Clive Cussler - Polar Shift

Barnes gazed at the scene with a beatific smile on his satanic face.

"Chaos," he murmured like a monk chanting his mantra. "Sweet, sweet chaos."

The deck lights were ablaze when the NUMA car carrying Austin and Zavala pulled up to the dock at Norfolk. Austin climbed the gangway with a jaunty step. He was happy to be going back to sea, and excited about sailing on the research vessel Peter Throckmorton, one of the newest ships in the NUMA fleet. He owed the mysterious Dr. Adler a debt for inviting him on the search expedition.

The 275-foot ship was named after one of the early pioneers in nautical archaeology. Throckmorton had proven that archaeological methods could work underwater, spurring a whole era of discovery. The ship was a seagoing workhorse. It was designed with versatility in mind, and its remote sensing equipment could just as easily explore an underwater city as a field of hypothermal ocean vents.

Like most research vessels, the Throckmorton was a seagoing platform from which scientists could launch vehicles and probes to carry out their experiments. Sprouting from the fantail and foredeck were the booms and cranes that could be used to deploy the various undersea probes and submersibles the ship carried. Power winches were located on the port and starboard sides.

One of the ship's officers greeted the NUMA men at the top of the gangway.

"Captain Cabral welcomes you aboard the Throckmorton and wishes you a pleasant trip."

Austin knew the captain, Tony Cabral, from other NUMA expeditions, and looked forward to seeing him again.

"Please thank the captain, and tell him we're pleased to be sailing under his command."

With the brief formalities over, a crewman escorted them to their comfortable cabins. They dropped off their duffel bags and went to find Adler. At the suggestion of the crewman, they looked for him in the vessel's survey control center.

The center was a spacious semidark room on the main deck. The walls were lined with banks of monitors that served as the eyes and ears for the ship's remote sensing gear. When a probe was launched, the information it gathered was transmitted to the center for analysis. With the ship still in port, the room was deserted except for a man who sat at a table pecking away at a computer keyboard.

"Dr. Adler?" Kurt said.

The man looked up from his keyboard and smiled. "Yes. And you must be the folks from NUMA?"

Austin and Zavala introduced themselves and shook hands with Adler.

The wave scientist was a rumpled, big-boned man who had the physique of a lumberjack and a mop of shaggy, silver hair that looked like Spanish moss growing on an old oak. His upper lip was adorned by a crooked mustache that looked as if it had been pasted on his face as an afterthought. He had a rumbling voice and a grumpy way of talking, as if he had just got up from a nap, but the alert, gray eyes that squinted at them through wire-rimmed glasses sparkled with good humor. He thanked them for coming, and pulled over a couple of chairs.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you gentlemen. I wasn't sure Rudi Gunn would go along with my request to have you on the expedition, Kurt. Getting Joe here is an unexpected bonus. I was probably being a bit persistent. Blame my Quaker background. Friendly persuasion and all that. We don't push; we sort of lean on people until they notice us."

The professor would never have to worry about going unnoticed, Austin thought. "No apologies needed," he said. "I'm always up for a sea cruise. I was surprised that you specifically wanted me on board. We've never met."

"But I've heard a lot about you. And I know that NUMA likes to tout its accomplishments without specifically attributing them to the work of your Special Assignments Team."

The team had been the brainchild of Admiral Sandecker, who ran NUMA before Dirk Pitt took over as director. He wanted a group of experts for undersea assignments that sometimes took place outside the realm of government oversight. At the same time, he used the team's more spectacular missions to leverage funds out of Congress."

"You're right. We prefer to minimize our role."

Adler responded with a big-toothed grin. "It's very hard to minimize the discovery of the body of Columbus in an underwater Mayan pyramid. Or to belittle the prevention of a methane hydrate tsunami off the East Coast."

"Dumb luck," Austin said. "We were only doing some troubleshooting."

Zavala rolled his eyes. "Kurt says that the only problem being a troubleshooter is that trouble sometimes shoots back."

"I'll concede that the Special Assignments Team has taken on some odd missions, but NUMA has dozens of technicians far more capable than I am at search and survey. Why did you ask for me?"

Adler's face grew solemn. "Something very strange is going on in the ocean."

"Nothing new there," Austin said. "The sea is more alien than outer space. We know more about the stars than the planet under our feet."

"I'd be the first to agree with you," Adler said. "It's just that, well, I've got some crazy ideas banging around the inside of my skull."

"Joe and I learned a long time ago that there's a thin line between crazy and rational. We'd like to hear what you have to say."

"I'll run them by you in due time, but I'd prefer to wait until we find the Southern Belle."

"No hurry. Tell us about the Belle's disappearance. As I recall, she was sailing off the mid-Atlantic coast. She sent out an SOS, saying she was in trouble, then she vanished without a trace."

"That's right. An intensive search was launched within hours. The sea seemed to have swallowed her up. It's been tough on the crew's families not knowing what happened to their loved ones. From a practical point of view, the owners would like to get their legal house in order."

"Ships have disappeared without a clue going back hundreds of years," Austin said. "It still happens, even with instantaneous and worldwide communication."

"But the Belle wasn't simply any ship. It was about as close to an unsinkable vessel as possible."

Austin grinned. "That sounds vaguely familiar."

Adler raised his finger. "I know. The same thing was said about the Titanic. But the science of shipbuilding has made huge leaps since the Titanic went down. The Belle was an entirely new type of oceangoing cargo vessel. It was built strong enough to withstand the most severe weather. You said that this isn't the first time a well-made vessel vanished. Absolutely right. A cargo ship named the Munchen disappeared in a storm while crossing the Atlantic in 1978. Like the Belle , it radioed an SOS, saying it was in trouble. No one could understand what could have happened to such a modern ship. Twenty-seven crewmen were lost."

"Tragic. Was any trace of the ship ever found?" Austin asked.

"Rescue attempts started immediately after the SOS. More than a hundred ships combed the ocean. They found some wreckage, and an empty lifeboat that provided a valuable clue. The boat would have hung by pins on the starboard side more than sixty feet above the waterline. The steel pins attached to the boat were found to be bent from forward to aft."

Zavala's mechanical mind immediately saw the significance of the damage to the ship. "Easy call," he said. "A violent force at least sixty feet tall knocked the lifeboat off its pins."

"The Maritime Court said the ship sank when bad weather caused an 'unusual event.' "

Austin chuckled. "Sounds as if the Maritime Court was dancing around the real conclusion."

"The mariners who heard the court's findings would agree with you. They were outraged. They knew exactly what sunk the Munchen. Sailors had been talking for years about their encounters with waves eighty or ninety feet tall, but the scientists didn't believe their stories."