Deep Six

“I’ve heard of titanium, but I have no idea what it’s used for.”

“When properly processed in pure form, titanium becomes stronger and lighter than steel, an asset that puts it in great demand by builders of jet aircraft engines. It’s also widely used in the manufacture of paints, rayon and plastics. I suspect you even have traces of it in your cosmetics.”

The cook, an anemic-looking Oriental with a sparkling white apron leaned through a side door and nodded at Lee, who in turn tapped a glass with a mixing spoon.

“Dinner ready to be served,” he said in his heavily accented English, while flashing his gap-toothed smile.

It was a fabulous meal, one Estelle promised herself never to forget. To be surrounded by six handsomely uniformed and attentive men was all that her female vanity could endure in one evening.

After a demitasse, Captain Masters excused himself and headed for the bridge. One by one, the other officers drifted off to their duties, and Estelle took a tour of the deck with the engineering officer. He entertained her with tales of sea superstitions, eerie monsters of the deep and funny tidbits of scuttlebutt about the crew that made her laugh.

At last they reached the door of her stateroom, and he gallantly kissed her hand again. She accepted when he asked her to join him for breakfast in the morning.

She entered the tiny cabin, clicked the lock on the door and switched on the overhead light. Then she closed the curtain tightly over the single porthole, pulled the suitcase from under the bed and opened it.

The top tray contained her cosmetics and carelessly jumbled underthings, and she removed it. Next came several neatly folded blouses and skirts. These she also removed and set aside to later steam out the wrinkles in the shower. Gently inserting a nail file around the edges of the false bottom of the suitcase, she pried it up. Then she sat back and sighed with relief. The money was still there, stacked and bound in the Federal Reserve Bank wrappers. She had hardly spent any of it.

She stood up and slipped her dress over her head— daringly, she wore nothing beneath — and collapsed across the bed, hands behind her head.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture the shocked expressions on her supervisors’ faces when they discovered the money and reliable little Arta Casilighio missing at the same time. She had fooled them all!

She felt a strange, almost sexual, thrill at knowing the FBI would post her on their list of most wanted criminals. The investigators would question all her friends and neighbors, search all her old haunts, check a thousand and one banks for sudden large deposits of consecutively numbered bills — but they would come up dry. Arta, alias Estelle, was not where they’d expect her to be.

She opened her eyes and stared at the now familiar walls of her stateroom. Oddly the room began to slip away from her. Objects were focusing and unfocusing into a blurry montage. Her bladder signaled a trip to the bathroom, but her body refused to obey any command to move. Every muscle seemed frozen. Then the door opened and Lee the mess boy entered with another Oriental crewman.

Lee wasn’t smiling.

This can’t be happening, she told herself. The mess boy wouldn’t dare intrude on her privacy while she was lying naked on the bed. It had to be a crazy dream brought on by the lavish food and drink, a nightmare stoked by the fires of indigestion.

She felt detached from her body, as if she were watching the eerie scene from one corner of the stateroom. Lee gently carried her through the doorway, down the passageway and onto the deck.

Several of the Korean crewmen were there, their oval faces illuminated by bright overhead floodlights. They were hoisting large bundles and dropping them over the ship’s railing. Abruptly, one of the bundles stared at her. It was the ashen face of the young fourth officer, eyes wide in a mixture of disbelief and terror. Then he too disappeared over the side.

Lee was leaning over her, doing something to her feet. She could feel nothing, only a lethargic numbness. He appeared to be attaching a length of rusty chain to her ankles.

Why would he do that? she wondered vaguely. She watched indifferently as she was lifted into the air. Then she was released and floated through the darkness.

Something struck her a great blow, knocking the breath from her lungs. A cool, yielding force closed over her. A relentless pressure enveloped her body and dragged her downward, squeezing her internal organs in a giant vise.

Her eardrums exploded, and in that instant of tearing pain, total clarity flooded her mind and she knew it was no dream. Her mouth opened to emit a hysterical scream.

No sound came. The increasing water density soon crushed her chest cavity. Her lifeless body drifted into the waiting arms of the abyss ten thousand feet below.

Part I The Pilottown

1

July 25,1989

Cook Inlet, Alaska

Black clouds rolled menacingly over the sea from Kodiak Island and turned the deep blue-green surface to lead. The orange glow of the sun was snuffed out like a candle flame. Unlike most storms that swept in from the Gulf of Alaska creating fifty- or hundred-mile-an-hour winds, this one bred a mild breeze. The rain began to fall, sparingly at first, then building to a deluge that beat the water white.

On the bridge wing of the Coast Guard cutter Catawba, Lieutenant Commander Amos Dover peered through a pair of binoculars, eyes straining to penetrate the downpour. It was like staring into a shimmering stage curtain. Visibility died at four hundred meters. The rain felt cold against his face and colder yet as it trickled past the upturned collar of his foul-weather jacket and down his neck. Finally he spat a waterlogged cigarette over the railing and stepped into the dry warmth of the wheelhouse.

“Radar!” he called out gruffly.

“Contact six hundred fifty meters dead ahead and closing,” the radar operator replied without lifting his eyes from the tiny images on the scope.

Dover unbuttoned his jacket and wiped the moisture from his neck with a handkerchief. Trouble was the last thing he expected during moderate weather.

Seldom did one of the fishing fleet or private pleasure craft go missing in midsummer. Winter was the season when the gulf turned nasty and unforgiving. Chilled Arctic air meeting warmer air rising from the Alaska Current detonated incredible winds and towering seas that crushed hulls and iced deck structures until a boat grew top- heavy, rolled over and sank like a brick.

A distress call had been received by a vessel calling herself the Amie Marie. One quick SOS followed by a Loran position and the words “… think all dying.”

Repeated calls requesting further information were sent out, but the radio on board the Amie Marie remained silent.

An air search was out of the question until the weather cleared. Every ship within a hundred miles changed course and steamed full speed in response to the emergency signals. Because of her greater speed, Dover reckoned the Catawba would be the first to reach the stricken vessel. Her big diesels had already pushed her past a coastal freighter and a halibut long-liner gulf boat, leaving them rocking in her wake.

Dover was a great bear of a man who had paid his dues in sea rescue. He’d spent twelve years in northern