Arctic Drift Part 54

"But the NUMA ship has not sunk," the captain protested.

"That," Zak replied with a snarl, "is about to change."

66

A THOUSAND FEET BELOW THE SURFACE, THE INTERVENING hour had been one of complete frustration for Pitt and Giordino. While guiding the Rover aft along the lower deck, Giordino watched as the ROV jerked to a standstill and refused to move forward. Retracing its trail of cable, he found the power cord had become tangled in some debris at the head of the galley. Matters only got worse when the ROV's thrusters kicked up a huge cloud of silt around the snagged area. He had to wait ten minutes just for the visibility to return before he could see enough to free the cable.

The interior of the submersible had finally grown hot, and sweat dribbled down Giordino's face as he tensely guided the ROV back through the crew's quarters and down the main pa.s.sageway toward the stern of the ship.

"Where's the lounge on this boat? I think Rover and I could both use a cold beer about now," he muttered.

"You would have needed to break into the Spirit Room belowdecks, where the rum was stored. Of course, if this is the Erebus, then you might be out of luck, as Franklin was a teetotaler."

"That seals it," Giordino said. "No further proof required. My present state of luck dictates that this has to be the Erebus."

Despite the minutes ticking down on their bottom time, neither man was ready to give up. They pressed the ROV onward, striking down the single aft pa.s.sageway, past the cramped officers' cabins, until finally arriving at a large compartment at the very stern of the ship. Called the Great Cabin, it stretched from beam to beam, offering the one truly comfortable haven for the men of the ship, or at least its officers. Stocked with a library, chess sets, playing cards, and other sources of entertainment, it was also a potential repository for the ship's log. But like the rest of the vessel, the Great Cabin offered no clues to the ship's ident.i.ty.

Scattered across the deck and around an upturned table was a knee-deep pile of books. Lined on wide shelves across each side of the cabin, the large collection of books had smashed through the gla.s.s cases during the sinking and been strewn everywhere. Giordino slowly flew the ROV back and forth across the cabin, surveying the wall-to-wall mess.

"Looks like the San Francisco Library after the great earthquake," Giordino said.

"The ship's library contained twelve hundred volumes," Pitt replied, studying the mess with disappointment. "If the ship's log is buried in there, it will take a couple of fortnights and a good rabbit's foot to find it."

Their frustration was interrupted by another radio transmission from Dahlgren.

"Sorry to break up the fiesta, but the big hand on the clock says it's time for you to begin your ascent," he said.

"We'll be on our way shortly," Pitt replied.

"Fair enough. The captain says to tell you that our shadow has closed to within four miles and is sitting pretty again. I think the captain would feel a whole lot better if you boys got yourselves aboard p.r.o.nto."

"Understood. Bloodhound out."

Giordino looked at Pitt and noticed a look of concern in his green eyes.

"You think that pal of yours from the Miners Co-op is aboard the icebreaker?"

"I'm beginning to wonder," Pitt replied.

"Let's try the captain's cabin and then we'll skedaddle."

The captain's cabin was located off the far side of the Great Cabin and represented a faint hope for containing the ship's log. But a small sliding door to the cabin was locked and no amount of b.u.mping or cajoling by the ROV would shake it loose. With less than an hour of battery power left and a twenty-minute ride to the surface, Pitt called the survey off and told Giordino to fetch Rover back home.

Giordino steered the ROV back to the galley and toward the entry gap in the bow, as a take-up spool reeled in the power cable. Pitt powered up the submersible's thrusters, then gazed out the view port at the Bloodhound 's electronic pod while waiting for the ROV.

"How did the mineral sensor test out?" he asked, pointing at the pod.

"Seems to work like a champ," Giordino replied, his eyes glued to the overhead monitor as he threaded the ROV through the forward debris. "We won't be able to gauge its full accuracy until we can a.s.say our samples back at headquarters."

Pitt reached over and powered on the sensor, watching a nearby monitor as it computed the mineral readings. Of no surprise to Pitt, the screen registered a very large iron concentration nearby, along with some trace elements of copper and zinc. The iron made perfect sense, as the ship was loaded with it, from the anchors and anchor chains directly below them to the locomotive engine in the hold. But it was one of the other trace elements that caught his eye. Waiting until the ROV snaked out of the lower deck, he engaged the thrusters and elevated the submersible. Moving slowly, he brought the craft to a hover over the damaged section of the bow while keeping one eye on the sensor's output.

"If you can find us some gold on this tub, it would redeem an otherwise forgettable dive," Giordino said.

Pitt danced the submersible over the debris area, gradually focusing on a small section near the ship's centerline. Easing to a stable section of the deck, he again set the submersible down. Giordino had pulled the ROV's cable slack and was preparing to drop it into its cradle.

"Hold on," Pitt said. "Do you see that broken timber standing upright about ten feet in front of us?"

"Got it."

"There's a covered object near its base, a little to the right. See if you can blast it off with the ROV."

Giordino had the Rover in place within seconds. He cut the power and let the ROV sink to a small pile of debris covered in silt. When the ROV made contact, he applied full power to its tiny thrusters. The little ROV shot upward, kicking up a thick cloud of silt in the process. The steady bottom current that rippled over the ship quickly cleared away the murky water. Both men could see a curved object with a gold l.u.s.ter lying in the debris.

"My gold bars," Giordino said facetiously.

"Something better, I think," Pitt replied. He didn't wait for Giordino to fly the ROV over the object, instead propelling the submersible over for a close-up look. Peering down through the view port, they saw the unmistakable shape of a large bell.

"Holy smokes, how did you pick that out of the muck? " Giordino asked.

"The Bloodhound's sniffer did it. I noticed a small reading of copper and zinc, and remembered that they're the two components of bra.s.s. I figured it was either a cleat or the ship's bell."

They stared down at the bell, observing an engraving on the side, which they couldn't quite make out. Pitt finally backed off a few feet and let the ROV zoom in for a closer look.

The bell was still caked with silt and crustaceans, but a close-up view from the Rover's camera revealed two of the engraved letters: ER.

"Can't spell Erebus without it," Giordino remarked with some relief.

"Give it another blast," Pitt directed.

While Giordino maneuvered the ROV in for another go at the silt, Pitt checked their battery reserves, finding their remaining power was down to thirty minutes. There was little time left to lose.

The silt burst upward in a ma.s.sive cloud of brown particulates from the Rover's second burst. It seemed to Pitt that the water took hours to clear when in fact in was just a few seconds. Giordino immediately guided the ROV back over the bell as they waited for the murky cloud to drift away. They both stared silently at the monitor as the bell's engraved lettering slowly materialized in its entirety.

It spelled TERROR.

67

AFTER THREE DAYS OF CONFINEMENT IN THE frozen darkness, the barge captives were living a different kind of terror. Roman had ordered the fading penlights to be used sparingly, so most of the time the men spent groping around in complete blackness. Initial feelings of anger and determination to escape had waned to despair in the bleak hold, where the men huddled close together to stave off hypothermia. Hope had flourished when the barge had come to a rest at the dock and the hatch was briefly thrown open. It proved to be nothing more than an inspection from several armed guards, but at least they had provided some food and blankets before their hasty exit. Roman took it as a good sign. They wouldn't be given food if they were not intended to be kept alive, he reasoned.

But now he wasn't so sure. When Bojorquez had awakened him to report a change in the sound of the icebreaker's engines, he suspected that they had reached their destination. But then the rhythmic tugging of the towropes had suddenly ceased while the rocking motion from the choppy seas remained. He could sense that they had been cut adrift.