Clive Cussler: Cyclops

<1>THE PROSPERTEER

October 10, 1989

Key West, Florida

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The blimp Hung motionless in the tropical air, poised and tranquil, like a fish suspended in an aquarium. Her bow nudged against a yellow mooring mast as she balanced daintily on a single landing wheel. She was a tired-looking old airship-- her once silver skin had wrinkled and turned white and was spotted by numerous patches. The gondola, the control car that hung beneath her belly, wore an antique boat-like look, and its glass windows were yellowed with age. Only her two 200-horsepower Wright Whirlwind engines appeared new, having been carefully restored to pristine condition.

Unlike her younger sister ships that plied the skies above football stadiums, her gas-tight envelope was made from aluminum with riveted seams instead of rubber-coated polyester and was supported by twelve circular frames like the back of a fish. Her cigar shape was 149 feet in length and held 200,000 cubic feet of helium, and if no headwinds attacked her rotund nose, she could barrel through the clouds at sixty-two miles an hour. Her original designation was ZMC-2, Zeppelin Metal Clad Number Two, and she had been constructed in Detroit and turned over to the United States Navy in 1929. Unlike most airships with four massive stabilizing fins, she sported eight small fins on her tapered tail. Very advanced for her era, she had given solid and dependable service until 1942, when she was dismantled and forgotten.

For forty-seven years the ZMC-2 languished in an abandoned hangar along the runway of a deserted naval air station near Key West, Florida. Then in 1988, the property was sold by the government to a financial conglomerate headed by a wealthy publisher, Raymond LeBaron, who intended to develop it as a resort.

Shortly after arriving from his corporate headquarters in Chicago to inspect the newly purchased naval base, LeBaron stumbled onto the dusty and corroded remains of the ZMC-2 and became intrigued. Charging it off to promotion, he had the old lighter-than-air craft reassembled and the engines rebuilt, calling her the Prosperteer after the business magazine that was the base of his financial empire, and emblazoning the name in huge red letters on the side of the envelope.

LeBaron learned to fly the Prosperteer, mastering the fickle moods of the craft and the constant adjustments required to maintain steady flight under the capricious nature of the wind. There was no autopilot to relieve the chore of dipping the bow against a sudden gust and lifting it when the breeze slackened. The near-neutral buoyancy varied greatly with the atmosphere. Residue from a light rain could add hundreds of pounds to the blimp's vast skin, decreasing her ability to lift, while dry air blowing down from the northwest forced the pilot to fight the craft's insistence on rising to an undesired altitude.

LeBaron reveled in the challenge. The exhilaration of second guessing the moods of the antique gas bag and wrestling with her aerodynamic whims far exceeded any enjoyment he received from flying any of the five jet aircraft belonging to his corporate holdings. He sneaked away from the boardroom at every opportunity to travel to Key West so he could island-hop around the Caribbean. The Prosperteer soon became a familiar sight over the Bahama Islands. A native worker, laboring in a sugarcane field, looked up at the blimp and promptly described her as a "little pig running backwards."

LeBaron, however, like most entrepreneurs of the power elite, suffered from a restless mind and a driving urge to tackle a new project lying over the next hill. After nearly a year his interest in the old blimp began to wane.

Then one evening in a waterfront saloon he met an old beach rat by the name of Buck Caesar, who operated a backwater salvage company with the grandiloquent title "Exotic Artifact Ventures, Inc."

During a conversation over several rounds of iced rum, Caesar spoke the magic word that has fired the human mind into insanity for five thousand years and probably caused more grief than half the wars-- treasure.

After listening to Caesar spin tales of Spanish galleons littering the waters of the Caribbean, their cargoes of gold and silver mingled with the coral, even a shrewd financial manipulator with the acute business sense of LeBaron was hooked. With a handshake they formed a partnership.

LeBaron's interest in the Prosperteer was revived. The blimp made a perfect platform for spotting potential shipwreck sites from the air. Airplanes moved too fast for aerial survey, while helicopters had a limited flying time and churned up the surface of the water with wash from their rotor blades. The blimp could remain airborne for two days and cruise at a walk. From an altitude of 400 feet, the straight lines of a man-made object could be detected by a sharp eye a hundred feet beneath a calm and clear sea.

Dawn was crawling over the Florida Straits as the ten-man ground crew assembled around the Prosperteer and began a preflight inspection. The new sun caught the huge envelope covered by morning dew, giving off an iridescent effect like that from a soap bubble. The blimp stood in the center of a concrete runway whose expansion cracks were lined with weeds. A slight breeze blew in from the straits and she swung around the mooring mast until her bulbous nose faced into it.

Most of the ground crew were young, deeply tanned, and casually dressed in an assortment of shorts, bathing suits, and denim cutoffs. They took scant notice as a Cadillac stretch limousine drove across the runway and stopped at the large truck that served as the blimp's repair shop, crew chief's office, and communications room.

The chauffeur opened the door and LeBaron unlimbered from the rear seat, followed by Buck Caesar, who immediately made for the blimp's gondola with a roll of nautical charts tucked under one arm. LeBaron, looking a very trim and healthy sixty-five, towered above everyone at six foot seven. His eyes were the color of light oak, the graying hair combed just so, and he possessed the distant, preoccupied gaze of a man whose thoughts were several hours in the future.

He bent down and spoke for a few moments to an attractive woman who leaned from the car. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, closed the car door, and began walking toward the Prosperteer.

The crew chief, a studious-looking man wearing a spotless white shop coat, came over and shook LeBaron's outstretched hand. "Fuel tanks are topped off, Mr. LeBaron. The preflight check list is completed."

"How's the buoyancy?"

"You'll have to adjust for an extra five hundred pounds from the dampness."

LeBaron nodded thoughtfully. "She'll lighten in the heat of the day."

"The controls should feel more responsive. The elevator cables were showing signs of rust, so I had them replaced."

"What's the weather look like?"

"Low scattered clouds most of the day. Little chance of rain. You'll be bucking a five-mile-an-hour head wind from the southeast on the way out."

"And a tail wind on the return trip. I prefer that."

"Same radio frequency as the last trip?"

"Yes, we'll report our position and condition, using normal voice communication, every half hour. If we spot a promising target we'll transmit in code."

The crew chief nodded. "Understood."

Without further conversation LeBaron climbed the ladder to the gondola and settled in the pilot's seat. He was joined by his copilot, Joe Cavilla, a sixty-year-old, sad-eyed, dour individual who seldom opened his mouth except to yawn or sneeze. His family had immigrated to America from Brazil when he was sixteen and he had joined the Navy, flying blimps until the last airship unit was formally disbanded in 1964. Cavilla had simply showed up one day, impressed LeBaron with his expertise in lighter-than-air craft, and was hired.