Treasure dp-9 Page 29

  "Considering the facts," said Gunn ominously, "I fear the only place the Lady Flamborough could have gone is down."

  "Take her last position, Rudi, and figure how far she might have sailed before the search planes arrived."

  Rojas stared at Pitt with interest. "May I ask what you intend to do?

  Further search would be useless. The entire surface where she vanished has been swept."

  Pitt seemed to stare through Rojas as though the Colonel were transparent. "Like the man just said, 'The only place she could have gone is down." And that's precisely where we're going to look."

  "How can I be of service?"

  "The Sounder, a NUMA deep-water research ship, should arrive in the general search area sometime this evening. We'd be grateful if you could spare a helicopter to shuttle us out to her. "

  Rojas nodded. "I will arrange to have one standing by."

  Then he added, "You realize you n-light as well be hunting one particular fish in ten thousand square kilometers of sea. It could take you a lifetime."

  "No," said Pitt confidently. "Twenty hours on the outside."

  Rojas was a pragmatic man. Wishful thinking was foreign to him. He looked at Giordino and Gunn, expecting to see skepticism mirrored in their eyes. Instead, he saw only complete agreement.

  "Surely, you can't believe such a fanciful time schedule?" he asked.

  Giordino held up a hand and casually studied his fingernails. "If experience is any judge," he replied placidly, "Dirk has overestimated."

  Exactly fourteen hours and forty-two minutes after the Uruguayan army helicopter set them on the landing pad of the Sounder, they found a shipwreck matching the Lady Flamborough's dimensions in 1,020 meters of water.

  On the discovery pass the target showed up as a tiny dark speck on a flat plain below the continental slope. As the Sounder moved in closer, the sonar operator decreased the recording range until the shadowy image of a ship became a discernible shape.

  The Sounder did not carry the five-million-dollar viewing system Pitt and Giordino had enjoyed on the Polar Explorer. No color video cameras were mounted on the trailing sonar sensor. The mission of her oceanographic scientists was purely to map large sections of the sea bottom. Her electronic gear was designed for distance and not closeup detail of manmade sunken objects.

  "Same configuration all right," said Gunn. "Pretty vague. Could be my imagination but she appears to have a sweptback funnel on her stern superstructure. Her sides look high and straight. She's sitting upright, no more than a ten-degree list."

  Giordino held back. "We'll have to get cameras on her to make a positive ID."

  Pitt said nothing. He kept watching the sonar recording long after the target slipped behind the Sounder's stern. any hope of finding his father alive was draining away. He felt as though he was staring at a coffin as dirt was being thrown on the lid.

  "Nice going, pal," Giordino said to him. "You laid us right on the dime."

  "How did you know where to look?" asked Frank Stewart, skipper of the Sounder.

  "I gambled the Lady Flamborough didn't change her heading after crossing the inside path of the General Bravo," Pitt explained. "And since she wasn't spotted by search aircraft beyond the outside course of the Cabo Gallegos, I decided the best place to concentrate our search was on a track extending east from her last-known heading as shown by the Landsat."

  "In short, a narrow corridor running between the General Bravo and the Cabo Gallegos, " said Giordino.

  "that about sums it up," Pitt acknowledged.

  Gunn looked at him. "I'm sorry it's not an occasion to celebrate. "

  "Do you want to send down an ROV?"* asked Stewart.

  "We can save time," answered Pitt, "by skipping a remote camera survey and going direct to a manned probe. Also, the submersible's manipulator arms may be useful if we need to lift anything from the wreck."

  "The crew can have the Deep Rover ready to descend in half an hour,"

  said Stewart. "You going to act as operator?"

  Pitt nodded. "I'll take her down."

  "At a thousand meters, you'll be right at the edge of its depth rating."

  "Not to worry," said Rudi Gunn. "The Deep Rover has a four-to-one safety factor at that depth."

  "I'd sooner go over Niagara Falls in a Volkswagen," said the Captain,

  "than go down a thousand meters in a plastic bubble."

  Stewart, narrow-shouldered, with slicked-down burnt-toast-brown hair, looked like a small-town feed-store merchant and scoutmaster. A seasoned seaman, he could swim but was leery of the deep and refused to learn to dive. He catered to the scientists' requests and whims concerning their oceanographic projects as in any business/client relation 'Remote Operated Vehicle; tetherrd, underwater viewing system.

  ship. But the ship operation was his domain, and any aca demic type who played Long John Silver with his crew was cut off at the knees in short order.

  "That plastic bubble," said Pitt, "is an acrylic sphere over twelve centimeters thick."

  "I'm happy to sit on deck in the sunshine and wave goodbye to anyone who takes the plunge in that contraption," Stewart muttered as he walked through the door.

  "I like him," said Giordino moodily. "Utterly lacking in savoir faire, but I like him."

  "You two have something in common," Pitt said, grinning.

  Gunn froze an image of the wreck on videotape from the sonar recording and studied it thoughtfully. He slid his glasses over his forehead and refocused his eyes. "The hull looks intact. No sign of breakup. Why in hell did she sink?"

  "Better yet," mused Giordino, "why no flotsam?"

  Pitt stared at the blurred image too. "Remember the Cyclops? She was lost without a trace too."

  "How can we forget her?" Giordino groaned. "We still carry the scars."

  Gunn looked up at him. "In all fairness, you can't compare a poorly laden ship built around the turn of the century with a modern cruise liner carrying a thousand built-in safety features.

  "No storm put her down there," said Pitt.

  "Maybe a rogue wave?"

  "Or maybe some sand kicker blew her bottom out," said Giordino.

  "We'll know soon enough," Pitt said quietly. "In another two hours we'll be sitting on her main deck."

  The Deep Rover looked like she'd be more at home orbiting space than cruising the depths of the ocean. She had a shape only a Martian could love. The 240-centimeter sphere was divided by a large O-ring and sat on rectangular pods that held the 120-volt batteries. All sorts of strange appendages sprouted from behind the sphere: thrusters and motors, oxygen cylinders, carbon dioxide removal canisters, docking mechanism, camera systems, scanning sonar unit. But it was the manipulators that extended in the front that would have made any self-respecting robot green with envy. Simply de bed, Vaey were mechanical arms and hands with a canny way of doing everything flesh and bone could do, and then some. A sensory feedback system made it possible to control the hand and arm movements to within thousandths of a centimeter, while force feedback allowed the hands to delicately hold a cup and saucer or grab and lift an iron stove.

  Pitt and Giordino patiently circled the Deep Rover while she was fussed over by a pair of engineers. She sat on a cradle inside a cavernous chamber called the "moon pool." The platform holding her cradle was part of the Sounder's hull and could be lowered twenty feet into the sea.

  One of the engineers finally nodded. "She's ready when you are."

  Pitt slapped Giordino on the back. "After you."

  "Okay, i'll handle the manipulators and cameras," he said jovially. "You drive, only mind the rush-hour traffic."

  "You tell him," yelled Stewart from an overhead balcony, his voice echoing inside the chamber. "Bring it back in one piece and I'll give you a great big kiss."

  "Me too?" Giordino yelled back, going along with the joke.

  "You too. ',

  "Can I take out my dentures?"

  "Take out anything you want."

  "
You call that an incentive?" Pitt said dryly. He was grateful to the Captain for trying to take his mind off what they might find. "I may make a beeline for Africa rather than come back here."

  "You'll need an extra truckload of oxygen," said Stewart.

  Gunn walked up, oblivious to the good-natured exchange, a pair of earphones clamped to his head with the cable dangling at his leg.

  He tried to keep his instructions businesslike, but compassion crept into his voice. "I'll be monitoring your audio locator beacon and communications. Soon as you see bottom, make a

  three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep until your sonar picks out the wreck. Then give me your heading. I expect you to keep me informed every step of the way."

  Pitt shook Gunn's hand. "We'll stay in touch."

  Gunn stared up at his old friend bleakly. "You sure you wouldn't rather stay topside and let me go down?"

  "I've got to see for myself."

  "Good luck," Gunn murmured, and then he quickly turned away and mounted a ladder leading from the moon pool.

  Pitt and Giordino settled into the side-by-side, aircraftstyle armchairs. The engineers swung the top half of the sphere closed against the watertight O-ring and tightened the clamps.

  Giordino began going through the predive checklist. "Power?"

  "Power on," affirmed Pitt.

  "Raho?"

  "Are we coming in, Rudi?"

  Loud and clear," Gunn answered.

  "Oxygen "Twenty-one-point-five percent."

  When they finished, Giordino said, "Ready when you are, Sounder."

  "You're cleared for takeoff, Deep Rover," Stewart replied in his usual ironic tone. "Bring back a lobster for dinner."

  Two divers stood by in full gear as the platform was slowly lowered into the sea. The water surged around the Deep Rover and soon enveloped the sphere. Pitt looked up into the shimmering lights of the moon pool and saw the wavering figures leaning over the balconies. The entire company of oceanographers and crew turned out for the dive, hovering around Gunn and listening to the reports from the sub. Pitt felt like a fish on display in an aquarium.

  When they were fully submerged, the divers moved in and unhitched the submersible from its cradle. One of them held up a hand and gave an

  "Okay" sign. Pitt smiled and answered with a "Thumbs up," and then pointed ahead.

  The handgrips on the end of the amirests guided the manipulators, while the armrests themselves controlled the four sters. Pitt took a Deep breath and controled the rover as if he were a helicopter pilot. A slight pressure on his elbows and she rose off the cradle. Then he pushed his arms forward and the horizontal stablizers eased her ahead.

  Pitt moved the little craft off the platform about thirty meters and stopped to assess his compass bearing. Then he engaged the vertical thrusters and began the descent.

  Down, down the Deep Rover fell through the dimensionless void, the darkening water burying her in its depths. The vibrant blue-green of the surface soon turned to a soft gray. A small, one-meter blue shark swam effortlessly toward the sub,

  circled once and, finding nothing inviting, continued its lonely journey into the fluid haze.

  They felt no sense of movement. The only sound came from the soft crackle of the radio and the pinging of the locator beacon. The water became a curtain of black surrounding their small circle of light.

  "Passing four hundred meters," Pitt reported as caln-Ay as a pilot announcing his flight altitude.

  "Four hundred meters," Gunn repeated.

  Ordinarily the wit and the sarcasm would have bounced off the interior of the submersible to pass the time, but this trip Pitt and Giordino were strangely silent. Seldom during the descent did their conversation run more than a few words.

  "There's a real sweetheart," said Giordino, pointing.

  Pitt saw it at the same time. One of the ugliest of the deep's resident citizens. Long, eel-shaped body, outlined by luminescence like a neon sign. The frozen, gaping jaws were never fully closed, kept apart by long, jagged teeth that were used more for entrapping prey than for chewing them. One eye gleamed nastily while a tube that was attached to a luniinated beard dangled from its lower jaw to lure the next meal.

  "How'd you like to stick your arm in that thing?" asked Pitt. Before Giordino could answer, Gunn broke in. "One of the scientists wants to know what you saw."

  "A dragonfish," Pitt replied.

  "He wants a description," said Giordino.

  "Tell him we'll draw a picture when we come home," Pitt grunted.

  "I'll pass the word."

  "Passing eight hundred meters," Pitt reported.

  "Mind you don't smack the bottom," Gunn warned him.

  "We'll keep an eye peeled. Neither of us is keen on making a one-way trip."

  "Never hurts to have a worrywart on your side. How's your oxygen?"

  "On the money."

  "You should be getting close."

  Pitt slowed the Deep Rover's descent with a light touch of the sliding armrest. Giordino peered downward, his eyes watchful for a sign of rocks. Pitt could have sworn his friend never blinked in the next eight minutes it took for the seabed to gradually materialize below.

  "We're down," Giordino announced. "Depth one,thousand fifteen meters."

  Pitt applied extra power to the vertical sters, bringing the submersible to a hovering stop three meters above the gray silt. Due to the water pressure, the weight of the craft had increased during the descent. Pitt turned one of the ballast tank valves, keeping an eye on the pressure gauge, and filled it with just enough air to achieve neutral buoyancy.

  "Making our sweep," he notified Gunn.

  "The wreck should bear approximately one one zero degrees," Gunn's voice crackled back.

  "Affirmative, I read you," said Pitt. "We have a sonar target two hundred twenty meters, bearing one one two degrees."

  "I copy, Deep Rover."

  Pitt turned to Giordino. "Well, let us see what we shall see.

  He increased the power on the horizontal thrusters and executed a sweeping bank, studying the barren seascape ahead as Giordino kept him on track by reading off the compass heading.

  "Come left a couple of points. Too much. Okay, you've got it. Keep her straight."

  There was not a flicker of emotion in Pitts eyes. His face was strangely still. He wondered with a growing fear what he might find.

  He recalled the haunting story of a diver salvaging a ferry that had sunk after a collision. The diver was working the wreck at one-hundred meters when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He swung around and was confronted by the body of a beautiful girl who was staring at him through sightless eyes, one arm extended and touching him as if asking to take her hand. The diver had nightmares for years afterward.

  Pitt had seen bodies before, frozen as the crew of the Serapis; bloated and grotesque as the crew of the Presidential yacht Eagle; decayed and half-dissolved in sunken airplanes off Iceland and a lake in the Colorado rockies. He could still close his eyes and visualize them all.

  He hoped to God he wouldn't see his father as a floating corpse. He shut his eyes for a few moments and almost ran the Deep Rover into the bottom. Pitt wanted to remember the Senator as alive and vibrant-not as a ghostly thing in the sea or a ridiculously made up stiff in a casket.

  "Object in the silt to the right," Giordino said, jolting Pitt from his morbid thoughts.

  Pitt leaned forward. "A two-hundred-liter drum. Three more off to the left."

  "They're all over the place," said Giordino. "Looks like a junkyard down here."

  "See any markings?"

  "Only some stenciled lettering in Spanish. Probably weight and volume information."

  "I'll move closer to the one dead ahead. A trace of whatever was in them is still rising to the surface."

  Pitt edged the Deep Rover's sphere to within a few inches of the sunken drum. The lights showed a dark substance curling from the drain hole.

  "Oil?" said Giordino.

  Pitt sh
ook his head. "The color is more nistlike. No, wait, it's red.

  By God, it's an oil-base red paint."

  "There's another cylindrical object next to it."

  "What do you make of it?"

  "I'd say it's a big roll of plastic sheeting."

  "I'd say you're right."

  "Might not be a bad idea to take it aboard the Sounder for examination.

  Hold position. I'll grab it with the manipulators."

  Pitt nodded silently and held the Deep Rover steady against the gentle bottom current. Giordino clutched the handgrip controls and curled the arm assemblies around the plastic roll, much like a human would bend both elbows to embrace a friend. Next he positioned the four-function hands so they gripped the bottom edge.

  "She's secure," he announced. "Give us a little vertical thrust to pull it out of the sillt."

  Pitt complied, and the Deep Rover slowly rose, carrying the roll with her, followed by a swirling cloud of fine silt. for a few moments they couldn't see. Then Pitt eased the submersible ahead until they broke into clear water again.

  "We should be coming up on her," said Giordino. "Sonar shows a massive target in front and slightly to the right."

  "We show you to be practically on top of her," said Gunn.

  Like a ghostly image in a darkened mirror, the ship rose out of the gloom. Magnified by the water distortion, she seemed a staggering sight.

  "We have visual contact," Giordino reported.

  Pitt slowed the Deep Rover to a stop seven meters from the hull. Then he maneuvered the sub up and alongside the derelict's foredeck.

  "What the hell?" Pitt broke off suddenly. Then, "Rudi, what colors were on the Lady Flamborough?"

  "Hold on." No more than ten seconds elapsed before Gunn answered. "Light blue hull and superstructure."

  "This ship has a red hull with white upperworks."

  Gunn did not reply immediately. When he did, his voice sounded old and tired. "I'm sorry, Dirk. We must have stumbled on a missing World War Two ship that was torpedoed by a U-boat. "

  "Can't be," muttered Giordino distantly. "This wreck is pristine. No sign of growth or corrosion. I can see oil and air bubbles escaping.