Austin moved in under Zavala so that the light from his suit pointed straight into the ship. The powerful beam was swallowed by the darkness. He gave his vertical thrusters a short blast, descended feet-first into the garage, then stopped and rotated the suit three hundred sixty degrees. The water was free of loose ends and projections. He gave Zavala the all-clear and watched the bloated yellow figure sink through the blue-green hole and come to a hovering stop.
'This reminds me of the Baja Cantina in Tijuana,' Zavala said. Actually it's not as dark.'
'We'll stop for shots of Cuervo on the way back,' Austin replied. 'The ship is ninety feet wide. The cargo would have slid. down to the bottom like Captain McGinty said. Everything is at a ninety-degree angle, so the floor of the garage is actually that vertical wall right behind you. We'll stick close to the wall so as not to become disoriented.'
As they descended Austin went down a mental checklist, anticipating obstacles and reactions. While he worked on practical problems and solutions his brain was busy on another, irrational level, probably the survival mechanism that raised the hackles on the unshaven necks of his ancestors. He was hearing Donatelli's voice describing his terrifying descent into the innards of the ship. The old man was wrong, Austin concluded. This was worse than anything Dante could have imagined. Austin would take the fire and brimstone of the Inferno any day. At least Dante could see something. Even if it was only demons and the damned.
It was hard to believe now that the decks of this vast empty hulk once throbbed with the diesel power of fifty thousand horses, and more than twelve hundred passengers basked in the ship's sensuous beauty, their needs served by a crew of nearly six hundred. The first person to dive on the Andrea Doria after she slid beneath the Atlantic said the ship seemed still alive, producing an eerie cacophony of groans and creaks, the banging of loose debris, water rushing in and out of doorways. Austin saw only decay, emptiness, and silence, except for the sound of their rebreathers. This huge metal cairn was a haunted place where a man who lingered too long could go mad.
The ship seemed to close in on them, and Austin kept checking his depth gauge. Although they were only about two hundred feet from the surface, it seemed deeper because of the darkness. He looked upward. The bluegreen rectangle that marked the opening was diffused in the murk and eventually might have become invisible if the saturation divers hadn't placed a strobe light on the edge as a beacon. Austin glanced at the blinking pinpoint and felt reassured, then turned his focus to what lay below.
Under their feet solid objects were looming out of the darkness into the circle of illumination cast by their lights. Straight lines and
edges. Mysterious rounded shapes. Tons of debris were jammed into the horizontal space that had once been the starboard bulkhead of the Dona. When the ship was level the garage was covered with heavy metal mesh and catwalks. Now these were vertical as well. Austin and Zavala started a search pattern, moving in parallel lines, back and forth, between the vertical partitions formed by the old floor and ceiling of the garage, the type of search they would execute if they were on the surface looking for a shipwreck. They encountered dangling wires from the old light fixtures but not enough to be dangerous and they were easily avoided.
Their lights caught the glint of metal and glass and vague forms that occasionally resolved into familiar shapes.
'Hey, Kurt, is that a Rolls-Royce I see down there?'
Austin directed his light at the distinctive heavy grille sticking out of the debris.
'Probably. According to the liner's manifest a guy from Miami was shipping his Rolls back from Europe.'
'Goes to show it pays to have a Rolls on every continent.'
Austin glided over the Rolls and saw part of another car with unconventional sweeping lines.
'That looks like the Chrysler experimental car built by Ghia. Too bad Pitt isn't here. He'd go through hell and high water to add a oneof-a-kind to his collection.'
'He'd have to go through a lot of mud, too.'
The cars had tumbled on top of one another and now were largely covered by debris and silt. Austin had briefly entertained thoughts of a plan to excavate the debris, but it was an intellectual exercise only. Too dangerous, costly, and time-consuming. Any effort to dig through the cover would stir up a cloud so thick it would take days to settle.
From what Donatelli said of the truck's position, the vehicle should have fallen onto the top of the heap. It should have been visible. Could the old man have been wrong? He was under tremendous stress that night. Maybe the car was in another cargo hold. Austin groaned. It had taken a tremendous effort to cut into the garage. They had neither the time nor resources to try again. His expeditionary force was made up of assets borrowed for only a few days.
Doubts grew the longer they searched. They went over every square yard of visible debris.
'Whatever happened to the plan to refloat this thing with Ping-Pong balls?' Zavala said.
'I don't think there are enough PingPong balls in China for the job. What's your take?'
'I think Angelo Donatelli was one gutsy guy. This must be the biggest sensory deprivation tank in the world. Hard to believe we're still on planet Earth. I feel like a fly in a molasses jar.'
'I'm beginning to wonder if the truck is in here at all.'
'Where would it be?'
'I wish I knew,' Austin replied.
'Nina is going to be disappointed.'
'I know. What say we go topside and deliver the bad news?'
'Fine with me. My bladder is telling me I drank too much coffee this morning.'
They powered the vertical thrusters, keeping a slow but steady pace, homing in on the flashing beacon above. As they ascended they flashed their lights ahead and above to make sure they weren't coming up on unseen obstructions. The beam from Zavala's light stabbed the blackness in a corner of the garage, moved away for a second, then came back.
'Kurt,' he called out excitedly. 'There's something in the corner.'
They stopped their ascent. Austin saw two red eyes glowing in the inky darkness.
Having spent more than an hour in this otherworldly environment his first reaction was that they were looking at a huge sea creature who'd made the ship its lair. He pointed his light at the twin orbs, and his pulse rate ratcheted up a few beats. It couldn't be. Both men moved in for a closer look and put the full force of their lights on the corner.
'Well, I'll be damned,' they said in unison.
43 DECADES BEFORE AUSTIN AND ZAVALA cut their way into the Andrea Doria's garage a ship's officer presciently pictured the dire consequences of an armored truck weighing several tons crashing around in the hold during a storm at sea. To head off that possibility the vehicle was lashed by .strong cables passed over the truck's body and bolted to the floor. More than fifty years later the cables still held the truck in place at a right angle to the vertical wall that had once been the garage floor.
The black body was mottled with .rust, and the tire rubber had softened into an evi-llooking mush. The chrome still held a dull shine, though, and the truck itself was in one piece. After as thorough an inspection as they could make, Austin and Zavala left the hull and went back into the open sea. The saturation divers had retreated to the dry comfort of the pressurized bell. Austin didn't blame them. Saturated trimix is eight times as difficult to breathe as air from a scuba tank.
Austin called McGinty. 'Tell Mr. Donatelli we've located the truck.'
'Goddamn! Knew you could do it. Is it accessible for salvage?'
'With a little luck and the right equipment. I've got a shopping list.'
Austin quickly laid out the gear he wanted.
'No problem. There's a fresh crew coming down. They'll bring the stuff with them.'
The bell rose to the surface, and the divers inside exchanged places with a team living in the decompression chamber. When the bell returned, the equipment Austin ordered was secured to its exterior. Austin had talked by radio to the replacement divers before they left the ship and outlined the plan. The divers popped from the bottom of the bell and swam over to the hole in the hull. Austin and Zavala re-entered the ship first. The saturation divers followed with their umbilical lifesupport hoses trailing behind. One of them carried an oxygen cutting torch.
Austin regretted not having direct contact with the divers. He would have liked to hear their comments when they saw the truck hanging from the wall at a right angle. Their animated arm waving was almost as enjoyable.
