Night Probe!

by Clive Cussler

  "If all my fellow officers looked like you, Commander Milligan, I might never retire from service."

  "Flattery deserves a reward," said Pitt. "Perhaps I can persuade Heidi to give you a tour of the ship."

  "I'd like that very-much." Then Weeks' expression turned serious. "You may not be so hospitable when you learn the nature of my visit."

  "You've come to tell us the ball game has been called because of political rain."

  "Your vernacular is most appropriate." Weeks shrugged. "I have my orders. I'm sorry."

  "How much time have we got to retrieve our men and equipment?"

  "How much do you need?"

  "Twenty-four hours."

  Weeks was no fool. He knew enough about salvage to know Pitt was conning him. "I can give you eight."

  "We can't bring up the saturation chamber in less than twelve."

  "You'd make a good merchant in a Turkish bazaar, Mr. Pitt." Weeks' smile returned. "Ten hours should see you through. "Providing you begin counting after lunch."

  Weeks threw up his hands. "My God, you never give up. All right, after lunch it is."

  "Now that's settled, Commander Weeks," said Heidi, "if you'll follow me, I'll show you the operation."

  Accompanied by two of his ship's officers, Weeks trailed Heidi down a stairway to the work platform inside the center well. Pitt and Gunn turned and slowly made their way to the control room.

  "Why the V.I.P treatment for a character who's kicking us out of the park?" Gunn asked irritably.

  "I bought ten hours," Pitt said in a low voice. "And I'm going to buy every minute I can to keep those guys below working on the wreck."

  Gunn stopped and looked at him. "Are you saying you're not discontinuing the project?"

  "Hell yes," said Pitt earnestly.

  "You're nuts." Gunn shook his head in wonder. "We need at least two more days to break through to Shields' cabin. You don't stand a prayer of stalling that long."

  Pitt smiled crookedly. "Maybe not, but by God, I'm going to try."

  Through the heavy veil of sleep, Moon felt someone shaking him. He had remained in his office around the clock since the Ocean Venturer had moored over the Empress of Ireland. Normal sleeping hours were forgotten and he took to catching up on his sleep with short catnaps. When he finally opened his eyes he found them looking into the grim features of the White House communications director. He yawned and sat up. "What's the latest?"

  The communications director handed him a sheet of paper. "Read it and weep."

  Moon studied the wording. Then he looked up. "Where's the President?"

  "He's speaking to a group of Mexican-American labor leaders out in the rose garden."

  Moon slipped on his shoes and hurried down the hallway, pulling on his coat and straightening his tie as he went. The President had just finished a round of handshaking and was returning to the oval office when Moon caught up with him. "More bad news?" asked the President.

  Moon nodded and held up the message. "The latest word from Pitt."

  "Read it to me as we walk back to my office."

  "He says, "Have been ordered out of the St. Lawrence by the Canadian navy. Granted a ten-hour grace period to pack the suitcases. Destroyer is standing by."

  "Is that all?"

  "No, sir, there's more."

  "Then let's have it."

  Moon read on. " 'Intend to disregard eviction notice. Salvage continues. We are preparing to repel boarders. Signed Pitt.' "

  The President stopped in mid-stride. "What was that?"

  "Sir?"

  "The last part, read it again."

  " 'We are preparing to repel boarders.' "

  The President shook his head in astonishment. "Good lord, the order to repel boarders hasn't been given in a hundred years."

  "If I'm any judge of character, Pitt means what he says."

  The President looked thoughtful.

  "So the British and Canadians have slammed the door."

  "I'm afraid that's the verdict," said Moon. "Shall I contact Pitt and order him to break off the salvage?

  Any other action might provoke a military response."

  "It's true we're walking a tightrope, but good old-fashioned guts deserve a reward."

  Moon suppressed a sudden fear. "You're not suggesting we throw Pitt a lifeline."

  "I am," said the President. "It's time we showed some guts of our own."

  They stood together tenderly as though it was the first time and watched a young moon rise in the east, guessing the destinations of the ships beating steadily downriver. Overhead the two red lights, signifying a vessel moored over a wreck, burned from the mast, giving them just enough glow to make out each other's faces. "I never knew it would come to this," Heidi said softly.

  "You created a ripple effect," Pitt responded, "and it's still spreading."

  She leaned against him. "Strange how the discovery of an old crumpled letter in a university archive could touch so many lives. If only I'd left well enough alone," she whispered.

  Pitt put his arm around her and gently squeezed. "We can't look back on the ifs. There's no profit in it."

  Heidi gazed across the water at the Canadian destroyer. The decks and boxlike superstructure were brightly lit, and she could hear the hum of the generators. She shivered as a drifting patch of fog crept in across the river. "What will happen when we overstep Commander Weeks' deadline?"

  Pitt held up his watch to the dim mast lights. "We'll know in another twenty minutes."

  "I feel so ashamed."

  Pitt looked at her. "What is this, cleanse-the-soul hour?"

  "That ship wouldn't be out there if I hadn't blabbed to Brian Shaw."

  "Remember what I said about ifs."

  "But I slept with him. That makes it worse. If anyone is hurt I . . ." The words escaped her and she fell silent as Pitt held her tight.

  They did not speak again until, a few minutes later, a low, polite cough tugged them back to reality. Pitt turned to see Rudi Gunn standing on the bridge wing above.

  "You'd better come up, Dirk. Weeks is getting pretty insistent. Claims he sees no evidence of our departure. I'm running out of excuses."

  "Did you tell him the ship is swept by bubonic plague and mutiny?"

  "No time for humor," Gunn said seriously. "We also have a contact on radar. A ship steering out of the main channel in our direction. I fear our luncheon guest has called up reinforcements."

  Weeks stared through the bridge windows at the incoming mist. He held a cup of coffee in one hand that was half full and turning cold. His normally easygoing disposition was stretched to the limits by the annoying indifference of the NUMA ship to his requests for information. He turned to his first officer, who was bent over a radarscope. "What do you make of it?"

  "A large ship, nothing more. Probably a coastal tanker or a containership. Can you see its lights?"

  "Only when they climbed over the horizon. The fog has cut them off."

  "The curse of the St. Lawrence," said the first officer. "You never know when the fog decides to shroud this part of the river."

  Weeks trained a pair of binoculars on the Ocean Venturer, but already its lights were beginning to blur as the fog bank rolled in. Within a few minutes the Venturer would be completely obscured.

  The first officer straightened up and rubbed his eyes. "if I didn't know better, I'd say the target was on a collision course."

  Weeks picked up a microphone. "Radio room, this is the Captain. Patch me in on the safety call frequency."

  "The contact is slowing," said the first officer.

  Weeks waited until he heard the bridge speaker come on and emit a low crackle of static. Then he began transmitting.

  "To the ship-on an upriver course, bearing zero-one-seven degrees off Pointe-au-Pere. This is the H.M.C.S. Huron . Please respond. Over." His only reply was the muted static. He called two more times, but there was still no reply.

  "Down to three knots and still closing. Range tw
elve hundred yards.

  Weeks ordered a seaman to sound the inland waterway fog signal for a ship at anchor. Four blasts of the Huron's horn whooped over the black water: one short, two long, one short.

  The answer was a prolonged shriek that cut through the fog.

  Weeks stepped to the doorway, his eyes straining into the night. The approaching intruder remained invisible.

  "He appears to be slipping between us and the Ocean Venturer," the first officer reported.

  "Why in hell don't they answer? Why don't the fools stay clear?"

  "Maybe we'd better throw a scare into them."

  A devious gleam came into Weeks' eyes. "Yes, I think that might do the trick." He pressed the mike's transmit button and said, "To the ship off my port stem. This is the H.M.C.S. destroyer Huron . If you do not identify yourself immediately, we shall open fire and blow you out of the water."

  Perhaps five seconds passed. Then a voice rasped out of the bridge speaker in a pronounced Texas drawl.

  "This is the U.S.S. guided missile cruiser Phoenix . Draw when you're ready, pardner."

  Local farmers may have welcomed the rain that poured onto the Hudson River valley, but it only further depressed the crew of the De Soto. Their search for the Manhattan Limited had turned up nothing but the twisted, rusting remains of the Hudson-Deauville bridge, which lay on the river bottom like the scattered bones of an extinct dinosaur.

  Hour followed hour, the crew keyed to the instruments, the helmsman steering over the same grids five and six times, everyone trying to spot something they might have overlooked. Three times the probes that trailed behind the boat's stern hung up on underwater obstructions, creating delays of several hours before divers could work them free again.

  The line of Giordino's mouth tightened as he pored over the grid charts, sketching in the debris shown by the side-scan so nor Finally he turned to Glen Chase.

  "Well, we may not know where it is, but we sure as hell know where it ain't. I'm hoping the diving team will get lucky." He looked up at the large brass chronograph on the wheelhouse wall. "They should be surfacing about now."

  Chase idly thumbed through the historical report on the Manhattan Limited wreck that Heidi Milligan had compiled and sent from Canada. He stopped at the last two pages and read them in silence.

  "Is it possible the train was salvaged years later when it was old news," and no one bothered notifying the newspapers?"

  "I don't think so," replied Giordino. "The disaster was too big an event in these parts for a successful recovery to go unnoticed and unrecorded."

  "Any truth to the claims by individual divers that they discovered the locomotive?"

  "None that can be verified. One guy even swears he sat in the cab and rang the engine's bell. Another says he swam through a Pullman car filled with skeletons. Show me an unsolved mystery, and I'll show you a certified weirdo with all the answers."

  A figure in a dripping exposure suit materialized in the doorway and stepped into the wheelhouse.

  Nicholas Riley, chief diver for the project, sank to the deck, his back pressed against a bulkhead, and exhaled a great sigh. "That three-knot current is murder," he said tiredly.

  "Did you find anything?" Giordino asked impatiently.

  "A veritable junkyard," Riley answered. "Sections of the bridge are strewn all over the riverbed. Some of the girders look shredded, as if they were blown apart."

  "That's explained in here," said Chase, holding aloft the report. "The Army Corps of Engineers blasted off the top of the wreckage in nineteen seventeen because it was a menace to navigation."

  "Any sign of the train?" Giordino persisted.

  "Not even a wheel." Riley paused to blow his nose. "Bottom geology is fine sand, very soft. You could sink a thin dime in it."

  "How deep is bedrock?"

  "According to our laser probe," replied Chase, "bedrock lies at thirty-seven feet."

  "You could blanket a train and still have twenty feet to spare," said Riley.

  Giordino's eyes narrowed. "If geniuses were awarded roses and idiots skunks, I'd get about ten skunks."

  "Well, maybe seven skunks," Chase needled him. "Why the self-flagellation?"

  "I was too dumb to see the solution to the enigma. Why the proton magnetometer can't get a solid reading. Why the sub bottom profiler can't distinguish an entire train under the sediment."

  "Care to share your revelation?" queried Riley.

  "Everyone takes for granted that the weakened bridge collapsed under the weight of the train and they dropped together, the locomotive and coaches entangled with steel girders, into the water below,"

  Giordino said briskly. "But what if the train fell through the center span first, and then the entire bridge dropped down on top and blanketed it?"

  Riley stared at Chase. "I think he's got something. The weight of all that steel could well have pressed all trace of the train deep into the soft sand."

  "His theory also explains why our detection gear has struck out," Chase agreed. "The broken mass of the bridge structure effectively distorts and shields our probe signals from any objects beneath."

  Giordino faced Riley. "Any chance of tunneling under the wreckage?"

  "No way," grunted Riley. "The bottom is like quicksand. Besides, the current is too strong for my divers to accomplish much."

  "We'll need a barge with a crane and dredge to yank that bridge off the bottom if we expect to lay our hands on the train," said Giordino.

  Riley rose wearily to his feet. "Okay, I'll get my boys to shoot some underwater survey photol so we'll know where to lay the jaws of the crane."

  Giordino took off his cap and wiped a sleeve over his forehead. "Funny how things work out. Here I thought we'd have the easy time of it, while Pitt and his crew got the short end of the stick."

  "God knows what they're up against in the St. Lawrence," said Chase. "I wouldn't trade places with them."

  "Oh, I don't know," Giordino shrugged. "If Pitt is running true to form, he's probably sitting in a deck chair with a beautiful woman on one side and a mai tai on the other, lapping up the Canadian sun."

  A strange mist, a swirling, reddish mist curtained off the light and swam thickly in front of Pitt's eyes.

  Once, twice, several times he tried desperately to struggle through to the other side, reaching out in front of him like a blind man.

  There had been no time to prepare for the shock, no time for his mind to comprehend, no time even to wonder. He wiped away the claret that trickled over his brows and probed a gash on his forehead four inches long and thankfully not skull-deep.

  Pitt dragged himself to his feet, staring in disbelief at the litter of bodies around him.

  Rudi Gunn's pale face looked up at Pitt, eyes lost and uncomprehending, and devoid of expression. He swayed on hands and knees, muttering softly. "Oh, God! Oh, God! What happened?"

  "I don't know," Pitt answered in a strained voice, foreign even to himself. "I don't know."

  On shore Shaw froze in hunched paralysis, lips compressed until his mouth no longer showed, face contorted in blind and bitter rage, a bitterness directed at his own sense of guilt.

  Ignoring Villon's order to leave Canada, he had set up camp on the eastern tip of Father's Point, two-and-a-half miles from the salvage site. He had assembled a British army S-66 long range reconnaissance scope that could read a newspaper headline at five miles, and had begun the tedious routine of observing the small fleet of ships moored over the Empress of Ireland.

  Launches were charging back and forth between the two naval vessels like ferries held to a schedule.

  Shaw amused himself by imagining the heated negotiations going on between the American and Canadian officers.

  The Ocean Venturer appeared still and dead. No one moved about its decks, but he could clearly see that the derrick was still in operation as its huge winch pulled up slime-covered scrap from the hulk below.

  Shaw sat back to rest his eyes for a moment and munch a cou
ple of candy bars that passed for breakfast. He noticed a small outboard hydroplane coming down the river at great speed, somewhere between ninety and a hundred miles an hour as it blasted off the wave tops and trailed a ten-foot rooster tail in its wake.

  His curious nature aroused, he turned the scope on it.

  The hull was painted a metallic gold with a burgundy stripe that flared at the stern. The effect was that of an arrow as it banked and tracked into the sun. Shaw waited until the glare subsided and then he zeroed in on the driver. The single figure behind the windscreen wore goggles, but Shaw recognized the squat nose, the cold, hard face.

  It was Foss Gly.

  Shaw gazed fascinated as the hydroplane cut a large circle around the three ships, leaping clear of the water with only the props submerged, then thumping down with a kettledrum impact that carried to where Shaw was standing.

  It was difficult to keep the scope trained on the bouncing boat, but he locked in when it swung on an opposite course and gave him a clear view of the exposed cockpit over the transom.

  Gly was clutching the wheel with his right hand while his left hand held aloft a small box. A thin shaft gleamed in the sun, and Shaw identified it as an antenna.

  "No!" he shouted to the un hearing wind as the awful truth of Gly's intent struck him. "No, damn you, no!"