Fire Ice nf-3 Page 29

  Had Austin been of a more poetical bent, he would have said that the big wave had stolen the town's soul. "What I mess," was the best he could come up with.

  "Coulda been worse," said Police Chief Charlie Howes, who stood next to Austin in the boat's stern.

  "Yeah, if hit by a nuclear missile," Austin said, with a shake of his head.

  "Yep," Howes replied, not letting an outlander outdo his Maine talent for brevity of speech.

  Austin had been introduced to the chief a few hours earlier. A NUMA executive corporate jet had whisked Austin, Paul Trout and Jenkins to the Portland Airport. Jenkins had called ahead to Chief Howes, and he was waiting at the air- port in a police cruiser to drive the men to Rocky Point.

  After the meeting with Sandecker, Austin had gone to his office with the satellite photos of the Ataman Explorer and studied them under a high-powered magnifying glass. Even though the pictures had been shot from thousands of feet up, they were sharp and detailed. He could easily read the ship's name on the hull and see people on deck.

  Austin was immediately struck by the ship's resemblance to the Glomar Explorer, the six-hundred-foot-long salvage vessel Howard Hughes had built in the 1970s on secret contract to the CIA to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine. Tall derricks and cranes similar to those on the Glomar extended off the deck like waterborne oil rigs.

  Austin examined the ship from stem to stern, paying particular attention to the deck area around the derricks. He made a few sketches on a pad of paper and sat back in his chair, a smug smile on his face. He had figured out a way to set onto the Ataman Explorer. It was a long shot and depended on how close he could get to it The vessel would run for cover at the first sight of a NUMA ship. He thought about the problem for a few minutes, recalling his Black Sea experience with Captain Kemal, then picked up his phone, called Yaeger and asked where Jenkins was.

  "Doc Reed is giving him the NUMA VIP tour. He's offered to put Jenkins up for the night before he catches a plane back to Maine tomorrow."

  "See if you can track them down and give me a call." Austin's phone rang a few minutes later. Austin outlined his plan to Jenkins, making no effort to soft pedal its possible dangers. Jenkins didn't hesitate for a second. When Austin was through describing his wild scheme, Jenkins said, "I'll do anything you can think of to get back at the bums who ruined my town."

  Austin told Jenkins to enjoy his tour while he made a few phone calls. The first call was to the NUMA transportation section to see if fast transportation was available. The second was to the Trout's Georgetown town house. Gamay had left a message saying she and Paul were home from Istanbul and were standing by for orders. Austin got Paul on the phone and brought him up to date.

  In the meantime, Jenkins started calling those local fishermen whose boats were still afloat and asked if they would like to do a job. At Austin's suggestion, Jenkins told the fishermen that NUMA needed their boats for a deep-ocean species study. As a bonus, the substantial sums they were being paid would be matched by no-strings grants to get their port back into shape without going through the usual government red tape.

  Jenkins had no trouble recruiting fishermen, and when the Kestrel left port shortly after dawn, six other lobster boats and trawlers trailed behind him single-file. Charlie Howes had insisted on going along, and Jenkins was glad to have him. The chief had trapped lobsters for a living before joining the police department and hadn't lost his sea sense.

  The fishing fleet passed the rock-ribbed promontory that gave the town its name, and entered the open ocean. The sea was a bright bottle green. Only a few whispery cirrus clouds marred the azure sky, and the breeze was a gentle westerly. The line of boats plodded east, then south, climbing the rolling swells and sliding down the other sides in an easy rhythm. Periodically, Gamay called from NUMA headquarters with the Ataman Explorer's position as seen by satellite.

  Austin penciled the positions on a chart of the Gulf of Maine, the expansive stretch of water between the long Maine coast and the curving arm of Cape Cod. The ship seemed to be moving in a big, lazy circle. Austin guessed it was in a holding pattern. Gamay used a simple code so anyone listening would think they were hearing fishermen's chatter. Jenkins and Howes politely ignored Gamay's butchering of the Maine dialect. But when the voice that over the speaker said, "Catching some good haaadik floundah soweast of my last set, ayup," they could remain silent no longer.

  "Ayup?" Jenkins cringed. "Did she say, 'ayup'?"

  Howes shook his head. "I've lived Down East my whole life, and I've never heard anyone say 'ayup.' Wouldn't know what it means."

  Trout suppressed a smile. Mumbling an apology, he explained that Gamay had seen too many episodes of Murder; She Wrote, which had been set in the Hollywood version of a Maine town. Jenkins cut him off. With clear excitement in his voice, he pointed to a large blip on the radar screen. '"There she is. No doubt about it."

  Austin, who was leaning over his shoulder, looked at the target to the southeast. "Ayup," he said.

  Jenkins gunned the throttle, picking up speed. The other boats did the same. It was more than a matter of impatience. Jenkins wasn't lulled by the playfulness of the sea. He had been studying the fetch, the distance between waves, with an experienced eye, assessing the situation as a fisherman and a scientist. "We've got some weather coming in." he said.

  Austin said, "I've been listening to the NOAA report on the radio."

  "I don't need the squawking of a computer-generated voice to tell me there's a storm on the way," Jenkins said, with a grin. "You just have to know how to read the signs."

  Since leaving port, Jenkins had watched the clouds gather and thicken and the sea spectrum shift to an oily gray. The breeze had moved a couple of compass points to the east. "If we get our work here done quickly, we can get back to port ahead of the storm. Problem is that if the sea and the wind kick up, it could be dangerous hauling back on our net."

  "I understand," Austin said. "Paul and I will get ready."

  "Might be a good idea." Chief Howes said, his easygoing voice gaining an uncharacteristic tautness. "We've got company."

  The chief was pointing at a huge, dark shape that loomed from the gathering fog. As the amorphous mass grew closer, it lost its spectral aspect, and the lines that had been softened by the vaporous mists hardened into the silhouette of a very large ship. The vessel was completely black, from the waterline to the top of the single funnel protruding from the high superstructure. Derricks and cranes bristled from the deck like the quills on a porcupine. The dull, light-absorbing paint made the ship hard to see and gave it an evil, brooding aspect that wasn't lost on the other fishermen.

  The radio crackled with excited voices. One fisherman said, "Jeez, Roy, what's that thing? Looks like a floating hearse."

  “Hearse," said another voice. "Looks like the whole damned funeral parlor."

  Austin smiled at the chatter. Anyone listening to the comments would know they hadn't been rehearsed. Jenkins warned his fellow fishermen to keep a sharp eye out so they wouldn't be run down. They didn't have to be told twice and gave the monster ship a wide berth. Austin estimated the ship's speed at around ten knots.

  The Ataman Explorer seemed to slow as it came nearer. A dot detached itself from the deck. The speck grew larger, buzzing like a hornet stirred from its nest. Moments later, the black helicopter flew low over the fishing fleet. Jenkins and Howes gave the aircraft a friendly wave. The chopper circled the fishing fleet a few times, then headed back to the ship.

  From inside the pilothouse, where he and Trout were donning their scuba gear, Austin watched the departing aircraft with calm eyes.

  "Guess we passed inspection," Austin said.

  "That was a lot friendlier than the reception Gamay and I got when we poked around Ataman's property in Novorossiysk."

  "You can thank Jenkins for that. It was his idea to have lots of witnesses so Ataman would stay on the straight and narrow."

  Austin was glad that he had listened to Jenkins
when he'd asked if he'd be willing to offer his services. Jenkins pointed out that there was safety in numbers. Since the vessel was sitting in prime fishing grounds, it was not all that suspicious for boats to be trawling in the area. In fact, Austin could see a half dozen fishing boats tending their nets on the way out.

  Austin had based his plan on the successful infiltration of the sub base from Captain Kemal's fishing boat. Penetrating the sub pens had been easy compared with what he had in mind now. Unlike the scruffy Cossacks, who were more interested in playing people polo than standing guard, watchful and well-armed sentries would be manning the Ataman vessel.

  Then Austin caught the break he was looking for. The ship plowed to a stop and floated dead in the water. Jenkins ran his boat as a trawler when he wasn't going after lobsters, and it was fitted out with a drumlike stem hauler to handle the net. With the help of the chief, he got the net in the water. Then the Kestrel got under way again and made a sweep by one side of the ship, a hundred yards off. The maneuver gave those on the ship a chance to inspect the fishing boat at close range. What they didn't see were the two divers hanging off the opposite side of the boat.

  After traveling about halfway along the length of the ship, Jenkins cut the Kestrel's engine to an idle and went out onto the deck. He and Howes tinkered with the hauler, as if there was a problem. During the pause, Austin and Trout dropped into the water and dove under the boat. They wanted to get deep and out of the way of the net.

  It was agreed that Jenkins would make a sweep by one side of the ship, then trawl for a couple of miles before turning back and returning on the other side. That gave them an hour to get on board the ship and back. They would keep in touch with Jenkins using their underwater communicators to talk to a hydrophone Trout had hung into the water before they went over the side.

  They swam deeper, moving their legs in a steady flutter that ate up the distance. They could hear the muffled grumble of the fishing boat engine as Jenkins got under way again and dove to thirty-five feet, where the visibility was still fair.

  With powerful scissors kicks, they covered the distance to the ship in a short time.

  The gigantic hull emerged from the murk like the body of an enormous whale asleep on the surface. Austin signaled Trout to go deeper. When they were directly under the massive keel, they looked up and snapped their lights on. It was hard not to be unnerved by thousands of tons of black steel floating above their heads.

  "Now I know how a bug feels just before someone steps on it," Trout said, gazing up at the massive hulk.

  "I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't want to make you nervous."

  "Too late. Where do you want to start?"

  "If I interpreted the satellite photos correctly, we should find what we're looking for at midships."

  They swam slowly upward until the ship's barnacle-encrusted bottom entirely filled the lenses of their face masks. In the beam of his light, Austin saw what he was looking for, a rubber-edged seam that ran across from one side of the flat-bottomed hull to the other. "Bingo!" he said.

  When Austin had first looked at the satellite pictures, he'd noticed an open area around one of the derricks that rose from the deck. Someone had carelessly left off a tarp that covered the opening and he could see down into a black void. He was sure he was looking into a "moon pool," a docking space similar to that on the Argo and other NUMA ships.

  Austin knew from experience that odds favored the pool's gates being closed. It was standard operating procedure, otherwise the drag from the open sea would slow the ship down. But he remembered that some NUMA ships had a smaller pool used for launching ROVs. He saw what he was looking for on the port side, forward of the larger moon pool, an indented rectangle about twelve feet square. When they swam close, they saw that the gates of the ROV launch well were shut tight.

  Austin unclipped the Oxy-Arc cutting torch from his belt and uncoiled the hose. Trout produced the oxygen tank he had been carrying and coupled it to the hose. From his belt bag, Austin pulled out two small powerful magnets with hand grips on them. He attached the magnets to the hull, then he and Trout slipped plastic shades over their masks to shield their eyes from the bright flame. While Austin held on to the magnet with one hand, Trout lit the torch. Even with the protection of the eyeshades, it was like looking at the sun.

  Austin began to cut, hoping that the pool cover was thinner than the actual hull. Although the ship wasn't moving, water churned around its great bulk and created eddies of current that pulled at Austin's body. With Trout's help, he had been able to stay more or less in one place, but a particularly violent current twisted him completely around. He had to let go of the magnet and when he made a grab with the other hand in reflex, he dropped the torch.

  Trout was having similar problems, only he lost the oxygen tank. They managed to grab onto the magnets and whipped their eyeshades off in time to see the tank and the torch, still lit, plunge out of sight into the depths.

  Every sailor's curse Austin had learned in years at sea crackled in Trout's earphones. After exhausting his repertoire of curses, he said, "I couldn't hold on to the torch."

  "You may have noticed that I lost the tank. I didn't realize you knew so many cusswords."

  Austin managed a chuckle. "Zavala taught me the ones in Spanish. Sorry for dragging you all this way for nothing."

  "If I weren't under a giant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Gamay would have me wallpapering our town house. Got any backup plans?"

  "Maybe if we knock, they'll open the doors. Or we swim to the surface, look for a ladder hanging down and climb aboard."

  "Hardly practical."

  "You asked if I had backup ideas. You didn't say they had to be practical."

  Austin was about to give the word to head back when Trout let out a yell of surprise and jabbed his forefinger straight down.

  Paul's sharp fisherman's eye had seen faint lights rising from the darkness below. The hazy glow reminded Austin of the luminescent fish William Beebe had found on his half- mile dive in a bathysphere. The oncoming object grew larger. They hurried out of its path until they were off to one side of the ship. They turned around and saw a small submarine ascend until it was about a hundred feet beneath the hull of the Ataman ship. The sub was clearly outlined by its running lights.

  "I'll be damned," Trout said, recognizing the distinctive silhouette. "It's the NR-1. What's she doing here?"

  "More important, where's she going next?" Austin's nimble mind had already sprinted several steps ahead. "Let's go for a boat ride."

  Austin angled his body downward and swam behind the hovering sub. He had once made a dive on the NR-1 and knew a camera was mounted forward of the conning tower. He and Trout grabbed onto the stair rungs built into the sail and hung on. Within seconds, a thin glowing line of yellow light appeared above. The moon pool gates were being retracted.

  Trout looked up, the illumination from above reflected in his mask lens. "I think I saw this on The X-Files when the aliens abducted a human."

  "It's always nice to meet new friends," Austin said, his eyes glued to the line as it widened into a long narrow rectangle, then a square of blazing light.

  The sub's vertical thrusters whirred, and the NR-1 rose slowly into the ship. Austin and Trout slid off the deck before the sub surfaced inside the pool. They swam toward a dark area between the circles of illumination cast by the lights inside the ship. At the edge of the pool, they cautiously poked their heads from the water. From the safety of the shadows, Austin took measure. The pool was about two hundred feet long and half as wide. Steel mesh catwalks accessed by short flights of open stairs ran along both sides.

  Men in coveralls leaned over the railings and watched the NR-1 emerge from the water. Then the loud grinding of gears filled the enormous chamber as the pool doors closed.

  Heavy-duty hoists fitted with steel hooks descended from the ceiling. A door opened in the side of the chamber, and several divers dressed in dry suits jumped int
o the water. They slid wide yokes under the front and back of the sub. The yokes were attached to the hooks, and powerful winches lifted the sub like the chain falls that were used to yank car engines out.

  The hydraulic gates slid shut, sealing the chamber from the sea, and with a mighty grumble, invisible pumps began to suck water from the pool. The powerful pumps cleared the pool in minutes. Then the winches lowered the sub.

  Crews of men flowed down the stairs onto the slimy floor of the pool. While some men swept the deck clear of seaweed and flopping fish, others attached cables to the NR-1 and braced it with timbers so it wouldn't shift with the ship's movement. The whoosh of ventilators brought fresh air into the space.

  Austin and Trout had scrambled up a ladder when the pumping started, and now they hung above the deck. The weight of their scuba equipment pulled at their arms and fingers. While they huddled in the shadows, below them in the glare of lights men leaned a ladder against the sub. The hatch opened in the conning tower, and a man with a white beard climbed out. He had a revolver holster on his belt and matched the description Ensign Kreisman had given of Pulaski, the phony scientist who'd pulled a gun on the NR-1.

  Two more men came out. Austin recognized Captain Logan and the pilot of the NR-1 from pictures he'd been shown. Four more men emerged. They had tough, impassive faces and carried heavy-duty firearms that identified them as guards. The NR-1 men were ushered up the stairs and disappeared from view. Hauling bags of sea debris, the last of the cleaning crew followed. The lights went out except for a glow above their heads.

  "What now?" Trout said.

  "We've got two choices. Up or down."

  Trout looked at the darkness below them and then grabbed the rung above his head and started to climb. The scuba gear seemed to get heavier the higher they got. Luckily, they had to climb less than twenty feet before they reached a narrow landing. With a mighty grunt, Trout pulled himself up and over the rail and slipped off his tanks and weight belt. He gave Austin a hand and they both sat there, catching their breath.