bow at the small spit of sand formed around the base of the wreck and pushed the throttle forward. Like a horse bracing for the next hurdle at the Grand National, the launch rose up on the wave crest and rode it through the swirling foam until the keel dropped and scraped onto the spit.

“A neat bit of handiwork,” Pitt complimented him.

“All in the timing,” Dover said, a grin visible behind his helmet’s face mask. “Of course, it helps if you land at low tide.”

They tilted back their heads and stared up at the wreck towering above them. The faded name on the stern could be deciphered now. It read Pilottown.

“Almost a pity,” Dover said reverently, “to write finishto an enigma.”

“The sooner the better,” Pitt said, his tone grim as he considered the mass death inside.

Within five minutes the equipment was unloaded, the launch securely moored to the Pilottown’s rudder, and the men laboriously climbing the steep slope on the port side of the stern. Pitt took the lead, followed by Giordino and the rest as Dover brought up the rear.

The incline was not made up of solid rock but rather a combination of cinder ash and mud with the consistency of loose gravel. Their boots struggled to find a foothold, but mostly they slid back two steps for every three they gained. The dust from the ash rose and clung to their suits, coating them a dark gray. Soon the sweat was seeping through their pores and the increasingly heavy rasp of their breathing became more audible over the earphones inside their helmets.

Pitt called a halt at a narrow ledge, not four feet wide and just long enough to hold all six men. Wearily Giordino sank to a sitting position and readjusted the straps that held the acetylene tank to his back. When he could finally pant a coherent sentence, he said, “How in hell did this old rust bucket jam herself in here?”

“She probably drifted into what was a shelving inlet before 1987,” replied Pitt. “According to Mendoza, that was the year the volcano last erupted. The explosion gases must have melted the ice around the mantle, forming millions of gallons of water. The mudflow, along with the cloud of ash, poured down the mountain until it met the sea and buried the ship.”

“Funny the stern wasn’t spotted before now.”

“Not so remarkable,” Pitt answered. “So little is showing it was next to impossible to detect from the air, and beyond a mile from shore it blends into the rugged shoreline and becomes nearly invisible. Erosion caused by recent storms is the only reason she’s uncovered now.”

Dover stood up, pressing his weight against the steep embankment to maintain his balance. He unraveled a thin knotted nylon rope from his waist and unfolded a small grappling hook tied to the end.

He looked down at Pitt. “If you’ll support my legs, I think I can heave the hook over the ship’s railing.”

Pitt grasped his left leg as Giordino edged over and held the right. The burly Coast Guardsman leaned back over the lip of the ledge, swung the hook in a widening arc and let it fly.

It sailed over the stern rails and caught.

The rest of the ascent took only a few minutes. Pulling themselves upward, hand over hand, they soon climbed onto the deck. Heavy layers of rust mingled with ash flaked away beneath their feet. What little they could see of the Pilottownlooked a dirty, ugly mess.

“No sign of Mendoza,” said Dover.

“Nearest flat ground to land a copter is a thousand yards away,” Pitt replied. “She and her team will have to hike in.”

Giordino walked over to the railing beside the corroded shaft of the jackstaff and stared at the water below. “The poison must be seeping through the hull during high tide.”

“Probably stored in the after hold,” said Dover.

“The cargo hatches are buried under tons of this lava crap,” Giordino said in disgust. “We’ll need a fleet of bulldozers to get through.”

“You familiar with Liberty ships?” Pitt asked Dover.

“Should be. I’ve inspected enough of them over the years, looking for illegal cargo.” He knelt down and began tracing a ship’s outline in the rust. “Inside the aft deckhouse we should find a hatch to an escape trunk that leads to the tunnel holding the screw shaft. At the bottom is a small recess. We might be able to cut our way into the hold from there.”

They all stood silent when Dover finished. They should all have felt a sense of accomplishment at having found the source of the nerve agent. But instead they experienced apprehension – a reaction, Pitt supposed, that stemmed from a letdown after the excitement of the search. Then also there was a hidden dread of what they might actually find behind the steel bulkheads of the Pilottown.

“Maybe… maybe we better wait for the lab people,” one of the chemists stammered.

“They can catch up,” Pitt said pleasantly, but with cold eyes.

Giordino silently took a prybar from the toolpack strapped on Pitt’s back and attacked the steel door to the after deckhouse. To his surprise it creaked and moved. He put his muscle to it, the protesting hinges surrendered and the door sprang open. The interior was completely empty, no fittings, no gear, not even a scrap of trash.

“Looks as though the movers have been here,” observed Pitt.

“Odd it was never in use,” Dover mused.

“The escape trunk?”

“This way.” Dover led them through another compartment that was also barren. He stopped at a round hatch in the center of the deck. Giordino moved forward, pried open the cover and stepped back. Dover aimed a flashlight down the yawning tunnel, the beam stabbing the darkness.

“So much for that idea,” he said dejectedly. “The tunnel recess is blocked with debris.”

“What’s on the next deck below?”

“The steering gear compartment.” Dover paused, his mind working. Then he thought aloud. “Just forward of the steering gear there’s an after steering room. A holdover from the war years. It’s possible, barely possible, it might have an access hatch to the hold.”

They went aft then and returned to the first compartment. It felt strange to them to walk the decks of a ghost ship, wondering what happened to the crew that abandoned her. They found the hatchway and climbed down the ladder to the steering gear compartment and made their way around the old, still oily machinery to the forward bulkhead. Dover scanned the steel plates with his flashlight. Suddenly the wavering beam stopped.

“Son of a bitch!” he grunted. “The hatch is here, but it’s been welded shut.”

“You’re certain we’re in the right spot?” Pitt asked.

“Absolutely,” Dover answered. He rapped his gloved fist against the bulkhead. “On the other side is cargo hold number five – the most likely storage of the poison.”

“What about the other holds?” asked one of the EPA men.

“Too far forward to leak into the sea.”

“Okay, then let’s do it,” Pitt said impatiently.

Quickly they assembled the cutting torch and connected the oxygen-acetylene bottles. The flame from the tip of the torch hissed as Giordino adjusted the gas mixture. Blue flame shot out and assaulted the steel plate, turning it red, then a bright orange-white. A narrow gap appeared and lengthened, crackling and melting under the intense heat.

As Giordino was cutting an opening large enough to crawl through, Julie Mendoza and her lab people appeared, packing nearly five hundred pounds of chemical analysis instruments.

“You found it,” she stated straight from the shoulder.

“We can’t be sure yet,” Pitt cautioned.

“But our test samples show the water around this area reeks with Nerve Agent S,” she protested.

“Disappointment comes easy,” said Pitt. “I never count my chickens till the check clears the bank.”

Further conversation broke off as Giordino stood back and snuffed out the cutting torch. He handed it to Dover and picked up his trusty prybar.

“Stand back,” he ordered. “This thing is red hot and it’s damned heavy.”

He hooked one end of the bar into the jagged, glowing seam and shoved. Grudgingly, the steel plate twisted away from the bulkhead and crashed to the deck with a heavy clang and spray of molten metal.

A hush fell over the dark compartment as Pitt took a flashlight and leaned carefully through the opening, staying clear of the superheated edges. He probed the beam into the bowels of the darkened cargo hold, sweeping it around in a 180-degree arc.

It seemed a long time before he straightened and faced the bizarrely clad, faceless figures pressing against him.

“Well?” Mendoza demanded anxiously.

Pitt answered with one word: “Eureka!”