'It was an odd name.' She paused, trying to remember. Then she shrugged in defeat. 'Funny thing . . . I've already forgotten it.'
Loren was driving when they reached San Felipe. Pitt had stretched out in the backseat and was snoring away, but she did not bother to wake him. She guided the dusty, bug-splattered Pierce Arrow around the town's traffic circle, making a wide turn so she didn't run one side of the trailer over the curb, and turned south toward the town's breakwater-enclosed harbor. She did not expect to see such a proliferation of hotels and restaurants. The once sleepy fishing village was riding the crest of a tourist boom. Resorts appeared to be under construction up and down the beaches.
Five kilometers (3 miles) south of town she turned left on a road leading toward the waters of the Gulf. Loren thought it strange that an artificial, man-made harbor had been constructed on such an exposed piece of shoreline. She thought a more practical site would have been under the shelter of Macharro Point several kilometers to the north. Oh well, she decided. What did gringos know about Baja politics?
Loren stopped the Pierce alongside an antiquated ferryboat that looked like a ghost from a scrap yard. The impression was heightened by the low tide that had left the ferry's hull tipped drunkenly on an angle with its keel sunk into the harbor bottom's silt.
'Rise and shine, big boy,' she said, reaching over the seat and shaking Pitt.
He blinked and peered curiously through the side window at the old boat. 'I must have entered a time warp or I've fallen into the Twilight Zone. Which is it?'
'Neither. You're at the harbor in San Felipe, and you're looking at your home for the next two weeks.'
'Good lord,' Pitt mumbled in amazement, 'an honest-to-God steamboat with a walking beam engine and side paddlewheels.'
'I must admit it does have an air of Mark Twain about it.
'What do you want to bet it ferried Grant's troops across the Mississippi to Vicksburg?'
Gunn and Giordino spotted them and waved. They walked across a gangplank to the dock as Pitt and Loren climbed from the car and stood gazing at the boat.
'Have a good trip?' asked Gunn.
'Except for Dirk's snoring, it was marvelous,' said Loren.
Pitt looked at her indignantly. 'I don't snore.'
She rolled her eyes toward the heavens. 'I have tendonitis in my elbow from poking you.'
'What do you think of our work platform?' asked Giordino, gesturing grandly at the ferryboat. 'Built in 1923. She was one of the last walking beam steamboats to be built.'
Pitt lifted his sunglasses and studied the antique vessel.
When seen from a distance most ships tend to look smaller than they actually are. Only up close do they appear huge. This was true of the passenger/car ferries of the first half of the century. In her heyday the 70-meter (230-foot) vessel could carry five hundred passengers and sixty automobiles. The long black hull was topped with a two-story white superstructure whose upper deck mounted one large smokestack and two pilothouses, one on each end. Like most car ferries, she could be loaded and off-loaded from either bow or stern, depending on the direction the ferry was steaming at the time. Even when new, she would never have been called glamorous, but she had supplied an important and unforgettable service in the lives of millions of her former passengers.
The name painted across the center of the superstructure that housed the paddlewheels identified her as the Alhambra.
'Where did you steal that derelict?' asked Pitt. 'From a maritime museum?'
'To know her is to love her,' said Giordino without feeling.
'She was the only vessel I could find quickly that could land a helicopter,' Gunn explained. 'Besides, I kept Sandecker happy by obtaining her on the cheap.'
Loren smiled. 'At least this is one relic you can't get in your transportation collection.'
Pitt pointed to the walking beam mounted above the high A-frame that tilted up and down, one end driven by a connecting rod from the steam cylinder, the other driving the crank that turned the paddlewheel. 'I can't believe her boilers are still fired by coal.'
'They were converted to oil fifty years ago,' said Gunn. 'The engines are still in remarkable shape. Her cruising speed is twenty miles an hour.'
'Don't you mean knots or kilometers?' said Loren.
'Ferryboat speeds are measured in miles,' answered Gunn knowledgeably.
'Doesn't look like she's going anywhere,' said Pitt. 'Not unless you dig her keel out of the muck.'
'She'll be floating like a cork by midnight,' Gunn assured him. 'The tide runs four to five meters in this section of the Gulf.'
Though he made a show of disapproval, Pitt already felt great affection toward the old ferry. It was love at first sight. Antique automobiles, aircraft, or boats, anything mechanical that came from the past, fascinated him. Born too late, he often complained, born eighty years too late.
'And the crew?'
'An engineer with one assistant and two deckhands.' Gunn paused and gave a wide boyish smile. 'I get to man the helm while you and Al cavort around the Gulf in your flying machine.'
'Speaking of the helicopter, where have you hidden it?'
'Inside the auto deck,' replied Gunn. 'Makes it convenient to service it without worrying about the weather. We push it out onto the loading deck for flight operations.'
Pitt looked at Giordino. 'Have you planned a daily search pattern?'
The stocky Italian shook his head. 'I worked out the fuel range and flight times, but left the search pattern for you.'
'What sort of time frame are we looking at?'
'Should be able to cover the area in three days.'
'Before I forget,' said Gunn. 'The admiral wants you to contact him first thing in the morning. There's an Iridium phone in the forward pilothouse.'
'Why not call him now?' asked Pitt.
Gunn looked at his watch. 'We're three hours behind the East Coast. About now he's sitting in the Kennedy Center watching a play.'
'Excuse me,' interrupted Loren. 'May I ask a few questions?'
The men paused and stared at her. Pitt bowed. 'You have the floor, Congresswoman.'
'The first is where do you plan to park the Pierce Arrow? It doesn't look safe enough around here to leave a hundred-thousand-dollar classic car sitting unattended on a fishing dock.'
Gunn looked surprised that she should ask. 'Didn't Dirk tell you? The Pierce and the trailer come on board the ferry. There's acres of room inside.'
'Is there a bath and shower?'
'As a matter of fact, there are four ladies' restrooms on the upper passenger deck and a shower in the crew's quarters.'
'No standing in line for the potty. I like that.'
Pitt laughed. 'You don't even have to unpack.'
'Make believe you're on a Carnival Lines cruise ship,' said Giordino humorously.
'And your final question?' inquired Gunn.
'I'm starved,' she announced regally. 'When do we eat?'
In autumn, the Baja sun has a peculiar radiance, spilling down through a sky of strange brilliant blue-white. This day, there wasn't a cloud to be seen from horizon to horizon. One of the most arid lands in the world, the Baja Peninsula protects the Sea of Cortez from the heavy swells that roll in from the dim reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Tropical storms with high winds are not unknown during the summer months, but near the end of October the prevailing winds turn east to west and generally spare the Gulf from high, choppy swells.
With the Pierce Arrow and its travel trailer safely tied down on the cavernous auto deck, Gunn at the wheel in the pilothouse, and Loren stretched on a lounge chair in a bikini, the ferry moved out of the breakwater harbor and made a wide turn to the south. The old boat presented an impressive sight as black smoke rose from her stack and her paddlewheels pounded the water. The walking beam, shaped like a flattened diamond, rocked up and down, transmitting the power from the engine's huge piston to the shaft that cranked the paddlewheels. There
