Pacific Vortex! Part 12

"Suddenly, one afternoon, the cracking stopped and he began receiving a tapping sound, as if something was rapping a pencil on the underwater microphone. At first he figured he'd only run onto a fish with a previously unrecorded sound. But it slowly dawned on him that the tapping was in some kind of code. The ship's radio operator was hastily called and he deciphered it as a mathematical formula. Then the noise stopped and a shrieking laughter, eerily distorted by the density of the water, burst from the listening room speakers. Shaking off disbelief, the crew quickly lowered a TV camera. They were about ten seconds too late. The fine bottom silt had been stirred up by a rapid movement, leaving an impenetrable cloud of muck. It took an hour before the bottom cleared. And there, in front of the cameras, was a set of odd-looking indentations in the silt going off into the black void."

"Were they able to make anything out of the formula?" asked Denver.

"Yes, it was a simple equation for finding the water pressure at the depth the microphone was located."

"And the answer?"

"Nearly two and a half tons per square inch."

Silence fell on the chart room, a long, chilling silence. Pitt could hear the water below the ports gently lapping the hull.

"Any coffee around?" Pitt asked.

Denver's mind still roamed the mysterious abyss of the sea. Then with a marked degree of effort, he shrugged it away. "Be a.s.sured," he said with a grim smile, "when you take an ocean cruise on the Martha Ann, you travel under the finest service in the Pacific." He picked up an old blackened pot and poured the coffee into a battered tin cup. "There you are, sir, and enjoy your trip."

They were sitting at the chart table just beginning to savor the coffee when the door swung open and Boland entered. He wore a soiled T-shirt, faded Levi's, and a pair of brogans in worse condition than Pitt's. The thin shirt showed off Boland's muscular shoulders, and for the first time, Pitt noticed a tattoo on one of his arms. The picture of a knife piercing the skin and oozing blood, adorned his right forearm, and underneath the gruesome ill.u.s.tration in blue lettering, read the words:

DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR .

"You two look like you just received Dear John letters," Boland's voice was mocking, yet firm. "What goes?"

"We were just solving the mysteries of the universe," Denver answered. "Here, Paul, have a shot of my world-renowned brew." He pushed a steaming cup toward Boland, spilling a few brown drops on the deck

Boland took the dripping mug from Denver's hand and looked thoughtfully at Pitt, and when Pitt stared back at him, he slowly cracked a smile, lifted the cup, and sipped at the hot contents.

"Any final orders from the old man?" he asked.

Denver shook his head. "Same as he told you. At the first sign of danger, get the h.e.l.l out and hotfoot it back to Pearl Harbor."

"That's if we're lucky," Boland said. "None of the other missing vessels had time for a Mayday signal, much less time to cut a.s.s."

"Then Pitt here is your insurance. And the helicopter."

"It takes time to warm up a helicopter," Boland said doubtfully.

"Not that bird," Pitt said briefly. "I can put her in the air in forty seconds flat." He stood and stretched, his large hands touching the metal ceiling. "One question. That copter can only carry fifteen men. Either the Navy provided us with a crew of midgets, or we're sailing d.a.m.ned shorthanded."

"Under normal standards, we're sailing short-handed," Denver said. He smiled at Boland and winked. "You couldn't know, Dirk, but the Martha Ann is not the decrepit old scow she seems. A large crew is unnecessary because she's equipped with the most advanced and highly automated centralized control system of any ship afloat. She practically runs herself."

"But the scale on the hull. The rust..." "Prettiest fake scenery you ever saw," Denver admitted. "A clever chemical coating that looks like the real thing. Can't tell it from rust under bright sunlight from a foot away."

"Then why the elaborate equipment?" Pitt asked.

"There's more to the Martha Ann than meets the eye," Boland said with a hesitant degree of modesty.

"You'd never know it to look at her, but she's crammed from keel to topside with salvage equipment."

"A disguised salvage ship?" Pitt said slowly. "That's a new twist."

Denver smiled. "The masquerade comes in handy for the, shall we say, more delicate reclamation projects."

"Admiral Sandecker mentioned a few of your delicate accomplishments," Pitt said. "Now I see how you carried them off."

"No job too large, no job too small," Boland said, laughing. "We could almost raise the Andrea Doria if they turned us loose on it"

"Suppose we do find the Starbuck, even with your automated gadgetry, you could never bring her to the surface with such a small crew."

"Purely precautionary, my dear Pitt," answered Denver. "Admiral Hunter insisted on a skeleton crew during the search operation. No sense in wasting lives if the Martha Ann should meet the same fate as the others. On the other hand, if we get lucky and discover the Starbuck, you and your whirlybird then begin a shuttle service between the recovery site and Honolulu by ferrying the salvage crew and any needed parts and equipment."

"A tidy little package," Pitt admitted. "Though I'd sleep better if we had an armed escort."

Denver shook his head. "Can't chance it. The Russians would smell a shady plot the minute they got wind of an old tramp steamer escorted by a Navy missile cruiser. They'd have the Andrei Vyborg on our tail by sunup."

Pitt's eyebrows lifted. The "Andrei Vyborg?"

"A Russian oceanographic vessel cla.s.sified by Navy Intelligence as a spy ship. She's shadowed the Star-buck's search operation for the last six months and she's still out there somewhere hovering around poking for the sub." Boland paused for a swallow of coffee. "The 101st Fleet has spent too much time and effort to maintain our cover as a merchantman. We can't afford to have it blown now."

"As you can see," Denver said, "the Martha Ann is completely divorced from the Navy. She's listed under United States registry as a merchant ship. And we intend to keep it that way, nice and discreet."

"Isn't the Navy concerned by the fact that the Andrei Vyborg is nosing around alone?"

"She's not alone," Boland said seriously. "We've four ships still combing the northern search area. The Navy never gives up on a search, no matter how hopeless it seems for survivors. Call it Naval tradition if you will, Major, but it's a d.a.m.n good feeling when you're floating in the sea, clutching a piece of flotsam after your ship has gone down, knowing that nothing is spared to make your rescue ..."

Boland's lecture was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Come in!" he shouted.

A young boy, no more than nineteen or twenty, stepped through the doorway. He was wearing a white butcher's cap on his head and a pair of blue coveralls. Ignoring Pitt and Denver, he spoke to Boland.

"Excuse me, sir, the chief engineer reports the engine room is in readiness and the bosun's mate has the crew standing by to cast off."

Boland glanced at his watch. "Right. Pa.s.s the word to cast off and get underway in ten minutes."

"Yes sir," replied the young seaman. He saluted, turned, and disappeared into the pilothouse.

Boland smiled smugly at Denver. "Not bad. We're forty minutes ahead of schedule."

"The copter tied down and secure?" asked Pitt.

Boland nodded. "She's snug. You can make your final flight checks when it's daylight."

Pitt rose and walked over to the porthole, breathing deeply to cleanse his lungs of the stale smoke from Denver's cigarettes. The harbor air smelled sure in comparison to the stuffy chart room.

"Have you a.s.signed accommodations for Dirk?" Denver asked Boland.

"There's a stateroom next to mine that we keep vacant for VTP's," Boland replied, his lips curled in a sarcastic grin. "In Pitt's case, we'll make an exception."

Pitt fixed a long hypnotic stare devoid of anger or animosity at the smoke curling up from the ashtray. He could shrug off a verbal dig with all the feeling of nipping a mosquito off an arm. Hunter was a clever old fox; placing two men with different temperaments together as a team.

"Well, I guess I'd best shove off," Denver said, breaking the uneasy silence.