64
Sandecker stood in the chart room of NUMA and peered through a magnification enhancer at an aerial photo of Johns Island, South Carolina. He straightened and looked at Giordino and Pitt, who were standing on the opposite side of the table. “Beats me,” he said after a short silence. “If Suvorov pinpointed his landmarks correctly, I can’t understand why he didn’t find Bougainville’s lab facility from a helicopter.”
Pitt consulted the Soviet agent’s notebook. “He used an old abandoned gas station for his base point,” he said, pointing to a tiny structure on the photograph, “which can be distinguished here.”
“Emmett or Brogan know you made a copy before we left Guantanamo Bay?” asked Giordino, nodding toward the notebook.
Pitt smiled. “What do you think?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“If Suvorov escaped the lab at night,” said Sandecker, “it’s conceivable he got his bearings crossed.”
“A good undercover operative is a trained observer,” Pitt explained. “He was precise in his description of landmarks. I doubt he lost his sense of direction.”
“Emmett has two hundred agents crawling over the area,” Sandecker said. “As of fifteen minutes ago, they came up empty-handed.”
“Then where?” Giordino asked in a general sense. “No structure the size Suvorov recorded shows on the aerial survey. A few old houseboats, some scattered small homes, a couple of decrepit sheds, nothing on the order of a warehouse.”
“An underground facility?” Sandecker speculated.
Giordino considered the point. “Suvorov did say he took the elevator up to break out.”
“On the other hand, he mentions walking down a ramp to a gravel road.”
“A ramp might suggest a boat,” Giordino ventured.
Sandecker looked doubtful. “No good. The only water near the spot where Suvorov puts the lab is a creek with a depth of no more than two or three feet. Far too shallow to float a vessel large enough to require an elevator.”
“There is another possibility,” said Pitt.
“Which is?”
“A barge.”
Giordino looked across the table at Sandecker. “I think Dirk may have something.”
Pitt stepped over to a telephone, dialed a number and switched the call to a speaker.
“Data Department,” came a groggy voice.
“Yaeger, you awake?”
“Oh, God, it’s you, Pitt. Why do you always have to call after midnight?”
“Listen, I need information on a particular type of vessel. Can your computers come up with a projection of its class if I supply the dimensions?”
“Is this a game?”
“Believe you me, this is no game,” Sandecker growled.
“Admiral!” Yaeger muttered, coming alert. “I’ll get right on it. What are your dimensions?”
Pitt thumbed to the correct page in the notebook and read them off into the speaker phone. “A hundred sixty-eight feet in length at inside perpendiculars by thirty-three feet in the beam. The approximate height is ten feet.”
“Not much to go on,” Yaeger grumbled.
“Try,” Sandecker replied sternly.
“Hold on. I’m moving to the keyboard.”
Giordino smiled at the admiral. “Care to make a wager?”
“Name it.”
“A bottle of Chivas Regal against a box of your cigars Dirk’s right.”
“No bet,” said Sandecker. “My specially rolled cigars cost far more than a bottle of scotch.”
Yaeger could be heard clearing his throat. “Here it is.” There was a slight pause. “Sorry, not enough data. Those figures are a rough match for any one of a hundred different craft.”
Pitt thought a moment. “Suppose the height was the same from bow to stern.”
“You talking a flat superstructure?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on,” said Yaeger. “Okay, you’ve lowered the numbers. Your mystery vessel looks like a barge.”
“Eureka,” exclaimed Giordino.
“Don’t cash in your coupons yet,” Yaeger cautioned. “The dimensions don’t fit any known barge in existence.”
“Damn!” Sandecker blurted. “So near, yet—”
“Wait,” Pitt cut in. “Suvorov gave us interior measurements.” He leaned over the speaker phone. “Yaeger, add two feet all around and run it through again.”
“You’re getting warmer,” Yaeger’s voice rasped over the speaker. “Try this on for size — no pun intended— one hundred and ninety-five by thirty-five by twelve feet.”
“Beam and height correspond,” said Pitt, “but your length is way off.”
“You gave me interior length between perpendicular bulkheads. I’m giving you overall length including a raked bow of twenty-five feet.”
“He’s right,” said Sandecker. “We didn’t allow for the scoop of the forward end.”
Yaeger continued. “What we’ve got is a dry cargo barge, steel construction, two hundred and eighty to three hundred tons — self-enclosed compartments for carrying grain, lumber and so forth. Probably manufactured by the Nashville Bridge Company, Nashville, Tennessee.”
“The draft?” Pitt pushed.
“Empty or loaded?”
“Empty.”
“Eighteen inches.”
“Thanks, pal. You’ve done it again.”
“Done what?”
“Go back to sleep.”
Pitt switched off the speaker and turned to Sandecker. “The smoke clears.”
Sandecker fairly beamed. “Clever, clever people, the Bougainvilles.”
Pitt nodded. “I have to agree. The last place anyone would look for an expensively equipped laboratory is inside a rusty old river barge moored in a swamp.”
“She also has the advantage of being movable,” said Sandecker. The admiral referred to any vessel, scow or aircraft carrier in the feminine gender. “A tug can transport and dock her anywhere the water depth is over a foot and a half.”
Pitt stared at the aerial photo pensively. “The next test is to determine where the Bougainvilles hid it again.”
“The creek where she was tied leads into the Stono River,” Sandecker noted.
“And the Stono River is part of the Intracoastal Waterway,” Pitt added. “They can slip it into any one of ten thousand rivers, streams, bays and sounds from Boston to Key West.”
“No way of second-guessing the destination,” Giordino murmured dejectedly.
“They won’t keep it in South Carolina waters,” Pitt said. “Too obvious. The catch, as I see it, boils down to north or south, and a distance of six, maybe eight hundred miles.”
“A staggering job,” Sandecker said in a soft voice, “untangling her from the other barges plying the eastern waterways. They’re thicker than leaves in a New England October.”
“Still, it’s more than we had to go on before,” Pitt said hopefully.
Sandecker turned from the photo. “Better give Emmett a call and steer him onto our discovery. Someone in his army of investigators may get lucky and stumble on the right barge.”
The admiral’s words were empty of feeling. He didn’t want to say what was on his mind.
