Clive Cussler - Deep Six

“We’ve come this far,” Dover said. “We might as well finish the job.”

“Faster if we split up. I’ll search the engine room. You know your way around the ship better than I do—”

“The forward cargo holds it is,” Dover said, anticipating him.

The big Coast Guardsman started up a companion-way, whistling the Notre Dame fight song under his breath. His bearlike gait and hulking build, silhouetted by the wavering flashlight in his hand, grew smaller and finally faded.

Pitt began probing around the maze of steam pipes leading from the obsolete old steam reciprocating engines and boilers. The walkway gratings over the machinery were nearly eaten through by rust, and he treaded lightly. The engine room seemed to come alive in his imagination — creaks and moans, murmurings drifting out of the ventilators, whispering sounds.

He found a pair of sea cocks. Their handwheels were frozen in the closed position.

So much for the sea-cock theory, he thought.

An icy chill crept up the back of Pitt’s neck and spread throughout his body, and he realized the batteries operating the heater in his suit were nearly drained. He switched off the light for a moment. The pure blackness nearly smothered him. He flicked it on again and quickly swept the beam around as if he expected to see a specter of the crew reaching out for him. Only there were no specters. Nothing except the dank metal walls and the worn machinery. He could have sworn he felt the grating shudder as if the engines looming above him were starting up.

Pitt shook his head to purge the phantoms in his mind and methodically began searching the sides of the hull, crawling between pumps and asbestos-covered pipes that led into the darkness and nowhere. He fell down a ladder into six feet of greasy water. He struggled back up, out of the seeming clutches of the dead and evil and ugly bilge, his suit now black with oil. Out of breath, he hung there a minute, making a conscious effort to relax.

It was then he noticed an object dimly outlined in the farthest reach of the light beam. A corroded aluminum canister about the size of a five-gallon gas can was wired to a beam welded on the inner hull plates. Pitt had set explosives on marine salvage projects and he quickly recognized the detonator unit attached to the bottom of the canister. An electrical wire trailed upward through the grating to the deck above.

Sweat was pouring from his body but he was shivering from the cold. He left the explosive charge where he found it and climbed back up the ladder. Then he began inspecting the engines and boilers.

There were no markings anywhere, no manufacturer’s name, no inspector’s stamped date. Wherever there had been a metal ID tag it was removed. Wherever there had been letters or numbers stamped into the metal, they were filed away. After probing endless nooks and crannies around the machinery, he got lucky when he felt a small protrusion through his gloved hand. It was a small metal plate partially hidden by grease under one of the boilers. He rubbed away the grime and aimed the light on the indented surface. It read:

PRESSURE 220 PSI.

TEMPERATURE 450° F.

HEATING SURFACE

5,017 SQ. FT.

MANUFACTURED BY THE

ALHAMBRA IRON AND BOILER COMPANY

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

SER. #38874

Pitt memorized the serial number and then made his way back to where he started. He wearily sank to the deck and tried to rest while suffering from the cold.

Dover returned in a little under an hour, carrying an explosive canister under one arm, as indifferently as if it were a jumbo can of peaches. Cursing fluently and often as he slipped on the oily deck, he stopped and sat down heavily next to Pitt.

“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.