Pacific Vortex Page 7

  Pitt said “It would appear that the Lillie Marlene was attacked by a boarding crew.”

  Boland shook his head. “The men who boarded from the San Gabriel were cleared. Radio directional equipment established the Spanish freighter’s position as being twelve miles from the disaster when she answered the distress call.”

  “No other ship was sighted?” Pitt asked.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Denver volunteered. “But piracy on the high seas went out with the manufacture of cutlasses.”

  “Dupree’s message also mentioned a mist or fog bank,” Pitt persisted. “Did the San Gabriel sight anything resembling a fog?”

  “Negative,” Hunter answered. “The first Mayday came in at 2050 hours. That’s dusk in this latitude. A dark horizon would have blotted out any hint of an isolated fog bank.”

  “Besides,” Denver said, “fog in this part of the Pacific Ocean in the month of July is as rare as a blizzard on Waikiki Beach. A small, localized fog bank is formed when stagnant warm air cools to condensation most often on a still night when it meets with a cool surface. There are no such conditions around these parts. The winds are nearly constant throughout the year and a seventy-two to eighty-degree water temperature could hardly be called a cool surface.”

  Pitt shrugged his shoulders. “That settles that.”

  “What we have there,” Hunter said somberly, “is San Gabriel had not arrived when it did, the Lillie Marlene would have exploded and sunk to the bottom anyway. Then it would have been written off as one more mysterious disappearance.”

  Denver stared at him. “On the other hand, if something not of this world had attacked the Littie Marlene, they’d hardly have done so with another ship in sight, or allowed time for an inspection by boarders. They must have had a purpose.”

  Boland threw up his hands. “There he goes again.”

  “Stick to the facts, Commander.” Hunter gave Denver an icy look. “We’ve no time for science fiction.”

  The men fell silent; only the muffled sounds of the equipment outside the paneled walls seeped through the quietness. Pitt rubbed his hand tiredly across bis eyes, then held his head as if to clear his mind. When he spoke, the words came very slow.

  “I think Burdette has touched on an interesting point.”

  Hunter looked at him. “You’re going to buy little green men with pointed ears who have a grudge against seagoing ships?”

  “No,” Pitt answered. “But I am going to buy the possibility that who or what is behind the disasters, wanted that Spanish freighter to make the discovery for a purpose.”

  Hunter was interested now. “I’m listening.”

  “Let’s grant bad weather, bad seamanship, and bad luck for a small percentage of missing ships. Then we go one step further and say there’s intelligence behind the remaining mysteries.”

  “Okay, so there’s a brain running the show,” said Boland. “What did he...” He paused and stared at Denver smiling. “Or it, have to gain by letting those Spaniards catch him in the middle of a mass murder?”

  “Why would he deviate from an established routine?” Pitt replied with another question. “Sailors are notoriously superstitious people. Many of them can’t even swim, much less put on a scuba tank and dive under the surface. Their lives are spent crossing the surface. And yet, their innermost fears, their nightmares, are centered around drowning at sea. My guess is that it was a deliberate plot by our unknown villain for the Lillie Marlene’s passengers and crew to be found heaped about the decks in ungodly mutilation. Even the dog wasn’t spared.”

  “Sounds like an elaborate plot to scare a few seamen,” Boland persisted.

  “Not merely scare a few seamen,” Pitt continued, “but a whole fleet of seamen. In short, the whole show was staged as a warning.”

  “A warning for what?” Denver asked.

  “A warning to stay the hell out of that particular area of the sea,” Pitt answered.

  I’ve got to admit,” Boland said slowly, “that since the Lillie Marlene affair, maritime ships have avoided the Vortex section like the plague.”

  “You’ve got one problem,” Hunter’s tone was strangely soft. “The only on-scene witnesses, the boarding crew, were blown up along with the ship.”

  Pitt grinned knowingly. “Simple. The idea was for the boarders to return to the San Gabriel and report to the captain. Our mastermind didn’t figure on greed rearing its ugly head. The boarders, as you recall, elected to stay on the ship and requested a tow rope, probably already spending the salvage money in their minds. They had to be stopped right where the ship sat. If the Lillie Marlene had reached port, scientific investigation might have uncovered some damaging evidence. So one good bang and Verhusson’s yacht went to the deep six.”

  “You make a good case,” Hunter sighed. “But even if your fertile imagination has stumbled on the truth, we’re still left with our primary job, finding the Starbuck.”

  “I was coming to that,” Pitt said. “The message from the yacht’s radio operator and the one from Commander Dupree, they have the same broken sentences, the same pleading tone in their words. The radio operator said ‘Don’t blame the captain, he could not have known.’ And in the latter part of Commander Dupree’s message, he said ‘If I had but known.’ A similarity between two men under stress? I don’t think so.” Pitt paused to let it sink in. “All of which leads to a likely conclusion: Commander Dupree’s final message is phony.”

  “We considered that,” Hunter said, “Dupree’s message was flown to Washington last night. The Naval Intelligence Forgery Office verified an hour ago the authenticity of Dupree’s handwriting.”

  “Of course,” Pitt said matter-of-factiy. “Nobody would be stupid enough to forge several paragraphs of script. I suggest you have your experts check for indentations in the paper. Chances are, the words were printed and then indented just enough to match the marking of a ball-point pen.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” said Boland. “Someone would have to have extra copies of Dupree’s writing in order to duplicate it.”

  “They had the logbook, his correspondence, and maybe a diary. Perhaps that’s why some of the pages were missing from the message capsule. Certain key words and letters were cut out and pasted together into readable sentences. Then it was photoengraved and printed.”

  Hunter’s expression was thoughtful, his tone neutral. “That would explain the strange wording and the rambling text of Dupree’s message. But it doesn’t tell us where Dupree and his crew lie.”

  Pitt raised from his chair and walked over to the wall map. “Did the Starbuck send its messages to Pearl Harbor in code?” he asked.

  “The code machine hadn’t been installed yet,” Hunter replied. “And since the sub was operating more or less in our own waters on a test cruise, the Navy saw no great urgency for top secret transmissions.”

  “Sounds risky,” Pitt said, “for one of our nuclear subs to be on the air.”

  “Strict silence is only maintained when a sub is on patrol or on station. Because the Starbuck was a new and untested ship, Dupree was ordered to report his position every two hours only as a precautionary measure in case of a mechanical malfunction. The initial shakedown was scheduled for only five days. By the time the Russians could track the calls and put a ship loaded with electronic spy gear on-the-scene, the Starbuck would have been long gone on a return course to Pearl Harbor.”

  Pitt continued to stare at the map. “These red marks, Admiral. What does it indicate?”

  “That’s Dupree’s position, according to his message.”

  “And these periodic black symbols, I take it, are the Starbuck’s last position reports?”

  “Correct.”

  Pitt continued, his words economical. “The top mark then is the final bonafide message from Dupree.”

  Hunter simply nodded.

  Pitt leaned against Hunter’s desk and stared silently at the map for several moments. Finally he straightened and rapped on
the area marked as the Starbuck’s last position report. “Your search area spreads from this point to where?”

  “It extends in a fan-shaped sector three hundred miles northeast,” Boland answered, his eyes clouded with puzzlement at Pitt’s cross-examination. “If you’d be so good as to tell us what you’re after.”

  “Please bear with me,” Pitt said. “Your search operations were massive, over twenty ships and three hundred aircraft. But you found nothing, not even an oil slick. Every scientific detection device was undoubtedly used-magnetometers, sensitive Fathometers, underwater television cameras, the works. Yet your efforts came up dry. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

  Hunter’s expression registered uncomprehension. “Why should it? The Starbuck could have gone down in an undersea canyon...”

  “Or she might have buried her hull in soft sediment,” Denver added. “Finding one little ship in an area that large is as tough as finding a penny in the Salton Sea.”

  “My friend,” Pitt said smiling, “you just spoke the magic words.”

  Denver looked at Pitt blankly.

  “One little ship,” Pitt repeated. “In all your searching, you couldn’t find one little ship.”

  “So?” Hunter’s tone was icy.

  “Don’t you see? Your search pattern was supposed to be right in the middle of the Pacific Vortex. Maybe you didn’t hit on the Starbuck, but you should have stumbled on to something. After all, you had nearly thirty other sunken derelicts to choose from.”

  “Damn!” Hunter’s self-confidence was shaken. It never occurred to us ...”

  “I see your point,” Boland said. “But what does it prove?”

  “It proves,” Pitt replied, “that you searched the wrong area. It proves that Dupree’s message was a clever counterfeit And it proves that the Starbuck’s last radioed positions were an even cleverer case of fraud. In short, gentlemen, the place to find your missing submarine is not to the northeast, but a one-hundred-eighty-degree reverse course to the southwest.”

  Hunter, Boland, and Denver stared at Pitt in stunned silence, enlightenment spreading across their features.

  Denver spoke first. It fits,” he said simply. Hunter’s face began to glow with an enthusiasm that he hadn’t shown for months. He gazed long and hard at the wall map for nearly half a minute. Then, he swung abruptly and fastened his gaze on Boland. “How soon can the Martha Ann get underway?”

  “Hoist the helicopter on board, finish refueling, make a final check of the detection instruments; I’d say 2100 hours this evening, sir.”

  Hunter glanced at his watch. “That doesn’t leave us much time to plot a search area.” He turned to Denver. “This is your realm. I suggest you begin programming a search grid immediately.”

  “The primary data is already on the tapes, Admiral. It’s only a matter of reversing the location input”

  Hunter rubbed his eyes. “Okay, gentlemen, it’s all yours. I’d give up half these stripes to come with you.

  By the way, Mr. Pitt, I hope you won’t mind taking an extended ocean voyage?”

  Pitt smiled at him. “I have nothing else planned at the moment.”

  “Good.” Hunter rolled a cigarette around in his mouth. “Tell me something; how did an Air Force officer ever become a departmental head of the government’s top oceanographic agency?”

  “I shot down Admiral Sandecker and his staff over the China Sea.”

  Hunter stared at Pitt with a strange believing look indeed. With this man, almost anything is possible, Admiral Sandecker had told him earlier.

  It was one hour after sunset when the AC slipped into a parking stall in the Honolulu dock area. As the front wheels made contact with a wooden tire stop, the engine died and the headlights blinked out. Pitt swung the door open and gazed across the harbor into the inky water.

  As the breeze changed direction it carried a heavy odor to his nostrils: the undeniable bouquet of the waterfront. It smelled of oil, gasoline, tar, and smoke, with a tinge of saltwater thrown in. It exhilarated Pitt, carrying the nostalgic sensation of faraway exotic ports.

  Pitt pulled himself from the car and glanced about the parking lot in search of any sign of human activity. There was none. Only a seagull, perched on a wooden piling, returned his stare. Pitt reached into the car and pulled the towel-wrapped Mauser from behind the seat Then he inhaled the harbor night air, tucked the gun under his arm, and began walking along the pier.

  If anyone had been loitering around the docks they would hardly have noticed anything unusual about Pitt’s appearance. He was dressed in a well-worn khaki shirt over a faded pair of gabardine pants. His feet were encased by a pair of badly scuffed brogans, tied with heavy twine. The cast-off clothing, a gift from the 101st Fleet’s Security Officer, was a size too small and bulged at the seams. He felt like a toss-up between a bindle stiff and a skid row derelict. A quart of muscatel in a brown paper bag was all that was missing. Or better yet, a bottle of Grand Marnier Yellow Ribbon: just the right touch of class to go with the rags.

  One hundred yards later, Pitt stopped and looked up at the huge black hulk that loomed in the darkness. The only light that beamed down on the weathered and tarred planking came from a few scattered green-shaded lamps that hung awkwardly from the corrugated metal sides of an old warehouse. The eerie glow of the lamps, coupled with the deathly stillness of the evening, only added to the already ghostlike appearance of the monster in the water.

  She was an old ship with a straight up-and-down bow and a square, boxlike shape to her superstructure; this was topped by an old-fashioned vertical smokestack that sported a faded blue stripe. Rising from her decks stood a maze of cluttered derricks and masts. At some time in the distant past she had been painted black with the usual red waterline, but now she was grimy, dirty, and rusty. Pitt moved closer until he was standing under her stern. She was large, probably in the neighborhood of twelve thousand tons. He stared up at the dim white lettering just below the fantail. The name was so battered and streaked with rust he could barely make it out in the dim light: MARTHA ANN-SEATTLE.

  The gangplank looked like a tunnel leading upward into a forbidding void. Only the muted hum of the generators deep within the hull, and a thin wisp of smoke curling from the funnel betrayed human presence.

  Pitt placed his hand on the coarse railing rope of the gangplank and, leaning forward to compensate for the thirty-degree angle, began the ascent to the Martha Ann’s deck. The fading light from the warehouse lamps ceased at the last step of the ramp. Pitt hesitated upon reaching the seemingly deserted deck and peered into the shadows.

  “Mr. Pitt?” came a voice from the gloom.

  “Yes, I’m Pitt”

  “May I see your identification, please?”

  “You may, if only I could see who in hell to hand it to.”

  “Please lay your ID on the deck, sir, and step back.”

  Pitt grumbled to himself. He was aware that it was normal military procedure to examine identification papers during alerts and emergencies, but why all the fuss to come aboard this old rivet-dangling sea bucket? Setting the Mauser gently on the deck, he pulled out his wallet and groped for his ID. His eyes could not penetrate the blackness so he ran his fingers over a stack of assorted plastic cards until he found one that lacked the telltale raised lettering of a credit card and threw it a few paces in front of his feet. A pencil-thin shaft of light beamed on the card and then touched Pitt’s face.

  “Sorry to trouble you, sir, but Admiral Hunter ordered strict security all around the ship.” A black shadow passed the ID back to Pitt. “If you take the first stairway to your right, you’ll find Commander Denver in the chart room.”

  “Thanks,” Pitt grunted. He retrieved the gun and straggled up the stairway toward the bridge. At the top he found the darkened wheelhouse empty so he walked through the deserted enclosure and cautiously cracked open a door. Here at last he was greeted by a flood of bright light.

  “Hello, Dirk,” Denver said wa
rmly. He had a cigarette between his fingers and as he waved a greeting to Pitt, the ash fell in a tiny heap on the chart table. He was wearing a black pullover sweater and a pair of soiled denims. “Welcome aboard the U.S. Navy’s only floating fossil.”

  Pitt tossed him an offhand salute. “I didn’t expect to find you here, Burdette. I thought you were remaining in Operations with the admiral.”

  Denver smiled. “I’ll get there. But I couldn’t resist coming down and wishing you and Paul good hunting.”

  “We’ll need it. If the choice was up to me, I’d take the old-fashioned needle in a haystack any day.”

  “Do you think this is a strange phenomenon?” Denver asked him.

  “Like your boss said, our job is to find and raise the Starbuck. Any ghost-catching is strictly a side benefit. Besides, our NUMA scientists and engineers do not make a habit of researching Bermuda triangles or Pacific vortices. We leave that up to imaginative writers with a knack for exaggeration. Any unexplainable discoveries are purely accidental, and afterward, they’re quietly filed away.”

  “Could you give me an example?” Denver asked softly.

  Pitt stared vacantly at a half-opened chart on the table.

  “There was one instance about nine months ago that smacked of Jules Verne. Two of our oceanographic ships were conducting subbottom profiling and underwater acoustical tests in the Kurile Trench off Japan when their instruments detected the sound of a vessel traveling at a high rate of speed in very deep water. Both ships immediately heaved to, closing down all engines and turning all instruments to whatever it was that was down there.”

  “Could an instrument or one of the operators have been mistaken?” Denver murmured.

  “Not likely,” Pitt answered. “Those researchers were the tops in their respective fields. And, when you consider that two different ships with two sets of precision instruments traced and recorded identical readings, you pretty much eliminate any percentage of error. No mistake about it, the thing, the submarine, the sea monster, whatever you wish to call it, was there. And it was moving at one hundred ten miles an hour in a depth of nineteen thousand feet.”