Night Probe! - Clive Cussler

The expedition to locate the Manhattan Limited seemed jinxed from the start. Giordino was frustrated to the gills. Already he was four days behind on his promised schedule.

After a hurried dockside loading of men and equipment, the trim new research boat, the De Soto, sixty feet long and especially designed by NUMA engineers to cruise inland waterways, churned upriver and headed toward near destruction.

The helmsman kept a keen eye on the channel buoys and passing pleasure craft. His main concern, however, was the falling barometer and a light splattering of rain on the wheelhouse windows. Together they promised a first-class storm by nightfall.

As darkness settled, the river's chop began throwing spray over the De Soto's foredeck. Suddenly the wind howled down over the steep palisades bordering the shoreline, gusting from twenty miles an hour to over sixty. The force of the blast pushed the speeding boat out of the main channel. Before the helmsman could literally muscle it back on course, it had driven into shallow waters, ripping a two-foot gash under its port bow on what was believed to be a submerged log.

For the next four hours, Giordino drove his crew with the heavy hand of a Captain Bligh. The sonar operator insisted later that the feisty Italian's tongue lashed about his ears like a bullwhip. It was a masterful performance. The hole was plugged until there were only a few small trickles, but not before the water had risen above the bilges and was sloshing ankle deep on the lower deck.

Laden with two tons of water, the De Soto handled sluggishly. Giordino ignored it in his fury and crammed the throttles to their stops. The sudden burst of speed raised the splintered wound above, the waterline and the vessel hurtled back down the river toward New York.

Two days were lost while the boat was dry docked and its hull repaired. No sooner had they gotten underway again than the magnetometer was found to be defective and a new unit rushed from San Francisco. Two more days down the drain.

At last, under the light of a full moon, Giordino watched cautiously as the De Soto slipped under the massive stone abutment that had once supported the Hudson-Deauville bridge. He poked his head in the open wheelhouse window.

"What do you read on the fathometer?"

Glen Chase, the taciturn, balding captain of the boat, cast an eye at the red digital numerals. "About twenty feet. Looks safe enough to park here till morning."

Giordino shook his head at Chase's land talk. The captain stoutly refused to voice the language of the sea, using left for port and right for starboard, claiming that ancient tradition did not fit the modern scheme of the times.

The anchor was dropped and the boat secured by lines running to a convenient tree on shore and the rusting remains of the bridge pier in the river. The engines were shut down and the auxiliary power unit fired up. Chase stared up at the crumbling abutment.

"Must have been quite a structure in its day."

"Fifth longest in the world when it was built," said Giordino.

"What do you suppose caused it to fall?"

Giordino shrugged. "According to the inquiry report, the evidence was inconclusive. The best theory was high winds combined with lightning strikes weakened a supporting truss."

Chase nodded his head toward the river. "Think it's waiting down there?"

"The train?" Giordino gazed at the moonlit waters. "It's there all right. The wreckage wasn't found in 1914 because all salvage men had at their command were copper-helmeted divers in clumsy canvas suits, groping in zero visibility, and grapples dragged by small boats. Their equipment was too limited and they looked in the wrong place."

Chase lifted his cap and scratched his head. "We should know in a couple of days."

"Less, with any luck."

"How about a beer?" Chase asked, smiling. "I always buy for an optimist."

"I believe I will," said Giordino.

Chase disappeared down a stairwell and made his way to the galley. In the main dining salon the crew could be heard joking among themselves as they adjusted the television dish antenna to pick up signals from a passing relay satellite.

A sudden chill raised goose bumps on Giordino's hairy arms, and he reached inside the wheelhouse for a windbreaker. As he was pulling up the zipper he hesitated and cocked an ear.

Chase appeared and handed him a beer can. "I didn't bother with glasses."

Giordino held up his hand for silence. "You hear that?"

Chase's brow furrowed. "Hear what?"

"Listen."

Chase tilted his head, his eyes locked in the unseeing stare of a man concentrating on sounds. "A train whistle," he announced indifferently.

"You sure?"

Chase nodded. "I can hear it plainly. Definitely a train whistle."

"Don't you find that odd?" asked Giordino.

"Why should I?"

"Diesel locomotives have air horns. Only the old steam engines blew whistles, and the last one was retired thirty years ago.

"Could be one of those kids' rides at an amusement park somewhere up the river," Chase surmised. "Sound can carry for miles over water."

"I don't think so," Giordino said, cupping his ears and swinging his head back and forth like a radar antenna. "It's getting louder…... louder and closer."

Chase ducked into the wheelhouse and returned with a land road map and a flashlight. He unfolded the paper over the deck railing and beamed the light.

"Look here," he said pointing to the tiny blue lines. "The main rail line cuts inland twenty miles south of here."

"And the nearest track?"

"Ten, maybe twelve miles."

"Whatever is making that sound is no more than a mile away," Giordino said flatly.

Giordino tried to fix the direction. The blazing moon illuminated the landscape with crystal clarity. He could distinguish individual trees two miles away. The sound was approaching along the west bank of the river above them. There was no movement of any kind, no lights except those of a few distant farmhouses.

Another shriek.

New sounds now. The clangor of heavy steel, the throaty, pulsating exhaust of steam and combustion split the night. Giordino felt as if he was suspended in air. He stood rigid. He waited.

"It's turning-turning toward us," Chase rasped as though he was still trying to convince himself. "God, it's coming off the ruins of the bridge."

They both stared upward at the top of the abutment, unable to breathe, unable to grasp what was happening. All at once the deafening noise of the invisible train exploded out of the dark above them. Giordino instinctively ducked. Chase froze, his face a ghastly corpse-white, the enlarged pupils of his eyes black pits you could fall into.

And then, abruptly, silence-a silence deathlike and ominous.

Neither man spoke, neither moved. They stood rooted to the deck like wax figures without hearts or lungs. Slowly Giordino gathered his thoughts and took the flashlight from Chase's unresisting hand. He shone its beam on the top of the abutment.

There was nothing to see but time-worn stone and impenetrable shadows.

The Ocean Venturer lay anchored over the wreck of the Empress of Ireland. A light rain had passed in the early morning hours and the Venturer's white hull glistened orange under the new sun. In contrast, a tired old fishing boat, its faded blue paint scarred and chipped, lazily trolled its nets two hundred yards away. To the fishermen the Ocean Venturer, silhouetted against the brightening horizon, looked as if it had been created by an artist with a warped sense of humor.

Its hull lines were aesthetic and contemporary. Beginning with its gracefully rounded bow, the main deck line traveled in an eye-pleasing curve to the oval fantail. There were none of the sharp edges associated with most other ships; even the eggshaped bridge rested on an arched spire. But there the beauty ended. Like a Cyrano's repulsive nose, a derrick similar to those erected in new oil fields protruded incongruously from the Ocean Venturer's midsection.