The water closed over him and the sun diffused into a greenish orange blur. The current pulled at his body and he had to swim on a diagonal course against it until he found the buoy. He reached out and clutched the line and stared downward. Less than three feet away the white nylon braid faded into the opaque murk.
Using the line as a guide and a support, Pitt slipped into the depths of the Potomac. Tiny filaments of vegetation and fine particles of sediment swept past his face mask. He switched on his dive light, but the dim beam only added a few inches to his field of vision. He paused to work his jaws and equalize the growing pressure within his ear canals.
The density increased as he dove deeper. Then suddenly, as if he’d passed through a door, the water temperature dropped by ten degrees and visibility stretched to almost ten feet. The colder layer acted as a cushion pushing against the warm current above. The bottom appeared and Pitt discerned the shadowy outline of a boat off to his right. He turned and gestured to Giordino, who gave an affirmative nod of his head.
As though growing out of a fog, the superstructure of the
Pitt swam around one side of the hull while Giordino kicked around the other. The yacht was sitting perfectly upright with no indication of list. Except for a thin coating of algae that was forming on her white paint, she looked as pristine as when she rode the surface.
They met at the stern, and Pitt wrote on his message board, “Any damage?”
Giordino wrote back, “None.”
Then they slowly worked their way over the decks, past the darkened windows of the staterooms and up to the bridge. There was nothing to suggest death or tragedy. They probed their lights through the bridge windows into the black interior, but all they saw was eerie desolation. Pitt noted that the engine-room telegraph read ALL STOP.
He hesitated for a brief moment and wrote a new message on his board: “I’m going in.”
Giordino’s eyes glistened under the face-mask lens and he scrawled back, “I’m with you.”
Out of habit they checked their air gauges. There was enough time left for another twelve minutes of diving. Pitt tried the door to the wheelhouse. His heart squeezed within his chest. Even with Giordino at his side, the apprehension was oppressive. The latch turned and he pushed the door open. Taking a deep breath, Pitt swam inside.
The brass gave off a dull gleam under the dive lights. Pitt was curious at the barren look about the room. Nothing was out of place. The floor was clean of any spilled debris. It reminded him of the
Seeing nothing of interest, they threaded their way down a stairway into the lounge area of the deckhouse. In the fluid darkness the large enclosure seemed to yawn into infinity. Everywhere was the same strange neatness. Giordino aimed his light upward. The overhead beams and mahogany paneling had a stark, naked appearance. Then Pitt realized what was wrong. The ceiling should have been littered with objects that float. Everything that might have drifted to the surface and washed ashore must have been removed.
Accompanied by the gurgle of their escaping air bubbles, they glided through the passageway separating the staterooms. The same neat look was everywhere; even the beds and mattresses had been stripped. Their lights darted amid the furniture securely bolted to the carpeted deck. Pitt checked the bathrooms as Giordino probed the closets. By the time they reached the crew’s quarters, they only had seven minutes of air left. Communicating briefly with hand signals, they divided up, Giordino searching the galley and storerooms while Pitt took the engine room.
He found the hatch cover over the engine room locked and bolted. Without a second of lost motion, he quickly removed his dive knife from its leg sheath and pried out the pins in the hinges. The hatch cover, released from its mountings and thrust upward by its buoyancy, sailed past him.
And so did a bloated corpse that burst through the open hatch like a jack-in-the-box.
30
PITT REELED BACKWARD into a bulkhead and watched numbly as an unearthly parade of floating debris and bodies erupted from the engine room. They drifted up to the ceiling, where they hung in grotesque postures like trapped balloons. Though the internal gases had begun to expand, the flesh had not yet started to decompose. Sightless eyes bulged beneath strands of hair that wavered from the disturbance in the water.
Pitt struggled to fight off the grip of shock and revulsion, hardening his mind for the repugnant job he could not leave undone. With creeping nausea merged with cold fear he snaked through the hatch into the engine room.
His eyes were met with a charnel house of death. Bedding, clothing from half-open suitcases, pillows and cushions, anything buoyant enough to float, mingled between a crush of bodies. The scene was a nightmare that could never be imagined or remotely duplicated by a Hollywood horror film.
Most of the corpses wore white Coast Guard uniforms that added to their ghostly appearance. Several had on ordinary work clothes. None showed signs of injury or wounds.
He spent two minutes, no more, in there, cringing when a lifeless hand brushed across his arm or a white expressionless face drifted inches in front of his face mask. He could have sworn they were all staring at him, begging for something that was not his to give. One was dressed differently from the others, in a knit sweater covered by a stylish raincoat. Pitt swiftly rifled through the dead man’s pockets.
Pitt had seen enough to be permanently etched in his mind for a lifetime. He hurriedly kicked up the ladder and out of the engine room. Once free of the morbid scene below, he hesitated to read his air gauge. The needle indicated a hundred pounds, an ample supply to reach the sun again if he didn’t linger. He found Giordino rummaging through a cavernous food locker and made an upward gesture with his thumb. Giordino nodded and led the way through a passageway to the outside deck.
A great wave of relief swept over Pitt as the yacht receded into the murk. There wasn’t time to search for the buoy line so they ascended with the bubbles that flowed from their air regulators’ exhaust valves. The water slowly transformed from an almost brown-black to a leaden green. At last they broke the surface and found themselves fifty yards downstream from the
Sandecker and the boat’s crew of engineers spotted them immediately and quickly began hauling on the lifeline. Sandecker cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Hang on, we’ll pull you in.”
Pitt waved, thankful he could lie back and relax. He felt too drained to do anything but lazily float against the current and watch the trees lining the banks slip past. A few minutes later he and Giordino were lifted onto the deck of the old clamming boat.
“Is it the
Pitt hesitated in answering until he’d removed his air tank. “Yes,” he said finally, “it’s the
Sandecker could not bring himself to ask the question that was gripping his mind. He sidestepped it. “Find anything you want to talk about?”
“The outside is undamaged. She’s sitting upright, her keel resting in about two feet of silt.”
“No sign of life?”
“Not from the exterior.”
It was obvious that Pitt wasn’t going to volunteer any information unless asked. His healthy tan seemed strangely paled.
“Could you see inside?” Sandecker demanded.
“Too dark to make out anything.”
“All right, dammit, let’s have it straight.”
“Now that you’ve asked so pleasantly,” Pitt said stonily, “there’s more dead bodies in the yacht than a cemetery. They were stacked in the engine room from deck to overhead. I counted twenty-one of them.”
“Christ!” Sandecker rasped, suddenly taken aback. “Could you recognize any of them?”
“Thirteen were crewmen. The rest looked to be civilians.”
“Eight civilians?” Sandecker seemed stunned.
