Deep Six

“We read the seabed six hundred meters on either side of our hull.”

“Then we’re cutting a swath nearly two thirds of a mile wide.”

“Close enough,” Pitt admitted.

“We should have detected the ship by now,” Dover said irritably. “Maybe we missed it.”

“No need to get uptight,” Pitt said. He paused, leaned over the computer keyboard and fine-tuned the image. “Nothing in this world is more elusive than a shipwreck that isn’t ready to be found. Deducing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel is kindergarten stuff compared to finding a lost derelict under hundreds of square miles of water. Sometimes you get lucky early. Most of the time you don’t.”

“Very poetic,” Dover said dryly.

Pitt stared at the overhead bulkhead for a long and considering moment. “What’s the visibility under the water surface?”

“The water turns crystal fifty yards from shore. On the flood tide I’ve seen a hundred feet or better.”

“I’d like to borrow your copter and take aerial photos of this area.”

“Why bother?” Dover said curtly. “Semper Paratus, Always Ready, is not the Coast Guard’s motto for laughs.” He motioned through a doorway. “We have charts showing three thousand miles of Alaskan coastline in color and incredible detail, courtesy of satellite reconnaissance.”

Pitt nodded for Giordino to take his place in front of the hydroscan as he rose and followed the Catawba’s skipper into a small compartment stacked with cabinets containing nautical charts. Dover checked the label inserts, pulled open a drawer and rummaged inside. Finally he extracted a large chart marked “Satellite Survey Number 2430A, South Shore of Augustine Island.” Then he laid it on a table and spread it out.

“Is this what you have in mind?”

Pitt leaned over and studied the bird’s-eye view of the sea off the volcanic island’s coast. “Perfect. Got a magnifying glass?”

“In the shelf under the table.”

Pitt found the thick, square lens and peered through it at the tiny shadows on the photo survey. Dover left and returned shortly with two mugs of coffee.

“Your chances are nil of spotting an anomaly in that geological nightmare on the seafloor. A ship could stay lost forever in there.”

“I’m not looking at the seafloor.”

Dover heard Pitt’s words all right, but the meaning didn’t register. Vague curiosity reflected in his eyes, but before he could ask the obvious question the speaker above the doorway crackled.

“Skipper, we’ve got breakers ahead.” The watch officer’s voice was tense. “The Fathometer reads thirty feet of water under the hull — and rising damned fast.”

“All stop!” Dover ordered. A pause, then: “No, reverse engines until speed is zero.”

“Tell him to have the sonar sensor pulled in before it drags bottom,” Pitt said offhandedly. “Then I suggest we drop anchor.”

Dover gave Pitt a strange look, but issued the command. The deck trembled beneath their feet as the twin screws reversed direction. After a few moments the vibration ceased.

“Speed zero,” the watch officer notified them from the bridge. “Anchor away.”

Dover acknowledged, then sat on a stool, cupped his hands around the coffee mug and looked directly at Pitt.

“Okay, what do you see?”

“I have the ship we’re looking for,” Pitt said, speaking slowly and distinctly. “There are no other possibilities. You were mistaken in one respect, Dover, but correct in another. Mother Nature seldom makes rock formations that run in a perfectly straight line for several hundred feet. Consequently, the outline of a ship can be detected against an irregular background. You were right, though, in saying our chances were nil of finding it on the seafloor.”

“Get to the point,” Dover said impatiently.

“The target is on shore.”

“You mean grounded in the shallows?”

“I mean on shore, as in high and dry.”

“You can’t be serious?”

Pitt ignored the question and handed Dover the magnifying glass. “See for yourself.” He took a pencil and circled a section of cliffs above the tideline.

Dover bent over and put his eye to the glass. “All I see is rock.”

“Look closer. The projection from the lower part of the slope into the sea.”

Dover’s expression turned incredulous. “Oh, Jesus, it’s the stern of a ship!”

“You can make out the fantail and the top half of the rudder.”

“Yes, yes, and a piece of the after deckhouse.” Dover’s frustration was suddenly washed away by the mounting excitement of the discovery. “Incredible. She’s buried bow-on into the shore, as though she were covered by an avalanche. Judging from the cruiser stern and the balanced rudder, I’d say she’s an old Liberty ship.” He looked up, a deepening interest in his eyes. “I wonder if she might be the Pilottown?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“One of the most stubborn mysteries of the northern seas. The Pilottown tramped back and forth between Tokyo and the West Coast until ten years ago, when her crew reported her sinking in a storm. A search was launched and no trace of the ship was found. Two years later an Eskimo stumbled on the Pilottown caught in the ice about ninety miles above Nome. He went aboard but found the ship deserted, no sign of the crew or cargo. A month later, when he returned with his tribe to remove whatever they could find of value, it was gone again. Nearly two years passed, and she was reported drifting below the Bering Strait. The Coast Guard was sent out but couldn’t locate her. The Pilottown wasn’t sighted again for eight months. She was boarded by the crew of a fishing trawler. They found her in reasonably good shape. Then she disappeared for the last time.”

“I seem to recall reading something…” Pitt paused. “Ah, yes, the ‘Magic Ship.’ “

“That’s what the news media dubbed her,” Dover acknowledged. “They described her disappearing act as a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ routine.”

“They’ll have a field day when it gets out she was drifting around for years with a cargo of nerve agent.”

“No way of predicting the horror if the hull had been crushed in an ice pack or shattered on a rocky shore, creating an instant spill,” Dover added.

“We’ve got to get in her cargo holds,” said Pitt. “Contact Mendoza, give her the position of the wreck and tell her to airlift a team of chemists to the site. We’ll approach from the water.”

Dover nodded. “I’ll see to the launch.”

“Throw in acetylene equipment in case we have to cut our way inside.”

Dover bent over the chart table and stared solemnly at the center of the marked circle. “I never thought for a minute I’d stand on the deck of the Magic Ship.”

“If you’re right,” said Pitt, staring into his coffee mug, “the Pilottown is about to give her last performance.”

8

The sea had been calm, but by the time the Catawba’s launch was a quarter-mile from the lonely, forbidding coast, a twenty-knot wind kicked up the water. The spray, tainted by the nerve agent, struck the cabin windows with the fury of driven sand. Yet where the derelict lay beached, the water looked reasonably peaceful, protected as it was by jagged pinnacles of rock that rose up a hundred yards offshore like solitary chimneys from burned-out houses.