Douglas Preston - Riptide

He stepped toward the table. "If all goes according to plan, the Pit will be drained by noon tomorrow. The structure will be monitored closely while it stabilizes. During that afternoon, our crews will remove the largest obstructions from the Pit and insert the ladder array. And the following morning, we'll make our first descent."

His voice dropped, and his eyes moved from person to person. "I don't need to remind you that, even free of water, the Pit will remain a highly dangerous place. In fact, removing the water places a much greater load on its wooden members. Until we've braced it with titanium struts, there could still be cave-ins or collapses. A small team will be inserted to make initial observations and place piezoelectric stress sensors on the critical wooden beams. Once the sensors are in place, Kerry here will calibrate them remotely from Island One. If there is any sudden increase in stress—signaling a possible collapse—these sensors will give us an early warning. The sensors will be remotely linked with the network via RF, so we'll have instantaneous response. Once they're in place, we can insert teams to begin a formal mapping process."

Neidelman placed his hands on the table. "I've thought carefully about the composition of this first team, but in the end there's really no question about who has to go. There will be three people: Dr. Bonterre, Dr. Hatch, and myself. Dr. Bonterre's expertise in archaeology, soil analysis, and pirate construction will be vital in this first look at the Pit. Dr. Hatch must accompany us in case any unforeseen medical emergencies arise. And as for the third position on the team, I'm claiming Captain's privilege." A glint sparkled briefly in his eyes.

"I know that most, if not all of you, are anxious to see what awaits us. I fully understand. And let me assure you that, in the days to come, every one of you will get the chance to become familiar—no doubt all too familiar—with Macallan's creation."

He straightened up. "Any questions?"

The pilothouse was still.

The Captain nodded. "In that case, gentlemen, let's take care of business."

Chapter 27

The following afternoon, Hatch left the island in fine high spirits. The pumps had been chugging in tandem all the previous day and on into the night, sucking millions of gallons of brown seawater out of the Pit, piping it across the island, and dumping it back into the ocean. Finally, after thirty hours, the uptake hoses had struck silt at the bottom of the Water Pit, one hundred forty feet down.

Hatch had waited tensely in his medical office, but by five he'd received word that high tide had come and gone without any apparent seepage of seawater into the Pit. There had been an anxious watch as the massive timbering groaned, creaked, and settled under its heavier burden. Seismographic sensors registered some small cave-ins, but they were in adjoining side tunnels and pits, not the main shaft. After a few hours the major settling seemed to cease. The cofferdam had held. Now, a crew was at work with a magnetized grappling hook, clearing out debris that had fallen into the Water Pit over the centuries and snagged on various crossbeams and timbers.

After mooring his boat in Stormhaven, Hatch stopped by the Co-op to pick up a salmon fillet. Then, on impulse, he drove the eight miles down the coast to Southport. Driving along Route 1A, the old coastal highway, he could see a line of sullen lightning flicker jaggedly across forty degrees of sea horizon, pale yellow against the blues and pinks of the evening. A massive thunderhead had reared up beyond Monhegan Island far to the south, rising to thirty thousand feet, its steel-colored interior glinting with internal electricity: a typical summer storm, promising a heavy rain and perhaps a few bolts, but without the virulence to blow up a dangerous sea.

Southport's grocery, though poorly stocked by Cambridge standards, carried a number of things not found in Bud's Superette. As he got out of his Jaguar, Hatch made a quick scan of the street: it wouldn't do for anyone to recognize him and report the treasonous act to Bud. He smiled to himself, thinking how alien this small-town logic would seem to a Bostonian.

Arriving home, Hatch made a pot of coffee and poached the salmon with lemon, dill, and asparagus, then whipped up a sauce of curried horseradish mayonnaise. Most of the dining room table was covered with a large green canvas, and he cleared a space at the far end and sat down with his dinner and the Stormhaven Gazette. He was partly pleased, and partly disappointed, to see that the Ragged Island dig had been relegated to second page. Pride of place on the front page went to the Lobster Bake, and to the moose that had wandered into the storage lot behind Kai Estenson's hardware store, run amok, and been tranquilized by game officials. The article on the dig mentioned "excellent progress, despite a few unanticipated setbacks," and went on to say that the man wounded in the prior week's accident was resting comfortably at home. As Hatch had requested, his own name did not appear.

Finishing his dinner, he dumped the dishes in the sink, then returned to the dining room and the large green canvas. Sipping a fresh cup of coffee, he pulled the canvas away, exposing a smaller canvas and, on it, two of the skeletons that had been uncovered the day before. He had chosen what he thought were the most complete and representative specimens from the staggeringly large burial group and brought the remains back to his house, where he could examine them in peace.

The bones were clean and hard and stained a light brown by the iron-rich soil of the island. In the dry air of the house, they emitted a faint odor of old earth. Hatch stood back, arms akimbo, and contemplated the skeletons and the pathetic collections of buttons, buckles, and hobnails that had been found with them. One had been wearing a ring—a gold ring set with an inferior cabochon garnet, valuable more for historical reasons than anything else. Hatch picked it up from among the neat array of items. He tried it on his little finger, found that it fit, and left it there, somehow pleased at this connection with the long-dead pirate.

Summer twilight lay across the meadow beyond the open windows, and frogs in the millpond at the bottom of the fields had begun their evening vespers. Hatch pulled out a small notebook, writing "Pirate A" on the left side of a page and "Pirate B" on the right. Then he scratched these out, replacing them with "Black-beard" and "Captain Kidd." Somehow, it made them more human. Underneath each heading he began jotting his first impressions.

First, Hatch sexed the skeletons carefully: he knew there were more female pirates plying the seas in the 1700s than most people realized. Both were male. They were also nearly toothless, a characteristic shared with the other skeletons in the mass grave. Hatch picked up a loose mandible, examining it with a magnifying glass. Along the mandibular process there was scarring due to lesions of the gums, and places where the bone had been thinned and apparently eaten away. The few remaining teeth showed a striking pathology: a separation of the odontoblast layer from the dentin. Hatch laid the jawbone down, wondering whether this was due to disease, starvation, or simply poor hygiene.

He cradled the skull of the pirate he'd labeled Blackbeard and examined it, Yorick style. Blackbeard's one remaining upper incisor was distinctly shoveled: That implied either East Asian or Amerindian stock. He replaced the skull and continued his examination. The other pirate, Kidd, had broken his leg in the past: The ends of the bone around the fracture were abraded and calcified, and the break had not knitted together well. Probably walked around with a limp and in severe pain. In life, Kidd would not have been a good-tempered pirate. The man also had an old wound in the clavicle; there was a deep score in the bone, surrounded by spurs. Cutlass blow? Hatch wondered.