Serpent

'I had to twist the captain's arm, and I'll lose money on this job,' he said, his tone softening, 'but I guess it's worth it to get my son out here in my declining years.'

What an actor! Austin thought. His father could whup his weight in wildcats. True to his word the senior Austin had the boat in Nantucket the next day. The Monkfish was hardly a scow. It was, in fact, a medium-sized, state-of-theart salvage vessel less than two years old. An added bonus was Captain John McGinty, a hard-boned, ruddy-faced Irishman from South Boston. The captain had dived on the Andrea Doria years before and was delighted to work on her again.

Austin was removing the cassette from the mini-sub's video camera when McGinty strode over. 'Well, don't keep me in suspense,' he said with excitement in his voice. 'How's the old gal look?'

'She's showing her age, but you can see for yourself.' Austin handed over the cassette. The captain glanced at the mini-sub and chuckled. 'That's some hot rod,' he said, and led the way to his quarters. He set Austin and Zavala up with soft chairs and hard drinks, then popped the video into his VCR. McGinty sat in uncharacteristic silence, taking in every detail as the sweptback hull and its patina of anemones rolled across the TV screen. When the video ended he punched the rewind button.

'You boys did good work. She looks pretty much the way she did when I last dove on her in 'eightyseven. Except there are more trawler nets. And like you said,' he sighed, 'she's getting a, little worn around the edges. It's what you can't see that's the problem. I've heard the ship's interior bulkheads are rotting away. Won't be long before the whole thing collapses in on itself.'

'Could you give us an idea what we'll be dealing with down there?'

'I'll do my best. Want a refill?' Not waiting for an answer he poured the equivalent of a double shot of Jack Daniel's into each glass and dropped in a couple of token ice cubes. He took a sip, staring at the blank TV screen. 'One thing you can't forget. The Doria may look pretty, even with all that scum mucking up her hull, but she's a man-killer. They don't call her the Mount Everest of divers for nothing. She hasn't killed as many as Everest, around ten last time I got counting, but the guys who dive on the Doria are looking for that same adrenaline rush from the danger that mountain climbers get.'

'Every wreck has its own character,' Austin said. 'What are the major hazards on this ship?'

'Well, she's got all sorts of tricks up her sleeve. First of all there's the depth. With a two-hour decompression. You need a drysuit because of the cold. Sharks come to feed on the fish. Mostly blues. Not supposed to be dangerous, but when you're hanging on the anchor line decompressing you just hope some near- sighted shark doesn't mistake you for a fat pollock.'

'When I first started diving my father told me to remember that in the water you are no longer the top of the food chain,' Austin said.

McGinty grunted in agreement. 'None of that stuff would be major except for the other problems. There's always a wicked current. It can be bad all the way down and even runs through the boat. Sometimes it seems like it will pull you right off the anchor line.'

'I felt it pushing against the mini-sub,' Zavala said.

McGinty nodded. 'You saw what the visibility was like.'

'We could see pretty well today. We found the wreck without our lights,' Austin said.

'You were lucky. Sun was shining, sea wasn't stirred up much. On a cloudy or foggy day you can be practically on the wreck without seeing it. That's nothing compared to inside. Black as Hades, silt all over the place. Just touch it and you're surrounded by a cloud so thick your light won't penetrate it. Real easy to get confused and lost. But the biggest problem is entanglement. You can get into real trouble with all the wires and cables hanging down from the ceilings. That's if you get past those nets and ropes all over the hull and the monofilament from the party boats that fish the wreck. It's invisible. You don't know it's there until it's grabbed on to your tank. With scuba you've got twenty minutes max to get yourself out of trouble.'

'That's not much time to explore a huge ship.'

'That's one of the reasons it's so damned dangerous. Fellows want that piece of pottery or dish with the Italia crest on it. Figure they've spent all that time training and money to get out there. They forget. They get tired real fast, especially if they're fighting the current and breathing trimix. Make mistakes. Get lost. Forget the plans they memorized. Equipment's got to be working perfectly. One guy died because he had the wrong mix in his tanks. On my last dive I had five tanks, weight belt, lights, knives. I was carrying two hundred twenty-eight pounds. It takes a lifetime of experience to dive the ship. Even so, it's easy to become disoriented. You've got the ship lying on its side, so the deck and floors are overhead, the bulkheads between the decks are vertical.'

'The Andrea Doria sounds like just our kind of place, doesn't it, Joe?'

'Only if the bar still serves tequila.'

McGinty furrowed his brow. Ordinarily this kind of cockiness before a Doria dive was a one-way ticket to a body bag. He wasn't sure about these two. The big man with the hair that didn't match the unlined face and the soft-spoken dark man with the bedroom eyes exuded an unusual confidence. The captain's worried expression disappeared, and he grinned like an old hound dog. No, it wouldn't surprise him to see them belly up to the Doria's firstclass bar and order a drink from a ghostly bartender.

Austin said, 'What's the weather going to be like, Captain?'

'Weather tends to be cantankerous as hell out here on the shoals. Calm one day, howling gale the next. Fog is notorious. The guys who were aboard the Doria and the Stockholm could tell you how thick it gets. Wind's blowing southeast now, but it will come around more westerly, and my guess is you'll have flat seas. Don't know how many days that will last out here.'

'That's okay, we're in something of a hurry to get the job done,' Austin said. 'We don't have days.'

McGinty grinned. Yup, damned cocky. 'We'll see. Still, I've got to admit you boys have got brass. What's this you're looking for, an armored. truck in the hold? That's going to require some doing. Especially where you don't know the wreck.' He shook his head. 'Wish I could help you, but my diving days are over. You could use a guide.'

Austin saw a blue hull come into view through a porthole. The name Myra was painted on the bow

'Excuse me, Captain,' he said. 'I think our guide has just arrived.'

Georgetown,Washington, DC

40 'GAMAY, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?' Trout called out from his study. He was bent over the monitor of his computer, staring intently at the oversized screen he used for developing graphics for his various undersea projects.

'Yrrph,' Gamay answered with a muffled grunt from the next room. She lay on her back, suspended horizontally above the floor like a yogi in a trance, balanced on a narrow plank scaffolding supported by two ladders. She and Paul were constantly remodeling the interior of their Georgetown brick townhouse. Ruch Gunn ordered her to take a few days off to rest before reporting to NUMA headquarters. But the second she got back home she picked up on a project she had left undone, painting life-like flower garlands on the ceiling of their sunroom.

 She walked into the study wiping her hands on a rag. She was wearing old jeans and a chambray work shirt. Her dark red hair was stuffed under a white cap with the words TruTest Paint on it. Her face was smudged with green and red splatters except for a racoonish area around her eyes where she'd worn protective goggles.

'You look like a Jackson Pollock painting,' Trout said.

She wiped a gob of crimson from her mouth. 'How Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is beyond me. I've only been at it an hour, and I've got a badcase of painter's elbow'

Trout peered upward over non-existent glasses and broke into an easy grin.

'What's with the wolfish smile?' Gamay said warily.

He put his hand around her slim waist and pulled her closer. He'd touched her at every opportunity since they had returned home, as if he feared she would disappear into the jungle again. The days she was missing were a nightmare for him, but his Yankee upbringing would never allow him to come out and say so.

'Just thinking about how sexy you look with paint splattered on your face.'

Gamay gently tousled his fine hair and brushed it down over his forehead. 'You perverts really know how to sweettalk a gal.' Her eye caught the images on the screen. 'Is that why you called me?'

'So much for sudden impetuous romantic gestures.' He indicated the screen. 'Yes. Tell me what you see.'

She leaned on Paul's shoulder and squinted at the monitor. 'No brainer. I see beautifully detailed sketches of eight fantastic-looking heads.' Her voice lapsed into the scientific mode, like the monotone of a pathologist