Night Probe! Page 20

  Pitt hunched over, jogged up to the craft and opened the door. Heidi Milligan, dressed in a jumpsuit of cotton painter's cloth in dazzling azure blue, hopped out. Pitt helped her down and took a suitcase that was passed to him by the pilot.

  "On your next taxi run," Pitt yelled above the whine of the turbines, "bring us a case of peanut butter."

  The pilot waved a casual salute and shouted back, "Shall do."

  Pitt escorted Heidi across the deck as the helicopter lifted from the pad and dipped its nose toward the south. She turned to him and smiled. "Does the project director always double as baggage porter?"

  "Like the man said," Pitt laughed, "I get no respect."

  Several minutes after he showed her to her quarters, she entered the dining salon carrying a packet of papers and sat down beside him. "How was your trip?"

  "Productive," she replied. "How's your end?"

  "We arrived on site yesterday afternoon, eighteen hours ahead of schedule, and positioned the Ocean Venturer above the wreck."

  "What's your next move?"

  "A small unmanned remote sub with cameras will be lowered to survey the Empress. The video data it relays to our monitors will be studied and analyzed."

  "What angle does the ship lie?"

  "Forty-five degrees to starboard." Heidi frowned.

  "Lousy luck."

  "Why?"

  She began to spread the papers over the table. Some were quite large and had to be unfolded.

  "Before I answer that, here's a copy of the passenger list from the Empress on its final sailing. At first I thought I hit a dead end when I couldn't find Harvey Shields' name among the first-class passengers.

  Then it occurred to me that he might have traveled in a lower class to avoid advertising his presence.

  Most transatlantic liners provided plush accommodations on second-class decks for wealthy but frugal eccentrics or highlevel government officials who wanted to cross the oceans in low profile. That's where I found him. Upper deck D, cabin forty-six."

  "Nice work. You put a fix on the needle in the haystack. Now we don't have to tear the whole ship apart."

  "That's the good news," said Heidi. "Now the bad news."

  "Let's have it."

  "The Storstad, the Norwegian coal collier that sank the Empress, struck the liner starboard amidships almost directly between the funnels, gouging a wedge-shaped hole over fifteen feet wide and nearly fifty feet in height. The collier's bow sliced into the boiler rooms below the waterline with a section of the second-class accommodations straight above."

  "You're suggesting that the Storstad obliterated Shields' cabin?"

  "We have to consider the worst possibility." Heidi spread a copy of the Empress of Ireland's plans over the charts. She pointed a pencil tip at a small circled area. "Number forty-six was an outside starboard cabin. It was either damned close or directly in the middle of the impact point."

  "That could explain why Shields' body was never found."

  "He was probably crushed to death in his sleep."

  "What did you mean by 'lousy luck' when I gave you the wreck's angle?"

  "A forty-five-degree list to starboard would put cabin forty six in the riverbed," Heidi replied. "The interior must be buried in silt.

  "Back to square one. The silt would preserve the treaty's covering but make it almost impossible to find."

  Heidi sat silently watching Pitt as he slowly tapped his fingers on the table, his mind rummaging through the data laid before him. His deep green eyes took on a faraway look.

  She reached over and touched his hand. "What are you thinking about?"

  "The Empress of Ireland," Pitt said quietly. "It's the ship the world forgot. A tomb of a thousand souls.

  God only knows what we'll find when we get inside her."

  "I hope you don't mind seeing me on such short notice," said the President as he strode from the elevator.

  "Not at all," replied Sandecker without fanfare. "Everything has been constructed. Please step this way."

  The President motioned his Secret Service men to wait by the elevator. Then he followed the admiral down a carpeted hallway to a large cedar double door. Sandecker opened it and stood aside.

  "After you, Mr. President."

  The room was circular and the walls were covered by a dark purple fabric. There were no windows and the only piece of furniture was a large kidney-shaped table that stood in the center. Its surface was illuminated by blue and green overhead spotlights. The President approached and stared at a three-footlong object resting on a bed of fine-grained sand.

  "So this is how it looks," he said in a reverent tone.

  "The grave of the Empress of Ireland," Sandecker acknowledged. "Our miniature craftsman worked from video pictures relayed by the Ocean Venturer."

  "Is that the salvage ship?" the President asked, pointing to another model that was suspended on a clear plastic plate about two feet above the Empress.

  "Yes, the models are in exact proportion to each other. The distance between them represents the depth from the surface to the riverbed."

  The President studied the Empress model for several seconds. Then he shook his head in wonderment.

  "The treaty is so small and the ship so large. Where do you begin to look?"

  "Our researcher had a breakthrough on that score," said Sandecker. "She was able to pinpoint the location of Harvey Shields' cabin." He motioned to an area amidships on the buried starboard hull. "It lies somewhere about here. There is, unfortunately, a good possibility that the cabin was mangled in the collision with the coal collier."

  "How will you go about reaching the cabin?"

  "After the crew conducts a survey of the interior of the ship by an unmanned remote search vehicle,"

  replied Sandecker, "the salvage operation will start on the lifeboat deck and excavate downward to the target site."

  "It looks like they're going about it the hard way," said the President. "Me, I'd enter from outside the lower hull."

  "Easier said . . . As near as we can figure, Shields' cabin lies under tons of silt. Take my word for it, Mr.

  President, dredging through river mud is a dangerous, exhausting, time-consuming procedure. By attacking from inside the ship the men will have a firm platform from which to work, and most important, they'll be able to orient the exact direction of their penetration from the shipbuilder's plans at any time during the operation."

  "You've made your case," the President acquiesced.

  Sandecker went on: "We're relying on four different systems to tunnel through the guts of the ship. One is the derrick you see on the Ocean Venturer. Designed for a lifting load of fifty tons, it will remove the heavier debris. Second, a two-man submersible with mechanical arms will function as an all-purpose back up unit."

  The President picked up a detailed miniature and studied it. "I take it this represents the submersible?"

  Sandecker nodded. "The Sappho I. It was one of four deepwater recovery vehicles used on the Titanic project last year."

  "I didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue."

  "The third system is the keystone of the operation," said Sandecker. He held up a doll-like figure that resembled a mechanical polar bear with portholes in a bulbous head. "An articulated, deepwater atmospheric diving system, more commonly called a JIM suit. It is constructed of magnesium and fiberglass, and a man inside it can work at tremendous depths for hours at a time while eliminating the need for decompression. Two of these suits will enable six men to work on the wreck around the clock."

  "Looks heavy and cumbersome."

  "In air, with an operator inside, it weighs eleven hundred pounds. Under water, only about sixty. It's surprisingly agile. You might say it puts hiking on the seafloor in a class with hiking on the Sahara."

  The President took the figure from Sandecker's offered hand and moved the tiny articulated arms and legs. "It also makes aqualung divers obsolete."

  "Not entirely," answered Sandecker.
"A diver with three dimensional mobility is still the backbone of any salvage operation. The fourth and final system is called saturation diving." He gestured at a model in the form of a cylindrical tank. "A team of divers will live in this pressurized chamber while breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen. This prevents the narcotic effects of inhaling nitrogen under pressure. The chamber permits men to work underwater for long stretches of time without the danger of lung gases dissolving into the bloodstream, forming bubbles and causing the bends. Also, they don't have to decompress until the job is finished."

  The President fell silent. By education and occupation he was an attorney, a precise and analytical man-and yet scientific data was beyond him. He did not wish to appear stupid in front of the admiral. He chose his words carefully.

  "Surely your people don't intend to literally claw a path through an acre of steel."

  "No, there is a better method."

  "Like explosives perhaps?"

  "Too risky." Sandecker replied matter-of-factly. "The steel in the wreck has been under attack by corrosive elements for seventy-five years. It has become porous and its tensile strength is greatly reduced. A charge in the wrong place or one too strong, and the whole ship could collapse in on itself.

  No, we'll cut our way through."

  "With acetylene cutting torches, then."

  "With pyroxone."

  "Never heard of it."

  "A pliable incendiary substance that can burn under water at an incredibly high temperature for pre controlled lengths of time. Once pyroxone is molded against the surface to be separated, it is ignited by an electronic signal. At three thousand degrees Celsius it will melt any barrier in its way, including rock."

  "It's hard to imagine."

  "If I can answer any more questions."

  The President made a disparaging gesture. "No, I'm satisfied. You and your people are doing a remarkable job."

  "If we don't come up with the treaty, you'll know we did all that was technically possible."

  "I gather you're not too hopeful."

  "Frankly, Mr. President, I think we have about as much chance as a titmouse in a buzzard's beak."

  "What are your feelings concerning the treaty on the Manhattan Limited?"

  "I'll save any comment until we find the train."

  "At least I know your position," the President said, smiling.

  Sandecker suddenly looked wolfish. "Sir, I have a question."

  "Go ahead."

  "May I respectfully ask just what in hell this is all about?"

  It was the President's turn to look wolfish. "You may well ask, Admiral, but all I'm going to tell you is that the scheme is crazy," he said with an ill-boding look in his eyes. "The craziest scheme ever hatched by a president of the United States.

  The silence in the dense green depths of the St. Lawrence River was broken by a strange whirring sound. Then a thin shaft of bright bluish light sliced into the cold water, slowly increasing in dimension until it became a large rectangle. A school of curious fish, attracted by the brilliant glow, swam toward it in languid circles, seemingly uncaring of the blurred shadows that wavered above them.

  Inside the huge center well of the Ocean Venturer a team of engineers readied a remote-search vehicle that hung suspended by a cable--from a small crane. One man adjusted the light source units for the three cameras while another linked up the battery power supply.

  The RSV was shaped like an elongated teardrop, only three feet long and ten inches in diameter, and showed no protrusions on its smooth titanium skin. Steering and propulsion were provided by a small hydrojet pump with variable thrusters.

  Heidi stood on the edge of the well opening and peered at the fish below.

  "A strange feeling," she said. "Looking at water inside a ship and wondering why, we not sinking."

  "Because you're standing four feet above the surface," Rudi Gunn answered her with a grin. "So long as the river can't penetrate below the waterline, we stay afloat."

  One of the engineers waved his hand. "It's buttoned up."

  "No umbilical cable for electronic control?" asked Heidi.

  "Baby responds by remote sound impulses up to three miles under water," explained Gunn briefly.

  "You call it Baby?"

  "That's because it's usually wet," Pitt laughed.

  "Men and their juvenile humor," she said, shaking her head.

  Pitt turned to the well. "Diver in," he ordered.

  A man encased in a thermal diving suit adjusted his face mask and slipped over the side. He guided the RSV as it was lowered into the well and released it when they both had fallen below the Venturer's keel.

  "Now let's move along to the control room and see what's down there," Pitt said.

  A few minutes later they were watching three different viewing screens, mounted horizontally. On the opposite side of the room several technicians studied dials and noted instrument readings on clipboards.

  Against another wall a bank of computers began recording the data transmissions.

  A cheerful fat man with curly strawberry hair and freckles stippling his face grinned with a great flash of teeth as Pitt introduced him to Heidi.

  "Doug Hoker, meet Heidi Milligan," Pitt said, dropping Heidi's naval rank. "Doug plays mother to Baby."

  Hoker half rose out of his chair in front of a large console and shook her hand. "Always glad to have a beautiful audience."

  She smiled at the compliment. "This is one opening I didn't want to miss."

  Hoker turned back to his console and immediately became all business. "Passing eighty feet," he droned, his right hand on an aircraft control grip. "Water temperature thirty-four degrees."

  "Circle Baby in from the stern," said Pitt.

  "Acknowledged."

  At 165 feet the river bottom appeared on the color video screens, a drab, washed-out brown, devoid of life except for an occasional crab and scattered bits of weed. Visibility under the RSV's high-intensity lights was little more than ten feet.

  Gradually a dark shape began to grow from the top of the screen, slowly enlarging until its huge pintles could be clearly seen.

  "Nice sense of direction," Pitt said to Hoker. "You laid it dead on the rudder."

  "Something else coming up," Gunn announced. "The propeller, by the looks of it."

  The four great bronze blades that once had driven the 14,000ton ship from Liverpool to Quebec on many crossings moved at a funereal pace past the camera eyes of the RSV.

  "About twenty feet from tip to tip," Pitt judged. "Must weigh at least thirty tons."

  "The Empress was a twin-screw vessel," said Heidi softly. "The one on the port side was salvaged in nineteen hundred and sixty-eight.

  Pitt turned to Hoker. "Come up fifty feet and travel forward along the starboard boat deck."

  Deep beneath their feet the little sub obeyed its impulse commands and swam over the stern railing, narrowly missing the staff that had once flown the ensign of the Empress' home port.

  "The aft mast is down," Pitt said in a monotone. "The rigging appears to be gone."

  Then the boat deck came into view. A few of the davits hung empty, but some still held steel lifeboats frozen for eternity in their chocks. The ventilators stood in silent agony, their buff colored paint long flaked away, but the two funnels had vanished, fallen decades before into the silt.

  No one spoke for a few minutes. It was as though they could somehow reach into the past and sense the hundreds of frightened men, women and children milling the decks in confusion, helplessly feeling the ship sink beneath them with terrible swiftness.

  Heidi's heart began to pound against her breast. There was a morbid aura about the scene. Seaweed, clinging to the rust eaten hulk, swayed eerily to and fro with the current. She shivered involuntarily and clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling. Finally Pitt broke the silence. "Take it inside."

  Hoker took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the nape of his neck.

  "The
two upper decks have collapsed," he murmured as if conversing in a church. "We can't penetrate."

  Pitt spread the ship's interior drawings on a chart table and traced a line with his finger. "Drop down to the lower promenade deck. The first-class lobby entrance should be clear."

  "Is Baby actually going to enter the ship?" Heidi asked.

  "That's what it was designed for," replied Pitt.

  "All those people dead in there. Somehow it almost seems sacrilegious."

  "Men have been diving on the Empress for half a century," Gunn said gently, as though talking to a child.

  "The,museum at Rimouski is filled with artifacts taken from inside the wreck. Besides, it's imperative to see what we'll be up against when we begin cutting through-"

  "I have penetration," Hoker interrupted.

  "Take it slow," Pitt acknowledged. "The wooden ceilings have probably fallen and clogged the passageways."

  For the next few seconds only the floating particles in the water showed on the monitors. Then the RSV's light source fell on a fan-shaped stairway. The curled lines of the banisters were still evident, held erect by sagging support columns. The Persian carpeting that had once graced the lower landing had long since rotted away, as had the chairs and sofas. "I think I can negotiate the aft passageway," said Hoker.

  "Make entry," Pitt instructed tersely.

  The stateroom doorways marched by the cameras in wraithlike procession as the RSV threaded its way through the fallen rubble. After thirty feet the passageway looked clear and they made an inspection of a cabin. The luxurious comfort for which the ill-fated ship was famous had deteriorated into pitiful scraps.