Deep Six

“There’s four more between here and the forepeak,” Dover said tiredly.

“I found another one about forty feet aft,” Pitt replied.

“Wonder why they didn’t go off.”

“The timer must have screwed up.”

“Timer?”

“The crew had to jump ship before the bottom was blown out. Trace the wires leading from the canisters and you’ll find they all meet at a timing device hidden somewhere on the deck above. When the crew realized something was wrong, it must have been too late to re-board the ship.”

“Or they were too scared it would go up in their faces.”

“There’s that,” Pitt agreed.

“So the old Pilottown began her legendary drift. A deserted ship in an empty sea.”

“How is a ship officially identified?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Just curious.”

Dover accepted that and stared up at the shadows of the engines. “Well, ID can be found most anywhere. Life jackets, lifeboats, on the bow and stern the name is often bead welded, outlining the painted letters. Then you have the builder’s plates, one on the exterior of the superstructure, one in the engine room. And, oh, yeah, the ship’s official number is burned into a beam around the outer base of the hatch covers.”

“I’ll wager a month’s pay that if you could dig the ship from under the mountain you’d find the hatch number burned off and the builder’s plate gone.”

“That leaves one in the engine room.”

“Missing too. I checked, along with all the manufacturer’s markings.”

“Sounds devious,” said Dover quietly.

“You’re damn right,” Pitt replied abruptly. “There’s more to the Pilottown than a marine insurance rip-off.”

“I’m in no mood to solve mysteries now,” Dover said, rising awkwardly to his feet. “I’m freezing, starved and tired as hell. I vote we head back.”

Pitt looked and saw Dover was still clutching the canister of explosives. “Bringing that along?”

“Evidence.”

“Don’t drop it,” Pitt said with a sarcastic edge in his voice.

They climbed from the engine room and hurried through the ship’s storerooms, anxious to escape the damp blackness and reach daylight again. Suddenly Pitt stopped in his tracks. Dover, walking head down, bumped into him.

“Why’d you stop?”

“You feel it?”

Before Dover could answer, the deck beneath their feet trembled and the bulkheads creaked ominously. What sounded like the muffled roar of a distant explosion rumbled closer and closer, quickly followed by a tremendous shock wave. The Pilottown shuddered under the impact and her welded seams screeched as they split under enormous pressure. The shock flung the two men violently against the steel bulkheads. Pitt managed to remain on his feet, but Dover, unbalanced by his heavy burden, crashed like a tree to the deck, embracing the canister with his arms and cushioning its fall with his body. A grunt of pain passed his lips as he dislocated his shoulder and wrenched a knee. He dazedly struggled to a sitting position and looked up at Pitt.

“What in God’s name was that?” he gasped.

“Augustine Volcano,” Pitt said, almost clinically. “It must have erupted.”

“Jesus, what next?”

Pitt helped the big man to his feet. He could feel Dover’s arm tense through the heavy suit. “You hurt?”

“A little bent, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Can you make a run for it?”

“I’m all right,” Dover lied through clenched teeth. “What about the evidence?”

“Forget it,” Pitt said urgently. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Without another word they took off through the storerooms and into the narrow alleyway between the freshwater tanks. Pitt slung his arm around Dover’s waist and half dragged, half carried him through the darkness.

Pitt thought the alleyway would never end. His breath began to come in gasps and his heart pounded against his ribs. He struggled to stay on his feet as the old Pilottown shook and swayed from the earth’s tremors. They reached cargo hold number four and scrambled down the ladder. He lost his grip and Dover fell to the deck. The precious seconds lost manhandling Dover over to the opposite ladder seemed like years.

Pitt had barely set foot on the scaly rungs when there was a crack like thunder and something fell past him and struck the deck. He threw the light beam up. At that instant the hatch cover disintegrated and tons of rock and debris cascaded into the hold.

“Climb, damn it, climb!” he yelled at Dover. His chest heaved and the blood roared in his ears. With an inner strength he thrust Dover’s 220 pounds up the ladder.

Suddenly a voice shouted. The light showed a figure leaning through the upper hatch, his hands grabbing Dover and pulling him through into the aft hold. Pitt instinctively knew it was Giordino. The burly little Italian had a keen sense of arriving at the right place at the right moment.

Then Pitt was at the top and crawling into the hold containing the nerve agent. The hatch cover was still intact, because the sloping ground above was not as dense near the stern section. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, willing hands were helping Dover toward the after deckhouse and temporary safety. Giordino gripped Pitt’s arm.

“We took casualties during the quake,” he said grimly.

“How bad?” asked Pitt.

“Four injured, mostly broken bones, and one dead.”

Giordino hesitated and Pitt knew.

“Mendoza?”

“One of the drums crushed her legs,” Giordino explained, his voice more solemn than Pitt had ever known it. “She suffered a compound fracture. A bone splinter pierced her suit.” His words died.

“The nerve agent leaked onto her skin,” Pitt finished, a sense of helplessness and shock flooding through him.

Giordino nodded. “We carried her outside.”

Pitt found Julie Mendoza lying on the Pilottown’s stern deck. Overhead a great cloud of volcanic ash rose into a blue sky and fortuitously drifted northward and away from the ship.

She lay alone and off to one side. The uninjured people were attending to the living. Only the young officer from the Catawba stood beside her, and his entire body was arching convulsively as he was being violently sick into his air filter.

Someone had removed her helmet. Her hair flared out on the rusty deck and glinted orange under the setting sun. Her eyes were open and staring into nothingness, the jaw jutting and rigid in what must have been indescribable agony. The blood was hardening as it dried in sun-tinted copper rivers that had gushed from her gaping mouth, nose and ears. It had even seeped from around the edges of her eyes. What little facial skin still showed was already turning a bluish black.

Pitt’s only emotion was cold rage. It swelled up inside him as he knelt down beside her and struck the deck repeatedly with his fist.

“It won’t end here,” he snarled bitterly. “I won’t let it end here.”

11